Economy vs. Environment. Is Capitalism Enviromentally sustainable?

Tell me how it could be physically possible for the Earth to support a population of 100 trillion humans, which is the estimated human population in 1000 years with a 1.2% growth rate.

Think of how far we've advanced in the last 10, 100, and 1,000 years.

Who knows what the limits are for population? Certainly not the environmentalist scare mongers.

Just tell me where you'll fit all of them. Even if you drop the growth rate to 0.75%, in less than 8000 years, you would have 54 decillion people. To put this in perspective:

With 100 billion people, the entire landmass of Earth would have an average population density similar to that of Singapore. That's Singapore's densitiy over ever square inch of dry earth. With 54 decillion people, that would be over 1 octillion people per square mile, or over 2 quintillion people per square inch.

Sorry, should read close to 250 quadrillion people per square inch of land. Not that it makes much difference.

underwater. duuuuuh.

I think that at some point people will stop having so many kids. So you're right, at some point we'll have to slow down and we won't have 10,000,000,000,000,000 people on Earth. What's your point? You'll be dead by then and the situation will work itself out before it gets too bad.

We aren't going to suddenly realize there are too many people and have trillions of people starving to death.

It's going to have to be down to virtually zero growth at some point because even a fraction of a percent still yields hundreds of billions of people over the comming millennia.

There's also the problem of entropy, but that's a more longterm problem.

Obamas' plan to wreck the ecomonomy and set up death panels should fix this nicely!

If that don't work the Acorn death squads will follow.

It's interesting - not one person has stated the obvious. The only sustainable system is one that "harvests" the same amount of energy (or less) in one year than is "captured" by our planet in one year.

That energy can come from the sun, tides, wind, geothermal heat, etc - but, as long as we need to use a nonrenewable source (oil, coal, tar sands, etc) to power our world we will not have a sustainable system.

Our current system is completely dependent on millions of years worth of stored sunlight. That can't and won't last much longer. Within ten years global warming will be a secondary issue - our focus will be on sustaining the unsustainable as oil production starts its eventual decline. Believe it or not there are some things that not even the prius will be able to save us from.

I agree that a fossil fuel based economy is long term unsustainable, simple logic will tell you that. However, it would still takes hundreds of years before this becomes a dire problem, not 10. According to the Department of Energy, we have a 45-50 years supply of petroleum from KNOWN reserves. This is the highest it has ever been and more reserves are discovered all the time. Coal reserves in the US alone are estimated at 250-300 years worth. I haven't checked on natural gas, but this fuel source has barely been tapped.

Advancements in solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, biomass, and synthetic fuel sources are being made at a faster and faster rate. Because of this, we'll never actually run out of oil or coal because we'll switch to these alternatives long before it happens. 250 years ago the world's main fuel source was wood. 100 years ago it was coal. Today it's petroleum. I'm sure that 100 years from now it will be something else. This is not an insurmountable problem.

Anyway, this is an issue for all economic systems, not just Capitalism.

The point is that capitalism is inefficient when it comes to the environment. When you pay for a gallon of gas, the price of an emergency room visit for an asthmatic child on a high ozone day is not included in the price. It is an externality that is not properly captured by the market.

But, capitalism plus a strong social democracy can yeild a sustainable environment. In the 1970s, cars had no catalytic converters and emitted 90% more volatile organic compounds and CO (ozone precursors) than do cars with catalytic converters. Government interfered in the market and mandated catalytic converters. As a result, cities were able to grow while maintaining reasonable air quality. Atlanta, GA had about 1.5 million in the 1970. Had cars not been required to have catalytic converters, Atlanta's air quality would make LA look like some remote pristine mountain wilderness.

The issue isn't how much is in the ground - but rather the flow rate. Many of the major fields that we rely upon are in decline. Much of the new oil is from very hard to reach places (the new gulf of mexico find is 5 MILES below the ocean floor).

Coal may be "abundant" - but, the process to turn it into a transportation fuel ain't cheap or pretty. The alternatives that you list require a lot of oil for development and maintenance.

I don't want to live in a world where we face 2-3% declines in oil production every year without a viable alternative - but, that's where we're headed.

Mtn Dew wrote:

Think of how far we've advanced in the last 10, 100, and 1,000 years.

Who knows what the limits are for population? Certainly not the environmentalist scare mongers.

The promise of technology does not cure everything. Assuming that global warming continues at a modest pace, the Tibetan glaciers will not last much more than a century. If you look at a map of Asia, you will see that the Tibetan glaciers feed all the major rivers (Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, etc.). 1/3 of the world's population relies on water from the Tibetan glaciers for agriculture, transportation and power generation. No technology can replace that resource.

Precious Roy wrote:

The point is that capitalism is inefficient when it comes to the environment. When you pay for a gallon of gas, the price of an emergency room visit for an asthmatic child on a high ozone day is not included in the price. It is an externality that is not properly captured by the market.

Again, this is a problem for ALL economic systems, not just Capitalism. But Capitalism because of it's superior ability to create wealth allows for money to be spent to correct this problem, the other known systems do not.

If the advancement of technology stopped today, I'd agree with you. But that's not the way the world works. Just because it's expensive to do something today, doesn't mean it won't be cheap in the future. The profit motive is a strong motivator.