Crunchy food for thought: growth and overpopulation

I recently watched this video (despite the sensationalist title, the lecturer gives a very clearheaded presentation that is worth watching even if the idea he's presenting is familiar. As a bonus for family back in CO, he's a prof emeritus at CU so there are some interesting local examples from Bolder and the front range.) and have started reading Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs. These have provided some interesting morsels for though lately that I thought I'd share.

Both of these sources discuss the challenges associated with continued population growth; actually they make a nice complement since the video primarily just presents the underlying problem while Sachs' book is trying to suggest what we can do about it. The concern about overpopulation and resource depletion is becoming more and more mainstream of late, especially with the latest rise in commodities prices, but the discussion of exponential growth in the video seems to point very directly to one conclusion: we've got to stop growing.

This seemingly inescapable fate presents real problems for our current economic models; our economy has to keep growing each year just to remain stable. To keep a free flow of trade, we require a certain amount of liquidity in the market; eg. manufacturers who buy raw materials on credit and cover the expenses as they sell the product, or a family buy a home with a mortgage because the upfront cost is so steep. But there is a cost associated with liquidity: lenders requite a certain amount of interest in addition to the principle as an incentive for them to make the loan; now it's no problem to cover the interest on a reasonable loan if you are confident that you will be able to make that money grow, but reducing growth and eventually halting throws a wrench in the equation. Suddenly, it becomes harder to make a profit to cover your loan, and every dollar you get, you're taking out of the pockets of competitor. Soon either you or them are forced into default, and higher default rates means higher loan rates to cover risk, which only makes the problem worse, this is the road to depression.

So far, we've satisfied the economy's need for growth by putting in more resources: more people, more oil, more energy. But as the lecturer makes clear, at some point, there will not by any more resources on this planet to add. The only new source will be sunlight, which we only get a constant amount of each year. So we have a few options:

First, we could try expanding our search for new resources out into space. This is an option the video overlooks, (Well, he addresses the idea of discovering n more units of a resource, but space is still effectively an infinite resource, at least until we begin feeling like we've overpopulated the universe.) if we can just keep developing new resources as fast as our consumption grows we'll be fine, right? Well, maybe, but that is a pretty tenuous plan to be depending on when the consequence of failure are likely famine war and environmental destruction on an epic scale. Especially when you consider the massive hurdles we still have to overcome before we can see much meaningful resource harvesting even somewhere as close as the moon.

Ok, but maybe we can just divert all our growth activities to more sustainable growth, channel our R&D into solar, wind, energy efficiency and education to provide channels to keep all that money flowing as the rivers of oil dry up, land becomes scarce and all our labor is occupied. This seems like a necessity, at least in the short term, as a way to keep ourselves a float. In principle we could maintain this indefinitely, growing our economy exponentially with a fixed resources, by using the input we receive from the sun each year to create things which allow us to multiply the effectiveness of that input, effectively converting a linear resource into exponential production. (Obviously, very quickly most of this growth would be have to intellectual, not material, since we cannot make machines that produce more energy than we put into them.) This seems to be the approach advocated by most folks sounding the alarm bells about overpopulation and resource depletion. And it does have some very attractive results, if our population becomes more or less constant, growth funnels directly into increasing standard of living. But there are challenges to this as well: A higher standard of living implies longer lifespan, which means even stricter population controls. And what happens after a few doubling periods when almost all of our energies go into non-material growth? We may approach the realm of sci-fi where people become absorbed into a virtual reality neglecting the physical entirely. I question whether that is something we really want.

The challenges of growth, particularly of growth enforced by mere economic practicality, leads me to the conclusion that it is worth spending effort seeking a new economic structure that does not force us to keep running or be crushed when the ponderous weight of all we have created on credit comes tumbling down. Actually it became apparent to me long before I began exploring realities of overpopulation that our current economic gearing is inherently unstable and that a new system of trade needs to be found. The value of such a system would be removing the inherent instability that makes our economies swing from boom to bust, but I have so far come up empty handed in my search for a better economic model. It's actually this search drew me to pick up Sachs' book which is subtitled: "Economics for a crowded planet". (So far though it just sounds like he's proposing the the concepts from the previous paragraph, but I'm only getting started so we'll see if he goes deeper with it.) Now I'm not suggesting that humanity as a whole should stop growing - to explore, create and grow it fundamentally a part of what it means to be human - but it only seems prudent that we find a way to remove the brick that's been placed on the economic accelerator to give ourselves the freedom to modulate our growth.

These are just some of my thoughts which have been bouncing around from what I've been reading that I wanted to put into words; I'd certainly love to hear some other ideas and opinions in the comments. Ultimatly, I imagine we'll need to employ a combination of new economic models, resource discovery and investment in renewable economic growth to navigate the challenges that lie ahead. I personally think this is *the* political issue of our time, one we will become more and more aware of as our natural resources grow more and more precious. I would strongly urge anyone reading to join me in diving deeper into this issue and (since any solutions will demand strong political action) particularly challenging political candidates this fall to propose constructive plans for dealing with global overpopulation and resource depletion.