Thoughts on The Limits to Growth and Doom & Gloomsters

I was teaching a high school social studies class in the mid-1970s and we had materials on the "oil crisis". Most of the material was gloomy and predicted that oil would soon run out and that it would be so expensive that the only choice was to cut down our expectations of the future. This was completely in tune with the Club of Rome which published an infamous book called The Limits to Growth. I passed on the sad news to the students because that was the teaching material I had. I hadn't yet realized that doomsters have always been around and they are constantly thinking up new worries that get lots of attention (and big bucks) for them.

The end of oil, the so-called Hubbert's peak oil theory, has been trotted out over the years to sell more gloom and doom. Only when my father pointed out to me that when in was in high school in the early 1930s he was being told that there was only 20 years of oil left did it ding on me... it will always be the case that we will soon run out of any given resource because governments don't go out and find resources, they rely on resource companies to tell them what kind of reserves they know about. And it doesn't pay a resource company to go and find resources that won't be used within a reasonable period of time. So there will always be a problem of "running out of resources in about 20 years".

I've grown much more cynical over time. And I've been convinced by the arguments of Julian Simon and his book The Ultimate Resource. Humanity has always been running out of resources, but we will always find ways around the problem. Sure if you multiplied the current population 5 fold we would be at each other's throats fighting over food. But the Zero Population Growth people who wanted forcible sterilzation and predicted tens of millions if not hundreds of millions would stave in the 1980s were proved wrong by the Green Revolution. Norman Borlaug has been the greatest humanitarian the world has ever seen. He didn't sell "limits to growth" or "population explosion" or "global warming". Nope. He rolled his sleeves up and did research to expand the food supply. Of course the doom & gloom crowd has labeled all this "frankenfood" and spend their effort trying to convince people to not eat the food!

The doom & gloom crowd never look for a silver lining in a cloud. They take a paradise an worry themselves silly trying to find flaws in it, turn up potentially, hypothetically possible future problems with paradise.

As for running out of oil. We haven't hit "peak oil" yet as it continues to be slid out into the indefinite future. I'm sure it will happen some day. But in the meantime, we have a sufeit of riches. Here's a news story about how recent technological advances mean we now have 250 years supply of natural gas!

Supplies of natural gas could last more than 250 years if Asian and European economies follow the U.S. unconventional reserves, the IEA said.

The abundance of shale gas and other forms of so-called unconventional gas discovered in the United States prompted a global rush to explore for the new resource.

The International Energy Agency said Australia is taking the lead in the push toward unconventional gas, though China, India and Indonesia are close behind. European companies are taking preliminary steps to unlock unconventional gas as are other regions.

"Production of 'unconventional' gas in the U.S. has rocketed in the past few years, going beyond even the most optimistic forecasts," said Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a gas analyst at the IEA. "It is no wonder that its success has sparked such international interest."

Shale gas production in the United States is booming and the IEA estimates that unconventional gas makes up around 12 percent of the global supply.

Global supplies of natural gas could last for another 130 years at current consumption rates. That time frame could double with unconventional gas, the IEA said.

I guess the doom & gloom crowd can run around wailing and gnashing their teeth telling us that there is "only" 250 years supply so we need to cut back consumption now because it will all run out far too soon! They will find some way to use this to tell us we can't live a happy life. They will find a way to tell us that this means we have to abandon industrial society and go back to walking behind ox carts. They will only be happy when we get back to the "truly good old days" when 95% of th population was illiterate, most were starving, and pretty well everybody died in the early 40s. Yep... those "good old days"!

The reality is that technology changes the landscape under our feet. Here is a nice graph from a BP study "BP Energy Outlook 2030" that shows how various countries have shifted in the dependence on energy for GDP growth:

Click to Enlarge

And, as you can see, this report predicts that US dependence of imported oil & gas will fall:

Click to Enlarge