Author: Brian J. Noggle

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?

Sure, it’s a friendly, happy story about how high-income hipsters want an Ikea store to come to St. Louis:

Perhaps no other store has been rumored more often to be coming here soon than that elusive retailer whose very name gives many residents heart palpitations: Ikea.

The absence of the Swedish retailer — whose hulking blue and yellow stores are filled with sleek bookshelves, modern bedroom sets, and eclectic knickknacks— is a sore spot among many St. Louisans. As one of my colleagues put it, it’s one of the last bastions of our retail insecurity.

We now have Trader Joe’s, Crate & Barrel, Nordstrom Rack, American Girl, H&M, Ross Dress for Less, and buybuy Baby (which recently opened a store in Ballwin).

To be sure, there are still some left on our retail wish-list: Zara, American Apparel, Bloomingdale’s, and Room & Board, to name a few.

But there is no bigger Holy Grail than Ikea.

As you can probably guess, I have never been in an Ikea. I’ve done my share of assembling particle board furniture, including a huge honking desk that cost me almost a thousand dollars, more than a dozen Sauder bookcases, many laminated storage cabinets with doors hanging awry, and a couple Sauder printer stands that even today function as major pieces of furniture in my domicile. I’ve bought none of them because of the logo on the box, though, so I can’t understand how prestige and status stem from furniture you have to put together yourself.

But I digress.

So the crowd that we would have called Yuppies thirty years ago want their Ikea in St. Louis. Even though this will put small businesses out of business:

As I wrote last year, there are a handful of businesses that have sprouted up around town that take orders and pick up items from one of the stores in Chicago and then bring them back to St. Louis. One of them is Expedite STL.

Another such company popped up earlier this year called Blue Square Delivery. It was started by brother Dave and Bill Carruthers of Des Peres as a side business. They take a big moving van to Ikea about every three to four weeks.

Sorry, I guess that’s brother-and-brother businesses. But still.

So, how does this differ from Walmart?

Mainly in that hipsters like Ikea, and hipsters do not like Walmart.

Don’t worry, yuppies. Some municipality in St. Louis County will eventually throw enough tax credits, special taxing districts, and other perks to draw Ikea to town.

(Hey, aren’t you a yuppie? No. I’m not that young anymore, and I live in the country.)

Some residents of downtown St. Louis are growing older:

The scene picks up pace on weekends, with the streets even busier and the bars even fuller — offering regular proof of how the neighborhood has transformed in the last 15 years.

But the changes have also brought simmering tension that has now come to the forefront. Residents, business owners and police acknowledge that crime is steadily increasing along Washington, and that cruising on the strip has gotten out of hand. They’ve complained about motorcyclists revving engines, cars blaring music, fights, loitering by teenagers, even some shootings.

They’re just not sure what to do about it.

In the last month, police have experimented with closing off the street to vehicle traffic, circling the area with a helicopter and enforcing a curfew for those under 21.

The Partnership for Downtown St. Louis has helped form a task force to come up with a “code of conduct” for the area, hoping to crack down on noise, littering and congestion.

“We all wanted this growth,” said Tammika Hubbard, alderman for the 5th Ward. “We just didn’t know how we were going to handle it.”

At a residents association meeting two weeks ago, the consensus from speakers was that the area had become a victim of its own success.

The residents moved to the lofts from their quiet suburban homes because they wanted that. Now they’re getting older a couple years later and are outgrowing the party-all-night mentality and want to get some sleep, so they want governmental recourse.

It’s akin to the people who claim that The Simpsons isn’t funny any more. The cartoon hasn’t changed. They have.

Prediction: If they succeed in pushing out the bar and clubbing crowd (who preceded the residents and most of the other businesses), the businesses will follow, as they won’t survive without that crowd. Washington Avenue and other parts of downtown St. Louis will not be a shopping destination (see also Union Station and St. Louis Center), and the hundreds or small thousands of people scattered among the lofts will not support them. Eventually, Washington Avenue will become quiet again, and the loft dwellers will move on.

And the cycle will repeat in 2033 or so. Maybe.

(No, I am not a downtown booster, especially when it comes to centrally planning a Renaissance. It hasn’t worked in downtown St. Louis in the thirty or more years that government officials have been applying the paddles. The minute they lay off with the defibrillator of taxpayer cash, the city or neighborhood flatlines again. The government cannot will a self-sustaining reaction and revitalization through its action, but it sure can put the pillow over the face of one when it tries too much to help or to inspire its citizens.)