Of Course 2 % Growth Is "Here To Stay" - So Long As GDP Is Used As The Growth Indicator

First, some basics:

Labor productivity is a measure of economic growth within a country. Labor productivity measures the amount of goods and services produced by one hour of labor; specifically, labor productivity measures the amount of real gross domestic product (GDP) produced by an hour of labor.

What could be wrong with that? Well, plenty! Namely, if the GDP is in error or doesn't measure what is really needed, then the labor productivity will be off too. Hence, one must  look askance at the recent WSJ Business & Finance piece, '2 % Growth Is Here To Stay' (Jan. 31,  p. B14).   According to the piece:

"Economists get plenty wrong but they have been right about one thing: The U.S. economy is stuck in low gear.  On Thursday the Commerce Department reported that gross domestic product (GDP)  grew at an annualized rate of 2.1 percent from the 3rd matching economists' forecasts."

Adding:

"Most economists and the Fed expect GDP growth will be stuck around 2 percent in the years to come. This is partly due to demographics: the population is growing more slowly than it used to and aging as well. so growth in the labor force has moderated   And since the labor force produces the stuff that goes into GDP, GDP growth will be as well."

But the outside, inquiring economic observer must then ask if the growth index being used is not itself defective. I mean, why use a measure so subject to demographic change and especially population size?  We know, after all, that population cannot keep growing indefinitely, so why even incorporate it as part of the economic growth indicator?

As  Financial Times contributor David Pilling wrote in a 2018  TIME Viewpoint article ('Why GDP Is A Faulty Measure Of Success',  Feb. 5, p. 41):

"Invented in the 1930s, the figure is a child of the manufacturing age - good at measuring physical production but not the services that dominate modern economies. How would GDP measure the quality of mental health care or the availability of day care centers and parks in your area?  Even Simon Kuznets, the Belarussian economist who practically invented GDP, had doubts about his creation."

GDP is supposed to measure the total production and consumption of goods and services in the United States. But the numbers that make up the Gross Domestic Product by and large only capture the monetary transactions we can put a dollar value on. Almost everything else is left out: old growth forests that maintain cooling and act as CO2 repositories, watersheds, animal habitats, e.g. the Everglades, and costs of infrastructure maintenance. But ALL of these count toward  the physical security and welfare of a society. If bridges collapse owing to maintenance failure and hundreds or thousands of drivers are inconvenienced, delayed  - then that has a cost and hence an economic impact!

In addition, there are hundreds of other contributions not registered that arguably have  major economic repercussions. For example, a 2015 Forbes article highlighted how 40 million family caregivers in the U.S. are putting their own careers on hold to provide unpaid care — sometimes for decades.   The estimated  total value of the care has been put at nearly $1 trillion. This isn't reckoned into the GDP but IF it were,  the labor productivity cited in the WSJ would surely be much higher in the years since 2007 - maybe even double or (1.2%) x 2  2.4 %. Which would then exceed the rate cited since 1947.

Related to this - as reported in the WSJ three days ago- is the dearth of volunteers at senior care centers to help (e.g. in interactions with dementia patients, e.g. using games, coloring books and puzzles) to help caregivers at such facilities.  Surely, the assistance of such potential volunteers ought to be factored into the economic equation.

What to use in place of GDP? The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare which was first proposed by Eco-economist Herman Daly of the University of Maryland. is a prime alternative  Daly's point was that the GDP was too artificial and narrow an indicator of economic health. He argued that if one incorporated all the "externalities" usually dismissed or ignored by standard economic models, people would be more parsimonious in how they consume which would yield a better world.

Ignoring these externalities leads us into a fool's paradise where we come to believe things are much better than the GDP numbers show. Similarly with energy, conveniently ignoring externalities of cost and demand leads too many to envisage a pie-eyed future of never-ending growth (based on producing material output)  and ever more intense energy consumption.

All this translates inexorably into “growth” and woe betide you if you dare intimate (as Prof. Daly has done) that a zero or negative growth index may be a lot better for humans, if they hope not to outstrip their resource support base. Right now, indeed, we already know that humans are consuming the equivalent of 1.5 Earths every year. See, e.g.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/

This is obviously unsustainable, which means we desperately need to replace the industrial age GDP and sooner rather than later. Retaining it as a practical measure of real growth is a fool's errand and counterproductive, to say the least.

No surprise that a decade ago a panel headed by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz concluded we are  "mismeasuring our lives" using GDP.

If indeed it is true (and it is) that the millions of man-hours that go into Wikipedia  (which brings human knowledge to  virtually everyone) "adds not a cent to GDP" then something is seriously amiss. Because if that's so then it also doesn't add a single extra unit to labor productivity. Hence, those millions of man hours of research, writing, editing go unrecorded in our grand economic metric.  This is absurd.

We can't keep using this antiquated metric which is totally detached from reality.  "Production" simply cannot be measured in output of material units of slim Jims, Barbie dolls, Legos, Ipads, Ipods or X Boxes alone. Apart from being skewed toward one type of production it omits an entire other (admittedly less tangible) universe that now needs to be reckoned in - including for things like Wikipedia, unpaid care giving and creative expression in the generation of art or music, as well as abstract (basic) scientific research.

The New UN (IPBES) Report On Species Extinction Means Our Economic Growth Needs To Be Pared Down

On Monday, the largest ever assessment of the health of nature was published by a UN group (IPBES) which warned starkly that the annihilation of wildlife is eroding the foundations of human civilization.  The  numbers tallied included nearly 1 million species headed for extinction and effectively also putting humanity itself at risk - given we exist in a web of life- not isolated from it or independent.  As that web collapses our species will go down as well. You can make book on it.

How so? Because humans depend on many species of animals for food, from fish to mammals such as cattle, pigs.  If therefore part of that network is collapsed or rendered fragile, the rest is put at risk.  And this nutrition support system can be destabilized as easily as an infection - such as African Swine fever- which has now been responsible for the Chinese having to kill over 140 m pigs to protect the rest from infection.

Apart from diseases, the biggest toll on many species is from the spread of humanity, the ever increasing human numbers which encroach on habitats and reduce animal species, and biodiversity.  Human activities such as over fishing of specific sea species as well as industrial agriculture and claiming wetlands for real estate development are cases in point.  Indeed, any real estate development has the potential to affect animal habitat - such as here in Colorado where mountain lion and human confrontations have become more frequent - as well as bears and humans.  We've encroached on their habitats by over building then we scratch our heads and wonder why we'r being "'invaded"  by these terrible critters, which make feasts of our pets.

The planet is currently home to an estimate eight million plant and animal species, with the average number living on land having fallen by at least 20 percent.  Incredibly, most of this extinction has been since 1990 according to the UN report. Much of it is being caused by human expansion and its attendant nature -destroying activities, from widespread pesticide use and pollution to unchecked global warming.

More aspects to consider: Nearly half of amphibians and a third of all marine mammals are threatened.  Coinciding with this, since 1970 there has been a 30 percent reduction in global habitat.  How bad? Well, more than 85 percent of the wetlands that existed in 1700 were gone by the year 2000.

One of the more ominous notes was sounded by Joseph Walston, senior vice president for global conversation of the Wildlife Conservation Society:

"We're not just losing bee species. We're losing insects."

Insect extinction itself is approaching 40 percent of all insect species, and as a member of the Xerces Society (devoted to insect protection) this appalls me no end.  Hate bugs or love them, it cannot be denied they are part of the planetary ecosystem and their demise would not bode well for humans.

According to he IPBES report: “Insect abundance has declined very rapidly in some places … but the global extent of such declines is not known.” It said the available evidence supports a “tentative” estimate that 10% of the 5.5m species of insect thought to exist are threatened with extinction.  According to Prof Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences.

"Insects are the glue in nature and there is no doubt that both the [numbers] and diversity of insects are declining. At some stage the whole fabric unravels and then we will really see the consequences.”

Let's not mince words,  the food and water humanity relies upon are underpinned by insects.  Insects play a critical role in the complex natural world that sustains all life on Earth. Best known is the pollination that fertilizes most of the world’s crops and wildflowers, including the tiny midge essential to cacao.  The waste disposal service provided by insects is also vital, decomposing wood, plants and animals into nutrients for new life. In Australia, the lack of native dung beetles able to deal with the prodigious output from imported European cattle led to vast swathes of pasture being rendered useless in the 1960s.

Another critical service provided by insects is as food for many other creatures, from birds to reptiles and amphibians and mammals. The weight of insects eaten by birds alone is about the same weight of all 7 billion people on the planet, said Sverdrup-Thygeson. However, falling insect populations have contributed to the loss of 421m birds in Europe in the last three decades.

Sverdrup-Thygeson’s new book, Extraordinary Insects, spends many of its pages on how wonderful and weird insects are. “The first stage is to get people to appreciate these little creatures,” said Sverdrup-Thygeson.

Many insects appear to defy the normal rules of life. Some fruit flies can be beheaded and live normally for several days more, thanks to mini-brains in each joint. Then there are the carpet beetles that can effectively reverse time, by reverting to younger stages of development when food is scarce.
Others are bizarrely constructed. Some butterflies have ears in their mouths, one has an eye on its penis, while houseflies taste with their feet. Insect reproduction is also exotic. The southern green shield bug can maintain sex for 10 days, while another type of fruit fly produces sperm that are 20 times longer than its own body.

But for all their abundance, insects are in trouble. “Global data suggests that while we humans have doubled our population in the past 40 years, the number of insects has been reduced by almost half – these are dramatic figures,” she said.

Some researchers warned back in February that falling insect populations threaten a “catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems”, while recent studies from Germany and Puerto Rico have revealed plunging numbers over the last 25 to 35 years. According to Sverdrup-Thygeson, the destruction of natural environments to create farmland is the key cause.

She went on:

“I can understand people might not be interested in saving insects for insects’ sake. But people should realize this will come back on ourselves. We should save insects, if not for their sake, then for our own sake, because it will make it even more difficult than today to get enough food for the human population of the planet, to get good health and freshwater for everybody. That should be a huge motivation for doing something while we still have time."

Much of this insanity can be attributed to growth for growth for growth's sake dynamics, especially in the capitalist driven U.S.  This means U.S. voters become a large part of the problem - as pointed out by WaPo opinion writer Helaine Olen. As she notes:

"Americans agree that protecting and securing our envronment is a high priority, but they also assert we need to grow the economy."

The problem is that growth is exactly what drives the devastation of species' habitat and ultumately imperils our own survival.   All of the worst policies, including proposals to drill in federal lands, to continue water-destroying fracking and the contamination of our watersheds have been amplieid under the Trump administration.  Of course, they are cheered on by big business which abhors any regulations that cut short term profits.  Business in turn is assisted by a myopic economic model which disregards all "externalities" and their value.  These externalities were once estimated in worth via a paper appearing in the journal Science:



Alas, given this paper was published over two decades ago, all the areas under column (2) have since decreased, in some cases by 50 percent or more. (Such as wetlands and tropical forest areas)

For example, All totaled, between 1990 and 2005 Niger lost 34.9% of its forest cover or around 679,000 hectares.

It is clear there is a tie in, a nexus, between the global resource area each human commands (in hectares) and how it affects other species.  Richard Attenborough (in a 2014 BBC nature documentary), showed the divergences, with the UK consuming 5.5 hectares per person, and the USA, 9.5 hectares. Thus, the average American is consuming more than four times that which is defined as a fair (2 hectares) theoretical apportioning of resources across all the numbers on the planet. (At that time). 

According to Attenborough's expert reckoning of such unequal apportioning of output, the planet can only hold 1.5 billion people. This is the upper limit of carrying capacity given the finite resources the planet actually provides and the rate they are now consumed. 

The other marker for resource use - which effectively sets an upper limit on growth - is the concept of Earth Overshoot. 

The graphic below puts this into perspective;

The interpretation of the graph (upward) is simple. By June, 2030 TWO full Earths - that is the resources therein - will be needed to support the then population. Already we are at 1.5 Earths. Every year Global Footprint Network raises awareness about global ecological overshoot with its Earth Overshoot Day campaign. Earth Overshoot Day is the day on the calendar when humanity has used up the resources that it takes the planet the full year to regenerate. Just like the hands of the  'doomsday clock'  approaching 'midnight' for nuclear cataclysm, 
The extinction of species projected by the UN Report then, is an indicator disclosing our growth  - in both population and via GDP - is too high. 

What to use in place of GDP? The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare which was first proposed by Eco-economist Herman Daly of the University of Maryland. is a prime alternative  Daly's point was that the GDP was too artificial and narrow an indicator of economic health. He argued that if one incorporated all the "externalities" usually dismissed or ignored by standard economic models, people would be more parsimonious in how they consume which would yield a better world.  By "Better" he meant with ample room for different species as well as human beings. Not just humans!

Ignoring these externalities leads us into a fool's paradise where we come to believe things are much better than the GDP numbers show. Similarly with energy, conveniently ignoring externalities of cost and demand leads too many to envisage a pie-eyed future of never-ending growth.  

The upshot of this? Instead of aiming for the fossil fuel high consumption target of 3 % growth per year - which assures extinction of all non-human species by 2100 (if it could be realized) - we pare it down to 0.5-1 percent per year at most.   Or better zero percent growth, in the context of Daly's Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare. 

Would a zero percent growth world / economy be difficult to adjust to? Probably! No more closets packed with seldom worn clothes,  50 pairs of shoes, or garages packed with tossed out or stored Barbies, X-Boxes, old Ipads, comic books and other crap.  Nor the need to rent storage units!  But hey, people will survive. They will not survive without bees and other insects to pollinate their foods, or the collapse of multiple food chains. 

Basically, the future of the terrestrial web of life, including Homo Sapiens, depends on limiting growth and not allowing it to limit life as we know it.

See also:

http://projectcensored.org/12-lives-depend-keeping-80-percent-fossil-fuels-ground/

And:


http://projectcensored.org/3-rising-carbon-dioxide-levels-threaten-permanently-disrupt-vital-ocean-bacteria/

"Empty Planet"? Nope - One with Far Too Many Humans - Beyond Carrying Capacity

Once again, we have the Neoliberal  and reactionary financial media trying to gloss over the population crisis.  The latest manifestation arrived in the guise of a  WSJ book review by one Lyman Stone )'A Drop In Numbers') in terms of reviewing a book 'Empty Planet' - by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson. (Both from the American Enterprise Institute).

Stone writes:

“Their book is a vital warning to the world that the risks associated with population have been catastrophically misread: Governments and activists have spent decades fighting the specter of overpopulation but now face the looming demographic calamity of global population collapse.”

Adding:

“Fewer people participating in the economy will mean slower economic growth, less entrepreneurship, rising inequality and calamitous government debt.”

To which I say ‘Hogwash!’  Because the solution of more people born to support those already alive is merely a Ponzi scheme.  Since the libertarians in this country get their panties in snits  over "Ponzi schemes" they ought to pay especial attention to this one. Because if 50 million additional workers are needed to support the existing 45 (retired) million people, how many more will be needed to support those 50 million and the tail end of the earlier 45 million? Can't these imbeciles see that the base of population support is a never-ending growth proposition? 

There are more than sufficient unemployed or underemployed people in the developed world to make up for the deficits anywhere.  At last reporting the OECD estimated 230 m in Europe alone.  Even the authors at least conceded there is merit to allowing foreign workers in to fill the bill but with "selective standards. As Steon puts it (ibid.):

"Of course there are plenty of immigrants today to prop up growth and the authors sensibly suggest the U.S. should adopt a Canadian -style, merit based system Buyt then they worry that by giving in to anti-immigrant, nativist sentiments the UNitied States will "throw away the very tool that hs been the secret to its greatness."

Well, those libertarian authors do have a point and more  to support their arguments than the reviewer, Stone, i.e. "if we admit more immigrants our demographic bubble bursting will only be postponed."

Not really!  Africa, for example, is on a tear to sport the world's largest population increase by 2050 - nearly 2.5 billion. Surely many millions of African immigrants can help with our demographic issues (and less population of whities). That is, if we can ever rid ourselves of Trump's dismissive  epithet of "shithole countries".

Indeed, in yesterday's WSJ there was a further wake up call piece ('Employers Push For More Seasonal Visas', p. A6)  on why we desperately need more lower wage immigrants, especially to do the jobs Americans refuse to do - from carcass butchering at meat plants, to landscaping, to farming to fish and crab cleaning in Maryland.  

The article noted that employers who rely on seasonal (temporary) H-2B visas are renewing their fight to lift limits.  The situation with too few needed workers became so desperate that the Labor Dept. website crashed "after a scramble by employers chasing 33,000 available permits."  This is absolute nonsense.

The piece added:

"The Jan. 1 meltdown stemmed from high demand and a move to make the process first come, first served."

We also learned:

"Industries ranging from tourism to agriculture to landscaping to amusements say they are reliant on foreign workers and the H-2B program"

Note that congress can allow up to 69,000 such permits if the administration agrees, but up to now the Trumpie dolts - lead by Nazi wannabe Stephen Miller - have not. Hell, these nincompoops are even trying to cut back on the H-1B visas for more professionally qualified workers.

My point here is that all the hand wringing about too few people to support growth and we need more babies is plain hogwash. 

Stone also babbles, re: why the population is supposedly crashing:

"The authors pin the blame on faulty assumptions by the population establishment as represented by the UN Population Division. They don’t use the U.S. as an example but I will. The UN’s most recent population forecasts suggest the average U.S.  total fertility rate from 2015 to 2020 shold be 1.9 children per woman. In reality, CDC data shows U.S. fertility has averaged about 1.8 children per woman from 2015-2018,”

Not taking into account the Earth overshoot phenomenon, e.g. as illustrated below:


At root, the issue is sustainability - especially for water which is needed for crops. NO water, no crops to feed a growing population. The interpretation of the graph (upward) is simple. By June, 2030 TWO full Earths - that is the resources therein - will be needed to support the then population. Already we are at 1.5 Earths. Every year Global Footprint Network raises awareness about global ecological overshoot with its Earth Overshoot Day campaign. Earth Overshoot Day is the day on the calendar when humanity has used up the resources that it takes the planet the full year to regenerate

Even Terry Spahr, Executive Director of Earth Overshoot, was compelled to send a letter to the WSJ to contradict the Stone review and many of the claims made by the book's authors. Spahr emphasized the clear benefits of a less populated world, including: "Fewer workers will command higher wages, the environment will improve,  the risk of famine will wane and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence."   

A huge additional benefit is there will be fewer abortions in the developed world (cf. 'Fewer Births, Fewer Abortions', WSJ, Feb. 23-24, by Jo Craven McGinty).  As the author observed, "At 1.8 total fertility the number of children women are expected to have in their lifetime is near the 1976 low of 1.7."  "And "for the first time since 1975 the number of abortions in the U.S. dropped."  

The basis here is not mystifying and doesn't require one pass a Mensa admissions test.  Essentially, when women can choose the size of their families (for economic and other reasons) then they will be less likely to hit the abortion switch in the case of children not wanted.   The point is there are multifold benefits to keep our numbers lower.


Further, it is preposterous for those like the AEI authors to chirp about Americans needing to increase baby production when there is no incentive from the gov't to do so.  I refer to those like an ER nurse featured in a spot this a.m. on CBS Early Show. She took her allotted 12 unpaid weeks to care for her newborn, then found her family on the ropes financially.  By the end she was deep in debt and had to cash out a portion of her 401(k) to make ends meet.  Even then, she was left with barely $500 in the bank to pay her bills.

That contrasts with another new mom (Marquita Staples-Green)  - also presented in the segment- who was able to get 26 weeks of fully paid leave- compliments of her company, software firm Adobe. As she put it:

"By the time I went back to work, I was ready, I was prepared. I had some time off, I could think about my new goals as a working mom.  I am completely grateful but I just wish this was the norm."

Well, sadly it isn't the norm, given only 16 percent of American new moms are the enviable position of Ms. Staples- Green, i.e. having access to paid leave via their employers. That is not even 1 in 6 women!  It also explains, as presenter Alex Wagner noted, why so many women in this country need to secure infant care within weeks of giving birth.

So why should these Neolib knuckleheads, ensconced in capitalist outposts like the AEI,  incessantly express surprise that fewer American women are having kids in this "lotto" environment? (And we won't even get into how much it takes to even raise 1 kid to high school graduation level now, far less through university.)

To be sure, the Democrats' "Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act"  would give workers twelve weeks of partially paid leave funded by a payroll tax.  That is, workers would be able to draw on their Social Security early to get the needed leave.  I don't believe I need to explain why this is dead in the water, given the basis is  almost as bad as the ER nurse taking out part of her 401(k).  In other words, if enacted (which odds I place at slim to none) it would just add to the nation's retirement crisis. 

In  many respects this latest AEI- based effort reminded me of the book, 'The Birth Dearth' by Ben Wattenberg. He was also then a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. This association no doubt accounts for the thesis expounded in his book that the "Western industrialized nations are flirting with economic disaster and marginalization by maintaining too low birth rates."

 By Wattenberg's analysis from over 30 years back, the resulting missing babies would be translated into "missing producers and consumer, soldiers and sailors, mothers and fathers".

Again, nonsense not too different from the latest AEI iteration.  Then as now, in terms of the impact on non-renewable resources, each child in a Western-developed nation consumes a disproportionate share of limited resources.   The U.S. offers the worst example: 6% of the world's population gobbling up some 25- 30% of the available resources in a given year. What Wattenberg and now Ibbitson & Bricker are proposing (and largely for purely economic gains) is nothing short of lunacy in this light.

A far more rational take is afforded by Herman Daly, University of Maryland Professor of Ecological Economics, in his book 'Steady State Economics'. The problem is the concept of "growth" is bogus on its face. Only a congenital moron would continue to pander to unchecked growth (and the increased population that feeds it) in a finite, zero-sum environment or planet. Especially one in which artificial wealth is created by extracting resources  that necessarily diminshes and degrades the remaining resource base. By "artificial wealth" I mean materials or converted resources (other than food) that cannot sustain your life. They may window-dress it, like the latest X-box game, but they won't sustain it.

Another sane alternative is offered by Aurelio Peccei's `One Hundred Pages for the Future' . Peccei makes a passionate plea for humans to notch their numbers down to replacement levels or lower since they've exceeded the Earth's ability to support them. (Part 1: `The Ascent and Decline of Humankind'). Peccei refers to an enormous supplemental population - one that exists beyond the ability of additional resources to support humans, hence  existing as a "human bomb threatening the planet".

Meanwhile, the late, noted science writer and biochemist Isaac Asimov- in various essays written over decades- has also warned of similar constraints on humanity's use of resources, particularly in terms of how population growth impinges on finite resources and sets limits to growth. Asimov was probably also the first to use the term "carrying capacity" * which he estimated to be 3 billion humans for this limited world.

By contrast, Wattenberg's book essentially tosses the very concept of carrying capacity out the window.

More recently, in an article appearing in `Physics Today' (July, 2004 issue): `Thoughts on Long-Term Energy Supplies: Scientists and the Silent Lie', Albert Bartlett pinpointed the failure to name human population growth as a major cause of our energy and resource problems.

Bartlett avers that "their (scientists') general reticence stems from the fact that it is politically incorrect or unpopular to argue for stabilization of population - at least in the U.S. Or perhaps scientists are uncomfortable stepping outside their specialized areas of expertise".

But Bartlett himself, in books and lectures, i.e.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4

 Has perhaps given the best reason for this reticence of scientists to speak out: the realization that too few Americans understand the concept of exponential increase which lies at the heart of population increase.


But if Americans' math issues and  physicists (and other scientists')silence share blame, the corporate media also shares as much or more for having the facts and refusing to level with the public. For example, on the issue of overshoot of our finite resources.  

Indeed, I doubt any major newspaper (or corporate media website)  has published any relevant data on it since it became available. Why not? Because it would cut through all the propaganda, PR and 'feel good' economic bunkum (e.g. about needing more people to increase global GDP) to show we are unambiguously in a crisis with regard to resource sustainability.
 
 There is also no mention that every energy conversion pollutes and degrades the environment we depend upon.  Multiply those conversions - say via more and more people- and we quickly descend into a higher entropic, higher waste world.  

Are we there yet? Actually, we're way beyond it. As pointed out by Christopher Mims (WSJ, Exhange, Mar.2-3, p. B10):

"In 1950, the world produced about 4 billion pounds of plastic per year.  Today, we produce 600 billion pounds. Every year 20 billion pounds of it ends up in the ocean.  Over 90 percent of produced plastic has never been recycled, and it typically takes more than 400 years to break down naturally."

Think there's gotta be a techno fix? Dream on!  As Mims goes on to note, after citing the Chinese refusal to process any more foreign waste:

"It's a crisis so big that no amount of technology, innovation or policy can solve it in the near future ..."

In other words, we are converting the planet's oceans into massive crypts that will likely sustain no living things - maybe not even jellyfish - in another 100 years.

Sadly, too many of our citizens fail to appreciate that every energy conversion process features an accompanying entropy or increased disorder.  Thus, the combustion of fuel in an internal combustion engine releases carbon monoxide as well as CO2 and other pollutants. Further, the 2nd law of thermodynamics states that the expelled constituents can never be used again for positive energy.   


Turning resources into waste faster than even a fraction of waste can be recovered-recycled thereby sets the stage for global ecological overshoot which depletes the very resources on which human life and the natural environment depends.

The astute and aware citizen must be sentient enough to know more people is not in humanity's best interest. Isaac Asimov, as part of his February, 1976 Barbados lecture e.g.

warned that humans had two choices: decrease their population to the carrying capacity limit to live in an equilibrium with the Earth and its resources, or let nature “increase the human death rate” (e.g. by starvation, pestilence, wars over resources etc.)

He also remarked:

"It is now the willingly childless woman who is the heroine of our planet. She is the one who now deserves all the kudos and praise, for helping to do what is necessary to spare humanity from the ravages of over-population"

Empty planet? No. A perilously overpopulated one, and more than twice in excess of its carrying capacity. 

See also:

https://www.ft.com/content/c0a77b28-3c2c-11e9-b856-5404d3811663

----------------------------------------

*  Carrying capacity = (usable land-water resource base providing water + food + fuel) / (individual food, fuel + water requirement)

Now, if the numerator is  11.4 x 10 ⁹   hectares of usable aggregate equivalent land-water resource base and if 6 hectares is the ideal mean individual requirement over a lifetime (e.g. meet all basic needs and have a few private luxuries) , that means:

 CC = (11.4 x 10  9 hectares) / 6 hectares/person   =  2 billion.

Obviously, this can be increased if the numerator can be increased or the denominator (each individual's ecological footprint) decreased.

Skewering Alan Greenspan's Myth Of Endless Economic Growth

Former Federal Reserve Chief Alan Greenspan believes he knows what's best for the U.S. and that is endless growth, as measured by ever rising GDP.  ('The Great American Growh Engine And How To Fix It', WSJ,   Oct. 13-14, , p. C1).    One of his main recommendations for improved growth is:

"Get entitlement spending under control. Putting the system on a more sustainable footing could be done by raising the retirement age by a couple of years, indexing it to life expectancy so that the problem doesn't keep coming up."

Note  this is despite the fact  that a third of seniors have Social Security as their only income. Also, more than 50 percent of Americans claim their Social Security by age 62.  Why are so many doing this? It isn't always a case of not wanting to work but rather, for too many,  not being able to last at demanding physical jobs, i.e. landscaping, roof repair, nursing home aide,  etc.  It is fairly easy to work past 70 when it's all consulting, paper pushing or brain work.   But not so much when one is involved in heavy day -to -day labor like a nursing home caretaker moving an elderly patient from bed to chair and back many time a day - not to mention other tasks, such as bathing, toilet use etc. Work that takes its toll on the back, as well as many other parts of the anatomy.

Never mind, Greenspan fantasizes this ongoing rampant growth because well, it's the "American way", i.e.  "Today the United States has the most powerful economy in the world. It still accounts for almost a quarter of global GDP."

Well, yeah, given that it also has barely 5 percent of the global population but consumes 25 percent of its resources annually.  Greenspan also goes on to blab:

"The key to America's success lies in its unique toleration for creative destruction, the destabilizng force described by the economist Joseph Schumpeter in 1942. Creative destruction reallocates society's resources from less productive pursuits to more productive ones, or from horse and buggies to motorcars."

 Creative destruction, irrespective of who conceived it, is one of the most tragic and wasteful aspects of American cowboy capitalism.  It entails perpetual waste of energy and investment that ravages precious resources. In Barbados, with few resources, each must be maximized. There isn't the quantity  available (on a 166 sq. mile island) to allow duplication or other squandering in wasteful competition. In the U.S., the exact opposite holds. Huge amounts of resources are yearly squandered in competitive games- that have only one or a few 'winners'.  There is Alan Greenspan's "reallocation" of resources for you.

By contrast, the endemic socialist, communitarian structure of Denmark- for example - promotes a healthy growth of the social commonweal and the belief that what is done for the benefit of one, or a few, redounds to the benefit of all. E.g.

Oprah got perfect response from Danish woman on their social welfare state  

Hence, the imperatives for government subsidized low cost housing, national health insurance for all, free education through college.  Enough to make Greenspan and his ilk apoplectic.

Matt Miller in his The Tyranny of Bad Ideas has pointed out that all the so-called European "welfare state" economies (e.g. Denmark, Norway, Sweden etc.) fared much better than the neo-liberal, market dominated U.S. during the financial crisis and Great Recession. They provided the resources for their citizens to be more resilient, and also their higher formal tax structures prevented the sort of macro-scale deficiencies we still see in the U.S. where infrastructure is crumbling, public pensions are under-funded.  Does Greenspan factor in the cost of repairing our infrastructure (est. $2 trillion) into his growth delusions? I doubt it.

It's also somewhat ironic the former Fed chief praises "creative destruction" as a major contributor to the growth engine, while invoking the transition from horse and buggy to motorcar. This is given what all those existing 1 billion motorcars around the planet have wrought - putting us on the cusp of runaway warming  e.g.

Climate report understates threat

Of course, it's also choice and ironic that it was none other than Alan Greenspan  who was actually complicit in creating the financial crisis, though he disingenuously blames a "combination of fear and herd  behavior".    Adding  that this combination "led people to overreact to bad news and to plunge economies into self-reinforcing cycles of decline."

 That takes a lot of chutzpah given Greenspan relentlessly pumped ARMs  (adjustable rate mortgages) to people who didn't know enough about them and how an initial 3% rate could balloon into an 8 %- 10% rate  and ultimately lead to foreclosures. Then there were Greenspan's and other bankers' moves to bundle the credit default swaps into mortgage loans (collateralized mortgage obligations, or CMOs) and peddling them to folks with little or no credit. That set up the immediate collapse of the credit-loan system, especially as the debased loans were awarded AAA or other high ratings by the likes of the credit agencies, such as AIG and Moody's.

 Fear on the part of the hoi polloi?   How about crass manipulation of an exploitative mortgage market and inadequate oversight of destructive financial devices? See e.g.

Brane Space: The Financial Black Hole

Another factor 'Greenie' overlooks is that the onset of the productivity growth slowdown nearly matches the point U.S. employers gained access to workers from low wage countries to whom they could pay much lower wages than to American front line workers. Especially as the former often had similar skills to the latter.

Even given the current 3 percent growth of 12 months through September, Greg Ip in his WSJ piece today (On the paradox of 3% growth, p. A2) argues it isn't sustainable. As Mr. Ip writes:

"To keep this up the unemployment rate would have to go negative in eight years, a mathematical impossibility."

Better clue Greenspan in on his fantasies there, Mr Ip.

A further hidden factor damping growth which I've discussed before is the decreasing energy return on energy invested (EROEI) of fuel sources. In other words, our energy-dependent civilization is becoming ever more impoverished as the efficiency of the energy to run it diminishes over time. So no, with conditions like this, and a projected EROEI of 7.7 to 1 by 2030 do not look for more growth.

With such a forecast, energy costs will absorb as much as 15% of GDP by then. So we will be lucky to sustain the growth rate of 0.7% per annum Greenspan bitches about as characterizing the economy the last few decades.  Nor is the oil shale -fracking option the way out. As  Robert Heinberg observes ('Snake Oil: How Fracking's False Promise Imperils Our Future'), while it may cost less to extract a cubic foot of natural gas or a gallon of oil shale today, it will cost much more in just five years and even more in ten - such that one would have to spend as much or more to get the energy as the benefit it delivers.

Heinberg summons a point that most of the snake oil salesman humping fracking won't tell you, that it costs energy to get energy. And if you are a nation that resorts to employing 15 to 1 EROEI energy to extract  5 to 1 EROEI  oil shale energy.....well, can we say 'stupid'?

As Heinberg puts it (p. 116):
"No evidence suggests that the technology of fracking has actually raised the EROEI for natural gas production. It temporarily lowered prices but only by glutting the market."

Greenspan and his growth humpers need to process that lowered EROEI translates to increased debt - nationwide as well as for (most) individuals, since it will cost more and more in the future  to obtain the same services, products one currently depends upon.  Raise the per barrel oil prices by even 15%  - say from $100 to $115, and watch the impact on food prices, not to mention gas, or electricity. Eventually, as   Tullet Prebon Strategy Insight   notes, the economics becomes "non-viable" and that means the only way people can access the food or services is to go into debt, i.e. using credit cards or other means.

Here's another "stinger" or a reality bite - which is the subject of a forthcoming book by London School of Economics sociologist Mike Savage: It is very likely that, given the Earth's limited resources, there is also a very limited capacity to handle traditional growth. This is  easily discerned from the graphic below on how many "Earths" are currently being consumed by humans per year,

At root, the issue is sustainability - especially for water which is needed for crops. NO water, no crops to feed a growing population. Simply put, there simply aren't the resources to support a growing human population which is conditioned to consumption. (Especially in the developed, industrial world - which now includes China and India).  The projections now are for at least 10 billion people by 2050, and an 80 percent probability of 12.3 billion on Earth by 2100. 

 By June, 2030,  TWO full Earths - that is,  the resources therein - will be needed to support the then population. Already we are at 1.7 Earths. Every year Global Footprint Network raises awareness about global ecological overshoot with its Earth Overshoot Day campaign.   I believe even a guy like Alan Greenspan ought to be able to grasp these figures and the graphic, and that his growth ideal is a mirage, a myth or fantasy, if you will.

As sociologist Savage explains (The Nation, October, p. 16):

"If we want to live in a better society, it's not 'How do we grow more?' It's how do we become more sustainable and consider what level of inequality most people might find acceptable  and not extreme." 

A "rising tide" then - contrary to capitalist myths- might not raise all boats but flood us all out of existence.  Of course there will always be economic Pollyannas spreading bollocks, like Tom Gionvanetti , e.g.

Why Not 'Trump Retirement Accounts'? - WSJ

who writes, evidently with a straight face (p. A15):

"The back door solution to the entitlement crisis is to make workers wealthy"

Right, even as employers are unwilling to pay their employees a fair wage, or enhance their job benefits - even after being flush with corporate tax cuts. As managing director of Aspen Advisors, Andrew Gadomski (from a January WSJ piece) fessed up, when companies lament they can't find workers to fill key openings, that is code for: "I can find talent, I just don't want to pay them as much as they cost."

One wonders what brand of "wealth"  Giovanette conceives of with this sort of payout?  Also what sort of MJ candy he's gulping to write such unadulterated codswallop?

Is there an alternative route?  The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare which was first proposed by Eco-economist Herman Daly of the University of Maryland. is a prime alternative . Daly's point was that the GDP was too artificial and narrow an indicator of economic health. He argued that if one incorporates all the "externalities" usually dismissed or ignored by standard economic models, people would be more parsimonious in how they consume. This would then yield a more equitable economic landscape.

Ignoring these externalities leads us into a fool's paradise where we come to believe things are much better than the GDP numbers show. Similarly with energy, conveniently ignoring externalities of cost and demand leads too many to envisage a pie-eyed future of never-ending growth.    All this translates inexorably into lower growth and woe betide you if you dare intimate (as Prof. Daly has done) that a zero or negative growth index may be a lot better for humans, if they hope not to outstrip their resource support base

In the meantime, until we get to the Index of Sustainable Welfare, people may wish to consider redistribution of resources to bridge the gap. Why?  Well, because 0.1 percent of the world's population currently controls 50 percent of the planet's wealth and resources. 

Let those richies go on with their favorite playthings and pastimes  e.g.

Then don't come crying if the great 'unwashed' mass of the hoi polloi comes for them with torches and pitchforks in hand.  Faced with a choice between starvation or grabbing what they can from the richest, it shouldn't take a Mensa level IQ to figure out what will unfold.

See also:

Robert Reich

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