It is probably correct that we can’t bring everyone up to USA level consumption
Do you mean USA levels of consumption in the economic sense or just energy consumption? If the former, this seems like a really big deal to me. But I’m guessing it’s not the case. Right now we do many things in energy inefficient ways, because energy is so inexpensive right now.
> USA levels of consumption in the economic sense or just energy consumption?
Basically this is a false distinction. ( I did say first world originally not the US, which does seem to be somewhat profligate as a result of lower prices in the US, others tend to have high taxes on oil and coal).
Copied from my comment above:
> Some people try to argue that we can have high economic growth without more energy but cross sectionally and temporally this would be very novel. Living standards and energy use are highly correlated. The one apparent exception, first world countries recently is just a result of outsourcing manufacturing to LDCs. When you take into account the energy embedded in imports, the richer countries are continuing to grow energy use rapidly (and effective CO2 emissions as well).
The standards of life abruptly stop correlating with economic growth after a certain point. The whole first world has been far past that point from a while by now, economic growth only correlates with standard of life when it suddenly tanks hard in an economic crisis. Also Europe has the same living standards of the USA and a pro-capita carbon footprint that’s about 1⁄4. Part of it might be due to Europe moving a lot of polluting industries outside it’s borders, but it doesn’t seem even close to explain all the gap.
I mean for former, in terms of general economic wellbeing. It is a big deal and obviously bad if we can’t bring everyone up to a decent level of economic prosperity, but it is not fatal to civilisation. We are already at current levels of inequality, and we still have a civilisation.
The arguments for a possible collapse [I am on the fence] are roughly
1. Many civilizations in the past collapsed when deprived of their source of energy. A smooth transition to a lower level of energy use is not the norm though it has happened e.g. Byzantium.
2. Complex systems tend to be operating close to optimum, which makes for fragility. Turn the electricity off in NYC for two weeks and see what happens for example. More on this in books like “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph A. Tainter.
3. Our civilization is global thus the collapse would likely be global.
It is plausible to me that this would be fatal to our civilization, in the long run. Eventually we need to stop being biological humans living on the surface of Earth. It is not clear to me that we can move past that without much higher productivity than present day US.
I agree that if technological development productivity was held at a low level indefinitely that could be fatal, but that is a fairly different claim from the one waveman is making—which is that in the nearish term we will be unable to maintain our civilisation.
I am also hopeful that we can reach technological escape velocity with current or even fewer people with reasonable economic wellbeing.
I don’t really think you can make an argument that a renewable economy is viable based on hopium type arguments. As with the Club of Rome work, you would have to assume a massive increase in the rate of progress for this to work. In reality the problem seems to be the reverse—productivity increases seem to have slowed considerably.
Do you mean USA levels of consumption in the economic sense or just energy consumption? If the former, this seems like a really big deal to me. But I’m guessing it’s not the case. Right now we do many things in energy inefficient ways, because energy is so inexpensive right now.
> USA levels of consumption in the economic sense or just energy consumption?
Basically this is a false distinction. ( I did say first world originally not the US, which does seem to be somewhat profligate as a result of lower prices in the US, others tend to have high taxes on oil and coal).
Copied from my comment above:
> Some people try to argue that we can have high economic growth without more energy but cross sectionally and temporally this would be very novel. Living standards and energy use are highly correlated. The one apparent exception, first world countries recently is just a result of outsourcing manufacturing to LDCs. When you take into account the energy embedded in imports, the richer countries are continuing to grow energy use rapidly (and effective CO2 emissions as well).
The standards of life abruptly stop correlating with economic growth after a certain point. The whole first world has been far past that point from a while by now, economic growth only correlates with standard of life when it suddenly tanks hard in an economic crisis. Also Europe has the same living standards of the USA and a pro-capita carbon footprint that’s about 1⁄4. Part of it might be due to Europe moving a lot of polluting industries outside it’s borders, but it doesn’t seem even close to explain all the gap.
I mean for former, in terms of general economic wellbeing. It is a big deal and obviously bad if we can’t bring everyone up to a decent level of economic prosperity, but it is not fatal to civilisation. We are already at current levels of inequality, and we still have a civilisation.
The arguments for a possible collapse [I am on the fence] are roughly
1. Many civilizations in the past collapsed when deprived of their source of energy. A smooth transition to a lower level of energy use is not the norm though it has happened e.g. Byzantium.
2. Complex systems tend to be operating close to optimum, which makes for fragility. Turn the electricity off in NYC for two weeks and see what happens for example. More on this in books like “The Collapse of Complex Societies” by Joseph A. Tainter.
3. Our civilization is global thus the collapse would likely be global.
It is plausible to me that this would be fatal to our civilization, in the long run. Eventually we need to stop being biological humans living on the surface of Earth. It is not clear to me that we can move past that without much higher productivity than present day US.
I agree that if technological development productivity was held at a low level indefinitely that could be fatal, but that is a fairly different claim from the one waveman is making—which is that in the nearish term we will be unable to maintain our civilisation.
I am also hopeful that we can reach technological escape velocity with current or even fewer people with reasonable economic wellbeing.
I don’t really think you can make an argument that a renewable economy is viable based on hopium type arguments. As with the Club of Rome work, you would have to assume a massive increase in the rate of progress for this to work. In reality the problem seems to be the reverse—productivity increases seem to have slowed considerably.
There is a whole discussion about this both in the popular press and among economists https://time.com/4464743/productivity-decline/ https://www.intereconomics.eu/contents/year/2017/number/1/article/the-global-productivity-slowdown-diagnosis-causes-and-remedies.html
It is one thing even to assume present rates of improvement will continue, it is another to assume a dramatic turnaround against the current trend.
I do not mean technological development productivity, I mean economic productivity (how much stuff we’re making, how many services we’re providing).