5 ms·

On a finite planet, how is perpetual growth supposed to work indefinitely?

by well_actulily 3y ago

peepeepoopoo5 3y ago
The space of possible future human technologies is effectively infinite, to say nothing of extraplanetary resources.
- tzs 3y ago
  > The space of possible future human technologies is effectively infinite, to say nothing of extraplanetary resources. You are underestimating how quickly exponential growth gets out of hand. Take population for example. If we wanted to have 1% annual population growth, in ~12 100 years the volume of humans would be 9 x 10^60 m^3. If we started expanding into space right now, and we expanded at the speed of light, in 12 100 years we'd have access to 6 x 10^60 m^3, which is not big enough. Of course by then we may have bioengineered smaller humans. That doesn't help much. It just changes that 12 100 to 12 800. Or how about energy? If human energy use grows by 1% a year in ~9300 years we will be using 5.3 x 10^59 Joules per year. That's about the same as the amount of energy you would get if the entire mass of the Milky Way galaxy were converted to energy (E=mc^2). Forget the Milky Way. Let's think big. What if we converted the entire freaking universe--all the observable mass, and all the dark matter, and all the dark energy--into energy for humanity. At 1% annual growth from now we'd be using that much per year in 12 000 years.
  - dublinben 3y ago
    If human civilization has been growing exponentially for a while, how have we not already hit these enormous galaxy-straining limits? The total number of humans still easily fits on just the Earth alone.
    - tzs 3y ago
      We haven't been growing exponentially for very long. Before agriculture was invented there wasn't much growth at all. We were limited by how much hunter-gatherers could hunt and gather. Growth happened when people expanded to some new territory, and that was limited by poor transportation options. When agriculture was invented around 12000 years ago growth picked up, with the population doubling around every 1000 years. That lasted until around 5000 years ago, when the population was around 100 million. There wasn't much grown for the next couple thousand years. Around 3000 years ago growth picked up and the population tripled by 2000 years ago. It slowed again until around the industrial revolution and then picked up quite a bit. The world population growth rate went from around 0.1% per year before the industrial revolution to around 0.6%. The 20th century brought many developments that allowed for even more growth. That allowed the growth rate to hit around 2.24% in 1964. It's been declining since then, dropping to a little below 1% a couple years ago. It's been pretty much the same pattern since we became Homo sapiens. When there is an increase in available resources or we get new technology that lets us better utilize resources we can have a relatively short period of exponential growth until we reach the limits of those resources and then growth slows or stops. With the industrial revolution and then the developments in the 20th century we were able to have about a century of sustained high growth, but we're reaching the end of that expansion and the growth rate is declining. We'll almost surely have more breakthroughs that allow for growth increases, but some people want to plan based on the assumption that we'll have such breakthroughs often enough that we can count on high growth indefinitely. The point of the galaxy-straining limit calculation is that the past pattern of periods of exponential growth being followed by declining growth is something inherent in exponential growth. It's not something that can be escaped by finding new places to settle or more efficient ways to use existing resources. Thus, we should be planning on the recent period of exponential growth ending rather than becoming depending on exponential growth continuing indefinitely.
prottog 3y ago
Of course it doesn't. But there is no agreement on how close we are to reaching the limits of the finite planet, with degrowth advocates thinking that we're near, at, or past it already, and others thinking that we have a long way to go still before the planet cannot sustain humanity. And of course, growth may hop onto other planets.
- crispinb 3y ago
  I've followed the literature on this at a layperson's level (science feeds, etc). I haven't been seeing any work that disputes the fact that limits are being breached right now. Ecosystems all over the planet are dying, and many planetary systems (notably the climate) are shifting into unstable patterns. As far as I've seen, there absolutely is broad agreement among scientists about the physical reality at play. But (as usual) soft-headed business and political people ignore what they can't face.
  - prottog 3y ago
    Malthus in the 1800s and Ehrlich in the 60s (and continuing thereafter), both renowned scholars of their times, also thought that limits were being breached right then. The latter thought the crisis was so urgent that he advocated for policies like coercive population control and stopping American aid to "hopeless" countries like India, whose population was growing at a tremendous rate. As recently as a few years ago, Ehrlich stated that a collapse of civilization is a "near certainty" in the coming decades; never mind the fact that had any of the predictions in his 1968 book come true, there might be only half as many humans now as there actually are. Has humanity's scientific prowess improved so much since then that today's predictions are that much more accurate? Perhaps, but considering that we haven't put another man on the moon since then, maybe not. There's a growing problem in science of fake papers[0] due to the "publish or perish" nature of academia; it points to at least some level of incentive for there to be "a broad agreement among scientists" about the state of things, for career and funding purposes if nothing else. In the meantime, the "physical reality at play" is such that the number of deaths worldwide from climate-related disasters today is about one-third that of 50 years ago. That's not one-third of the rate; that's one-third in absolute number of deaths, despite the human population having literally doubled over that time. We can attribute this to a higher capacity for developing countries to deal with disasters due to their growing material wealth. As usual, high-minded visionaries never let a crisis go to waste. Remember that Al Gore's Nashville house uses about 200k kWh a year (about 20x the average American house); Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry routinely flies aboard his own private jet; and Martha's Vineyard, supposedly being literally eaten away today[2], is home to the Obamas' 30-acre, 11-and-three-quarter-million-dollar property. [0]: https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-papers-are-alarmingly-common https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-pape... [1]: https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-related-disasters-increase-over-past-50-years-causing-more-damage-fewer https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-relate... [2]: https://apnews.com/article/business-climate-environment-and-nature-climate-change-7f95efdc760622e19732b8e910907c22 https://apnews.com/article/business-climate-environment-and-...
BjoernKW 3y ago
Thermodynamically, nothing will work indefinitely. For all practical intents and purposes, the finite resources available on this planet and in the universe are more than sufficient, though.
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  > For all practical intents and purposes, the finite resources available on this planet and in the universe are more than sufficient, though. How can we know this is true? Like immediately, sure. But can we keep growing and extracting resources like we do for another thousand years? Ten thousand years? Like we're already pushing the limit on arable land. It doesn't seem plausible we'll be able to somehow increase crop yields even times to sustain the sort of growth we're projecting. At that point, the entire planet's land area would need to be farmland, even if it is currently desert or mountains or whatever.
epistasis 3y ago
Biological life is based on perpetual growth. Yet it has persisted for thousands of millions of years. I think you will have difficulty coming up for a definition of "growth" in humanity such that it makes sense for the argument you are trying to make. At least, I hav been searching for somebody to define what they mean by "growth" and have only gotten very vague platitudes such that the definition is y useful for basing further reasoning.

On a finite planet, how is perpetual growth supposed to work indefinitely?

peepeepoopoo5 3y ago

The space of possible future human technologies is effectively infinite, to say nothing of extraplanetary resources.

tzs 3y ago
> The space of possible future human technologies is effectively infinite, to say nothing of extraplanetary resources. You are underestimating how quickly exponential growth gets out of hand. Take population for example. If we wanted to have 1% annual population growth, in ~12 100 years the volume of humans would be 9 x 10^60 m^3. If we started expanding into space right now, and we expanded at the speed of light, in 12 100 years we'd have access to 6 x 10^60 m^3, which is not big enough. Of course by then we may have bioengineered smaller humans. That doesn't help much. It just changes that 12 100 to 12 800. Or how about energy? If human energy use grows by 1% a year in ~9300 years we will be using 5.3 x 10^59 Joules per year. That's about the same as the amount of energy you would get if the entire mass of the Milky Way galaxy were converted to energy (E=mc^2). Forget the Milky Way. Let's think big. What if we converted the entire freaking universe--all the observable mass, and all the dark matter, and all the dark energy--into energy for humanity. At 1% annual growth from now we'd be using that much per year in 12 000 years.
- dublinben 3y ago
  If human civilization has been growing exponentially for a while, how have we not already hit these enormous galaxy-straining limits? The total number of humans still easily fits on just the Earth alone.
  - tzs 3y ago
    We haven't been growing exponentially for very long. Before agriculture was invented there wasn't much growth at all. We were limited by how much hunter-gatherers could hunt and gather. Growth happened when people expanded to some new territory, and that was limited by poor transportation options. When agriculture was invented around 12000 years ago growth picked up, with the population doubling around every 1000 years. That lasted until around 5000 years ago, when the population was around 100 million. There wasn't much grown for the next couple thousand years. Around 3000 years ago growth picked up and the population tripled by 2000 years ago. It slowed again until around the industrial revolution and then picked up quite a bit. The world population growth rate went from around 0.1% per year before the industrial revolution to around 0.6%. The 20th century brought many developments that allowed for even more growth. That allowed the growth rate to hit around 2.24% in 1964. It's been declining since then, dropping to a little below 1% a couple years ago. It's been pretty much the same pattern since we became Homo sapiens. When there is an increase in available resources or we get new technology that lets us better utilize resources we can have a relatively short period of exponential growth until we reach the limits of those resources and then growth slows or stops. With the industrial revolution and then the developments in the 20th century we were able to have about a century of sustained high growth, but we're reaching the end of that expansion and the growth rate is declining. We'll almost surely have more breakthroughs that allow for growth increases, but some people want to plan based on the assumption that we'll have such breakthroughs often enough that we can count on high growth indefinitely. The point of the galaxy-straining limit calculation is that the past pattern of periods of exponential growth being followed by declining growth is something inherent in exponential growth. It's not something that can be escaped by finding new places to settle or more efficient ways to use existing resources. Thus, we should be planning on the recent period of exponential growth ending rather than becoming depending on exponential growth continuing indefinitely.

prottog 3y ago

Of course it doesn't. But there is no agreement on how close we are to reaching the limits of the finite planet, with degrowth advocates thinking that we're near, at, or past it already, and others thinking that we have a long way to go still before the planet cannot sustain humanity. And of course, growth may hop onto other planets.

crispinb 3y ago
I've followed the literature on this at a layperson's level (science feeds, etc). I haven't been seeing any work that disputes the fact that limits are being breached right now. Ecosystems all over the planet are dying, and many planetary systems (notably the climate) are shifting into unstable patterns. As far as I've seen, there absolutely is broad agreement among scientists about the physical reality at play. But (as usual) soft-headed business and political people ignore what they can't face.
- prottog 3y ago
  Malthus in the 1800s and Ehrlich in the 60s (and continuing thereafter), both renowned scholars of their times, also thought that limits were being breached right then. The latter thought the crisis was so urgent that he advocated for policies like coercive population control and stopping American aid to "hopeless" countries like India, whose population was growing at a tremendous rate. As recently as a few years ago, Ehrlich stated that a collapse of civilization is a "near certainty" in the coming decades; never mind the fact that had any of the predictions in his 1968 book come true, there might be only half as many humans now as there actually are. Has humanity's scientific prowess improved so much since then that today's predictions are that much more accurate? Perhaps, but considering that we haven't put another man on the moon since then, maybe not. There's a growing problem in science of fake papers[0] due to the "publish or perish" nature of academia; it points to at least some level of incentive for there to be "a broad agreement among scientists" about the state of things, for career and funding purposes if nothing else. In the meantime, the "physical reality at play" is such that the number of deaths worldwide from climate-related disasters today is about one-third that of 50 years ago. That's not one-third of the rate; that's one-third in absolute number of deaths, despite the human population having literally doubled over that time. We can attribute this to a higher capacity for developing countries to deal with disasters due to their growing material wealth. As usual, high-minded visionaries never let a crisis go to waste. Remember that Al Gore's Nashville house uses about 200k kWh a year (about 20x the average American house); Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry routinely flies aboard his own private jet; and Martha's Vineyard, supposedly being literally eaten away today[2], is home to the Obamas' 30-acre, 11-and-three-quarter-million-dollar property. [0]: https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-papers-are-alarmingly-common https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-pape... [1]: https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-related-disasters-increase-over-past-50-years-causing-more-damage-fewer https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-relate... [2]: https://apnews.com/article/business-climate-environment-and-nature-climate-change-7f95efdc760622e19732b8e910907c22 https://apnews.com/article/business-climate-environment-and-...

BjoernKW 3y ago

Thermodynamically, nothing will work indefinitely. For all practical intents and purposes, the finite resources available on this planet and in the universe are more than sufficient, though.

marginalia_nu 3y ago
> For all practical intents and purposes, the finite resources available on this planet and in the universe are more than sufficient, though. How can we know this is true? Like immediately, sure. But can we keep growing and extracting resources like we do for another thousand years? Ten thousand years? Like we're already pushing the limit on arable land. It doesn't seem plausible we'll be able to somehow increase crop yields even times to sustain the sort of growth we're projecting. At that point, the entire planet's land area would need to be farmland, even if it is currently desert or mountains or whatever.

epistasis 3y ago

Biological life is based on perpetual growth. Yet it has persisted for thousands of millions of years. I think you will have difficulty coming up for a definition of "growth" in humanity such that it makes sense for the argument you are trying to make. At least, I hav been searching for somebody to define what they mean by "growth" and have only gotten very vague platitudes such that the definition is y useful for basing further reasoning.