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.