According to this Reuter’s article, just released today (24-June-2002), an environmentalist-economic organization called Redefining Progress just published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, saying that every year we humans now consume enough natural resources that it takes the Earth 1.2 years to replenish them:
If this is true, and if it continues, the Earth will eventually run out of its “reserves” of the things we use (timber, land, fresh water, etc.) and we will suddenly be forced to throttle way back on our consumption (at which point there will be widespread poverty and famine, which usually means riots and wars – not to mention quasi-religious cults popping up like there’s no tomorrow, because as far as a heck of a lot of people are concerned, there really will be no tomorrow).
So … is this an inevitable doomsday scenario, a call to action Before It’s Too Late [TM], or just more eco-alarmism (a la Carl Sagan’s prediction that if the fleeing Iraquis set the Kuwait oil fields on fire, the entire Earth would be covered in high-altitude black soot)?
By the year 2000, Planet Earth was supposed to be groaning under the load of billions and billions of starving people (said Paul Erhlich).
Eh, these folks sound sincere, but anymore I tend to automatically question “the sky is falling!” predictions that appear in press releases. http://www.rprogress.org/
I’d like to see the study itself, because from what I understand, the unknowns revolving around resource issues are far too great to be able to offer a number as specific as, “We’re using up 1.2 years of resources every year.”
It’s also a rather meaningless number in that it doesn’t tell us anything useful. Okay, so if our oil reserves took 100 million years to create, and we’ll be done with them in 50 million years, that would be a rate of use twice that of the rate of creation. But should we care?
Even just oil reserves have some pretty big unknowns around them, with some credible theories suggesting that there could be vastly more reserves than we know about. As I understand it, some of the older, previously tapped-out pockets are slowly refilling from porous rock, and we don’t really know a lot about that process and how much extra oil could be reclaimed.
Anyway, without seeing the specifics of the study, it’s hard to say whether it has any meaning at all.
If this is true, and if it continues, the Earth will eventually run out of its “reserves” of the things we use (timber, land, fresh water, etc.) and we will suddenly be forced to throttle way back on our consumption (at which point there will be widespread poverty and famine…
No. If this is true, we would expect it to become more and more difficult to extract fewer and fewer resources from the earth.
As extraction costs go up, so will prices. This, in turn, will lead to lower consumption and -more to the point- substitution towards materials that are relatively plentiful.
It it thus less fashionable to worry about resource scarcity (energy excepted). The greater worry is that we will run out of environment. Specifically, since there is no explicit price put on degrading the environment, it is possible that too much of it will be “consumed”.
…which usually means riots and wars – not to mention quasi-religious cults popping up like there’s no tomorrow, because as far as a heck of a lot of people are concerned, there really will be no tomorrow
Don’t agree with the logic, but I like the attitude tracer. Keep it up.
From the article:
The study appears to be in fashion. Marine fishing and fossil fuel burning are 2 examples of free agents using the environmental commons for free. I’m not sure about the “building infrastructure” part though; maybe they are referring to habitat degridation.
Redefining Progress does interesting work, although they tend to pick rather ambitious research agendas. For example, they have a “Genuine Progress Indicator” which is suppose to adjust GDP figures to take into account resource depletion and other factors relevant to human progress.
Problem: Putting a price on certain elements of human progress can be tricky. For example, I understand that their GPI measure goes down as income inequality goes up. I can handle that actually, except I would need to see evidence that some care had been taken to properly elicit people’s valuation of this particular good. When I read one of the think tank’s reports some years back, I did not see evidence for this sort of careful work.
But they deserve kudos for asking good questions, even if they may sweep some contentious issues under the rug on occasion. Maybe I’ll get around to exploring their website some time.
Ace-face: I doubt that they were, since my reading of their work pre-dates that article.
Thanks for the link though. That method of valuing inequality had not occurred to me. There are a number of issues that I would have to see resolved (for example, I’m a little uncertain which way the causality runs), but that’s an intriguing approach to a tricky problem.
It’s worth asking- with the possible exceptions of oxygen, water and arable soil… what is a “natural resource”?
Oil, you say? Well, then was Saudi Arabia a mega-wealthy nation 200 years ago? Was Kuwait? No! Because oil ISN’T a “natural” resource. It’s of value only because human beings, like Henry Ford, came up with technology that MADE petroleum valuable. If man hadn’t invented the combustion engine, oil would be nothing but black gook under the sand.
So, while I don’t agree fully with the Julian Simons of the world, who insist everything’s peachy keeen and that pollution, overpopulation or overconsumption of SOME resources will never cause a problem, I also have a lot more faith in human ingenuity than the Chicken Littles of the world do.
When one “natural” resource is on the verge of running out (which usually takes a LOT longer than pessimists claim), I feel confident we’ll find new technologies, that in turn create more “natural” resources.
Main Entry: natural resource
Function: noun
Date: 1870
1 plural : industrial materials and capacities (as mineral deposits and waterpower) supplied by nature
Crude oil is such a “mineral deposit”.
Well, one resource is “clean air”, that is air free of excessive CO2, for example. The challenge is to great the proper incentives to preserve this resource rather than deplete it.
And actually, “natural resources” is a fairly well defined concept. Indeed, the article gave concrete examples of natural resources.
I should add though, that I have never been a fan of The Club of Rome/ Ehrlich, as their analysis basically ignores price-driven substitution between different resources (metals, for example).