Can nine billion people enjoy the standard of living of the rich?

Great Debates
1

In this article, “Worldly Wealth” –

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/start.asp?P_Article=12702

– from the June 26, 2004, issue of Prospect Magazine, political commentator Michael Lind argues that, through technological advancements, it really is possible for a world population of nine billion (the figure at which some thinkers expect the global population to stabilize) to enjoy the standard of living now enjoyed by the rich in fully industrialized nations, without crippling Earth’s ecosystem. A standard of living including not only enough food and clothing and services and technotoys, but plenty of living space in a wilderness setting – perhaps even a townhouse and a country home for every family! Agriculture can be made more efficient by “smart breeding,” thereby freeing up more land to be restored to wilderness conditions. The raising of livestock for meat can be replaced by cloning edible animal tissue in factories. Everyone might own a personal aircraft, powered by hydrogen fuel cells and operated primarily by a robot brain. In this article, Lind contradicts practically every bit of the conventional wisdom of the environmental movement, which he labels the “austerity school.”

What do you think? Is this future possible, or just a crisis-denying, technophile pipe dream?

2

Pipedreams, unless some ideal communist utopia takes the world by storm (I don’t think a system of capitalism exists where the CEO makes as much as the dockloader, that is kinda counter-capitalist). The standard of living of the poor may increase substantially (compare the SoL of American poor to Bolivian poor) for a good number of people on the planet, but they won’t be living the high life. There will always be something more necessary to have.

3

Well, Lind doesn’t really address questions of social or economic justice here, nor is he assuming a completely egalitarian future. The point he’s making is that a universally high standard of living is physically, technologically possible, and without putting an unbearable strain on the environment. That’s what I’m proposing for debate: Is it physically possible or not?

4

It may be possible, but I can’t see it actually happening. Today’s rich and powerful are quite content with the status quo, and will resist anything that might bring about significant change. I suspect life could already be much better than it is for the non-rich and non-powerful, but for the rich and powerful’s being hard at work resisting change.

5

OK, then we assume (for the purposes of this thread) that Lenin rises from the tomb and inspires the world to an ideal state where everyone is provided for (or if you prefer, where there is perfect employment and cheap goods).

Now, please define “the rich”. I’m not being snarky, we need to know what level of comfort we’re talking about here. I assume you mean upper-middle-class, own a 2 story house, lawn, 3 cars, all that jazz. By this, I’m also assuming that you don’t mean the rich-rich, who own several massive estates with sprawling property around them and a nice view of the valley. Or an entire floor of an apartment complex overlooking the Park. Or whatever.

You’re talking massive urban sprawl… you mentioned that we magically have efficient flying cars, so I presume a transit of 40 miles a day isn’t out of the world shocking.

I think we have the potential capacity to feed everyone, given careful control of the environment. I’m sure we can provide the luxaries of satellite TV, cell phones, internet, etc to everyone.

Part of this plan would require massive population redistribution and probably authoritarian control over land use etc, though.

6

Nine billion hellicopters zipping around the sky without a pilot? That’s terrifying.

7

Why wouldn’t it be possible? Economics is not a zero-sum game. We don’t live in a closed ecosystem. There is plenty of energy in the solar system, and plenty of resources.

And, it seems to me that standard of living is going to be increasingly measured by access to information. As the internet improves we’re going to be doing more and more of our interacting and business through it. That should require us to use less energy. For example, if internet technology gets good enough that telecommuting becomes a viable way of doing business, then that’s going to take a huge load off the physical infrastructure.

Plus, think of the 3rd world as an untapped resource. For them to become wealthy they will have to create goods and services to sell to the rest of the world. Just as the rise of South Korea and China has benefitted us all in many ways, the rise of the rest of the world should improve worldwide standards of living.

8

I agree that a high standard of living is possible for everyone. The real question is at what global population is this possible.

Having a high standard of living also requires careful planning and lots of discipline. Japan is an example of a country that, despite its wealth, really blows in terms of living standards.

9

13 percent of land worldwide is arable.

Fresh water getting scarce

10

Right, and that is taking into account areas like the Aral and Caspian Seas, sub-Saharan Africa, and other regions facing economic devastation and increasing desertification from environmentally unsafe agriculture, water distribution, and industry.

Terra may be bountiful, but it is not infinite and indestructable.

11

Energy is the answer. What is the question?

A quantum jump in cheap, clean energy would do it. With enough energy, the most desperate Bangladeshi subsistence farmer would be a successful subsistence farmer. There is, for practical purposes, no problem in subsistence farming that cannot be solved by cheap energy.

From the bottom, up.

In America, we are pretty close. Needs work, but to a large extent, we can provide a roughly decent life for the least of us, and all the bright shiny crap you could ever want for the rest. It is astonishing how much human energy is expended in America - not in the struggle for necessity, but in the struggle for things most emphaticly not “necessary”. Why, in the name of sanity, does anyone pay more money to ride in the front of an airplane? Does it really arrive that much sooner?

Of course not. Mr. Clemens has it just right, “A man will do many things to be loved, but he’ll do anything to be envied.”

So, to boil it down, we cannot provide a Lexus for everyone to be chauffered to the Piggly Wiggly. But we can easily provide that everyone can get there, buy enough to eat, and go home. And if that’s enough for you, you feel no impulse to envy, to feel deprived, then no one is richer than you, no one can be richer than you.

And if some silly son-of-a-bitch is willing to work himself into an early grave and piss away a perfectly good life just so’s he can cruise past me and sneer, OK by me, freak freely. But if he tries to tell be that ambition and greed are virtues, to be rewarded by health and education for his children that will be denied to mine, or my neighbors, then he and I have a problem.

12

So when it hits th-

looks around

Er, I shouldn’t finish that sentence, should I…

shuts up and waves a little American flag

13

What elucidator said. Energy is the answer. With enough energy, we can be as clean as we want to be. With enough energy, we can get as much fresh water as we need through desalinization. With enough energy, we can make the fertilizers and pump the water needed to turn arid lands into breadbaskets.

At the turn of the 20th century, something like 80% of the population was employed in agriculture. Today it’s 3%. Modern farming techniques have made agriculture far more efficient.

The biggest threat to the wealth of the third world is the growing ludditism of the anti-globalization crowd. For example, there is strong pressure to ban genetically modified crops, yet these crops could save millions and millions of lives. This mirrors the human destruction caused by the enviro-movements work to ban DDT in previous decades. Genetically modified crops can be designed to resist pests, to survive in arid environments with less water, and to provide the balance of nutrients people need. And yet, there is a real danger that they will be banned.

And it’s not just the left doing this. The right is busy trying to ban stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, avenues of research which have the potential to dramatically improve our lives.

14

OK, smart guy! Who are you, and what have you done with Sam?

15

I would like to point out that ASSUMING we develop fusion or something in the near future, an effort to raise global quality of living to the level suggested in the OP would take an authoritarian government, socialist or capitalist (though socialist would be easier, its not like corporations are going to invest assloads of money to sell clean water to poor Central Asian farmers, and it isn’t like desalinization is the cure-all to water shortages, and whatever Tuckerfan may think about reversing desertification with a mere 100 mil).

As Sam (or psuedo-Sam) mentions, anti-globalization efforts hinder this, because it requires some level of interaction between the commercial nations and the developing nations. However, I simply have too hard a time envisioning a system like this - most of the planet is simply unprepared for the social ramifications and would collapse into itself (this is why I don’t like scientists, they think that they can discover fusion and solve the world’s problems).

16

I’d love to see the standard of living achieved by nine million **productive **people, each living up to his/her potential. Such a small fraction of humanity even has the opportunity to utilize their native talents. How many potentially productive geniuses have died as a result of war or famine or stifling socio-economic systems?

We live in anything but a closed system, including energy resources.

17

Energy? Okay, so how can we get enough energy to make the world a paradise? Can we beam solar power down from orbit? Or what?

18

We’re short about fifty years, or one genius.

19

Well obviously we haven’t quite found a solution yet. But fusion and renewable resources are definitely getting closer to fruition. Whether we will see widespread use in our lifetimes, I don’t know, but I don’t presume that plentiful energy is a flight of fancy.

20

Never said that it would be desalination that would do it, nor did I say that it would be quick or easy, but $100 million? Yeah, given what air wells can do

I’d say it could be done for $100 million, if you used local labor and local materials.

However, I don’t think that you’ll be able to give the entire population of the Earth the same level of living standards as the developed nations and have a happy environment. The US, with it’s 300 million people, consumes the lion’s share of the world’s resources, bump the rest of the planet up to that level, and the environment’s going to take on helluva beating. Certainly recycling and better management of our resources can improve things, but even a 10% improvement isn’t going to be enough.

Nor, do I think that technological advancements are going to be the great solution many people believe them to be. One of the first results of practical fusion is going to be an increase in the demand for electricity. The moment we get fusion going, every government in the world is going to bust ass to make the switch. At the very least, they’re going to provide all kinds of incentives to encourage the building of plants (might even ignore environmental issues when it comes to choosing the sites of the plants) and the use of fusion generated electricity. They cut electric rates (which they no doubt will do), and people aren’t going to be worried about their electrical consumption (think about it, if your light bill suddenly got cut in half are you going to be all that concerned with leaving your lights on?), so they’ll use more electricity. A number of industries will also switch over to using electricity, instead of the fossil fuels they currently use.

This will put a strain on our electrical grid, so that will have to be upgraded (lots of hazardous chemicals involved in that) as well. Not to mention the environmental damage created by stringing up more and more power lines across the country side. Multiply this across the planet and you’ll start seeing a lot of damage.

Why Things Bite Back is an excellent book on the unintended consequences of technology.

The living standards of the world’s population can be raised up, but not in the manner we’re currently living, and it’s going to take a lot of changes on everybody’s parts for this to happen. That’s going to be the tough sell.