Renewable Resources

By | April 8, 2005
4 Comments

Rand Simberg provides an excellent critique of rhetoric about “renewable resources” on Tech Central Station. The money quote has to do with how and where the environment has actually changed, both for the better and the worse:

The environment in the industrialized world, and particularly the US, today is in fact cleaner, our health better, our lifespans longer, our forests larger, than was the case during colonial times. That things are in bad shape in much of the rest of the world is a consequence mostly of awful government, not any intrinsic resource issue per se. The largest environmental disasters have been in countries in which unaccountable dictators made decisions about the allocation of resources (e.g., Saddam draining the marshes, the denuding of Haiti’s forests, the vast environmental messes of the former Soviet Union, etc.) Similarly, it is command economies that waste and destroy resources. For instance, the Soviet Union actually subtracted value, as absurdly demonstrated by the fact that it was generally cheaper for Soviet farmers to feed their hogs with processed bread than with the grain from which it was made. Wealth, property rights and freedom are the best solution to concerns of resource utilization (and renewal).

Well said. Although I think there is also a role for government regulation to play. I’m not sure how much cleaner our environment today would be absent some well-placed laws governing industrial and other forms of pollution.

But Rand really has me scratching my head with this last part:

Even worse, it misleads many into supporting what has become a key (and mistaken) goal of the so-called “environmental movement” — to limit human population, because this is perceived to be necessary in order to conserve those “limited resources.” But to do so is to limit the quantity of human ingenuity itself. And that, as the late Julian Simon pointed out, is the ultimate resource, for which there remains plenty of room on our home planet, and beyond it as well, as long as we continue to renew and make the best use of it.

Well, now if that’s true, I may just have to re-think my whole Save the Planet by Eliminating the Humans strategy. Hmmmmm…..

  • Engineer-Poet

    Unfortunately for Simberg, just because the prescription of the watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside) is wrong does not mean that their diagnosis is incorrect.

    Ditto human ingenuity; innovation does not necessarily scale according to population, but by population which is enabled to innovate.  The per-capita innovation of educated, high-technology societies is demonstrably orders of magnitude above that of subsistence farmers and third-world slum dwellers; increasing the numbers of the latter is unlikely to result in any net increase in human welfare.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    EP:

    I agree with your idea that innovation does not necessarily scale according to population size. A society has to be “plugged-in” – be part of the network of the first world in order to make meaningful innovations.

    Some governments want it both ways – China comes to mind. They want the success that freedom brings, without the fuss. To the extent that they allow freedom, they succeed. But freedom has a Pandora quality too.

    Anyway, Rand and Phil are right about the environment. The solution will come from humans who are free to innovate.

  • Phil Bowermaster

    Stephen wrote:

    “But freedom has a Pandora quality too.”

    Exactly. As does economic growth.

    EP suggests that “subsistence farmers and third-world slum dwellers” won’t contribute much to innovation. Perhaps not. But then again, how many of us have ancestors a few generations back who were subsistence farmers? It’s true, few of us are descended from third-world slum dwellers. I think the term used back in the day was “huddled masses.”

    Population growth unaccompanied by economic growth offers little. But the fact is that, pretty much everywhere in the world, the former is slowing while the latter is rising.

  • https://www.blog.speculist.com Stephen Gordon

    Phil:

    You’re right, and no disrespect meant to the “huddled masses.”

    Thinking of it this way – there was never any danger that Ben Franklin (as brilliant as he was) would invent an airplane. He was just not living in a time and place where he could contribute to that effort. Scientists and inventors always stand on the shoulders of others.

    “the former is slowing while the latter is rising”

    and at a increasing pace.