[I am a concerned citizen of the world. I worry about the doom that is projected for this mother earth on account of the irresponsibility of “we the people.” Recently I came across some contrarian thoughts in few books that I read (referred below) which raises some questions on the current popular thinking. I have attempted to draw attention to some highlights. Those interested can read up more.This may be a bit heretical but I believe it is worth being alive to these issues]
In 1798, an Austrian Monk Robert Thomas Malthus, who was also a political economist, predicted a gloomy future for the mankind because he believed that population would increase at geometric progression and the food supply would grow at arithmetic progression resulting in collapse of the mankind. In 1898 another eminent British scientist, Sir William Crookes, argued that unless nitrogen could be chemically fixed from air by some scientific process, the human race would not be able to feed itself from the land available. They were not being paranoid. Their predications were based on facts, based on scientific estimation of arable land, based on the prevailing productivity of land, based on availability of fertilizer and based on their estimation of population growth. [1]
In the same year (1898) delegates from across the globe gathered in New York for the first international urban planning conference. Their main cause of concern was management of horse manure which had exploded to un-manageable problem in all major cities of the world. In 1894 Times London had predicted that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. Somebody in New York predicted about the same time that by 1930 horse shit would rise to Manhattan’s third-storey windows. All policy efforts to mitigate the problem offered no solutions. Urban planning conference broke up in three days instead of the planned 10 day schedule. [2]
Within 15 years after Sir Crookes made his predication a German Scientist Bosch invented a technology for large scale production of inorganic nitrogen fertilizer. Today almost half of the nitrogen in our body would have passed through such a factory. The invention of internal combustion engine was the environmental savior. It managed within two decades to address the problem that was driving nations around the world nuts. They also released significant land for farming which was hitherto being used to feed the horse and other draught animals.[3]
These solutions to the society’s vexing problems were not found by means of depopulation of society or by policy directions that reduced travel and commerce. It came about from human ingenuity and innovation. The internal combustion engines improved mobility, revolutionized travel and agriculture and helped the mother earth to sustain seven billion people without falling into the Malthusian trap.
With the exploding usage of these IC engines, today we are faced with the negative externalities of greenhouse gases (incidentally the methane gas produced by the ruminating animals produce 50% more greenhouse impact than the transport sector!) from this technological magic and we are worried about future of our energy options and global warming. In the same way the urban planning conference on horse manure failed to produce results, the Copenhagen Summit on climatic control was unproductive. The reason was not lack of intention. But because the marginal cost of discipline is much more than the benefit; not just for individuals, but also for countries. Garett Halden has nicely explained this “tragedy of commons”; the problem of free riding.[4]
We have to have innovations to address this. Not just knee-jerk relations based of fads and fashions. The renewable energy sources today have not reached the level of scalability to solve the global energy problem. Many of them, on a total input-output ratio of energy spent and energy output is quite inefficient and often a net consumer of energy. Matt Ridley has pointed out this conundrum with an interesting analysis. “Today about 125 kwh per day is the average energy consumption of a British national. Let us assume that we managed to brig it downto100 kwh which is to be supported with 25% each from nuclear, wind and solar, 5% each from bio-fuel, wood, wave tide and hydro. Then there would be sixty nuclear power stations, wind farms would cover 10% of entire land, solar panels covering an area the size of Lincolnshire, eighteen Greater Londons growing bio-fuels, forty seven new forests growing fast rotation harvested timber, hundreds of miles of wave machines off the coast, huge tidal barrages in the Seven estuary and Strangford Lough and 25 times as many hydro dams in the rivers as there are today’ Still with frequent power cuts.” [5]
We need to incentivize and encourage game-changing innovations and not hope for altruistic actions by individuals and countries represented by their political masters or jump at everything that sound green or organic without analyzing its true cost and benefit. We cannot be carried away by such dreams and take retrograde steps of arresting economic growth that would do injustice to billions of global citizens who hope to share some part of the benefit of human progress, massive drives to bio-fuels that will reduce land under cultivation leading to food shortage or hijack more rain forests. If we take this path the cure we are attempting will end up being a bigger disaster.
“Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.” Sydney J. Harris
Related Reading: Question of Existence
References
[1], [3],[5] The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley
[2] From Horse Power to Horsepower, Eric Morris
[4] The Corruption Conundrum, V Raghunathan
Super Freakonomics, Steven D levitt & Stephen J Dubner
The Price of Everything, Eduardo Porter
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In 1798, an Austrian Monk Robert Thomas Malthus, who was also a political economist, predicted a gloomy future for the mankind because he believed that population would increase at geometric progression and the food supply would grow at arithmetic progression resulting in collapse of the mankind. In 1898 another eminent British scientist, Sir William Crookes, argued that unless nitrogen could be chemically fixed from air by some scientific process, the human race would not be able to feed itself from the land available. They were not being paranoid. Their predications were based on facts, based on scientific estimation of arable land, based on the prevailing productivity of land, based on availability of fertilizer and based on their estimation of population growth. [1]
In the same year (1898) delegates from across the globe gathered in New York for the first international urban planning conference. Their main cause of concern was management of horse manure which had exploded to un-manageable problem in all major cities of the world. In 1894 Times London had predicted that by 1950 every street in the city would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. Somebody in New York predicted about the same time that by 1930 horse shit would rise to Manhattan’s third-storey windows. All policy efforts to mitigate the problem offered no solutions. Urban planning conference broke up in three days instead of the planned 10 day schedule. [2]
Within 15 years after Sir Crookes made his predication a German Scientist Bosch invented a technology for large scale production of inorganic nitrogen fertilizer. Today almost half of the nitrogen in our body would have passed through such a factory. The invention of internal combustion engine was the environmental savior. It managed within two decades to address the problem that was driving nations around the world nuts. They also released significant land for farming which was hitherto being used to feed the horse and other draught animals.[3]
These solutions to the society’s vexing problems were not found by means of depopulation of society or by policy directions that reduced travel and commerce. It came about from human ingenuity and innovation. The internal combustion engines improved mobility, revolutionized travel and agriculture and helped the mother earth to sustain seven billion people without falling into the Malthusian trap.
With the exploding usage of these IC engines, today we are faced with the negative externalities of greenhouse gases (incidentally the methane gas produced by the ruminating animals produce 50% more greenhouse impact than the transport sector!) from this technological magic and we are worried about future of our energy options and global warming. In the same way the urban planning conference on horse manure failed to produce results, the Copenhagen Summit on climatic control was unproductive. The reason was not lack of intention. But because the marginal cost of discipline is much more than the benefit; not just for individuals, but also for countries. Garett Halden has nicely explained this “tragedy of commons”; the problem of free riding.[4]
We have to have innovations to address this. Not just knee-jerk relations based of fads and fashions. The renewable energy sources today have not reached the level of scalability to solve the global energy problem. Many of them, on a total input-output ratio of energy spent and energy output is quite inefficient and often a net consumer of energy. Matt Ridley has pointed out this conundrum with an interesting analysis. “Today about 125 kwh per day is the average energy consumption of a British national. Let us assume that we managed to brig it downto100 kwh which is to be supported with 25% each from nuclear, wind and solar, 5% each from bio-fuel, wood, wave tide and hydro. Then there would be sixty nuclear power stations, wind farms would cover 10% of entire land, solar panels covering an area the size of Lincolnshire, eighteen Greater Londons growing bio-fuels, forty seven new forests growing fast rotation harvested timber, hundreds of miles of wave machines off the coast, huge tidal barrages in the Seven estuary and Strangford Lough and 25 times as many hydro dams in the rivers as there are today’ Still with frequent power cuts.” [5]
We need to incentivize and encourage game-changing innovations and not hope for altruistic actions by individuals and countries represented by their political masters or jump at everything that sound green or organic without analyzing its true cost and benefit. We cannot be carried away by such dreams and take retrograde steps of arresting economic growth that would do injustice to billions of global citizens who hope to share some part of the benefit of human progress, massive drives to bio-fuels that will reduce land under cultivation leading to food shortage or hijack more rain forests. If we take this path the cure we are attempting will end up being a bigger disaster.
“Our dilemma is that we hate change and love it at the same time; what we really want is for things to remain the same but get better.” Sydney J. Harris
Related Reading: Question of Existence
References
[1], [3],[5] The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley
[2] From Horse Power to Horsepower, Eric Morris
[4] The Corruption Conundrum, V Raghunathan
Super Freakonomics, Steven D levitt & Stephen J Dubner
The Price of Everything, Eduardo Porter
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We have often believed the best solutions to many problems lie within the circumference of the problem. You have brilliantly proved that the solutions often lie outside the circle. Great thought
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