The BBC has an alarming report from where environmentalists gather to eat, live it up, use more resources than they would normally have access to in their native lands, and issue alarming reports, complete with scary infographic about how things are running out. The text sez:
If we fail to correct current consumption trends, then when will our most valuable natural resources run out?
As the world’s population soars, so does its consumption, and as a result we are stretching many of our natural resources to their limits.
. . . .
The hope is that talks at the Rio+20 Earth summit will help to steer the world economy on a more sustainable path.
Oh, spare me the Jeremiads. No, that’s not a meteor shower; it’s a type of sermon. Make no mistake about it, those fellows who want to create a “sustainable path” have in mind some very basic controls that The World will have to do to save the planet from the infestation of humans. As though the planet were some weak sister who needs the help of her acolytes to regulate systems whose complexities and subtleties are not yet understood to any great degree by man. But I’m getting off onto my stock climate change rant here. Let me switch back into my limited resources rant.
Any projection of resource usage based on current consumption relies on the misconceptions that what we use now is all we’ll ever use and what we have now is all we’ll ever have. Let’s take each in turn.
What we use now is all we’ll ever use.
As the headline suggests and history shows, humans and civilizations have relied on different resources at different times. In the Bronze Age, they used bronze. In the Iron Age, guess what? They advanced and discovered iron. Even in more recent history, in spans of less than 100 years much less epochs, resource needs have changed. In the 18th century, whale oil fueled lamps for interior lighting. Then they discovered coal oil, also known as kerosene, and that illuminated homes into the 20th century. Anyone rending garments about the limited supply of whale oil would have proven less-than-prophetic in predicting a dark age around 1880 because the whales were gone.
Similarly, buildings were built with brick and wood, but now we see a lot of construction from steel and other materials. Household furniture used to be wood, but a lot of it is now plastic and particle board (which is wood, but used more efficiently).
Take a look at this timeline of battery technologies and see how fast the resource combinations for energy storage have changed. And this is a survey of commercial products.
Now, tell me how someone is going to prognosticate the future resource needs based on today. Especially when one looks at the resource needs and their evolutions in the future.
What we have now is all we’ll ever have.
Take a look at the recent discoveries of petroleum resources in the Bakken formation. Revel in how the estimated amount of recoverable petroleum keeps going up. Or look at the new discoveries off of the coast of Israel. Does the alarmist image take those into account? I looked at the source document, but it doesn’t give the source for its fossil fuel claims, but other claims are made on data from 2010 or before. So we can probably assume that the alarmist icon does not include the new discoveries.
Additionally, the report probably does not take into account discoveries of rare earth metals after 2010, such as Japan’s find in sea beds which could essentially double the earth-bound amounts estimated by the US Geological Survey.
Why do I say earth-bound? Because there’s that Planetary Resources company that has a business plan of mining asteroids. A company. With a business plan to profitably mine asteroids.
So any alarmist paper or icon coming from a transnational or international concern designed to create “sustainability” really does not recognize human ingenuity or the way the human race has acted in the past when confronted with scarce resources or just more efficient ways to use resources.
Undoubtedly, the path to sustainability requires some sacrifice on our part. Because here in the United States, we have a very high standard of living, and certainly we somehow “should” give something up to make sure that natives in Cameroon get to rise to some level of sustainable living. Not the same easy lifestyle we have, mind you, where large portions of the population have the leisure time to collect on resource-intensive devices and computer networks to lament the unsustainability of the lives they enjoy. Some top-down solution must be imposed, something like a potentially hazardous, expensive form of lighting replacing energy-intensive but inexpensive, pleasing, and technologically proven forms of lighting. Something like that. And maybe an energy-efficient stove for a Ugandan family.
The BBC post I linked to above does throw a sop to human ingenuity:
Of course, the assumption is that human ingenuity and market forces will prevent supplies from running out: we could create better or cheaper extraction methods, recycle materials, find alternatives to non-renewable sources, or reduce consumption.
But that is probably just a sop. Do you think the people at the Rio+20 summit are in favor of the free market to find these solutions? Do you think the journalists covering them believe individuals and corporations should mine asteroids, or do you think they more believe that the asteroids are pristine, people-free environments that should be protected because of their intrinsic value qua rocks floating through interplanetary space much like the earth has some intrinsic metaphysical value qua rock with atmosphere floating through space? Me, too.
In lieu of embracing an environmental hair-shirt and hemp-based computer architecture required for a sustainable world, how about we just go on doing what we as humans have done for millennia and really well since the Enlightenment and innovate our way to greater shared prosperity?
Ditto to all of this. Resource doomsaying is a demonstration of appalling historical ignorance, or even just a bad memory capacity.
The movement is rooted in wishful thinking. When its proponents predict the end of the world, they’re not warning us to avoid it. They’re hoping that the end comes so that Gaia may punish humanity for its sins. Like Hal Lindsey and his ilk, they want the world to end as an act of cosmic justice. And, like Lindsey, when it doesn’t, they just push the date back ten years. And then sell another book predicting the end at that point.
Here’s an ancient bit of wisdom that I keep in mind when listening to such people:
You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.
Resource doomsayers are frauds spreading unscientific superstition and should be treated as such.