Hmmm. I understand your concern and in some ways it relates to my key
issues with economics; mismatched time scales are potentially very
important. However, I'm not convinced that the case you raise is all
that crucial.
What has happened technologically since then that public planners in
2002-2003 would have wanted to know?
I suppose the rapid increase in energy prices might have been useful
to know, but that not only doesn't count as an advance, it was widely
anticipated.
I take a back seat to nobody in my admiration for Google and Apple,
but how do their achievements matter to public policy?
Segways?
Seriously, I suppose wind energy has scaled up a bit faster than you
might have expected and the Arctic has melted down a bit faster. The
entanglement of food prices , especially at the very cheapest end of
the scale, and biofuels is interesting and as far as I know was
missed. Anything else?
I wish things were a bit harder to predict, honestly.
mt
On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Tom Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> There is a problem with predicting the future. Technology experts
> can't predict more than 5 years out without sticking their necks out
> Yet, infrastructure projects, like the urban transportation systems
> have to be planned with more that 5 years in advance.
>
> On Aug 20, 9:10 pm, jdannan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Michael Tobis wrote:
>> > Prioritization is surely a good thing, but I am coming at this from
>> > another angle.
>>
>> > There will soon enough be 10G people, of whom perhaps 0.4G will be
>> > American.
>>
>> > If we take sustainability to mean no drawdown of remaining species
>> > population in the wild, no significant extraction of fossil fuels or
>> > groundwater, no net large scale changes in composition of atmosphere
>> > and ocean, can the average American standard of living as of today
>> > become the global average?
>>
>> > My intuition says no, it has too much impact, but I am trying to find
>> > somebody who has done the calculation in earnest, or, failing that,
>> > sources for the right numbers.
>>
>> I don't think this is a well-posed question in the first place. No
>> fossil fuel extraction but American standard of living already
>> presupposes lots of changes to an as-yet purely hypothetical future. If
>> we can solve the energy problem (eg via technology), then maybe we can
>> solve food and water problems similarly. If we cannot, then there is no
>> truly sustainable solution.
>>
>> So there you have the mathematician's answer - precisely correct and
>> utterly useless :-) But more reasonably, of course we are miles off any
>> semblance of sustainability by your measure, and will remain so
>> indefinitely. Maybe this means your definition is too strict to be
>> useful, although of course you can choose any definition you want...
>>
>> BTW 10 billion people seems unlikely, but I suppose 9 is more than enough.
>>
>> James
> >
>
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