What also happened in the 1970s is the the USA's production of oil began to decline forcing them to buy more from the rest of the world and making them vulnerable to the oil embargos of that decade.

Well said John. Of course the usual rabble will come out of the woodwork and put their heads on the sand and then regurgitate their nonsense about "She'll be right Jack". Our fearless leader seems to on board the spend, spend, spend train and when the money all runs out and the cost of credit goes up, the other mob will get to run the country again and try to get us out of the usual mess that Labor gets us in. Not that they understand the economic realities of a finite world either. We can only hope that one day the penny will drop.

David

Hi Michael,
nice to see you still commenting here. I sometimes need a break! ;-)

I was wondering if this article was going to touch on the "Exponential Money" theories of Douthewaite and Chris Martenson. You know, the FEASTA line that we "have" to grow because we lend money into the system exponentially and so would have exponential inflation unless we had real economic growth to back up the extra money.

A peak oiler / greenie mate of mine, totally into peak oil and global warming, still finds that he doubts this FEASTA line of economic argument. He says it is not the tool that's broken, it is the way it is being used. Keep in mind, he predicted the GFC back in 2005.
http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/2005/08/perfect-storm-approaches-america.html

Anyway, I loaded a recent email from Neil on my blog, where he tries to explain to my non-economic mindset why the FEASTA argument could be wrong. Do you have time to take a quick look and comment?

http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2009/03/steady-state-money.html

I agree that we need to develop a culture and economic model that can run a "stable state" economy not addicted to growth. I'm just not sure that the money system as it is is broken, or whether it is just silly policies that have got us into this mess.

I of course agree that we DO live on a finite planet and all sorts of "interesting times" lie ahead. (Remembering the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times".)

The Ponzi scheme (see the link) idea doesn't really work for me. It is more like cutting down the last tree for a quick profit and then no more trees can grow, or eating the seed grain and then there is no seed for crops next season.

It seems like we can either:
* come up with some really good ideas for new energy sources or try to reduce population growth
* come up with some really good ideas for growing more food on less land, with less water, less fertiliser and worse soil or try to reduce population growth
* come up with some really good ideas to preserve the ecosystems in the oceans and the forests or try to reduce population growth

It seems like reducing population growth helps to solve all those problems, and would be far easier than coming up with the really good ideas.

Unfortuneately, we really have to reduce population growth AND come up with lots of good ideas. We just don't want to. It's a lot more fun to eat the seed grain.

It is good to see a steady stream of articles on OLO addressing the entwined issues of sustainability and continuous growth. This is certainly the most important subject of information dissemination and debate that this forum offers….or that can be offered by any forum.

But one thing that is nearly always left out of these discussions is the differentiation between good and bad growth. We need good growth. We have desperately got to stop bad growth!

Good growth is stuff that leads to genuine progress. It includes better resource-use efficiency, the development of alternative energy sources and methodologies and technological advances that facilitate these things

Bad growth is continuous expansion of resource consumption and continuously increasing economic turnover due to population growth. It is stuff that weakens the demand / supply relationship, while not improving our average quality of life.

We can’t just denounce all growth. We’ve always got to tease these two aspects apart.

Surely we can do this before we reach the point of social and economic implosion. Surely governments and the business community that hold so much sway over them can appreciate this distinction and work solidly towards refining our growth to the good growth fraction!

Paul Gilding is very positive about our ability to do this….although not all that positive about the sort of sting that we’ll need to prompt us into action: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2592909.htm

I came back to the land of the big PX from Apocalypse Vietnam 40 years ago. My salary has been about the same as the average family income my entire life, reasonably, but not highly well paid for the US, but fabulously for most of the world.

I wonder if I will live to see Apocalypse USA.

I wonder if I want to.

If Israel decides to kill all the Jews in Iran, the Apocalypse will follow shortly.

Great article, however to say that economic theory as a whole is divorced from reality is a little broad.

If the writer was referring to current mainstream economics, i.e.: Keynesianism, then yes I agree wholeheartedly, and think everything possible should be done to route Keynesians out of universities, and governments across the western world. This is what allows such rubbish to remain gospel, especailly since it seems universities don't teach independent thought, but more how to brown nose lecturers who are omniscient by their own declaration (which I suppose is to be expected, because it's excellent training for the corporate world).

There are, however, other schools of economic thought which are connected to the real world, which differentiate between worthwhile growth, and bubble growth (i.e.: efficient allocation of scarce resources).
These models do not rely on ever expanding growth, and bubble maintenance as Keynes does.
You just don't hear them on the news, or coming from any the utterly incompetent western governments, or self proclaimed "economic experts" as the way out of the trouble we are in, is just not a vote winner.

In a famous speech quoted in Climate Progress today, Bbby Kennedy said:
“We will find neither national purpose nor personal satisfaction in a mere continuation of economic progress, in an endless amassing of worldly goods. We cannot measure national spirit by the Dow Jones Average, nor national achievement by the Gross National Product. For the Gross National Product includes air pollution, and ambulances to clear our highways from carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and jails for the people who break them. The Gross National Product includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and missiles and nuclear warheads…. It includes… the broadcasting of television programs which glorify violence to sell goods to our children.
And if the Gross National Product includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend. It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry, or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials… The Gross National Product measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile, and it can tell us everything about America — except whether we are proud to be Americans.”
Ideas repeated by Barack Obama in the New York Times:
“We cannot rebuild this economy on the same pile of sand…… We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for our lasting prosperity.” B Obama

Makes you think!

Growth everlasting is capitalism's Achilles heel. It will eventually destroy either us or the capitalist system. I do my damndest every day to make sure it is capitalism that fails and not humanity.

Capitalist economics is a farce with absolutely no correlation between the theory and the reality. It is more of a religion designed to keep the wealthy and powerful in their exalted position in society and to justify their exploitation and subjugation of the masses. And their exploitation and wastefulness of our resources.

Unless we are careful before long corporatism will have overtaken our governments and we will all be slaves to the world of big business with surveillance and big brother and robocop forcing compliance and rooting out "subversion" of capitalist ideals. All those sci fi horror stories could be about to become true. Capitalism will not die easily. But it must die. For the sake of the human race and all we have achieved.

Lets look at this statement in the article

The impact of the doubling of that labour pool can be seen in a business like Wal-Mart. It employs the same number of employees as General Motors did in the 30s yet in real terms the wages of Wal-Mart’s employees are about a third of what GM’s employees were taking home in the 30s.

This is typical of the unsourced sillyness that pervades the article. Who is saying this? What part of GM and what class of employees are we talking about in both instances.. For that matter what part of the 30s? I suspect that is important, considering the economy went into deep depression in the early part of it.. What studies is the author refering to in other, rather puzzling assertions throughout the article? There is a substantial literature on the growth in salaries and salary differential between different classes of employment. However, there is very little doubt that the overall standard of living has risen, substantially, over the decades but if the author wants to make an argument for a decline in the standard of living he should make it rather than simply assert that it is so.. I would be interested in the argument.
The bit about limits of growth has been kicked around quite a bit now. the problem is that whenever someone tries to put to a limit, or someplace restriction or place where the growth should stop the economy proves them wrong by sailing on regardless.

Fantastic and incomprehensible tripe re western economics in the 70s. No mention of stagflation or OPEC price hike or food chain break throughs. Once again usual apocalyptic comments re human helplessness in face of future challenges.

Revisionism through the single fish eye lens of whacko and extreme socio-bio environmental politics.

No mention of changing means or distribution of production. Predictable claims of uselessness of economic theory and market economics from bearded gnomes who measure people as energy consuming units.

I don't mind being fitted up for your 'end of the earth cull program' but cut the silly revisionism.

No doubt many have seen the quote;

Anyone who believes in infinite growth in a finite world is
either a madman or an economist.

I posted this on another thread.

The recurring theme in this and other threads is that money comes into
being by the generation of credit/debt in the government/banking system.
Fair enough, but if interest could not be paid then the system would
fall apart. Now, my understanding is that it is growth that enables
the payment of interest out of the growth in the business.

However growth is not dependent on money but energy.
In a time of depletion of energy there will have to be a failure to
pay interest.
This is what happened last year.
In fact, it was also capital that could not be repaid.

In these new circumstances we will have to invent a quite different
financial model.

Economic growth is NOT about doing more and more of the same thing. If it were, the limits-to-growth apocalyptics might be right.

This is why is economic growth possible in a world of finite resources:

Dematerialisation – as we become more prosperous, an increasing proportion of the economy is non-material or minimally material, e.g. services.

Substitution – as things become scarcer, their prices rises. As their prices rise, it becomes worthwhile to look for alternatives, and economic to produce them. The telecommunications revolution was not choked off by lack of copper for wires because we developed alternatives using cheap abundant materials (silicon) or needing no physical transmission at all (satellite etc). This substitution effect is not a happy coincidence but one of the key benefits of competitive markets.

Most importantly, innovation – economic growth derives primarily from finding new, more valuable, ways of combining resources.

Paul Romer is a growth economist who articulates this extremely well. He argues:

“Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable. A useful metaphor for production in an economy comes from the kitchen. To create valuable final products, we mix inexpensive ingredients together according to a recipe. The cooking one can do is limited by the supply of ingredients, and most cooking in the economy produces undesirable side effects. If economic growth could be achieved only by doing more and more of the same kind of cooking, we would eventually run out of raw materials and suffer from unacceptable levels of pollution and nuisance. History teaches us, however, that economic growth springs from better recipes, not just from more cooking. New recipes generally produce fewer unpleasant side effects and generate more economic value per unit of raw material.

“Every generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. Possibilities do not add up. They multiply.”

Hi Rhian,
great quotes, and I'm sympathetic to many of the ideas there. Witness the rise and rise of renewable energy now growing much faster than coal, the spread of new ideas about transport and fast rail, etc. Witness concepts about living without cars in "mainstream" walkable communities, not just ecovillages for the hard corps greenies.
See http://villageforum.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=39&Itemid=58

However, surely there is a point where ideas alone cannot support a trillion people on planet earth when all the ecosystems around the world are currently in decline, where we are utilizing so much of the good land for agriculture, where more human beings are born each day than the total number of all great apes in the wild?

Surely there ARE limits, and we'd better use the precautionary principle and slow down the growth in human numbers by humane means, or nature will do it for us?

Hi Bazz,
have you read this post? It's all about whether or not growth is caused by the way we loan money into existence with interest.
http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2009/03/steady-state-money.html

I agree with Ludwig and disagree with Mikk. We can’t get rid of capitalism. Siting the flaws in capitalism and then saying we have to get rid of capitalism is like saying Germany had the Nazis, so we need to get rid of all Germans. Capitalism has problems but not enough to scrap it. We need to make use of the the profit motive in an efficient way. It exists everywhere anyway.

Ludwig is right about the kind of growth that promotes new technologies. We need improved energy efficiency, new ways to save water, better ways to recycle the things that we are wasting now, etc. If a farmer who is now growing 3 tonnes of wheat per hectare on his land learns how to grow 3.3 tonnes per hectare without any extra fertiliser or expensive equipment or extra water, then his part of the economy grows by 10% just through his brainpower. I don't think that will be easy to do, but where we can do it, we should. We don’t want to do anything to limit that kind of growth.

Rhian - Why not get the best of both worlds: Wonderful new innovations and a stable population. Why should modern civilisation's primary goal be to cram as many people onto the planet as possible? I don't think it is best to just close our eyes and think that everything will be okay because it has been since WWII (at least in the rich world). Where is the innovation that brought us the cure for cancer? It seems smarter to slow down and wait for the brilliant innovations to come and then expand in the clear understanding that we haven't stuffed everything up for our kids. It's like spending more money than you earn and then saying "don't worry, I'll get a great new job soon, that pays twice as much." It seems smarter to save money now and then spend it when the great new job comes.

Economic theory does not claim that one can have infinite growth on a finite base. The author’s premise, and therefore his conclusion, are fundamentally mistaken.

The subject matter of economics is precisely the scarcity of resources, i.e. where the same thing cannot be used for more than one competing purpose. If we had an infinity of a resource, there would be enough to satisfy all purposes. There would be no need to choose one use over another, no need to sacrifice another value, and hence it would not be an economic good.

The author seems confused over whether or not he is in favour of a higher standard of living. On the one hand he decries the fall in the purchasing power of wages in the USA in recent history; on the other he alleges that we are on verge of an ecological catastrophe. Well, is it good for human beings to enjoy a higher standard of living, or not?

Economics also does not claim that economic goods provide an increase in happiness, in the sense that one ends up at a higher long-term level of overall happiness. All it says that in preferring A to B, man attaches more value (or “happiness”) to A than to B, that’s all. The author’s argument is based on simple misunderstanding.

There are two main fallacies underlying the common idea that our management of the earth is leading to ecological catastrophe.

The first fallacy is that “we” are managing the earth. Who is this “we”? There is no aggregate decision-making entity, there is no central planning directorate in charge of the world’s life. The ‘economic growth paradigm’ is not because of some central government policy decision, it is because of the actions of six billion human beings in billions of transactions individually tending to prefer more life and well-being over poverty, sickness and death.

Nor should there be such a global central planning authority, subjugating all wills and judgments to his own. The choice is not between market economics or a better alternative based on forced reduction of consumption by centralised planning.

It is between market societies on one hand, and much greater economic and environmental destruction on the other. If you don’t understand why, then you need to find out why before re-publishing third-hand much-refuted quasi-Marxist errors.

You can read the definitive argument here: http://mises.org/econcalc.asp

The second fallacy is the idea we are facing an ecological catastrophe, which is not supported by the evidence: see The Skeptical Environmentalist by Lomborg http://books.google.com.au/books?id=JuLko8USApwC&dq=lomborg+skeptical+environmentalist+books&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=7b41SuKIB4_6kAWky7mPCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPR11,M1

It is not valid to proceed, as the author and his linked article assume, by simply and linearly extrapolating current trends forward. That’s the mistake Malthus made 200 years ago. That’s what Ehrlich did in the 1970s. They were both proved spectacularly wrong.

10,000 years ago there were not enough caves to support a population of 6 billion people. Does it matter? No.

To regard the failure of the Jeremiahs’ predictions to happen, as proving the underlying theorem that we can’t have infinite growth on a finite base, is doubly fallacious. The theorem is a misrepresentation of the case the author is intending to refute. And an unfalsifiable belief is irrational.

Economics is about the processes and the consequences of people’s choices concerning scarce resources, including time, human effort, and natural resources. Thus the knowledge set of global justice should properly include economics. There is no virtue in ignorance. I respectfully suggest that you need to acquire a basic understanding of the principles of economics that you misunderstand, misrepresent, and fail to refute.

A good start is the very readable Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0517548232/ref=nosim/librarythin08-20

Otherwise you’re just displaying an ignorance deplorable in one who aspires not just to understand the subject, but to teach others.

"We can't eat money." The poorest in the world would suffer first, should we have chronic food shortages moreso than we have seen over the past 2 years.
Agriculture underwent a revolution with boosted productivity a few decades ago. They now say we need a greater revolution in half the time, this time around. And then there's climate change.
Yet in the first world, we seem to be ramping up the consumerism and wealth to a point which could be seen as disgusting, by those who have to go without, because there is only so much to go around.
How about we all just slow down a bit? Would that mean the end of the world, if we only used the car when absolutely necessary?
Would our communications break down completely if we stayed off the electronics a bit more? Could we try to break the addiction of 'shop till you drop', replacing it with a walk around places where shops don't exist? How about cooking at home instead of buying take-away food? Minimising use of gas and electricity where possible?
I worked full-time through tertiary education part-time: B.Comm (Accountancy) and CPA, but now after attaining home ownership, work only 20hrs per week at less than $18 per hour, keep the grocery bill to a minimum, don't 'shop' unless it is completely necessary, and manage to get by. Have a small car and only drive when needed. I also live in the country. Perhaps all of us, myself included; could continually strive to cut back on what some assume to be necessities. They are luxuries. Look at them from a global perspective. Maybe we just need a re-think about everything. From where I stand, there is an horrific amount of wasteful practises in our world, and it is not in the 3rd World. It is in the 1st World, where we should know better. Will we ever learn? I am not hopeful.

The economic paradigm of bigger, bigger, more, more has long been a worry for me. People cannot continue consumerism and credit forever. They are owned by the banks but to what end? It simply is not possible for this to continue without repercussions, it is not sustainable.
I am not an economist or a psychologist, just a person of average intelligence who can see there will be obvious repercussions in the long run if people think an infinite economy in an infinite world is possible. It is not an infinite world.
To the psychologists out there, don't bring this to a psychology debate, it is not, it's real, and most economists have no idea what to do.

The article is about economic growth, not population growth. As no-one actually believes ericc’s contention that “modern civilisation's primary goal [is] to cram as many people onto the planet as possible,” or Eclipse Now’s point about supporting “a trillion people” these are not very relevant to a realistic debate about growth possibilities.

Ericc’s point about “just close our eyes and think everything will be ok” probably is closest to the position that Romer contests. Just because we can’t imagine what the next breakthrough in energy or food technology will be, doesn’t mean someone else won’t think of it.

In 1899, Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, said that: "Everything that can be invented has been invented." About 1900 years earlier, Roman engineer Julius Sextus Frontinus made much the same point: "Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further developments." Both were victims of the same lack of imagination that Romer identifies as underpinning modern scepticism about the possibility of sustained and sustainable economic growth.

The central point here is that price changes provide the incentive both to innovate and to reduce usage of scarce resources. We do not know exactly how the economy will adapt, but we know that it will. And this process has gone on for hundreds of years, not just since WW2. The printing press, windmill and steam engine were all stages on the journey. We may not (yet) have cured all cancers, but a lot of cancers now are manageable and no longer kill as quickly as one they did. We can cure or control a vast range of other once-fatal diseases.

Romer’s article is short and easy to read and can be viewed here:
http://www.stanford.edu/~promer/EconomicGrowth.pdf

What we require is technological growth and economic sustainability and you can't have that with globalisation and economic growth. Unsustainable is not growth but regression, as any real economist will tell you, but refuse to accept for their own theories. Humanity has placed itself in a no win situation, we now have a society demanding everyone work for the economy or miss out completely, people have to work long hours just to survive.

Where's our government borrowing all this money from, all this borrowing means everyone's in debt to everyone else, now that's not logical or rational. Now education is aimed at establishing economic slaves and not people able to live their lives responsibly, as we see with the growing street violence around the country. Children are born then farmed out to programmers, who begin the process of indoctrination into the loneliness of economic enslavement. Now we live longer, they are demanding we work longer for less and less. We should work to live, not live to work, as elitist economist and ideologists demand.

We don't need growth to constantly improve living standards, what we need is control of how and when resources are used. Probably 80% of consumer goods are unnecessary, polluting, ecologically destructive and a useless waste of resources. The only way to change our direction is to remove the controlling ideologies and establish a different system allowing people to progress and also sustain our planet. With all the money spent on consumer junk and arms, we could establish a much better way of life.

The problem is people can refer to quotes by economists with theories and post other sources to read. I am sure we are all hearily sick of reading all the proposals from various sources.

When it really comes down to is reality - infinite growth in an infinite world is impossible. Reality is what you have when you are pontificating on what might or might not happen if the world continues consumerism and following some ideology that "we will be alright Jack if you just keep spending",and quoting capitalism is great. It won't be alright. It will certainly not be alright in 10 to 20 years. Or even next year.

Good article, and a great link to Bartlett's lecture; really good stuff.
What neither Tons or Bartlett even mentioned, is entropy.
Even if we achieve zero population growth in the near future (and I believe we could) we will still inevitably run out of resources. Once steel oxidises, you can't recycle it. You can't turn rust back into steel. Once the oil and diesel is burnt, it's gone forever. Water is the ashes of hydrogen that has already been 'burnt'. Laissez faire economics predicts these resources will just become more valuable as they become more scarce.
So what?
The gap between rich and poor continues to grow; war between the have's and the have not's becomes more and more likely.
There can be little doubt that future generations will curse our selfish profligacy.
We are currently demonstrating as much simple good sense and forward planning as the Easter Islanders.
Incidentally for all the oldies moaning about 'the good old days' here is a great vid.
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/642.html

Wing Ah ling,
there ARE central planning economic forces that are pro-growth, called Rudd and his so called "stimulus package", and his equivalents in most governments in most countries around the world. Or please show me the government that celebrates initiatives that will lower consumption and the general economy by 5% because the scientists demonstrated that the economy had “grown too high”?

Economics might be the science of the allocation of limited resources, but just restating this does not negate the central premise of this article: modern economic and political policy appears based on growth, growth, growth! To truly engage an argument you need to counter it with RELEVANT information, not just side-step with an irrelevant definition.

I suggest you take up watching Catalyst on Thursday nights or even just reading the newspaper! You appear terribly uninformed about the state of the world. We ARE approaching ALL SORTS of ecological and resource catastrophes despite Lomborg and his anti-science political propaganda. We are losing species, intact ecosystems, topsoil, forests, climate stability, oil, metals, gas, coal, fisheries, freshwater, river integrity and health, and beautiful countryside to the developer lobby and their political friends. Developers are paving over and ploughing up natural habitats.

Indonesia is loosing 300 football fields of forest per hour! You can quote Lomborg’s rubbish all you want but the science is against you. (And you’ve just lost any credibility you claimed to have). See:
http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/

The cave men might not have run out of caves, but the Irish Potato famine did kill 1.5 million Irishmen, Mao’s poor resource handling did cause “Mao’s Great Leap Forward” which killed 20 to 40 million peasants, and other resource mismanagement calamities abound throughout history! Read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse”.

Being rational beings I believe we need to become acquainted with the true challenges before us and adapt to them, and that means sensible population policy and stable state economics.

Eclipse
“modern economic and political policy appears based on growth, growth, growth!”

Yes it is and I agree with you that it should not be. I think government should neither deliberately favour economic growth for its own sake, nor deliberately be against it - for the same reason. Why should those who are against it, be forced to sponsor power arrangements that are for it; or vice versa? It’s like forcing people to be in a particular church, and pay tithes, for values they don’t believe in.

Obviously the reason the politicians are doing it is because they think they’ll get votes from it. This is not an argument in favour of pro-growth policies, in my opinion; it is an argument against policies either for or against growth. But minority opinion against such policies is even less of an argument.

In other words, it is not and should not be a political issue. But if you think that it is, then ‘those who live by the sword, perish by the sword’. Having chosen the option of using force, you should not cry foul when others use force against you. When you talk of ‘sensible population policy’ you are choosing force, because policy means ‘police-y’. It means using force – the law.

You talk of ‘stable state economics’ as if that expression has a known, sensible or practical meaning.

However if the original problem is that people, left to themselves, will continue to live and reproduce, and if the only solution is to use policy to stop them doing so, the problem becomes *how* otherwise to produce the goods and services to keep people alive (assuming they are not all to starve); to what standard; which are justified; how to judge which are not, who is to decide, how, and so on. In the absence of government intervention, it will be decided by the people themselves, each planning for his own values, including values as to ethics, the environment etc.

But in the absence of that option, it could only ever be decided by total government control over the means of production. This is not an option in practice. To understand why not, you need to understand the argument about economic calculation.: http://mises.org/econcalc.asp

I repeat, the choice is not between capitalism and a better centrally-planned sustainable stasis. It is between freedom, and total economic and environmental destruction.

Environmentalists are people-pushers. “A people-pusher is an person with a leash in search of a dog.” http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer191.html

And we have laws for the common good, so now we are back to a boring American philosophical debate between the perceived "public good" V "individual freedom" which seems vastly different to the European take on these things.

EG: Economies and governments interact. Governments might favour the car and motorways, as is the case in the USA, which affects the whole community! They are FORCED to own a car in many cases by necessity. The government zoning laws encourage car use, public tax money is spent on vast road infrastructures and the resulting mess is totally oil dependent and unsustainable. However, in Europe due to their unique history and having traditional city cores, they still have a ‘sense of place’ in the heart of their cities. They have a sense of the “public good” and how town planning can help all achieve such socially important things as a sense of local loyalty and identity, which are hard to measure economically but have enormous value for us as a species. They design cities around public transport more than the “individualistic American” model which emphasises trucking over trains. As a result, the average European uses half the oil of the average American, and will be that better placed to survive peak oil than America.

And this is just town planning! But I could easily perceive you or someone of your ilk arguing “But town planning is FORCE by LAW!” Well, yeah, why else do we have governments? It’s about the individual prospering because he / she lives in a prosperous society. The public good is my good.

As the world changes and society is forced to adapt, SOMEONE has to say “this much and no more” in certain areas of life, whether toxins, management of resources, etc.

Extreme example: I’d rather know that my use of timber was “managed” somehow (by policy, economic incentives and taxes, conservation laws, whatever) than that the last tree might get cut down in some planetary “Easter Island event”.

Lastly, SPA’s population policy was not a “one child” policy: it’s far more subtle than that.

Part 1
I guess the responses highlight the danger of compressing a 10,000 word piece into just 1,000 words. So in response to some of the posts these comments may help:
Ludwig's comments about good growth vesrus bad growth is well made; I had hoped that Bartlett's lecture covered that. Increasingly scientists are looking at economics and its claim to be scientific and making the point that the sort of "science' that (some) economists rely upon is a charicature of the scientific method (eg see Davies, G. (2004). Economia. Sydney, Australian Broadcasting Commission.) The point regarding entropy is also picked up by scientists writing on economics.
Curmudgeon questioned my sources - fair point. With respect to the comparison between Wallmart and GM wages see Lardner, J. and D. S. eds (2005). Inequality Matters. New York, New Press. They also make the point that Wallmart employees are also subsidised by the state; their wages are so low that most are eligible for food vouchers and the like. The comparison between real wages and profitability comes from Capitalism hits the fan : Richard Wolff on the economic meltdown. 2009 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7382297202053077236

Rechts is right (appropriate given the handle) By no means all economists are out of touch: Sen Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. New York, Random House. is good on good growth versus bad growth, likewise Stiglitz (just about anything he has written) and Krugman are three nobel prize economists who tend to pour buckets of cold water on the growth paradigm.

Part 2
Cheryl far from being about helplessness it is about the reality that we can take action but you would need to follow up the last link.
I had hoped that people would have picked up the significance of the Friedman reference - we have an enviable lifestyle thanks to the very technology that is about to derail our ecosystem. If we could go back in time would we tell people not to build their coal fired energy systems? Somehow I doubt it for it would mean foregoing a lot of benefits so what are the decisions that we can make now that will enhance the future? I personally believe that we can make the switch to a zerocarbon economy, that we can create a form of capitalism that is sustainable but it does demand that we are prepared to be creative in our thinking. ( see Porritt, J. (2006). Capitalism as if the World Matters. London, Earthscan, and Foster, J. (2008). The Sustainablity Mirage. London, Earthscan
Rhian’s references are valuable; there has also been much written about the notion that the way out of the recession is green economics. It is the one element that gives me some cause for cautious optimism.
Wing Ah Ling should perhaps read Stretton’s Introduction to Economics especially chapter 2.
No doubt there are others who can refer to yet more texts, more peer reviewed material that supports or contradicts my assertions.
But does all that really matter? Why not do what you can do in your own backyard and create a local resilient community that is self sufficient and sustainable. If you want to know how simply google Transition Towns or Mondragon. (The latter has been around since 1948)

Wing Ah Ling, in all aspects of life you require rules, even if you spend your entire life by yourself, you develop rules which give relevance to life, otherwise you're insane. When you have more than one person you need rules to establish personal boundaries, directions and approaches, otherwise you have anarchistic attrition. The problem is ideologists tore up the planets natural rules and imposed their ideological ones, as we all know, ideological aims always fail to materialise in the way predicted and in the long run, have the opposite outcome.

Growing consumerism and consumption is illogical, all it does is pollute and destroy the only current place in the universe we can live. We have no way of getting of the earth, so for humanity to survive into the foreseeable future comfortably, we need to change our approach. The current ruling ideology, economic growth at any cost, is failing in anyone's terms, except the slaves of the belief.

“Sensible population policy”, is when you provide for the populations sustainability, currently there's no country that can do that, without causing major environmental, social and economic problems. The current approach is extremely illogical, unsustainable and fatal for life, unless you only think of today and yourself, or belief in the tooth fairy coming to save you.

Thanks Baygon,

I'm afraid Wing ah Ling has demolished the anti-pops here. His first two posts expressed it so succinctly that anything I could add would be superfluous.

I find it amazing that the intellegentsia comes up with this nonsense.
The statement that we live in a finite world is just wrong.
The Earth receives energy from the sun, through photosynthesis that energy is used to create carbohydrates which over time becomes hydrocarbons. Meteorites and other extraterrestial bodies continually add mineral resources to the planet. As technology increases the world economy has the potential to utilise extraterrestial resources, but nevertheless we do not live in a finite world any more than the earth is flat.

Wing and Cheryl welcome to the "anti-pops" and glad to have you on board. With no government intervention that means no baby bonus to encourage women to have children. Point one of the Sustainable Population Australia wish list. No government intervention means net zero immigration. Don't encourage more, don't encourage less follows on to net zero immigration very easily. That is point two on SPA's wish list.

Promoting the many economists that don't want infinite growth on a finite base, that's a great help too. You could be a valuable member of the team.

Rhian promoting renewable technologies and low energy solutions to the problems caused by wasteful outdated methods, you should sign up as well.

Wing ah Ling and others seem to be of the opinion that growth or no
growth is an optional decision.
It is not, no growth is being imposed on us whether we like it or not.
The basic restriction is energy, although while lots of energy comes
from the sun it is not in a form that will allow us the growth rates
of the current era.
The conversion technologies are limited by minerals and other materials.
So face up to it and live with it.
Growth, except for a small amount for a short time is over.

A graph of human wellbeing over time looks far more like a roller-coaster than a steadily rising slope. Conditions improve when a new crop or technological advance expands carrying capacity, as with the Industrial or Green Revolutions, or when there is a big die-off among the humans competing for resources, as with the Black Death. After these peaks, conditions slowly deteriorate again. Paolo Malanima's website is a good corrective for the idea of unending progress (www.paolomalanima.it, but many of the papers are in English). The graphs at the end of this paper show how living standards deteriorated in Italy between the Black Death and the rise in the late 19th century.

http://www.paolomalanima.it/default_file/Articles/Wages_%20Productivity.pdf

"Over the centuries, Italian workers had to work more and more. The 'industrious revolution'... in Italy did not aim to raise the standard of living and introduce the population to the modern world of consumer goods, but it aimed to offset the worsening in the standard of living under rising demographic pressure."

Malanima estimates 500-1000 hours of work a year were required for bare survival in the 14th and 15th centuries, but 1500 in the 19th.

Graph 3 in this paper by Sevket Pamuk shows real wages from 1400-1800 in a number of European cities, making it clear that ordinary people were better off in 1400 than 1800, despite considerable technological progress.

http://www.ata.boun.edu.tr/faculty/sevket%20pamuk/publications/pamuk-black_death-final.pdf

Average heights were also decreasing over this period.

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm

And then there's the question of infinite growth of the population.

Humans have notoriously short memories. Perhaps that's why it is inherent in Human Nature not to do anything 'until after the horse has bolted'. That is what has happened repeatedly in the past.
If history is anything to go by: Both economic and population growth are checked by economic, political and environmental disasters. This seems to cause a natural balancing effect. It happens repeatedly over time: Economic collapse, wars, earthquakes, tsunamis and pandemics, to name a few; regularly check the rise of populations.
We have been 'steaming along' as of late. Looking at history again: A 'steaming along' seems always to be followed by a 'checking' of about the same magnitude. Perhaps it is inevitable. But one thing is for sure: SOMETHING will happen: Humans have never been in control. But we keep trying. Because that's all we can do. In the end, we all die, anyway.

LadyAussieAlone,

"In the end, we all die anyway".

Once Kanck as titular head of the Sustainable Population Lobby is rolled by either the Greens, the Weathermen, poor developing black people or unmedicated schizophrenics (who think she is talking about them), then I will nominate you as President for Life.

You're my kind of lady.