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The Great Debate
One of the oldest ideas about mankind and nature is that humanity is a type of rapacious pest, a locust or a virus, that consumes the resources of nature at a rate that nature cannot keep up with. Seneca the Younger in Naturales Questiones (first decade AD) noted a connection between population and pollution in Rome. This is a thought that has reappeared throughout the ages.
Malthus in the Eighteenth Century is probably the most famous proponent of this theory. He realized that human growth was exponential whereas agricultural productivity was linear. Thus, as the human population continued to double there would soon be a point where there would not be enough food for everyone. This is obviously the position taken by the Communist Party back in 1979 when they started the one child policy.
The Malthusian proposition was taken to its logical conclusion by Paul Ehrlich who in 1968 published the influential Population Bomb. In it Ehrlich rehashed the Malthusian idea and gave it a dash of drama by coining the phrase ‘population explosion’. Ehrlich also tied in other environmental factors to his on-going study of how human propagation and activity were bringing about a major catastrophe in the future. Ehrlich pointed to the fact pollution levels were rising, the water levels were rising, that average temperatures were rising and that species extinction was exponentially increasing.
Paul Ehrlich made the important connection between biology and the social sciences. The two disciplines had been arbitrarily separated. Economics focused just on human actions and responses (not on the how economics affected the environment); and conversely biology focused on the interactions between biological entities (excluding the biological entity called ‘homo sapiens’).
One of the essential tasks of CIPEC is to show how the environment, economics and institutional organization are all intimately bound up. Whereas at the end of the Twentieth Century there was a tendency towards academic ‘specialization’, the new century is about cross-disciplinary approaches to model building.
A good example of this is shown in the great debate and wager between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon. Whereas Ehrlich proposed a Malthusian and pessimistic model for predicting future trends, Simon believed that resources were infinite. His theory became known as the cornucopian theory. This theory states that although resources such as oil and coal are finite that human potential to find creative solutions to problems was not. Simon predicted that as resources started to run out humans would develop technologies, organizations and strategies for coping with the shortages and in the long run hardships would produce qualitative leaps forward in terms of both the state of the world environment and the average human quality of life.
Julian Simon challenged Ehrlich to a wager. He proposed that Ehrlich choose any 5 commodities and that over a 10 year period the price of these commodities would fall in inflation adjusted terms. Ehrlich accepted the bet and chose chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten. To many people’s surprise, Simon won the bet - the cost of all these commodities fell in real terms over a 10 year period.
Simon was right in arguing for the importance of technology. Ehrlich didn’t factor into his calculations technological advances over the 10 years: fiber optics replaced copper in communication systems and plastic replaced copper and tin in the construction industry.
Although Simon won the wager, the debate did not end there. Supporters of Ehrlich pointed out that the decade previously Ehrlich would have won the bet. Also the price of oil and oil commodities has continued to steadily rise. On final analysis it appears that energy commodity prices rise whereas non-energy commodity prices tend to fall over time.
The valuable research that the wager sparked needs to be expanded and related not just to technology but also to social structures. Do prices increase more or less under the price fixing rubric of communist and authoritarian structures? Does a free market economy really deliver on its promise of competition keeping prices low? And how do both these economic models relate to the rate of environmental degradation and carbon emissions? People assume that industrial activity has caused global warming but a significant proportion of green house gases come from methane emitting ruminants usually raised for food.
Another example of the complex interplay of social, economic and environmental factors can be observed by studying forestry. Whereas, it might be assumed that protected forests would be the healthiest in terms of bio-diversity this analysis ignores the cost of policing large areas of forest. Illegal logging increases when there is no legitimate way to monetize a forest. In contrast, sustainable forestry programs that allow for selective logging reduce the incidents of illegal logging because local inhabitants are given livelihoods by using and preserving forestry resources.
It is the wider picture that is important. We must step out of the corners of our respective disciplines and look at new ways of understanding the environment, human behavior and systems of organization. It is three abstractions that must be bought into focus by collecting data and proposing and refining models of reality.
Carbon and hydrogen are the basis of organic matter on Earth. The most basic hydrocarbon is methane – CH4. Carbon dioxide is usually thought of as inorganic (although some contend that there is no such thing as inorganic carbon chemistry) is carbon bonded with oxygen. Together methane and carbon dioxide are the two most important determinants for global warming.
Both methane and carbon dioxide are relatively inert – in other words they don’t react with other chemicals or compounds and so stay around for a long time. They are both greenhouse gases. They stay in the upper hemisphere and allow sunlight to pass through them but when ultraviolet light tries to leave the atmosphere it encounters the green house gases and a large portion of it is re-directed to earth. This is causing global warming and also increasing the risk of skin cancer.
The causes for global warming are hotly disputed. Most scientists make the industrial revolution the key event in the exponential growth in greenhouse gases. Others also point to ruminant farming that produces lots of methane.
In both cases it is human activity – one for industry and one for agriculture. Humans themselves breathe out carbon dioxide. The connection therefore between humanity’s security on the planet and humanity’s main activities of breathing, industry and agriculture is irrefutable.
Models of climate change show different things. One short term benefit of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be faster plant growth as plants and algae use carbon dioxide in photosynthesis to make energy to grow.
In the longer term, the rising temperature will melt ice caps and glaciers and cause sea levels to rise.
The ways to lower the carbon count are within our power. Trees, plants and flora in general are great sinks for carbon. Another method is to have a paradigm shift in agriculture and industry. Less livestock would reduce methane emissions. And new systems of energy not based on carbon would also have a positive effect.
If no large scale action is taken population numbers will decrease as climatic conditions become more harsh.
Malthus, Paul Ehrlich and many other thinkers, social commentators and writers view people essentially as a burden. It is this perspective that leads to conclusions of doom and gloom not only for humanity but for the planet in general. In contrast to this pessimistic view of humanity is the view epitomized by Julian Simon that people have a lot to offer.
Both points of view are essentially stereotypes. People are neither angels or devils. Rather the writers are talking about the aggregate impact of people on resources such as food, water, fossil fuels and minerals.
Ehrlich is right that human activity spreads over the globe. As population numbers increase the need for new land for housing, factories, entertainment centers etc. follows. As a result wilderness areas are becoming fewer and fewer. The Amazon is being chopped down to clear space for new farming settlements (as well as for logging companies).
In the second bet that Ehrlich proposed with Simon he wanted to count clean air, clean rivers, and unpolluted soil as his indices. Simon wisely turned down the bet because he would have lost. Pollution continues to spread despite attempts by governments, NGOs, charities and communities to clean up nature.
On the other hand, there is a lot to be said for Julian Simon’s insistence that human inventiveness and resourcefulness will finds ways to overcome problems. Scientists and engineers constantly make designs and systems more efficient. Ways of generating clean energy have been pioneered. Agricultural innovation keeps abreast with human numbers. As a problem arises the conditions force humans to find solutions.
The only concern is that the crisis might happen to fast for us to respond with a solution. If global warning accelerates with the release of trapped methane in the perma frost we might not have time to respond. If Antarctic ice melts and the glaciers in Greenland do too 60% of the land mass will be flooded. London, New York, Tokyo, Koh Phangan in Thailand, Fiji, Mombasa, Rio will all become submerged.
We need to take the threat of global warming seriously now.
