by FreakOil » Thu 07 Feb 2008, 06:06:25
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vampyregirl', 'T')his is a bit off topic but runaway economic growth as you call it began in the nineteenth century with what we call the Industrial Revolution.
Up until 1820 or so world economic growth was pretty stagnant.
Then came the steam engine. It powered factory machinery enabling mass production on a scale never seen before. Steam engine locomotives and ships allowed people and materials to be transported faster than ever possible before.
Also high speed communication was developed begining with the telegraph wire. The combination of high speed manufacturing, transport and communication enabled commerce to flow more smoothly than ever before and led to unprecedented creation of wealth.
And it went on from there. The internal combustion engine, the telephone, the airplane, the internet etc.
Today the world GDP is growing at $15 trillion a year.
According to Forbes the wealthiest 1 billion people live mostly in North America, Western Europe and Japan. The poorest one billion people live mainly in Africa and India.
These poorest of the poor are still living in the 16th century from an economic standpoint. Many people in Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe etc are still living in the early nineteenth century economically speaking.
The explosion of economic growth was created by innovation in transport and communication and remains so today. There is no stopping it unless you want to go back in time. Understand?
Unfortunately perpectual economic growth on a world of finite resources is a paradox. You cannot extract mineral resouces, then turn them into machines and gadgets and dispose of them indefinitely without hitting a peak in those mineral resources. Those steamboats and locomotives that you treasure so much are made of stuff that will one day run out.
Furthermore, we are tearing apart the very fabric of the biosphere by burning the fossil fuels that those machines consume, and even if we found a cleaner fuel - a carbon neutral one like solar or nuclear - the damage of perpetual economic growth would continue because it depends on making more and more of everything in greater quantities.
Take a look at consumer goods. There would be very little economic growth if everybody got one television and a few sets of clothing for their entire lives. But built-in obsolescence and perceived obsolescence takes care of that. The television is designed to break, so you have to throw it out and buy a new one. Those clothes won't be cool enough in two years' time, so you throw them out and buy new ones. All of those products are, of course, shipped in machines requiring more fossil fuels. The result: wasted resources and polluted land, materials taken out in ever greater quantities that can never be replaced.
As the population grows exponentially, we need exponentially more food to feed everybody, food that is grown industrially, resulting ever greater quantities of fossil-fuel fertilizers being pumped in the soil. Top soil is washed out to sea, only to be replaced by more fertilizer. Soon there will be no humus, just barren dirt.
One could just as easily say that a the linear system of perpetual economic growth is in contradiction with the cyclical system of our biosphere. Nature creates life from death. The trees that fall in the forest degrade into nutrients that are food for the next generation of trees. Plant and animal waste is put in the soil to grow crops for people. Everything must be put back. You cannot simply take, take and take without the biosphere that gives us life degrading into a desert wasteland.
This is the course we are on. The final innovation of humanity will be its own destruction. Shell cannot stop it.
Understand?