Guest essay by Indur M. Goklany
The recent Papal Encyclical on the environment’s endorsement of “changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat…warming,” and drastic reductions in carbon dioxide and other emissions is based on the notion that “it is not possible to sustain the present level of consumption in developed countries and wealthier sectors of society…” and that the “exploitation of the planet has already exceeded acceptable limits” (paragraphs 23. 27). It also reflects the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences’ Declaration which asserts that “Unsustainable consumption coupled with a record human population and the uses of inappropriate technologies are causally linked with the destruction of the world’s sustainability and resilience” (p. 1).
But these assertions are fundamentally flawed. The world is not less sustainable and resilient today than it was before the Industrial Revolution. In fact, it is probably more sustainable and resilient today than previously. This is shown in the following, which is a lightly edited extract from the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s The Pontifical Academies’ BROKEN MORAL COMPASS, which addresses this and other claims found in both the Encyclical and Declaration.
Humanity’s sustainability and resilience
If the world were less sustainable and resilient today, global population would be smaller today, worse off than in the past, or both. But the world’s population is at a record level. Equally important, human wellbeing is at or near its peak by virtually every objective broad measure. Consider that:
- Between 1990–92 and 2014–16, despite a global population increase of 35% (or 1.9 billion), the population suffering from chronic hunger declined by 216 million.[1],[2] Consequently malnutrition also declined. Since reductions in hunger and malnutrition are the first steps to better public health, age-adjusted mortality rates have declined and life expectancy has increased.[3]
- Even in low-income countries, life expectancy, probably the single best indicator of human wellbeing, increased from 25–30 years in 1900 to 42 years in 1960 and 62 years today.3
- People are not just living longer, they also are healthier. This is true in the richer as well as the poorer segments of the world. Healthy life expectancy — that is, life expectancy adjusted downward to account for years spent in a less-than-healthy condition (weighted by the severity of that condition) — was 53 years in 2012 in low-income countries, far exceeding their unadjusted life expectancy in 1960 (42 years).[4]
- Between 1950 and 2013, the average person’s standard of living measured by GDP per capita, increased from $2100 to $8200 (in 1990 international PPP-adjusted dollars).3,[5] This statistic understates the relative increase in the standard of living because long term changes in GDP per capita do not properly account for the fact that some goods and services available today — e.g. cell phones, the Internet, personal computers — were simply unavailable at any price a few decades ago. Nor do they account properly for improvements in the quality of others; compare the bulky, grainy black-and-white analogue TVs of yesteryear with the light, 80-inch HD 3-D colour models of today.
- More importantly, the global population in absolute poverty declined from 53% to 17% between 1981 and 2011.[6] There were about
847947 million fewer people living in absolute poverty in 2011 than in 1981, although the developing world’s population increased by 2.5 billion.[7] Not accidentally, the most rapid reductions in poverty occurred in east and south Asia, the areas with the fastest economic growth, all fuelled by fossil fuels. - Education and literacy, once the domain of the clergy and the wealthy, have advanced. Between 1980 and 2012, enrollment in secondary schools in low-income countries increased from 18% to 44%.3
- The average person has never had greater and faster access to information, knowledge and technology to help them learn, adapt and solve whatever problems they face. Mobile (cell) phone subscriptions have risen from 0% of population in 1997 to 55% in 2013 in low-income countries, while Internet users rose from virtually nil to 7% of the population over the same period.3
- These indicators reflect the very factors that enhance resilience and adaptive capacity, no matter what the threat.[8] And as humanity’s vulnerability to adversity has declined, the negative consequences of climate and weather, in particular, have been reduced. Thus the more narrowly focused climate-sensitive indicators have, predictably, also improved. Specifically:
- Global death rates from all extreme weather events have declined by over 98% since the 1920s.[9]
- Crop yields have improved steadily across the world. From 1961 to 2013, cereal yields increased by 85% in the least-developed countries and 185% worldwide, and show no sustained sign of decelerating, let alone reversing.[10]
- Despite population increases, which theoretically should have made clean water less accessible, the number of people with access to a safe supply has actually increased worldwide. Between 1990 and 2012, the population with such access increased from 75.9% to 89.3% (that is, by 2.3 billion additional people).3 Concurrently, an additional 2.0 billion people got access to improved sanitation.3
- The global mortality rate for malaria, which accounts for about 80% of the global burden of vector-borne diseases that may pose increased risk under global warming,[11] declined from 194 per 100,000 in 1900 to 9 per 100,000 in 2012, an overall decline of 95.4%.[12],[13]
Thus, trends in the broad indicators of human wellbeing and the narrower climate-sensitive indicators show that, despite population growth, sustainability and resilience have advanced markedly, in direct contrast to the academies’ claims. To illustrate, Figure 1 shows that, globally, both life expectancy and real GDP per capita — representing public health and the standard of living, and perhaps the two most important measures of human wellbeing — have been increasing in parallel with carbon dioxide emissions. Similar graphs can be produced showing improvements in the various indicators of human wellbeing with economic development. [14],[15]
But these are no mere correlations.
The improvement in human well-being have been enabled directly or indirectly through the use of fossil fuels or fossil-fuel powered technologies and economic growth.14,[16],[17],[18] This is because every human activity —whether it is growing crops, cooking food, building a home, making and transporting goods, delivering services, using electrical equipment for any purpose, studying under a light or going on holiday — depends directly or indirectly on the availability of energy (see below) and, in today’s world, energy is virtually synonymous with fossil fuels; they supply 82% of global energy used.[19] Even human inactivity cannot be maintained for any length of time without energy consumption. A human being who is merely lying around needs to replenish his energy just to maintain basic bodily functions. The amount of energy needed to sustain inactivity is called the basal metabolic rate (BMR). It takes food — a carbon product — to replace this energy. Insufficient food, which is defined in terms of the BMR, leads to starvation, stunting, and a host of other physical and medical problems, and, possibly, death.[20]
Nature’s sustainability and resilience
It may, however, be argued that the increase in humanity’s sustainability and resilience has come at the expense of the rest of nature. Indeed, this was the case for millennia, with an approximately linear relationship being seen between land clearance on the one hand, and human population and standard of living on the other. This was because virtually everything humanity needed and used — food, fuel, clothing, medicine, mechanical power, and much of its housing, shelter, material goods, energy and transportation — was obtained directly or indirectly via the services or products of living nature. The slow rate of technological change meant that if living standards had to improve or the population increased then, barring favourable weather, the increase in demand for food, fuel or any other good would have to be met mostly through additional land clearance. Thus, initially the Industrial Revolution saw population increases accompanied by higher conversion of land per capita to agricultural use. However, this trend was eventually reversed due to a host of fossil-fuel-based technologies. Firstly, these technologies increased the productivity of land to provide the needed goods and services. Secondly, they began to displace the goods and services that humanity traditionally obtained from nature.14,[21] Specifically:
· Food. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides derived from fossil fuels, non-existent in 1900, increased crop yields during the 20th century. Together they are responsible for at least 60% of today’s global food supply. Crop yields were also augmented by other technologies such as drilling, pumping and distribution of irrigation water, that were also fossil-fuel powered. The amount of food produced (or consumed) per acre of cultivated land was further stretched by reductions in post-harvest and end-use losses enabled through fossil fuel derived technologies such as refrigeration, faster transportation, plastic packaging and storage, and more efficient processing methods.14
· Fibre. About 63% of the world’s fibre production is of synthetic fibres, which are made from fossil fuels. Of the remainder 79% comes from cotton, which is also substantially dependent on synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.[22] Synthetic fibres were little more than curiosities until the 1900s. Synthetic fibres also diminished the need to hunt and trap various species for furs and skins helping defuse a major threat to biodiversity.[23]
· Fuel and energy. Biofuels (mainly wood) provided 52% of global energy in 1900. Today their share is down to 11%, whereas the share of fossil fuels has increased from 42% to 82% over that period.[24],[25] Along the way, fossil fuels displaced animal power for transporting goods, people, and doing other work on and off the farm. Feeding these animals used to consume a substantial share of agricultural produce. In the US, for instance, 27% of the land harvested for crops in 1910 was devoted to feeding the 27.5 million horses and mules. Thus displacing animal power with fossil fuels freed up land to feed people and limit habitat loss.14 Habitat loss is generally considered to be the single largest threat to biodiversity, although invasive species have been responsible for a large share of extinctions in the last few centuries, particularly in insular areas.
· Materials. Biomass was responsible for 74% of material use in 1900 but only 30% in 2009.24 This was enabled by the invention of new materials (e.g. plastics, new alloys) and the application of new, often energy-intensive processes to old and not-so-old materials (cement, iron, steel, engineered woods) to extract, manufacture, fabricate and transport them.
Thus, fossil fuels allowed humanity to vastly increase the quantity of goods and services that it obtained from the rest of nature while limiting land conversion. The trend towards greater land productivity is reinforced by the fact that higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere increase the rate of vegetation growth, and the efficiency with which plants use water. Nitrogen deposition from fossil-fuel and fertilizer use further increases the biosphere’s productivity. Together, these factors have enabled humanity to meet its growing needs without adding proportionately to its already considerable burden on the rest of nature. Consequently, as shown by Figure 2, the amount of land used for humanity’s needs per capita had peaked by the second half of the twentieth century: between 1990 and 2012, although global population increased 33%, the increases in global cropland (3%) and agricultural area (2%) were ten-fold smaller.10 That is, habitat conversion to crops and other agricultural land has almost plateaued globally.
Equally important, despite a 52% population growth10 and any land clearance and degradation, satellite data indicate that the productivity of global ecosystems increased 14% from 1982 to 2011. [26] They also show that 31% of the global vegetated area has become greener while 3% has become less green. All vegetation types — tropical rain forests, deciduous and evergreen boreal forests, scrubland, semi-deserts, grasslands and all other wild ecosystems —have increased their productivity. The IPCC Working Group II’s Fifth Assessment notes that, “[d]uring the decade 2000 to 2009, global land net primary productivity was approximately 5% above the preindustrial level, contributing to a net carbon sink on land … despite ongoing deforestation” and land-use change (emphasis added).[27] These increases have been attributed to higher carbon dioxide levels; nitrogen deposition from fossil-fuel combustion and fossil-fuel-derived fertilizer use, and possibly a more favourable climate.[28], [29] Thus, at least over the past thirty years, fossil fuels have helped the planet increase its productivity above its pre-industrial level; that is, the planet’s ability to sustain plant and animal biomass has increased.
To appreciate the scale of the positive effect of fossil-fuel technologies in limiting and reversing habitat loss, consider that fossil fuels currently are directly or indirectly responsible for at least 60% of humanity’s food and fibre. Thus, absent fossil fuels, global cropland alone would have to increase by at least 150% (or 2.3 billion hectares) just to meet current demand. This is equivalent to the combined land area of South America and the European Union.14,[30] That would have further exacerbated the greatest threat to biodiversity, namely, the conversion of habitat. To put into context the land saved by fossil fuels in this way, consider that the area exceeds the total amount of land set aside worldwide in any kind of protected status (2.1 billion hectares).[31]
Conclusion: fossil fuels have enhanced the world’s sustainability
Contrary to the Pontifical academies’ claim, empirical trends show that sustainability and resilience – both of humanity and of rest of nature — have advanced rather than diminished. Moreover fossil fuels have been an integral reason for these advances.
The divergence between the academies’ claims and empirical reality is due to their omission, for whatever reason, of any examination of a host of indicators of human wellbeing and global biological productivity. Less charitable souls may note that these indicators are not arcane, and that their favourable trends have persisted for decades and have been repeatedly noted by researchers. 15,[32],[33] They may therefore wonder if the academies’ oversight is wilful: a sin of commission. But it could also be due to wishful thinking rooted in confirmation bias, or to plain ignorance, although the latter seems implausible given the qualifications of the members of the academies.
Curiously, the academies claim to have demonstrated a causal link between this alleged decline and “Unsustainable consumption coupled with a record human population and the uses of inappropriate technologies”. This claim is obviously risible, given that one cannot establish such a link when the phenomenon concerned, namely the alleged reduction in the world’s sustainability and resilience, has not been observed.
References:
[1] FAO (2015), http://www.fao.org/hunger/key-messages/en/, visited June 7, 2015.
[2] This occurred despite the diversion of land and crops from production of food to the production of biofuels in large part in response to climate change policies. According to one estimate, such diversions helped push 130–155 million people in 2008 into absolute poverty, exacerbating hunger in this most marginal of populations which, in turn, may have led to 190,000 premature deaths worldwide in 2010 alone. Goklany IM (2011), Could Biofuel Policies Increase Death and Disease in Developing Countries? Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 16 (1): 9–13.
[3] World Bank (2014), World Development Indicators.
[4] World Health Organization (2014). World Health Statistics 2014, Part III Global Health Indicators, p. 68.
[5] Maddison A (2010), Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita GDP, 1-2008 AD, University of Groningen, 2010, http://www.ggdc.net/MADDISON/Historical_Statistics/vertical-file_02-2010.xls.
[6] World Bank (2014), PovcalNet, at http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/index.htm?1, visited May 15, 2015.
[7] The threshold for “absolute poverty” is conventionally defined at $1.25 a day (or about $460 per year) in 2005 PPP-adjusted International dollars.
[8] Goklany IM (2007), Integrated Strategies to Reduce Vulnerability and Advance Adaptation, Mitigation, and Sustainable Development, Mitigation and Adaption Strategies for Global Change DOI 10.1007/s11027-007-9098-1.
[9] Goklany IM (2011), Wealth and Safety: The Amazing Decline in Deaths from Extreme Weather in an Era of Global Warming, 1900–2010. Reason Institute.
[10] FAOSTAT.
[11] Institute of Medicine (US) Forum on Microbial Threats. Vector-Borne Diseases: Understanding the Environmental, Human Health, and Ecological Connections, Workshop Summary. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2008. Summary and Assessment. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK52939/.
[12] WHO (1999), “Roll Back Malaria.” World Health Report 1999.
[13] WHO (2013), World Malaria Report 2013, Annex 6B.
[14] Goklany IM (2012), Humanity Unbound: How Fossil Fuels Saved Humanity from Nature and Nature from Humanity. Policy Analysis, No. 715, Cato Institute, Washington, DC.
[15] Goklany IM (2007) The Improving State of the World, Cato Institute, Washington, DC.
[16] Belke, Ansgar, Frauke Dobnik, and Christian Dreger. “Energy consumption and economic growth: New insights into the cointegration relationship.” Energy Economics 33.5 (2011): 782-789.
[17] Fei, Li, et al. “Energy consumption-economic growth relationship and carbon dioxide emissions in China.” Energy policy 39.2 (2011): 568-574.
[18] Historically economic development and energy use have gone hand-in-hand. However, in recent decades the grip keeps relaxing because of technological change and the expansion of the service sector (itself a result of technological change). Hence, the declining trend in GDP per energy use.
[19] International Energy Agency (2014), Key World Energy Statistics 2014. p. 6.
[20] Goklany IM (2011), Economic Development in Developing Countries: Advancing Human Wellbeing and the Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change. In: Patrick J. Michaels, ed., Climate Coup: Global Warming’s Invasion of Our Government and Our Lives , Washington, DC: Cato Institute, pp.157–184.
[21] Goklany IM (1998), “Saving Habitat and Conserving Biodiversity on a Crowded Planet, BioScience 48 (1998): 941-953.
[22] Discover Natural Fibres Initiative (2015), World production of Natural and Manmade Fibres,2008–2013, at dnfi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Fiber-Production.xlsx, visited 1 June 2015.
[23] Goklany IM (2009), Technological Substitution and Augmentation of Ecosystem Services. In: Simon A. Levin et al. (eds.), The Princeton Guide to Ecology (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009...
[24] Krausmann, F. et al. (2009) Growth in global materials use, GDP and population during the 20th century. Ecological Economics 68, 2696–2705. Data on material and energy use downloaded from http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/socec/inhalt/3133.htm on 1/13/2013.
[25] International Energy Agency (2014), Key World Energy Statistics 2014. p. 6.
[26] Zhu Z and Myneni RB (2014), A Greener Earth (?), Global Vegetation Monitoring and Modeling, Avignon, France, February 3 to 7, 2014.
[27] IPCC AR5 WG2, Chapter 18, p. 989.
[28] See also: IPCC WG1, AR5, p. 502.
[29] Donohue RJ, Roderick ML, McVicar TR, Farquhar GD (2013), Carbon dioxide fertilisation has increased maximum foliage cover across the globe’s warm, arid environments. Geophysical Research Letters, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/grl.50563.
[30] This calculation ignores additional habitat conversion that would be required to maintain biomass plantations and livestock needed to fulfill current demand for fuel, energy and materials. It also assumes that crop yields can be maintained at the current average level. This is unlikely because the most productive lands are already being used.
[31] UNEP-WCMC (2014) Protected Planet Report 2014. UNEP-WCMC: Cambridge, UK.
[32] Simon JL, ed. (1995), The State of Humanity, Blackwell, Boston.
[33] Ridley M (2010), The Rational Optimist.
CAGW Statists’ claims that fossil fuels have destroyed the Earth border on the insane…
The moral, ethical, economic and philosophical argument in support of using fossil fuels is irrefutable.
If fossil fuels were banned by 2050, as some ill-informed political hacks suggest, and replaced by their pitiful “alternative” energy sources like wind, solar, bio-fuel, geo-thermal, etc., (which are laughably: inefficient, diffuse, intermittent, unreliable and terribly expensive) billions of people would die and people’s standards of living would plummet.
Thorium Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) will most likely replace a huge portion of energy requirements by 2050 and will be approximately 50% CHEAPER/kWh than natural gas/coal fired plants. MSRs will generate 200 TIMES less nuclear waste per year compared to Light Water Reactors, as expensive fuel-rod reprocessing isn’t required–just dump in more dirt-cheap/abundant thorium and gigawatts of energy are produced..
China’s first test Molten Salt Reactor goes online THIS YEAR and China’s truncated timeline for a commercially viable MSR design for large-scale rollout is 2023…
The irony is that if the $100’s of billions currently wasted on wind/solar were used to develop and build MSRs, future energy needs would be secured and the already disconfirmed CAGW hypothesis would be moot…
And political hacks wonder why only 12% of Americans think they’re doing a good job….
We need to build a GigaWatt of new nuclear power generating capacity each day. Better still we need to build at least ten small MSRs or LFTRs per day.
The USA used to be able to build two 14,000 tonne “Liberty Ships” per day.
We should be able to produce at least ten 100 MWe LFTRs a day, equivalent to one “Standard Candle” Gigawatt nuke. Such small nukes could be built on assembly lines and delivered to site on one 40 foot truck. They could be installed on small ships that could moor near third world ports so as to deliver cheap and reliable electricity to the third world.
Will the USA create a new and better Mesmer plan? Don’t hold your breath but some nation will display the kind of leadership that we no longer aspire to.
The Chinese can now build a 30 story building in 15 days:
In the US, it probably takes 15 days just fill out the EPA application form to enable an EPA to consider conducting a two-year study of the environmental impact of a 30-story office building…
And for a nuclear plant???? Are you frigging kidding me?
For EACH proposed MSR construction site, I suspect there will be YEARS of NIMBY public hearings, YEARS of EPA studies, YEARS of NRA evaluations, YEARS of litigation from eco-wacko groups fighting tooth and nail to prevent construction of every potential site, 100’s of various federal, state and local government agencies to sign off on: site selection, pre-construction, construction and post-construction, labor unions will be a pain, eco-wakco protestors: chaining themselves to fences, blocking construction traffic, die-ins on roads leading to the construction site, etc… A complete nightmare….
There are WUWT readers that are nuclear engineers that could shed more light on the years of red tape required just to get ONE nuclear site approved and then the construction red tape must border on the insane… And this has to be done for 100’s of MSR sites over the coming decades…
And we wonder why our economy and society are going to hell….
China is going to eat our lunch… AGAIN…
While there is nothing wrong with nuclear energy per se, no country in the world has yet solved the political problem of what to do with waste.
Climate Pete,
Nuclear Waste isn’t.
What you are talking about is unburned fuel with about 100 times the energy content extracted in the first burn.
One thing thing that would harm civilizations resilience is a colder world like the LIA , that would hurt our civilization (or an asteroid, ouch) !
Another thing that would serious cause hurt would be allowing the atmospheric CO2 level to drop down below 350ppm again.
The world’s food comes from one and only one chemical reaction, PHOTSYNTHESIS. !
And that requires a base level of about 250-300ppm to even start being reasonably productive.
We should be aiming for INCREASED levels of atmospheric CO2 to feed the world’s increasing population.
Unfortunately CO2 is not the only thing plants need to thrive. Water is another essential – and one which is going to be notable by its CO2-induced absence in the soil in some of the places which need it the most.
Further, high levels of CO2 also tend to make some crop plants more susceptible to insect disease.
And the higher temperatures caused by higher CO2 levels also make it easier for crop pests to breed.
Higher CO2 is not unadulterated good news as you seem to think it is.
Climate Pete commented : “…Water is another essential – and one which is going to be notable by its CO2-induced absence in the soil in some of the places which need it the most….”
Another false theory based on another false theory. You’re making this stuff up as you go. This is why the
warmist crowd has no credibility. Grubering only works for a short time span. When it goes on for….. 30 years?….people tune in the truth. You probably think the average person believes the explanations for fiddling with historical temperature data are valid, that CO2 is a pollutant and not essential to life, or that “97%” of the scientists believe AGW is responsible for….well everything. Right? Time for a reality check.
People who work in 3rd world countries will tell you that one of the main protagonists against any kind of development, is often religion. (An exception is where religious motive is channeled into doing hard work, Weber’s ‘work ethic’).
And the reason religion is often a stumbling block to development is always the same: they don’t want people thinking for themselves, they don’t want them doing too well, because this threatens the main strength of the church and religion, it is easier to convert and control the gullible when they are ignorant, reliant and poor.
You use the expression … “3rd. world countries”.
There is NO SUCH THING or place.
There is only one (world) and you are on it.
Such a term is often used these days but it is plainly wrong, quite insulting and derogatory.
I suggest using “developing” or “under-developed” (countries).
PS: The first sea-going, luxury cruise ship was built by “Egyptian” engineers for Caligula, whilst we in these (British) islands were still using coracles to cross ponds.
WL
developing.
thingadonta:
You say
Riiiight!?
sarc on/
So, a “stumbling block to development” was the the deep religious adherence and convictions of Isaac Newton, Friar Mendel, Michael Faraday, Henry Bessemer, etc., etc., etc.. Heaven must know how development would have advanced if they had not been held back by the “stumbling block”.
sarc off/
Richard
I think you have hit the nail on the head there, thingadonta. Fossil fueled progress poses an existential threat to the RC Church, which is dying in the West, & thriving only in the poorer & less educated parts of the world.
“The poor are a goldmine”.
So the Church moves to protect itself. It’s been in business ~1700 years & is the survivor par excellence.
Always Fascist in character, with top down control from an “infallible” leader, it has decided that its best chance for survival is to ally with the Fascists running the West, never mind the risible “science”
The Fascists running the West are the Corporatocracy, comprising the biggest banks, multinational corporations & their owned media. If anyone labours under the illusion that Socialism led to the plight of Greece, they should youtube JohnPerkins Confessions of an economic hitman.
All through the ages, man has been very good at recycling. One man’s dump is another man’s treasure. At some point in time all materials will be able to be recycled. It’s not too late to invest in Waste Management.
Having said that I’m not to worried about sustainability.
Goklany is awesome.
Every microdot of Sustainability and Resilience has been purchased by some amount of fossil fuel. More than 90% of what we have learned in the last 150 years was LITERALLY enabled, brought to us, coordinated or a direct result of the generation of power either as an industrial or infrastructure energy.
From Rockefeller’s lamp oil to natural gas demand load turbine generator stations the material has bought us a foothold against the night, against death, against tyranny and against oblivion. Fossil fuels have put man on the moon and the bottom of the ocean to return home again. They salvage wrecks, grow foods, cure disease and save lives every day. Five billion people wouldn’t be alive today without them.
Coal, Oil, Coke, Natural Gas, Tar, Charcoal.
The only thing that has gotten us further from our origin than fossil fuel is the tree itself: fossil fuel.
We seem to be finding more and more oil and more and more gas and at the unlikeliest places. No peak yet. But you all are still talk about fossil fuels. It is likely that Thomas Gold was correct and we have inexhaustible supply of abiotic hydrocarbon.
Dear jdseanjd,
You HIT the nail on the head !
I had already viewed that video yesterday (duration of 24min – 01sec.) and … if Mr. Perkins is genuine and I rather think he is, then it would seem to reinforce all those warnings given to us by LMofBr..
Attached here is the video clip by Mr. Perkins: it is dynamite.
He kicks off with how the World Bank works and the IMF and the UN, then his illustrations start with “IRAN – 1953”.
I strongly suspect that a particular meeting of billionaires on Jekyll Island (U.S.A.) in 1910 to introduce “The Fed” was the forerunner to it all.
Regards, WL
https://youtu.be/RVsB07CcSNw
Note that your noble guest author is a paid shill.
http://www.desmogblog.com/indur-m-goklany
I presume the Electrical Engineering degree he earned back in the 60s has equipped him to confidently tackle these complex environmental questions? Or would it be his day job as a US government policy analyst. At least he completed his Electrical Engineering degree, which is more than Watts did (mind you, Watts does have some climate-relevant qualifications – as a former TV weatherman).
http://www.desmogblog.com/anthony-watts
That people with no relevant credentials or knowledge have the balls to publish books and circulate articles making sweeping claims which support their ideological position doesn’t really surprise me.
What DOES astonish me is when they continue to do so in the face of actual evidence presented by real scientists. I suppose where there’s money to be made …
Anyway, let’s play the ball, not the man.
Goklany starts by quoting from the Papal Encyclical. He sets up a straw man by suggesting that the Encyclical states that conditions today (in terms of “human wellbeing”) are not better than in the pre-industrial past. My reading of the quote doesn’t infer that, I read it to be saying that our patterns of consumption and production, coupled with our population levels, are proving tremendously destructive, and are likely to be unsustainable. But never mind.
He then proceeds to lecture us as to how things must be sustainable, since there are more of us than ever before, and various measures of wellbeing are better than in the pre-industrial age. How does it automatically follow that conditions are somehow sustainable and resilient because there are more of us with better average wellbeing? If a rats living on a farm experience a population explosion because they discover bags of grain in the barn, does this make their situation more sustainable?
This idea of “sustainability” and how we define it does seem to be the main point of difference between what the Encyclical’s warning is actually saying and Goklund’s misconceived response to it. Goklund asserts that our present economic model does enable us to to continue to feed, employ and educate a constantly growing global population – hence, therefore, apparently, it is sustainable and resilient. (Huh?)
Anyway…
We can debate the way he uses the statistics around measures of poverty. Although global trends are informative, they tend to conceal enormous diversity in poverty levels across regions. Essentially what has happened is that the centres of extreme poverty have shifted; in 1981 the highest share of very poor populations were in East Asia and the Pacific, today they have relocated to South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. This reflects the economic patterns of growth (and lack of) in these regions.
All of which is very interesting from a demographers point of view, but it doesn’t make Goklany’s case that we are somehow now living in a more sustainable and resilient world – far from it. On the contrary. The enormous machine of industry and technologisation which has grown so explosively in China and South-East Asia over the past 30 years has certainly raised the average income and wealth of many, but it has done so at an enormous and in many cases irreversible cost to the environment and to the way of life of people living in those places. The rural poor who formerly lived simple agrarian self-sufficient lives were certainly poor and uneducated. But are their urban-dwelling children working 12 hour days in factories, doing monotonous and sometimes dangerous work, any better off? Not to mention the literal destruction of once viable and self-sustaining small-scale agricultural communities as a result of mining projects, hydroelectric schemes, massive industrialization driven by demand without any thought for health and social consequences.
When we examine income and wealth, we must do so intelligently. Certainly it’s true to say that GDP rates are higher today than in 1981, that average income and wealth levels are higher. But wealth today is concentrated in the hands of the very few, more so than at any previous time since the 1920s. Using HD TV sets as a measure of real wealth is deceptive. The rate of home ownership in the United States is at its lowest level in two decades, with poor rates of home affordability.
Few would doubt that technology and improved access to information is a fantastic boon. Without it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Goklany seems to be saying that because we have seen vast improvements such as access to mobile phone technology, the internet, general standards of education; this somehow refutes the encyclicals warning that our industry is not sustainable. But we need to take into account the costs as well as the benefits of these things, even as we celebrate them. And the environmental and social costs of these technologies are enormous.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth
The problem is not so much Goklund’s analysis – which appears to be based largely on a selective reading of the UN published data on poverty and agricultural productivity stats from FAO – but his conclusions. He seems to be saying that it’s ridiculous for the Encyclical to suggest that our patterns of consumption and reliance on fossil fuels are harmful and destructive and unsustainable, because it is only due to our use of fossil fuels that we have been able to improve soil fertility to increase food production, and enable other technologies, etc. Just because the latter is true does not make the former false. Non-sequitur, again. Both statements are true – we’ve achieved great things by our reliance on fossil fuels, yes, and we are causing irreversible destruction and harm through our continued use of and reliance on fossil fuels, yes!
Even if we were to leave aside the question of anthropogenic climate change, there is no disputing the fact that our patterns of production, consumption and disposal are causing tremendous harm to the environment. Toxins from industrial and agricultural waste are released into our waterways, the ocean and the air continuously. Plastics and the pthalates and PCBs they sequester leach into the environment and our bodies and those of other organisms. Plastic microparticles are now ubiquitous in our oceans, entering the food chain as they are consumed by plankton, fish and cetaceans.
I could go on ad nauseam about the myriad ways in which human activity is having deleterious and usually irreversible consequences for the environment. But my the point is that none of this can in any way be deemed “sustainable” or contributing to “resilience”, if we define those terms to mean that we can continue to behave this way indefinitely without causing an environmental cataclysm and a probable population crash.