Hitting limits to growth: we’ve entered a new era
January 4th, 2010 by Jim JustDr. Dennis Meadows, one of the authors of “Limits to Growth” and its subsequent updates, has a powerpoint presentation and podcast of a recent talk available at the Population Institute site.
Most interesting is his view that the end of growth does not come directly from depletion, but indirectly from rising capital expenditures as the costs of exploiting resource sources and dealing with saturating sinks rise exponentially. And as he points out, that’s what we’re beginning to see already:
Most people assume that the major global difficulties would occur after the end to growth.
This is not correct.
The globe’s population would experience the most stress prior to the peak, as pressures mount high enough to neutralize the enormous political, demographic, and economic forces that now sustain growth.
We are in the early phases of that period now.
Meadows’ presentation finishes up with a chart showing CO2 emissions as a function of four factors:
1. Number of people.
2. Number of units of capital per person, which is a surrogate for living standards.
3. The amount of energy required to build and operate that capital.
4. The fraction of that energy that comes from non-fossil sources.
Meadows points out the key to our climate change predicament lies in reversing population and consumption growth. If we can’t change those, technology can at best only prolong the agony.
Gail the Actuary at The Oil Drum transcribes his finishing words:
So far, our concern about climate change had manifested itself through efforts to improve efficiency and to implement alternative energy sources–the so-called technology options. I will just close by pointing out that as long as we ignore demographic and cultural issues, the growth in the first two factors will continue to offset all of the improvement we make in factors 3 and 4. And so until we can understand how to begin reducing the growth in the first two factors, climate change is a foregone conclusion.
Richard Heinberg also has his presentation posted at the same site. Heinberg focuses on how peak oil and the consequent end of growth led to the financial crisis, one that will not be resolved in the way to which we have become accustomed. The end of growth means we have entered a new era.