I guess I just don’t understand economics. Economists point to things like the unemployment rate, the inflation rate, and consumer spending and tell me not to worry, "everything is great", and "the fundamentals are sound." Well, I have a biology background, and in biology we assess a population’s health using things like food availability, habitat health and carrying capacity. Economic indicators may tell me how the stock market is going to do next week but it doesn’t tell me much about what kind of world my children will live in.
I believe our long-term outlook will depend, as always, on natural resources. To determine the biological fundamentals we need to look at pollution, petroleum, and population. These three highly intertwined factors will, in large part, determine our future standard of living. Quite simply, with too much pollution and too little petroleum the planet will no longer be able to sustain a rapidly growing population.
Human civilization has long operated on the principle that current generations could use nonrenewable resources and future generations would somehow figure out an alternative solution. While we had abundant resources and a limited population, this made a certain amount of sense. The end of those resources seemed so far removed that we didn’t need to worry about it. We were all convinced the future would either be a Jetson-like paradise of flying cars and jet packs or everyone would be swept away by the rapture.
Well, the occurrence of the rapture is still an open question, but it doesn’t seem likely that we will create a Jetson-like paradise. These days, the future is looking a lot more like Soylent Green than Star Trek.
We are now facing multiple imminent environmental crises including global warming, declining supplies of clean water and failing aquifers, over fishing of large areas of the oceans, species extinctions, and widespread environmental contamination. Over 1.1 billion people already lack access to clean water and global demand is doubling every 21 years. In Northern China the water table is dropping 2-3m per year. Ninety percent of ocean fish stocks have been depleted during the last century and all ocean fish and seafood species are projected to collapse by 2048. These problems will be exacerbated by the effects of global warming. And all of our problems will multiply as the world’s population races past 7 billion.
To the extent we have managed to live in this heavily polluted environment this long, it is thanks largely to the availability of abundant cheap energy to clean and pump water, grow and transport our food, and irrigate deserts. As the environment became more polluted we have had to rely on oil to replace free ecosystem services destroyed by our pollution.
We currently burn over 20 million barrels every day in the U.S. and we are totally dependent on it for everything from transportation to agriculture. With global demand soaring and new discoveries declining, we have nearly reached the point at which the oil supply can no longer meet the demand.
Based on extremely optimistic estimates of future discoveries, the federal government estimates that oil production will likely peak in 30 years. But many independent analysts have concluded that the peak will actually occur in this decade and, in fact, may have already occurred. The Department of Energy’s Hirsch Report (perhaps the most important unread government report) stated that "The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem." Americans, long used to consuming one fourth of the world’s oil production, are physically and psychologically unprepared for this inevitable reality.
The root of our problems is a firmly entrenched economic system based on exponential growth. Our politics, policies, and media coverage are all driven by the perceived need to keep the growth in GDP high quarter after quarter. Despite the fact that it seems completely irrational to link our future to a system of infinite growth based on an environment with finite resources, few people stop to think of the implications of this strategy. It is clearly unsustainable in the long-term, and unfortunately, the long-term is fast approaching.
How do we solve these problems before it is too late? Well of course the first step is admitting you have a problem. Unfortunately, we have yet to take the first step. We do not yet have the infrastructure, foresight, or political courage to prepare for the end of cheap and abundant energy or face our environmental problems.
Just when we need them most, our media and political systems are not functioning. Thanks to media consolidation, too much of our public debate is controlled by corporations with ulterior motives. Thanks to a corrupt system of legalized bribery, too many of our politicians are also controlled by corporations with ulterior motives.
Al Gore has brought much needed attention to global warming, peak oil on the other hand has been only derided by the media when not totally ignored. It will take every last vestige of an independent media and open democracy left in this country to make changes toward a sustainable economy and prepare for the inevitable changes ahead.
As you may have guessed, I am somewhat of a pessimist. I hope I am wrong. Optimists tell me someone will invent a perpetual motion machine and a way to recycle garbage into trees. Economists tell me that the invisible hand will swoop down from on high and fix all of our problems. But, optimism should not supplant contingency planning, hope is not a plan, and we owe it to our children to plan for the worst.
For most of U.S. history, parents could feel that their generation had made things better for their children. My generation is left hoping that the planet we leave our children is still habitable. Shouldn't we at least act like we care?