AndySir wrote:I'm not sure that's true. At current wealth levels an equal distribution would leave us all with about $10k GNI. There's no room for Humvee's in there - the humvee market goes.
Doesn't make any difference if each lost humvee is replaced by a fleet of mopeds. It would be a fairer world, but humans would still be heading for an ecological catastrophe.
Diets would probably be less meat heavy
Why? Overall, why? People at the top would be able to afford less meat, which would be consumed instead by more people at the bottom.
I think it's undoubtedly true that economic growth would increase, but it would take quite a while for everyone to get back up to current developed world levels.
They'd never get up to the level enjoyed in the "developed world" today.
The very fact that economic growth would increase proves my point. There is no way that growth can increase without ecological damage increasing, unless all that growth is in non-consuming service industries.
Last edited by UndercoverElephant on 11 Apr 2014, 18:26, edited 1 time in total.
undercoverelephant wrote:There is a tiny minority at the top who have more wealth than they could possibly ever spend. This is a problem in terms of social justice, but there is a limit to how much ecological damage they can do because there are so few of them.
I've been thinking long and hard about this (as well as doing C-footprint studies for a living...) and I believe that assumption to be incorrect. The extremely-rich do do a lot of damage, by several paths.
1. They really do burn a lot more FF directly in their everyday lives: have a look at the MPG of (for example) a Lear-jet, or one of those yachts.
OK, point taken.
2. But more to the point, their ownership of disproportionate amounts of land and property has an effect on the rest of us. It raises (or indeed, forms at all) the rent we must pay to use it (or the mortgage we must take out to buy it: same difference). This increases the amount of earnings the rest of us must make, which of course increases the amount of work we must do, simply in order to live somewhere. A similar case applies to other necessary commodities (for example speculation in food staples). That work that the rest of us do, in its turn, results in FF being burned and in various other damage.
You would have to replace each humvee with 20 mopeds (or the equivalent mileage) - if you extrapolated that kind of efficiency saving worldwide that would require each person to own between 3-4 mopeds to have equivalent energy use. You probably can't make that many useful journeys. Essentially it's the same point that RC made - you need large concentrations of wealth to be able to afford to waste so much.
Same argument applies to meat, only it's land that's evenly distributed not meat consumption that is averaged. Meat is a far more wasteful foodstuff to consume (something of the order of 7 times the land use, I think) so land is less likely to be used for meat production.
The meat thing is a bit complicated. I think one should not include in the same argument cattle that are reared on prime agricultural land or fed with arable crops and cattle that are reared on poor land. There are, for example. large areas of upland Britain that can support sheep where it is really very difficult to grow crops.
The reason I think meat gets its bad rep is the way it is reared, intensively. The US has significant numbers of corn fed cattle, feedlots are personally speaking an abomination not only is it wasteful of corn but not in my opinion good for the cattle on a welfare level.
Biff is right there are large areas of the UK which can support and produce meat (beef and sheep) which frankly are virtually unusable for anything else.
The North of Scotland had large numbers of people a couple of hundred years ago raising cattle on the hills. The powers that be saw the green 'fertile' hills cleared most of the people and replaced them with sheep as they offered more profit. Pretty soon it became clear the land was the way it was through generations of cattle grazing, it reverted and profitability went down. As labour got more expensive flock size increased to several thousand per man with additional labour brought in at certain times of the year.
Recent changes to the EU support structures made even this uneconomic and whole areas were cleared of sheep and the shepherds paid off.
That land is currently sitting empty and while oil is 'plentiful' we will import from where it is cheapest. This may be that governments in foreign countries support their agriculture to make it 'viable' the market does not care.
Land in the UK can support a lot more extensive meat production than it now does, meat is a means to get calories out of land unfit for much else.
I believe the threat is not change but rate and consistancy of change. We can adapt over time raise hens on balconies, pigs on scraps in back gardens, rabbits etc etc. The issue of consistancy is I can adapt to a sloowly changing environment but wild seasonal swings, good years, hot and dry years, very wet years late /early springs and winters are far harder to handle.
biffvernon wrote:The meat thing is a bit complicated. I think one should not include in the same argument cattle that are reared on prime agricultural land or fed with arable crops and cattle that are reared on poor land. There are, for example. large areas of upland Britain that can support sheep where it is really very difficult to grow crops.
This is a point I have tried to get across several times during online debates but it usually falls on deaf ears. Today in Nevada they are trying to evict a ranchers cattle from federal land for non payment of grazing fees. In the video clip of the protest notice the quality of the land they are fighting about. What crop would you like to grow there? Apparently the cattle do OK though and are worth $1000 a head. http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2014/04/11 ... en-square/
Yes, I think you have to have seen, or be familiar with, such land in order to appreciate the point. Cumbria in my case. The hills are steep, the soil is poor and the wind and rain would beat down any grains you might care to grow there in short order. But it's ideal for sheep. And wind turbines.
featherstick wrote:I hope so too, it would be unpleasant to think that this is driven by a rich middle-aged white man's worry about poor brown people having too many babies, which has been the basis of eugenics for a long time. The solution to the "absolute misery" UE predicts is contained in the last line of my post about addressing some of the absurd, offensive and deadly inequalities in our current system.
I would hesitate to imply racism or say anything about birth rates (in the latter case, because it seems as if discusing the birth rate is put to one side in UE's latest argument). It does however seem unfortunate that so many of these arguments have to do with the idea that basically poor people miles away aren't dying off fast enough, when really they aren't the nub of the problem. When someone in the rich world has on average an ecological footprint several times these people, and wants for few basic necessities.
I would propose a counter thought experiment. If it were the people of somewhere like Britain who were desperately poor and likely facing famine, drought and disease on a regular basis, would someone living in this country- especially someone most vulnerable to such- have the same opinion as the likes of the OP? I doubt it.
Except that the above is not what UE has suggested. He has simply pointed out that:
A.) The capacity of the world to distribute resources equitably is more or less logistically/politically impossible and so there is little point in continuing to pretend otherwise and, instead, we should set about ensuring our own food security in earnest in anticipation of the crisis that is coming our way as well as the rest of the world's.
Or
B.) Even if such an equitable allocation of resource were logistically/politically possible, we are already so far into overshoot as a species that allocating resources more equitably now is simply too late in the day to do anything other than to merely delay slightly the inevitable die off to come.
He is still advocating the idea that basically we should sit idly by and let people die horribly from drought and starvation.
Assuming that no matter what we do has any purpose, the idea that we should somehow turn into a society of Ebeneezer Scrooges and attend to our own misery whilst those in even worse misery get on with dying and decreasing the surplus population seems to have little merit. Firstly, it is highly unlikely that their impact on the global environment, as opposed to local, is likely to have anywhere near as much impact as those within the developed world already have; secondly, perhaps it might make problems for us worse in the long run, threatening stability in those parts of the world we depend upon for resources (see MENA right now), as well as increasing the illegal immigration problem, straining our resources even further.
Atman wrote:
7 billion humans clearly exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet [citations easily found obviously].
That is the dodgy bit and saying it is clear and obvious does not make it less dodgy. As I've said many times, I would prefer there to be fewer people, but my preferences don't stand for much. The fact is that one cannot say a particular number of people exceeds the carrying capacity without first describing the impact of those people.
Actually, it is completely irrelevant. Why? Because the vast majority of those who are not having a large impact are not in that situation out of choice.
There is a tiny minority at the top who have more wealth than they could possibly ever spend. This is a problem in terms of social justice, but there is a limit to how much ecological damage they can do because there are so few of them. Then there is a much larger population (say 1 billion) who live in reasonably developed countries and have a relatively large impact. Below them are further layers which get progressively bigger as the impact gets progressively lower, but almost the entire population underneath the very top layer is trying to increase their wealth and thereby increase their ability to consume more and have more impact. The number of people who are choosing to limit their impact out of respect for the ecosystem and their descendents is so small as to be utterly irrelevant. It makes a difference to their "soul" maybe. It sets an example maybe (though few will follow it). But in terms of making a difference to the overall impact it is utterly irrelevant, because any resources they aren't using are just going to get used by somebody else who belongs to the overwhelming majority who are trying to consume more by becoming more wealthy.
So I'm afraid your argument is a red herring, Biff. Since there is no way that the majority of humans are ever going to change their ways and join that tiny minority who are consuming less out of choice, the only thing that actually matters is the overall number of humans. The only way we, as a species, are going to stop ******* this planet up is when there are so few of us left that our global impact ceases to be significant, as has been the case for most of human history and will probably be the case for most of the future. Unfortunately, before we can return to that state lots of people have to die.
Your position depends on a belief that through education and other "improvements" in the human situation, we can convince people to either voluntarily do less damage to the ecosystem or vote for a government which will make those changes compulsory. Both of these things are pipe dreams, and anyone who proposes real policy based on pipe dreams is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Assuming the people who make little impact out of choice have their lot improved to make their lives that bit better, it is still unlikely that their standards of living, and associated impact is likely to come up to anywhere near First World standards any time soon. It is unlikely that anything like the economic booms enjoyed by East Asia will be replicated fully on a global scale.
As to whether people will voluntarily do less damage to the ecosystem on a mass scale- I guess that depends on how serious the problem is. As long as it doesn't look like a short-term, close-to-home problem, or as long as there is any wriggle-room for doubt/skepticism/outright denialism or the ability to point the finger at someone else, then for sure it will be a pipe-dream. This wriggle-room is getting increasingly smaller- it will be a case of, if we don't act, the consequences could easily be disastrous. Add to that, that the realities of a diminishing
As for the tiny proportion of super-rich, the problem posed by them seems to be overstated. How much of their wealth is not simply phantom capital which does little to actually represent real resources or wealth which can be shared/redistributed in some meaningful way? How much of what isn't is not invested in some enterprise or other which actually contributes to the impact on the ecosystem? It's hardly likely to be sat in some "Scrooge McDuck"-esque vault doing nothing.
1. It seems that, on the poorest soil in Northern Scotland, even sheep rearing is uneconomic. Many crofters purely raise lambs as feed-stock to send to lowland farms further south for fattening.
2. It appears that, for some producers, even our venison is not cheap enough (despite the glut of deer in the highlands). We normally obtain our venison locally, but the other day I had occasion to pick up some venison burgers from our local supermarket. They were made by Highland Game, based, I think, in Perthshire. Where was the venison sourced from? New Zealand!
Tarrel wrote:the other day I had occasion to pick up some venison burgers from our local supermarket. They were made by Highland Game, based, I think, in Perthshire. Where was the venison sourced from? New Zealand!
the_lyniezian wrote:
As to whether people will voluntarily do less damage to the ecosystem on a mass scale- I guess that depends on how serious the problem is. As long as it doesn't look like a short-term, close-to-home problem, or as long as there is any wriggle-room for doubt/skepticism/outright denialism or the ability to point the finger at someone else, then for sure it will be a pipe-dream. This wriggle-room is getting increasingly smaller- it will be a case of, if we don't act, the consequences could easily be disastrous. Add to that, that the realities of a diminishing
Will be? It was a case if of if we don't act it'll be disastrous some time about 1982. Or maybe 1970.
As for the tiny proportion of super-rich, the problem posed by them seems to be overstated. How much of their wealth is not simply phantom capital which does little to actually represent real resources or wealth which can be shared/redistributed in some meaningful way? How much of what isn't is not invested in some enterprise or other which actually contributes to the impact on the ecosystem? It's hardly likely to be sat in some "Scrooge McDuck"-esque vault doing nothing.
I'm still thinking about some things RC said about this...
The "virtual"-type wealth, you can regard it as a lot of promises to do work. Either those promises are kept and the work gets done (and the resulting damage happens), or those promises are broken (assets are de-valued or debts aren't paid) in which case the work isn't ever done and the economy shrinks.
