[pdonis]

The basic M.O. here is not new: (1) Present the basic math of exponential growth to show that exponential growth cannot continue indefinitely; (2) claim that sustaining our present lifestyle would require exponential growth to continue indefinitely; (3) conclude that our present lifestyle cannot be sustained.

The issue, of course, is in step 2.

[adamsmith143]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

Figured this out decades ago.

[chordalkeyboard]

what's the issue with step 2? Our present lifestyle does seem to require constant growth, and if this is not the case it would be nice for someone to explain how we can keep getting more out of the system without contributing more to the system.

[pdonis]

> Our present lifestyle does seem to require constant growth

No, it doesn't. The obvious cause of the huge economic growth over the past 150 years, which is what the author focuses on, is population growth. World population is expected to level off in this century.

The author also assumes, incorrectly, that GDP--money spent on goods and services--is the right measure of overall wealth. It's not. The author even discusses "decoupling", the fact that many types of wealth require little or no physical resources to produce, but fails to realize that the long term outcome of this will not be to raise monetary GDP more and more, but to make monetary GDP less and less of an accurate measure of wealth production.

Finally, the author misunderstands basic economics when he says (p. 25): "A limited life-essential resource will always carry a moderately high value." This is a common misconception. An obvious counterexample is air: air is a limited resource (Earth's atmosphere contains only a finite quantity of it), it is life-essential, but it is free. Why? Because it costs nothing to produce. And if the cost of production of other life-essential resources, like food, were reduced, those things would also become cheaper. (In fact, that has already happened to a large extent in the developed world: over the past 150 years, the fraction of people involved in food production has dropped from about 19 in 20 to about 1 in 20. The main reason food is not much cheaper as a result of this is political: governments artificially manipulate the markets for food, for example by paying farmers not to grow certain crops. This is fixable without any increase at all in our expenditure of physical resources.)

[chordalkeyboard]

> No, it doesn't. The obvious cause of the huge economic growth over the past 150 years, which is what the author focuses on, is population growth. World population is expected to level off in this century.

world population is leveling off because we're approaching many of these limits to growth and that's affecting the enabling factors for continued population growth.

> The author also assumes, incorrectly, that GDP--money spent on goods and services--is the right measure of overall wealth. It's not. The author even discusses "decoupling", the fact that many types of wealth require little or no physical resources to produce, but fails to realize that the long term outcome of this will not be to raise monetary GDP more and more, but to make monetary GDP less and less of an accurate measure of wealth production.

I agree with this.

> "A limited life-essential resource will always carry a moderately high value." This is a common misconception. An obvious counterexample is air: air is a limited resource (Earth's atmosphere contains only a finite quantity of it), it is life-essential, but it is free. Why? Because it costs nothing to produce.

you conflate value and price here. obviously atmosphere is not currently metered. That doesn't mean we don't place a high value on clean air.

> And if the cost of production of other life-essential resources, like food, were reduced, those things would also become cheaper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

[pdonis]

> you conflate value and price here

I'm not doing that. I'm pointing out that the author of this paper is doing that. He is assuming that everything of value is captured in the GDP, i.e., in money spent. But as you acknowledge, this is false, and that invalidates his argument.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

The Jevons paradox does not say things don't become cheaper when their cost of production is reduced. So it is not an argument against the statement of mine that you were responding to here.

Also, if we are talking about life-essential resources like food (or air), which was what I was talking about in the comment you responded to here, the Jevons paradox is of limited applicability if it applies at all, because demand for such resources is constrained. Even if food were free, people would not eat an unlimited amount of it, any more than they now breathe an unlimited amount of air because air is free. The most important factor driving an increase in total consumption of such resources is population increase, so if population levels off, the resources consumed for these life-essential things will be naturally limited no matter how cheap they become.

[wussboy]

> world population is leveling off because we’re approaching many of these limits to growth

Is it? My understanding is that as economies become richer, healthcare improves, infant mortality decreases and parents reduce their birth rates because they need less children to “hedge their bets”.

[danbruc]

Why does our current lifestyle require constant growth, could we not just stop at our current energy consumption level?

[chordalkeyboard]

lots of reasons but population growth and our dependence on technology are two of the major ones.

[danbruc]

I was about to add ignoring population growth to my comment because developed countries are generally close to replacement-level fertility rate and I don't think having more children is part of or current lifestyle.

Also lifting everyone to the living standard of highly developed countries will require significant amounts of resources and significantly increase energy consumption, this however is also more like a one-time expense and I would therefore ignore it, too.

How does dependence on technology demand growth? Because resource extraction becomes less efficient as we deplete available sources?

[chordalkeyboard]

> I was about to add ignoring population growth to my comment because developed countries are generally close to replacement-level fertility rate and I don't think having more children is part of or current lifestyle.

actually they are generally below replacement level, which (if not augmented by immigration) would itself lead to a collapse as people leave the workforce and there are fewer laborers to replace them. But people think we manage this labor shortage with technology, which leads us back to the requirements for more energy and capital development to maintain the same lifestyle.

> Also lifting everyone to the living standard of highly developed countries will require significant amounts of resources and significantly increase energy consumption, this however is also more like a one-time expense and I would therefore ignore it, too.

why do 'highly developed' countries need vastly greater resources to maintain this living standard if its a one-time expense? the greater standard of living your referring to requires continually expanding quantities of inputs in terms of energy and labor, aka 'economic growth'.

> How does dependence on technology demand growth?

its more related to the specific technologies we've chosen to build our society upon, but this technologies generally depend on these improvements to sustain themselves. For example, electric cars require batteries which require raw materials to be mined, recycling batteries requires chemical industry that is predicated on all sorts of inputs, themselves coming from nonrenewable sources.

[danbruc]

actually they are generally below replacement level, which (if not augmented by immigration) would itself lead to a collapse as people leave the workforce and there are fewer laborers to replace them.

Which is extra good as this offsets other parts of the world. I would also guess that it is probably easier to provide incentives for people to have more children once this becomes necessary than trying to prevent them from having too many children, but that is not much more than a gut feeling.

But people think we manage this labor shortage with technology, which leads us back to the requirements for more energy and capital development to maintain the same lifestyle.

If we permanently fall below replacement-level fertility, we will just die out and no amount of investment will fix this. The only solution is to match replacement-level fertility which will provide a stable population and workforce and hence require a stable amount of economic activity to achieve a stable lifestyle. The obvious caveat is of course that the economic activity must not deplete any non-renewable resources.

why do 'highly developed' countries need vastly greater resources to maintain this living standard if its a one-time expense? the greater standard of living your referring to requires continually expanding quantities of inputs in terms of energy and labor, aka 'economic growth'.

The one-time expense is to lift someone from say 2,000 kWh/a to 40,000 kWh/a which requires adding the difference in production capacity. After that this person will of course consume 40,000 kWh every year and we will have to produce those 40,000 kWh every year, but I don't think that constitutes economic growth. Economic output is quantified as absolute output over some period of time, not as cumulative absolute output.

For example, electric cars require batteries which require raw materials to be mined, recycling batteries requires chemical industry that is predicated on all sorts of inputs, themselves coming from nonrenewable sources.

I still don't see how this requires continued growth if we assume constant output.

[arrosenberg]

Author even acknowledges it on page 27, but thinks this time Malthus must be right.