limits to growth

In a 2005 report, 1,360 scientists and 95 countries reported that  we have used about 66% of all the resources our planet has available. What happens when this reaches 80%, 90%+?? 


This is a good time to revisit the 1970's Donella & Dennis  Meadows 'Limits to Growth' and Paul Erlich's 'Population Bomb' books and premises. 





Back then (in the  1970's) Erlich's infamous claim to fame was a bet with a WS hedgefunder (Julian Simon) who challenged Erlich's premise that the world was consuming resources beyond its limits and that market forces always find endless new deposits, materials thereby keeping prices in check.  Mr. Erlich bet that as the world consumed more stuff, resource availability would shrink thereby driving up prices.  Mr. Erlich lost spectacularly. 

Simon challenged Ehrlich to choose any raw material he wanted and a date more than a year away, and he would wager on the inflation-adjusted prices decreasing as opposed to increasing. Ehrlich chose copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. The bet was formalized on September 29, 1980, with September 29, 1990 as the payoff date. Ehrlich lost the bet, as all five commodities that were bet on declined in price from 1980 through 1990, the wager period.[1)


I wonder what would happen with such a bet today.  Would our engineering and market ingenuity still outdo earth's endless supply of resources - or are we truly approaching its limits?  I vote for the latter. (e.g. see copper below)

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There's no doubt we live in a finite world - a closed system.  There's only so many resources and regenerative possibilities.  One way to represent this is earth 'overshoot day'.  (see my blog"  https://winsol33.blogspot.com/2018/06/why-one-earth.html )

Earth overshoot day 2018 occurred on August 1 - which means between August 1 - Dec 31 we are liquidating / drawing-down / detracting / exhausting / over-reaching  the resources our planet has available.  As we continue this, eventually there'll be fewer and fewer resources left.
Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources (fish and forests, for instance) and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year. We maintain this deficit by liquidating stocks of resources and accumulating waste, primarily carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Andrew Simms originally conceived the concept of Earth Overshoot Day while working at the UK think tank New Economics Foundation.



Let's look at the status of a few resources we 7.6 billion use a lot: 

Water
It's #1 on the hit parade for limits.  Only 2.5% of the worlds' water is fresh, and by 2025 about 1 billion people will be living with daily water scarcity. WOW.  a lot of the on-going 'wars' originated from drought and lack of water (Syrian farmers = rebels, Yemen, Somalia, ++)  Wait until Bangladesh and southern Asian countries feel the effects of Himalayan glacier disappearance, and dam projects. 
Fossil Fuel

 Here we are really making some progress!  We are well on our way to replacing these with the original (not alternative!) energy source - the sun.  We have the following years left for each of these: Oil (~60), Natural Gas (~90) , Coal (~200) will last another ( x ) years before we run out.   

btw:  Oil is the #1 commodity in the world, coffee is #2. In California it's dairy and grapes.



Phosphorous

This is a big one. How do we grow food without phosphorus?  We don't. Then how will our vegetables grow?  Will we forage the ecosystem to its limit in search of green vegies? 
We could run out of phosphorous in as little as 50 years.  It's very difficult to reclaim phosphorous runoff once they are diluted in waterways.  
Copper
Imagine a world without motors, pumps, and copper wiring.  Copper is everywhere!

there's a phenom called 'peak copper'.  We may run out of new copper supplies within 25 years.
Environmental analyst Lester Brownsuggested in 2008 that copper might run out within 25 years based on what he considered a reasonable extrapolation of 2% growth per year.[9]

The kind of accelerated extraction of copper as shown in this figure can't continue much longer.  

The good news here is that most copper gets recycled and that 80% of it is still in use.  But large problems remain.  There's an increasing demand, and new supplies are more costly to bring to market - as evidenced by increase in copper theft.  

Sand


I would like to propose that a bet like this today may have a different outcome.  Take SAND for instance.  The world is running out of sand.  Does that mean the amount of sand running out?  When will it get more expensive to import foreign sand to beaches and parks than people are willing to pay for? 


Helium
The first limited resource we'll run out of is helium.  Helium rises - all the way out the top of our atmosphere.  Go into any balloon store and you'll be limited on the # of helium balloons you can buy - and it'll be getting lower each year.  Personallyu, i don't understand why anyone would buy helium balloons  (what, AIR filled balloons aren't enough, or you can't resist talking like Donald Duck - yeah, that's FUN! but... )  if they knew we were running out of that precious resource and helium's importance in other VERY useful things. 

Here's some of the more important uses for helium:  welding, Silly valley conductors, MRI machines etc.  I'm sure we'll find replacements and alternative ways to do the same thing, but right now there's really no equivalent substitute.  Perhaps helium will act like a canary in our coal mine of diminishing resources. 

Sun - our only true 'resource'
Let's face it, everything we have on earth came from the stars.  Everything we consume can be traced directly to coming our own star - the sun. 
Our sun has about 6 out of 10 billion years left before it burns itself out.  BUT - and this is a big one, as it increases its intensity by 6% every year, we actually have only 1.1 billion years left.  So start making your retirement plans now... :-)

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Perhaps Mr. Erlich's 'Limits to Growth' concepts were just a bit ahead of their time and we need to reconsider the consequences - for instance of running out of sand - yikes!

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