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The planet's got 99 problems, but exponential growth isn't one
- SomeoneFromCA 3y agopaywall
- dirtyhippiefree 3y agoArchive link posted two minutes after you…
- rwmj 3y agohttps://archive.ph/Kx0xv https://archive.ph/Kx0xv
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aidenn0 3y agoSomeday I'd like to know what the 99 problems are. So far we've ruled out "bitches" and "exponential growth"
- Y_Y 3y agoThe Entscheidungsproblem should cover the rest
- henearkr 3y agoSure... What else could be the conclusion of the... Financial Times?
- ploika 3y agoOpinion columns are not the same as editorials. But anyway, the Financial Times is well able to publish pieces that say "this currently profitable endeavour will blow up in everyone's faces". It's a serious newspaper.
- rlili 3y agoRight? Capitalism at its core relies on exponential growth, since every investor wants ROI. So acknowledging that exponential growth is a problem would go against the interests of pretty much all financial players.
- stuartjohnson12 3y agoBy the same token, the destruction of the earth is directly against the interests of pretty much all financial players, therefore environmentalism is not a concern because the market will self regulate. ...is the response with the same level of nuance as is present in your comment. Human incentives are much more complicated than that. The incentives that capitalism creates are much more complicated than that.
- nvm0n2 3y ago> Capitalism at its core relies on exponential growth, since every investor wants ROI No it doesn't. You can have capitalism in a world where growth is zero or negative, nothing much happens except the world getting slightly worse (a recession). Criticisms of capitalism on the other hand do rely on BS claims about exponential growth.
- baq 3y agoYou think that people directly benefitting from saying that growth must be kept positive year over year would say exponential growth isn't a problem? Preposterous.
- aidenn0 3y agoUsing per-capita numbers for the first industrialized nation is highly disingenuous. There are limits to efficiency, and billions that aspire to the lifestyle of the average Brit.
- graemep 3y agoWhat are the limits to technological progress? In the past we have replaced resources that we might run short of with other resources. We have almost entirely replaced wood as a source of energy, and many countries have almost replaced coal.
- makomk 3y agoIt's basically impossible for the developing world to copy the route to replacing coal usage that the developed world has taken though, because that relies heavily on natural gas and there simply isn't enough of it being produced, and of course the wealthier developed world gets first dibs. This has likely been made worse by environmental activists campaigning against new gas production. Countries like Pakistan have had to switch away from gas and launch emergency coal power building programs because they simply cannot keep the lights on otherwise.
- graemep 3y agoCoal was not just replaced only by natural gas in developed countries though - it was replaced by multiple other sources. We have constantly replaced materials with others, and availability is a factor. Stone and wood in construction are less used because we have cement, concrete, bricks etc. We replaced copper and bronze with iron and steel. These go back many millennia. We have replaced natural materials with synthetic to deal with shortages (e.g. silk with nylon). I get the problems with electricity generation, but as a general rule exponential economic growth does not require an exponential increase in the consumption of any particular resource.
- Matticus_Rex 3y agoNo one needs to copy routes through technological progress, though. You do need a build-up of capital (without outside investment), but the history of technological progress is full of less-developed groups jumping ahead because of the strides taken by more-developed groups.
- josefritz 3y ago"both are right" is the softest, most useless takeaway they could have.
- roenxi 3y ago> per capita coal emissions in the UK peaked more than 100 years ago. Some of that fall represents the offshoring of industrial processes, with the coal choking someone else, but most of it reflects the use of cleaner, more efficient technology. The UK's global empire existed 100 years ago. Not a knock against the UK, I think they've been by and large doing the right thing, but their policies over the last century has been managing the decline and dissolution of their civilisation in as graceful a way as possible. They're an inspirational case of a group of people regressing to the mean politely. But I'm doubting the intelligentsia can pull off the "this is really an improvement!" line. There is a lot of anger in the EU on the subject that we see in things like the Brexit vote and I suspect the AfD's polling in Germany is reflective of similar policy choices in Germany. France had the Yellow Vest protests. People don't like it when their energy access gets choked; it does a lot of real-world harm and this intellectual burying of heads in sand is unhelpful.
- HalcyonicStorm 3y agoI think the former colonies might disagree with your assessment of a graceful decline and dissolution of the empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre A lot current geopolitical issues are consequences of the British empire dissolution and the way it was handled
- WillAdams 3y agoI take it this is a rebuttal of: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist... They bring up Malthus w/o noting that his math was correct --- he just didn't anticipate the Haber process, nor the on-going improvements afforded by foodstuffs from the new world. The one valid point made is that we are moving ever larger quantities of rock for ever-smaller returns --- when does that reach a point at which it no longer makes sense?
- yetihehe 3y ago> when does that reach a point at which it no longer makes sense? When asteroid mining is viable perhaps.
- api 3y ago> he just didn't anticipate the Haber process, nor the on-going improvements afforded by foodstuffs from the new world. ... which is why historically Malthusians have been wrong. A Malthusian bacterium writing at the time before photosynthesis would have concluded that life on Earth was doomed. Chemotrophic bacteria were gradually consuming all the left over high energy compounds from the Earth's formation and eventually this would run out, leading to a population crash and the end of organic life. Their math would have been correct. The thing they are leaving out of their models is adaptation and intelligence. Life isn't guaranteed to always find a way, which is why shorter term stagnations and die-offs do occasionally happen, but given time and resources it eventually will. Life will probably keep finding a way until the heat death of the universe. The bumps in the road are part of the process. In evolution they provide the constraint that stimulates learning through natural selection. In post-evolutionary cognitive intelligence (humans and eventually AI) constraints give rise to signals such as price signals that tell the system that it needs to learn, change, and adapt. This isn't a justification for total rose colored glasses woo-woo utopianism because as I said bumps in the road do occur. But it shows why simple Malthusian reasoning hasn't historically been accurate and probably will continue to be mostly inaccurate. Malthusians are like perma-bears that are always calling for a recession in the market. Occasionally they're right, but there's a joke in finance that these are people who have "predicted 54 of the last 3 recessions." A prediction method that's wrong that often isn't actually worth very much.
- xnx 3y agoGrowth doesn't have to be exponential to exhaust resources when they are finite.
- connorgutman 3y agoExactly this.
- Solstinox 3y agoGrowth is fueled by energy. If we're not exponentially growing it's because energy is a limiting factor for some reason. I find the table in the middle of this page illuminating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment If you were to map human population growth against the energy technologies in the table, you would basically see that human population growth bursts with jumps in EROI. There are a couple of elephants in the room on that table that warrant some discussion. One is nuclear: the massive jump in EROI it provides and our comparative hesitant/tepid adoption of it. The other is a lot of the renewables: the massive leap backwards they offer.
- jamager 3y agoleap backwards?
- Solstinox 3y agoWind-based energy tends to be par or worse than fossil fuels in terms of energy return on investment. Photovoltaics are more grim depending on whose numbers you pull. Right now nuclear is the only energy source we have that could sustain growth and be more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels. If we want growth. And this is not to say we should only have one energy source by any means.
- sottol 3y agoIn my opinion economic growth is mostly fueled and sustained by population growth. And population growth depends on various societal, industrial and scientific advancements that often also coincide with EROI improvements. Would our society look so different if 90% of our energy needs would be produced by nuclear? Would energy be cheaper?
- orwin 3y agoReal GDP per habitant is fueled by energy usage (except for a short period in the 70s where it was fueled by increased efficiencies, at least in France).
- coldtea 3y agoNo, but the idea of "pursue endless growth, fuck externalities" is.
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoWhat about "endless growth for me, but fuck thee"?
- coldtea 3y agoIf you mean developed vs developing world, I'm more in favor of: "let's scale down growth and distribute existing wealth and resources more evenly, even if it means I'll go scale down compared to where I'm now and you'll scale up"
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoHow will you coordinate that? Short of a benevolent powerful global dictator (aka God), I don't see that working out. Will China scale down to let India prosper and be even with them? Will China scale down manufacturing to be level with the US? Will Europe be ok giving up their wealth to Russia?
- coldtea 3y agoGlobal revolution, or we're fucked. In other words, we're fucked.
- cscurmudgeon 3y agoProof for "we're fucked." Also Marxist notions of "Global revolution" are exponentially more fucked up than exponential growth. So, no thank you.
- blagie 3y agoCounterpoint: 1) There are population groups which are exponentially growing 2) There are ones which are declining This is not taken into account in models. Economic growth shifts bucket 1 into bucket 2, but genetically-speaking, we favor people who want a lot of kids. The exponential growth groups will eventually overtake the exponential-decline or the plateau groups. For a silly exploration of this phenomenon, see the movie Idiocracy. Trigger warning: This movie is nearing 20 years old, and has a lot of things which might trigger the types of people who expect trigger warnings.
- Hizonner 3y agoI don't even need to read that, because the title tells me which stupid boilerplate regurgitation of capitalist religion it is.
- jacknews 3y agoBut it will be eventually, and we're already seeing spasms in capitalism, which requires growth and more growth. Something will have to give. I honestly don't think economists are the best at prediction. Or at dictating how society should function.
- giantg2 3y agoPerhaps eponential growth isn’t a problem because its not happening. What exponent are we using for exponential growth? The modern graphs look more like a log 2 or log e. Infinite growth is a potential problem that is rooted in limits of efficiency, availability of resources, and most importantly the demands/expectations/despiration of people. We can support more people. The real question is what the sustainable limit is. Lifestyle is perhaps the biggest factor, but that changes as does the technology to support it. It seems our species likes to live on the edge of maximum consumption. I feel that given a long enough timeline, that will be disastrous when we feel we deserve more, but there is no more unless it is taken.
- pveierland 3y agoInterestingly, 2% annual growth in amount of utilized matter becomes physically impossible to sustain for even ~1000 years. Short ballpark math: https://gist.github.com/pveierland/4aeaa5e9ab90de69787b732a9dd7d48e https://gist.github.com/pveierland/4aeaa5e9ab90de69787b732a9...
- Matticus_Rex 3y agoHave we ever hit anywhere near that?
- pveierland 3y agoI'm not sure which metric would be the best to use - we did reach it in population growth during the 1900s. However I mostly think the calculation is an interesting exercise to calibrate our expectations for what sensible growth rates can be. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-population-growth https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-population-growth
- tzs 3y agoMy examples for how fast exponential growth gets out of hand: • At 1% annual population growth starting now without access to faster than light travel in ~12000 humans the total volume of all human bodies would exceed the volume of the 12000 light year radius sphere that humanity would be limited to. • At 1% annual energy growth in energy needs starting from now in ~12000 years our annual energy use would equal the energy of the entire universe. All the mass including dark matter converted to energy (E=mc^2) and all the gravitational potential energy and all the dark energy...one year of human use. • At 1% annual population growth starting now in ~12300 years the total mass of all human bodies would exceed the mass of the observable universe. Let's break that last one down into waypoints along the path to needing the entire universe. Starting from now with 1% annual population growth and assuming humans don't evolve so much in the next 12000+ years to be massively (no pun intended!) smaller: • 3400 years until we need the entire mass of the Earth plus to Moon for human bodies. • 600 years after that and we need to add Jupiter's mass. • 700 years more and we need all the mass in the solar system. • It is then 2000 years until we need to mass of the entire Milky Way galaxy. • A mere 100 years later we need to add the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy. • That's 6800 years from now. From there it is another 5500 years to need to add the rest of the observable universe.