Hi Steve,
I was very impressed by both of your essays mentioned in your posting of 17
Dec 2001. Well worth reading. Confining myself to the latter one "Growth:
Salvation, Addiction, Cessation"
<http://www.contratheheard.com/cth/comment/01oct.html>
I wouldn't want to disagree with most of what you've written. However, I
would like to make a couple of comments if I may.
Where you wrote (5th para):
<<<<
What is my point? Well, the goods and services available for purchase and
consumption are real economic wealth. And those items are either products
of nature or are converted by humans from natural energy and materials.
Even human ideas require caloric input.
>>>>
Having mentioned caloric inputs, I was then expecting you to devote a few
subsequent sentences to the prime importance of energy supplies in any
period of significant economic growth (despite other factors being also
necessary). The immense surge of economic development since the 1800s and
continuing to this day has been dependent on what have been, to all intents
and purposes so far, limitless supplies of coal, oil and natural gas. Of
course, they're not limitless and, unless another immense source of energy
comes along in the next decade or two, then economic growth will not only
stabilise but go backwards at a rapid rate sometime during the coming
century with, probably, massive social breakdown and suffering.
However, I believe that another source of energy -- massive electrification
via solar cell technology -- is going to be possible. Were it not for the
obvious earth- and population-based limitations to a resumption of the sort
of conventional economic growth that we have known it for the past 200
years, then mankind would be in for another period of mad struggle for
individual and nationalistic power.
But I'd like to make a more substantive comment. In your last paragraph,
you write:
<<<<
An unintended consequence of recessions is a rest from competitive
consumption. It is at these times that mindsets are most open to change, as
challenges tend to lead to innovation. Perhaps the "growth at all costs"
paradigm will soon be challenged, with stabilization the hallmark of a new
era.
>>>>
Yes, this matter of challenges is important. However, if, as I believe
likely, a conjunction of solar-, nano- and bio-technologies could lead to
more than a sufficient standard of living and way of life for all
inhabitants of the world (say, by the year 2100), I am not at all sure that
this sort of civilisation would produce sufficient endogenous challenges,
despite the fact that access to energy would be enormous once again.
But exogenous challenges will more than supply this gap! Until quite
recently, astronomers have neglected observation of near-earth objects, but
now they are doing so it is being increasingly realised that the
destruction of life on earth on a massive scale by an asteroid is
inevitable unless a technology is developed that can steer or blow it off
course.
Already, close on 300 potentially destructive asteroids of sufficient size
to wipe out all lifeforms have been firmly detected by astronomers, and a
further 1,000 of more than one kilometre diameter -- sufficient at least to
destroy large regions and affect the weather of earth for years. (For
comparison, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and 90% of all
species 65 million years ago was 10 kilometre in diameter.)
In short, if mankind is to survive as a species, then we must develop space
technology either able to deflect *all* hazardous asteroids and/or develop
artificial satellites/planets and/or to re-engineer an existing planet in
order to support life. This is not pie in the sky or science fiction any
longer.
One huge benefit from all this is that man can have a common "enemy" at
long last -- something that could unite all nations from now onwards. But,
as the French say, "Il n'y a que le premier pas qui co�te" (if I have
quoted that correctly -- probably not!) and surely our first step is to
develop a new prolific source of energy. And, as a byproduct, it would also
enable us to quickly raise the standard of life of all those outside the
First World in the meantime.
Keith Hudson
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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