Thanks Peter,

This article address the one critical issue that should be at the front of everyone's mind.

Visitors may be interested to see how I have expressed, in a different way, some of the same ideas raised by Dr Peter MacMahon at http://candobetter.org/about

APEC HAS FORGOTTEN VILLAGE FARMERS. South East Asia an Overlooked Success - Farmers who have given up a source of their livelihood, where governments had succeeded in slashing poppy cultivation are struggling to find subsistance - livilhood - an income.

STOP THE VIOLENCE - alternative economic strategics required

We ALL have the knowledge to help DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

We MUST PROBLEM SOLVE!

The border zone between Burma, Thailand and Laos that was once the world's most prolific supplier of opium, is still on conflict on issues of liberty and livilhood.

Farmers have no income. More has to be done to find alternative crops and enterprises to help village farmers and their families.

Burma's "roadmap" is not working. Situation is still extremely fragile... Myanmar's 53 million people wish for support to restore civilian rule. Political roadmap needs to be as inclusive, participatory and transparent as possible.

Displaced People in Burma Call for International Action and Economic Support. HELP APEC FIND FOCUS for VILLAGE FARMERS

http://www.miacat.com/
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Relax, folks, these problems will be solved by the usual methods that have been tried and tested since the dawn of history.

The shortage of resources will be solved by having a little war to decide who gets the available resources, and who gets nothing.

The problem of world overpopulation will be solved by the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Mother nature kept her children in line by tossing plagues,wars, diseases at them but now her offspring have got pretty canny about such things and have created vaccines and insecticides. Wars are not fashionable and will go out. But the world's children are still land clearing at an enormous rate as the population grows , thus rainfall is less and less in some places and instead of natural bush we now have a sea of roofs. This is called progress.
Governments weep tears about the lack of drinkable water but still allow private swimming pools and garden feature fountains. They are far more concerned about the cost of water than the sustainable provision of it.
And why keep up a heavy immigration intake when there is not the utilities to go round?

“these problems will be solved by the usual methods that have been tried and tested since the dawn of history.” (plerdsus).

History – written or oral – its dawn came long after those problems showed up. Wars to decide who gets the available resources have been taking place among the rodents ever since there were rodents. As they have among other species, across the spectrum to fungi.

It is fundamentalist arrogance to assume we, alone among all species, can go on proliferating and consuming to infinity.
Humans are animals, subject to biological limits the same as all other life forms.

The sooner we follow economic and social realities within those constraints, the better the chances of civilized advancement. There is a fat chance of that, while our PM rabbits on about growth, sans its downsides, and our treasurer advocates an increasing birth rate.

Fundamentalism currently reigns supreme – and yes, it has humanity’s direction firmly set. It has our wagon harnessed to the Four Horsemen; and gormless humanity will, without the necessary changes, get to an unattractive destination – needlessly. Much the same as rats and mice.

For those who lie awake at night, worried about how civilisation is doomed to collapse as we run out of natural resources and hit Nature's limits (and I've been there myself), can I strongly recommend you at least read Julian Simons' "Ultimate Resource", the classic "cornucopian" text, available here: http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
You may not (as I do not) agree with all of his views, and there are definitely shortcomings with some of his arguments, but he writes very well and accessibily, and gives very good reasons why much of the worry over resource limits is unjustified. Reading Simons certainly went a long way towards convincing me that the best possible chance we have of surviving is continued economic growth and technological development, although I dispute his conclusion that the best way to achieve this is to grow our population without limit.

Thanks Peter, and also Dagget about how we are using up precious resources with hardly one individual in power today in today's global nations having the guts and commonsense to admit that once we have used up the world's natural gifts for our future existence we are in loads of trouble.

It is so interesting and indeed so tragic, that those who have been giving the above warnings for years are still dismissed as fruitcakes or left-wing loonies.

Nevertheless, a study of world history does show that those who have brought in dramatic beneficial changes to both society and environment have mostly appeared not in line with normal opinion of the time.

Here we are talking about the Avant-Garde, so keep up the good work, mates, the future world desperately needs you.

Regards, BB, WA.

"although I dispute his conclusion that the best way to achieve this is to grow our population without limit."

Well Julian Simon was an economist, who understood nothing about
biology. He did some silly things like try and value biodiversity.
He forgot that without biodiversity, you won't have a humanity,
it will be down to ants and cockroaches spinning on planet earth.

I've learnt one thing, to not worry about the things I cannot
change. I believe that old mother nature will sort it all out in
the end, as us humans are smart enough to invent new things, too
stupid as a species, to use them wisely most of the time.

People accept as a given, that world population will rise to
10 billion. The religious lobby, mainly Catholics and fundies
are driving it. I can argue and reason with these people all day,
but of course if the whole thing collapses, for them thats
"judgement day".

So I'm not going to stress over every light bulb and every litre
of fuel that I use. If humanity is too stupid to see the big
picture, then so be it, let the whole thing crash. Meantime I have
full intention of enjoying the years, months, days, I've got left.
Heaven is here and now after all.

Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that ecosystem adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change.

If the rate should exceed 0.4 C/decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global average temperature today is increasing by 0.2 C/decade.

This incease is caused by greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere decades ago, due to the lag time between emission and temperature rise.

We have emitted nearly double the greenhouse gas since then, and are increasing our emissions at a rate of over 3% per year.

Therefore, in the next couple of decades we are facing the quick destruction of all the world's ecosystems, which will result in abrupt climate change (I suggest reading the Pentagon's alarming report on this subject).

Reference: Leemans og Eickhout, 2004, Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change, Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228.

"We now have evidence from the Earth's history that a similar event happened fifty-five million years ago when a geological accident released into the air more than a terraton of gaseous carbon compounds. As a consequence the temperature in the arctic and temperate regions rose eight degree Celsius and in tropical regions about five degrees, and it took over one hundred thousand years before normality was restored. We have already put more than half this quantity of carbon gas into the air and now the Earth is weakened by the loss of land we took to feed and house ourselves. In addition, the sun is now warmer, and as a consequence the Earth is now returning to the hot state it was in before, millions of years ago, and as it warms, most living things will die." (The Revenge of Gaia)

The real book that speaks about the way out of global collapse is the Holy Bible. The answers on how to look after our world are in there. First we started off with a clean unpolluted world, even the bacteria are in perfect harmony with everything else. The first man and woman are there, quietly looking after the animals and birds and reptiles, and in fellowship with God. The water comes up out the the ground as mist and waters everything. There is no rain. The water bubble above the earth has not broken and will not break til the flood. The way back to that world is through submission to God once again, and this is done through prayer and by receiving His Sacrifice Jesus Christ, for the sin that brought the fall. Getting back into harmony with God is the only restoration. Greed and hate and doing our own thing stops the restoration. The Book of Revelation speaks about the end. It says we didnt make the restoration in the time allocated to the conflict on earth between God and satan. Some did a personal restoration via Jesus the Saviour and were wonderfully born again and saved and set free from the fear, but not enough went for the restoration to stop the Judgment. Its all so sad. Man, without God as Master, dont work too well. And that is the story of the planet.

Peter McMahon's closing analogy seems oddly malapropos.
The people of the FRG (West Germany) recovered from WWII and prospered by rapid industrialization (with enormous assistance from the USA).
The rest is the usual prate from a deluded utopian.

Great article.

It isn't the idea that human society is terminal that bothers me so much, it is watching the trashing of everything, the industrialisation of cruelty, the uglification and entropy and the silly cocks crowing on top of the pile of rubbish we are creating that makes my remaining time on earth - which could have been joyful - a continual struggle just to protect my immediate environment, just to try to keep a place for other creatures and some green for sore eyes.

The worst thing is that where in past societies, even if your own corner of the woods was being trashed, you knew that the impact of your own clan and even of your own species, was only like a small scar on the earth, now we are a systemic disease that has taken over the entire planet.

Nowhere to run to anymore. This is particularly the case in the English speaking world; not so bad in Continental Europe, for there the engineered population growth stopped with the first oil shock.

You are right about profit being the flaw in the system, since it isn't possible really to get profit out of nature; we are sawing off the branch we are sitting on.

The profit motive also favours and uses the status motivated people, who are the only ones content with consumerism, overwork and loss of control over their lives, because they think that they are getting ahead in some kind of competition, for which they will sacrifice anything. We are managed by work-ethic dominated bullies who are really no more enlightened than lab-rats running on a big wheel.

The sale of land is at the bottom of all the problems because it means that we have created a society with many dispossessed who are the fuel of the profit economy; they can be forced to work for others. Without that ready workforce, the profit-based system would be dead in the water.

I like Sharon Beder's articles on the Work Ethic and environmentalism at http://homepage.mac.com/herinst/sbeder/home.html

A bit rich for the author to be calling on restraints after making his money from mining and political advising. Lots of gloom and doom and rhetoric in this article. Why is it that so many preaching conservation and socialism are happy to make their comfortable living from capitalism and then preach against it for everyone else

Thomas Homer Dixon’s article on societal collapse is perhaps worth reading,
“..Being ready means preparing today for breakdown tomorrow. Times of crisis are times of enormous social fluidity, when societies can be pushed into a new path, either for good or for bad. They’re moments, too, of great danger. People are scared, angry, and searching for someone to blame—just the attitudes that extremist leaders can exploit to build political power and divide group from group..”
http://www.homerdixon.com/download/prepare_for_tomorrows_breakdown.pdf

Some current thinking still has us ‘barking’ in the wrong direction..

For those with a basic understanding of statistics: Correlation is not causation. In terms of global warming and CO2 emissions, there looks to be a rough fit.

However..

For those who have a basic grasp of science: Science has not progressed by calculations and models, but by repeatable observations.

For those who can apply logic and common sense: The integrity of the scientific community will win out in the end, following the evidence wherever it leads. But in the meantime, the effect of the political climate is that most people are overestimating the evidence that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming. As yet, we do not completely address the root causes of our current quandary...

Applying logic and common sense, “most people are overestimating the evidence that carbon emissions are the main cause of global warming” is an unsupportable statement.
It is unsupportable on the basis of whether it is either “most” or “some”; on the quality of evidence upon which the “overestimating” is based; on the implication that the downside of ignoring the evidence is unimportant, should that evidence prove to be correct.
I think it is unlikely that we will ever completely address the root causes of our current quandary: our arrogance of belief in our species being above natural laws; and in this planet’s capability to provide for infinite increase - of resource consumption, and of dumping for our wastes.
I live in hope that I am wrong, that there will be change. For the sake of future human generations.
In the meantime, “Ah, my beloved, fill the cup that clears today of past regrets and future fears” – to quote my favourite Muslim the, delightful Omar Khayyam. And enjoy the wonderment of the best of nature that remains; that which past generations, and our own, have bequeathed us. Explore the tantalising snippets of knowledge that constantly unravels from it. Get it now, before it is gone. There is still music to be made on our Titanic, in a church or outside it, depending upon proclivities.
But, don't lose perspective - some good may yet come of it.

Reckon it's about time we should be looking deeper than just behind the eyes and ears, Schneider.

Us troops even talked about such things while waiting for discharge near the end of WW2.

We were a specialist unit which had been formed to ponder, and the dropping of the atom bomb made us think even deeper, wondering whether science and technology though helping to win the war, might eventually backfire on us.

Certainly the failures in Iraq have proven that - thought thought and talk talk - might prove better than war war, and I guess that is what Peter is trying to get across?

Maybe it is also the message that Mahatma Ghandi and Nelson Mandela both proved to the world

True, colinsett, my statement is largely unsupportable, as an ‘overestimation of evidence’ can be more an exercise in subjectivity. Objectively though, man grabs a quarter of the earth’s renewable resources – perhaps suggesting our innate greed.

I agree, with Johan Rockstroem, the director of the Stockholm Environment Institute, when he says the livelihoods of more than three billion people in the world are being undermined by the wealth of the privileged few (due an exploitative use of resources).

As a species, man uses a remarkable share of the earth's plant productivity to meet the needs and wants of one species - we use up almost a quarter of the sun's energy captured by plants, the most of any species. The problem therefore is not just confined to rich vs. poor, albeit an important part of the equation.

Rockstroem also says that we’ve come to the end of the road of sustainable development as we know it today. Science alone cannot deal with this. The risk of environmental refugees, the risk of societal collapse is imminent – I agree here also.

Our talking and thinking must lead us to an action where we need to make massive changes in the equity and stewardship of the planet which goes way beyond climate change.

1. Analogy between the Germans, WWII and the current Climate Change debate is a little out of context - or out of left field
2. Personally, I don’t buy into the political rhetoric; not when our illustrious leader waffles on about all the growth under his stewardship, and both contenders to the throne bow tow to the Chinese leaders, when China is one of the worst offenders, not only in green house gas emissions; but work ethics (lack of); human and animal rights abuses… and growth at any cost policy.
Hasn’t sold me; why - because I am going to pay more for my electricity,( even though I am trying to use it less) am paying more for my water usage (even though I try and use less) , and will soon have to hang on to the running boards of the train to the city because of overcrowding , the result of no foresight/or political inaction for the infrastructure required for the massive influx of southerners (the rate of 1000 per week since 1994) + a Premier who espouses Australia’s population to be 50mil ? And you want me to take climate change seriously and 'go back to basics'
I started out at the basics and i have now desire to go back.

A very well written article from Peter. He says ... "The new debate, only just getting under way, is this: how can we live decently with suddenly too many people, too few resources and too much pollution?"

I laugh at many things in life ... often at myself, to myself and explains perhaps why I come to post here mainly to religious articles where I read so much funny stuff. However, many would be jokes of cosmic proportions if they were not so bludddy serious.

Take this blinkered, SHORT term thinking that comes with the worship of the good shepherd where from the cheerleaders we hear false words and trubble .... "be fruitful and multiply" with NO consideration of what this means exponentially with such an ever-increasing human impact on the environment which supplies basic needs.

e.g.
Quote .....
"Pope Benedict XVI told Catholics to have more babies "for the good of society," saying that some countries were being sapped of energy because of low birth rates.
"Having children is a gift that brings life and well-being to society," he told about 15,000 people at his weekly audience in the Vatican, to which he arrived by helicopter from his summer residence southeast of Rome.
He said the decline in the number of births "deprives some nations of freshness and energy and of hopes for the future incarnate in children."
The pope also spoke of "the security, the stability and the force of a numerous family."
End Quote .....

Aren't Popes and their cheerleaders like the smirk Costello just saying that life is meaningless?

Also, I'm sure that being the good shepherd this invented teddy (god) made a huge mistake. LOL We should have had the good gardener instead ...... not being anthropocentric, nor greedy, nor ignorant, but being part artist and part scientist, would be guided by sustainability, the environment, biodiversity, and would welcome as well as advocate a stable, mature population and end this rapid, exponential, growth of the human population.

Thanks Peter for the call to arms. I think the article presumes unfairly that economics suffers incurable Harvard School myopia.

Thanks wizofaus for Julian Simon's book. It's unreadable as presented online, but there's an outline of a sound "Polyanna economist" case :-)

In any sane economy, if something is scarce, people intending to deprive others of it must pay for the privilege. Scarcity pricing works well, providing *all* potentially-scarce resources command a price. Nicholas Stern describes it as "a massive market failure" that ecological resources (such as near-pristine biodiversity and heavily-exploited pollution sinks) exist outside the marketplace of paid-for things.

Some market failures are oversights, correctible by regulation. Others come about through active manipulation by market players who benefit from the status quo.

Polyanna economists underestimate the difficulties of matching the money economy which drives investment to the natural economy of tangible resources. As long as the mismatch persists, economic activity will be increasingly destructive. Humanity suffers appallingly from constant wastage of undervalued human and natural resources.

A financial accounting of all natural resources is not realistically possible (for most are still unrecognised), but gradually incorporating them into the economy will be reflected in "economic indicators" as long-lasting economic growth. If our economy learns, through regulation or other mechanisms, to account realistically for hitherto unmeasured wealth, it will grow and its behaviour will become saner.

Julian Simon's case is the thesis first presented by Adam Smith: in seeking the best for themselves, informed and intelligent people act in concert for the mutual benefit of everyone. What market fundamentalists usually overlook is that the "invisible hand" of enlightened self-interest includes actions outside the marketplace, including political ones.

It would be a mistake to pretend that modern capitalism can ever accurately model the true worth of natural resources and human potential. The things that are patently undervalued by that economy -- solar energy, neighbourly relations, healthy and well-informed human minds, clean air, wildnerness -- must be collectively worth many times the total present value of financial capital.

But "Economic Growth" need not forever refer to the destructive tradition of the past century.

According to a quick review of Peter's prolific output, Mark Latham should be our Prime Minister and the Democrats a major political force. For predictions of the future, I think I'll look elsewhere.

Can anyone tell me what resources we're running out of? Or what are our limits to growth? I can't think of a single mineral or natural resource apart from fresh (as opposed to salt) water which is in short supply right now.
Sorry, Peter, but you're way off the mark. Our environment is suffering badly as a result of our unwise use of resources but there's no shortage of resources facing even the 9 billion people that will be living here in about 30 years' time when world population is projected to stabilise before reducing.
Actually, I can think of one natural resource that is diminishing: it's our biodiversity which has already been seriously diminished in developed countries (Europe 1000 years ago, USA 200 years ago, Australia 100 years ago) and is now starting to be lost from developing countries. If we value the genetic 'resources' contained within the world's biodiversity, then we have to be a whole lot smarter than we've been in the past. But this problem is still very different from the doom and gloom projected by Peter's article, so let me ask the question again: what resources are we running out of that will limit our future global growth?

With current world expectations, the greatest future problem is that too many people will share too little energy.

Undoubtedly there will be some major changes – both in our expectations and in the environment.

"Previous to the emergence of man, the earth was replete with fertile soil, with trees and edible fruits, with rivers and waterfalls, with coal beds, oil pools, and mineral deposits; the forces of gravitation, of electro-magnetism, of radio-activity were there; the sun set forth its life-bringing rays, gathered the clouds, raised the winds; but there were no resources." - ERICH ZIMMERMANN

The issue therefore is not a lack of resources, but an issue of sustainability and how we create. Man is the creator of resources, but man can also destroy and immobilize resources. We use resources as a means to an end, not as an end in themselves. People don't want oil, they want to cool and heat their homes; they don't want copper telephone lines, they want to communicate quickly and easily with friends, family, and businesses; they don't want paper, they want a convenient and cheap way to store written information. If oil, copper, and paper become scarce, humanity will turn to other sources of energy, other methods of communication, and other ways to store information – some, clearly, do not meet this challenge.

Precisely, relda, it is not the Earth itself which is resourceful but its human population.

I have no idea why you would be concerned about too many people "sharing" too little energy, though.

There's no present shortage of fuel, oxygen, tides, waves, sunlight or wind, nor any reason why the equipment to exploit these resources should be in short supply. Nor is there a present surfeit of energy-using people. Indeed, the prevailing trend is for populations that use a lot of energy to grow more slowly than those who use only a little.

There are two big problems with our present energy economy, and they're both clear market failures: One is persisting destructive use of the atmosphere as an exhaust sink (in this sense, the carbon-dioxide-absorbing ability of the oceans and biosphere is a resource in very short supply) and the other is our continued heavy reliance on liquid fossil fuels, which are becoming scarce.

As far as I can tell, the reason the global capitalist economy persists in these false accountings is mostly a matter of powerful interests propping up the price of "old money" assets. These dinosaurs may do a lot of damage in the short term, but sooner or later (sooner if I can help it) they will cut their losses and allow the rest of us to revalue the vital assets of fuel stocks and atmospheric health appropriately.

Another way of putting it, xoddam, is there are many who, for whatever reason, are not resourceful – maybe through a poor culture where education, science, technology the arts etc. do not flourish.

As to resources, it depends how far you think that we should go in
raping and pillaging the planet for human benefit and human population
growth. The price we pay for that is as yet unknown. At the moment
we are simply stealing more resources from other species, at their
expense.

Some people don't have a problem with wall to wall humans and concrete,
but personally I don't think its sustainable and will
eventually crash, as did the Easter Islanders etc. Some people
don't have a problem with wiping out more and more species for
human benefit. I think its a shame. I think other species deserve
a little bit of this planet too.

We are seeing the last of our closest relatives, ie other primates,
heading for extinction due to human population growth. In Africa,
forests are being chopped down for charcoal and shot out for
meat. Meantime the Catholic Church keeps up its anti birth control
policy, encouraging more and more little Catholics.

Our oceans are pretty well stuffed in terms of sustainability,
as EU fleets head for Africa, to plunder their fish. Mangroves,
which act as filters and breeding grounds, have been wiped out
in many places.

Yup, humans can eat something else, when they have wrecked one
particular environment. So there are other resources. Its a
moral argument, but I think that its a waste of one hell of a planet.

As resources become scarcer and more expensive, thats when you'll
see wars over them. We are a destructive species, we really are.

Most of you will be aware of the peak oil debate. There appears to be a consensus forming (and backed by the OECD's International Energy Agency) that by 2010 we will see the real start of the decline in oil. With it will go the growth economies.
That will be the beginning of the end of our current lifestyles.

(Get to the point!) Now I will get to the point. All the theory and pondering we can indulge in here will change to the severely practical on how to get by. Jobs will go, prices will go thru the roof and wars will get really serious.

Given this future, the question of what rationing system will work best is very important. Clever rationing of fuel may be the only path to a low energy lifestyle that prevents total collapse. Are our governments capable?

Maybe three years away, within the term of the next govt.

Michael,

There is no need to move to a "low energy lifestyle". Petroleum has, for over a century, been the cheapest form of transportable stored energy for machines, and it has facilitated much of the industrial revolution seen over that time.

But there is no shortage of energy in the world per se. Other forms of energy storage and transportation exist, and many of them do not cost very much more than petroleum does (some, indeed, are cheaper, and have only been suppressed to prevent competition). Our present overwhelming dependence on liquid fossil fuels looks alarming on the surface when you realise they aren't going to last forever and that production must decline, but there is sufficient oil still in the ground (indeed, roughly as much as has already been burned over 140 years) that really all we need to do is get used to paying more for our transportable stored energy. We already *do* pay more for petroleum. Other energy carriers are becoming increasingly competitive as a result. The market, in this case, will provide.

Peak Oil will hurt the people who are least prepared for it, and it will hurt those who are always hurt in a downturn. But it need not terminate the growth economy that oil enabled over the last century. We had growth before and we will have it after.

I *hope* that whatever economic crisis is precipitated by rising energy prices results also in more conclusive action to avert a catastrophic climate shift. This is likely but by no means certain; after all the world still has extensive reserves of other fossil fuels and it is far cheaper to exploit them with than without greenhouse gas pollution.

The climate crisis is far more desperate than the energy crisis. One is a mere matter of prices, in something that has always been dictated by the market. The other is a matter of uncosted and unpredictable changes in the very conditions of life on this planet, a destruction of enormous productive natural wealth that has never been measured or accounted for on anyone's balance sheet.