Another interesting blog post found via stumbleupon. The basic argument is that energy efficiency won't save the environment. It's a good point and backed up by a valid economic argument, although it's missing some points, which leads to a somewhat *ahem* pessimistic conclusion. At least they're acknowledging economics as the correct starting point, albeit sort of in the same way creationists try to use evolution to disprove itself.
My reply:
A good article and worthy of attention, but I think you’re missing a few crucial points about the larger picture.
1. Efficiency is not the same as conservation. Conservation is the setting aside of resources based on the expectation of future value (usually economic value). Efficiency merely reduces the required inputs of an activity, allowing us to do more of what we want with the same amount of resources.
2. There is one very important class of product that does not necessitate the use of (significant) additional energy or resources. It’s called human capital or more commonly, knowledge. It is produced and replicated across all societies and cultures, everywhere that humans live. It has allowed us to escape the natural population cycles of other animals and prevented mass starvation, ever since Malthus earned economics the name of ‘”the dismal science”. I see no indication that people are running out of new scientific ideas. Quite the reverse, actually.3. We will use up a lot of certain resources but actually, that’s OK. When resources become scarce their price rises, creating an incentive to use less and substitute away. The higher the price, the greater the incentive. That’s precisely why the high oil prices of early 2008 jump-started so much activity in renewable energy, alternative transportation and non-fossil fuel versions of plastics etc. Non-energy products can be recycled and new materials can be invented.
In Conclusion: Have we used fossil fuels to bootstrap our economy in an unsustainable way? Yes. Will the environmental impacts cause more damage than we expect? Probably. Can we invent solutions to both of these problems? Absolutely. It won’t be easy, but what’s different about that?
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2 comments:
Hi,
Glad you - kind of liked my blog post. I wanted to explain one thing though:
I am not being pessimistic, I just wanted to show people what I think is a huge problem with conserving energy. As you said increasing efficiency allows us to do more of what we want with the same amount of resources - OR do the same thing with less resources. The problem is humans don't every say 'ok that is enough, lets just use up less resources since we are now more efficient.' we use up the resources at an increased rate. No one wants to really conserve energy, we are just promoting being more efficient.
As for alternative to fossil fuel products... well this is where things get depressing. There is absolutely no way that we can sustain this lifestyle without fossil fuels. Every resource is getting scarce, every metal, every fossil fuel. We can make fuels and plastics from plants... but our farming exists only because of fertilizers and pesticides... that are petroleum based. You can read about how fertilizer run off is ruining the oceans, there is a mass extinction going on, dead zones in the oceans...
at what point do we just admit that there are just too many people in the world, and start to talk about some way to stop population growth?
you are only looking at the economics argument, you are not seeing the big picture.
Shane,
Thanks for the comment. I hope you didn't take anything too hard because I did like your post. =)
While I have a more optimistic outlook than what you have expressed here, I feel I should stress that I am not just some laissez-faire, trickle-down capitalist. I read about many of the environmental problems you mention and like you I am very concerned. Considering I hope to be alive for another 60-80 years, I have every reason to be concerned, and frankly I expect to see some rather significant repercussions from the short-sightedness of our industrial process.
Your point that people always use efficiency to do more things at the same cost rather than reducing costs is absolutely true and part of human nature. That said we have three broad ways of dealing with it:
1) Moral persuasion. Convincing people to behave differently is a good strategy, but only very effective in the long term. It can take decades to convince a significant fraction of people to change.
2)Legal persuasion. Laws work a bit quicker and are more effective at getting the whole group to participate, but given the complexity of the political process I would label this a medium-term strategy. Nevertheless I am very excited at the prospect of the USA finally taking the lead on these issues so that the whole world can move forward together.
3)Market forces. Prices are a powerful motivator. They can change quickly in response to bounty or scarcity and people respond to them fairly quickly too. Since markets are essentially everyone making their best guess every day, they are adaptable and nearly impossible to control. Of course they're not perfect allocators of resources since people are often irrational and sometimes have bad information. But they are very powerful and it would be foolish to ignore them. Really what we need is coordinated combination of all three.
As far as the population growth aspect, I think it's obvious we can't tongue lash developing nations into not having children. The only way I see out is for them to develop their standard of living to something approaching ours. Education, income stability and affordable contraception will work as well for them as they have for us.
In the western world, our biggest challenge is to keep lobbying, corruption and failures of international coordination from distorting the prices of externalities. Companies that have to clean up their messes will find cleaner ways of operating.
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