Some people believe in Progress. Others don’t. Usually the source of disagreement is about what “Progress” means anyway. Those who argue we’ve obviously made lots of progress point to things like the end of slavery, civil rights, technology, democracy, etc. Those who don’t believe in progress point out slavery has ended many times in the past, democracy has come and gone in the past, etc. But their biggest argument is that our current apparent “progress” is happenstance; that, take away some specific material benefits, mankind goes right back to doing things the way he used to do them before the arrival of those material benefits. And, if those material things are only temporarily available to us, then this phase in history is just that, a phase, and not a culmination. Ergo, no progress.
Maybe the best exmple of the no-progress point is the Olduvai Gorge Theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_theory and http://dieoff.org/page125.htm). Please do go read those links in full. To summarize the theory, energy production per capita steadily increased from 1930 to 1979. Then it plateau’d and declined a little, and with peak oil, peak natural gas, and peak coal all arriving now or in the near future, is set for a steep decline. Also, population increases between 1-2% annually. When energy production per capita declines below the level it was at in 1930, then the industrial age is over, never to return, and in fact, the declines continue and we’ll experience a horrendous die-off due to our dependence on energy for food production, and world population will plummet due to disease, war, and famine down to 2 billion people. To get a sense of just how horrendous our world would have to be to go from a population of 7 billion to 2 billion in, say, 40 years, see (http://canada.theoildrum.com/node/2516). It’s a long article, but worth reading.
On the face of it, the theory is simple and hard to argue with. Once you see that peak fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) theory is, like evolution, not so much a speculative theory, but simply an observation (ie, US peaked in oil and natural gas production around 1970; the north sea peaked in oil production around 1999, mexico peak in oil and is currently crashing pretty hard, most countries of the world have peaked in oil production and follow a very predictable curve while doing so. Natural gas tends to peak and then crash and vanish. Oil tends to peak and then decline relatively slowly.), then you understand that the rise and fall of fossil fuel production is inevitable. Because so much of our energy comes from these sources, and because other renewable energy sources appear to have a cap on how much energy they can provide (hydro is maxed out, solar and wind can’t provide more than about 20% of our power needs because of intermittancy and unreliability, plus the huge expense of them compared to other energy sources, nuclear - well, we’ll get to nuclear later), it seems to follow that, over a long enough time period, our overall energy availability is going to rise, and then fall. If you add into the consideration the idea of energy per capita with an exponentially increasing population, then the situation is worsened, though not qualitatively changed.
But, there are some problems with the theory. For one thing, energy efficiency has generally increased over time, and thus we do more with the same amount of energy. I’d love to see a graph of energy usage per capita that factored in our overall societal energy efficiency increases, but such data isn’t readily available. Any estimates on efficiency improvements is necessarily rife with interpretation controversy. One could measure things in terms of GDP and inflation, but such measures are untrustworthy, as inflation is intentionally underestimated and GDP intentionally overestimated. Furthermore, one could look around and see all kinds of energy-wasting activities that could easily be reduced or eliminated all-together (SUV’s anyone?), so, when we look at it, we need, at an absolute minimum, about 4 million barrels of oil per day (or its equivalent in natural gas) to grow our food - this oil/natural gas being used for fertilizer, pesticides, farm equipment - and probably about half of our transportation fuel - 14 million barrels per day - is a base necessary amount for the distribution of said food and other necessities. This means the US absolutely needs 11 million barrels of oil or it’s equivalent to sustain itself and its food production, and since we currently use somewhere around 24 million barrels of oil currently for these needs, then it appears, at base, that we can improve our efficiency by 50% - with considerable hardship. Of course, doing so means a lot of capital investment, as our entire vehicle fleet would have to be replaced (using up quite a lot of oil in new car production).
However, that means we’re still dependent on fossil fuels - there is simply no way to produce as much food as we do and distribute it without fossil fuels - our soils are too poor and depleted to grow much at all without enormous inputs of chemical fertilizers. Without the fertilizers, some estimate that north america can support between 100-200 million people total, and that would not allow for any of the food imports that helps the rest of the world feed it’s remaining 6 billion. So, 50% efficiency improvement doesn’t kill the Olduvai Theory, it just delays it. And possibly not even for very long.
Another problem with the theory is that is equates fossil fuel energy with energy itself. While true that fossil fuel energy is limited and will inevitably decline, that is not true of renewables. This is where the per capita part of the equation plays in. If population keeps increasing, a flat amount of total energy means a decreasing amount of energy per capita. However, that energy is still there if there is a die-off and thus industrial civilization could reassert itself with a lower population level. Furthermore, nuclear energy has potential to allow us to increase our energy production far into the future, though it does require the development of breeder reactors that can ultimately use all the uranium we find to create electricity. Three problems with nuclear, however: 1) breeder technology is somewhat unproven and very unpopular currently, 2) building nuclear power plants has extreme up-front costs and thus requires central societal planning and committment (ie, free markets don’t tend to build nuclear power plants), and 3) we have problems with our current technology and infrastructure using electricity for transportation needs. Nuclear remains problematic, but is very probably our best chance to escape the Olduvai crunch.
If we could do away with our cars entirely, and/or use only electric vehicles plus electrified rail, that would go a long ways towards eliminating our need for any fossil fuels - which we will eventually have to do. But, what about farming? How can we continue to produce food from depleted soil without the fossil fuels as fertilizer and pesticide input? Even assuming the equipment is powered electricall from a nuclear power plant, we can’t escape the fact that our soil management in industrial agriculture is completely unsustainable. Even with ever increasing fertilizer inupt and use of pesticides, our output is flat or declining. Some estimate that Iowa is down to it’s last 6 inches of topsoil, from a initial 14. Producing ethanol from corn to burn in our cars is only exacerbating that, as corn is one of the worst crops in terms of soil erosion and depletion. Plus the fact that when you burn the ethanol, you are sending into the atmosphere nutrients that belong back in the ground.
I don’t see anyway out of this part of the problem except for extremely intensive, highly advanced and localized, labor intensive farming - techniques like permaculture, small scale organic farming where human labor and intervention and ecologically high-tech techniques are brought to bear on the problem of food production. Rather than a 5,000 acre farm with enormous tractors and harvestors and planes for spraying fertilizer and pesticides, we’ll need 50 acre farms where every inch of soil is carefully managed, where every input into the system is measured, and every output is tracked and eventually returned to the system (as manure or whatever). This leaves us our high-tech society, but at the expense of requiring a higher percentage of people involved in farm labor and maintenance. Our energy efficiency will have to be maximized as much as possible, and wasteful activities eliminated entirely. Virtually all our technology research which currently goes into making things bigger and better and more powerful, will have to switch to making things smaller and better and more efficient. And more sustainable in terms of the environment.
But who believes we’ll choose this route over war, thievery, and greed?
