Earth's Resources are Finite
Two things you need to know to understand this rant:
1. Earth's Resources are Finite
For all practical purposes the Earth is a closed system. Yes, occasionally a meteorite will hit Earth and so deposit a few more materials. Yes, Earth receives energy from the Sun. In terms of the material components which comprise Earth, though, Earth itself is finite; there is a finite amount of matter out of which we may make things.
2. Currency is infinite
I do not receive cash from my place of work. Instead, my salary is directly deposited into my bank account. There is no physical component of my salary but rather numbers in a database somewhere indicate the balance of my account, the balance of my employer's account. Since numbers are infinite, unending, there are no restrictions on what my account can hold. Granted, the system we have in place "transfers", in an odd sense of the word, numbers from one account to another. But these numbers are not constrained by the rules of physicality or finitude; there is no physical component to which these numbers relate; we can always add more numbers.
So what is the point?
We use an infinite system of currency to allocate and dispense finite resources; item values in terms of currency are only part of the whole picture.
Think of it this way: My parents have a predilection for not turning shit off. So they will turn on a television and lights in a room, leave the room, and not turn the shit off. When I confront them about this their response is that they are willing to pay the minimal fee incurred by leaving on these electronic devices. The problem is that there are a finite amount of fossil fuels on Earth. Running electronic devices depletes Earth of its finite supply of fossil fuels. The financial cost of electricity is only part of the actual cost. In addition to slightly increasing your electric bill by running a television you also slightly decrease the amount of Earth's finite resources.
This is the problem with discussing consumption in terms of economics or "the market". Economic concerns are only part of the picture; arguably, the least important part. When you buy that new car you don't need you are not only wasting money but also you have consumed some of the Earth's finite resources and so brought humanity a step closer to its end.
What of the actual value of these resources? Gas is $4 a gallon. But that $4 cost is the result of a consideration of the cost of obtaining that gallon of gasoline. What if we assessed the value of gas from the opposite direction? The total amount of gas X for the planet Earth, the finite supply of gasoline available to humanity, has a value of priceless. What is the value of that one gallon when one recognizes that it is part of a finite supply of a priceless commodity? Is it still $4? I fucking doubt it.
Think of how wasteful humanity is with Earth's resources. How many resources are consumed by World of Warcraft? Consider the computers used to create it, maintain it, play it. Electricity, plastic, metal all gone for a leisure activity. Think of lawn mowing. How much fuel is consumed to run mowers? How many resources are wrenched from the Earth to build them, maintain them? Think of anything else you do, consume, purchase. How many of Earth's finite resources are consumed by your car, your dog, your Xbox, your iPod, your going to see a movie?
When you consider activities in terms of their financial component alone you ignore the true cost, the actual reality of the situation. You are consuming the Earth's finite, irreplaceable resources. Everything you consume, purchase, build depletes the finite quantity of resources available to human kind.
What happens when those resources hit zero?
21 comments:
I would argue that those resources never hit zero. It may be true that we use them up faster than they can be produced, but technically oil is a renewable resource, just not in our lifetime. Most other resources referenced are never actually consumed, but rather thrown away. Plastics, metals, etc more often than not are thrown away rather than consumed. A car is totaled, it is tossed, a computer is obsolete it is tossed, etc. Most of those resources that are tossed are easily reusable.
By the time the resources become so scarce, however, that we can no longer survive off of them, then new resources will be discovered. Remember, necessity is the mother of invention. People are naturally lazy, and won't truly focus themselves on new sources of energy until absolutely necessary. When oil becomse truly scarce, then gas prices and electricity will sky rocket far beyond their current prices. This is when people will focus on discovering new resources.
Nice Rant J. Now whats the next step?
Kyle Brown? what?
do you really think capitalism is a sustainable endeavor?
... Flaw one? Currency is not infinite. Currency capacity is, but not currency.
You're basically describing the wellspring of the concept of inflation.
Economic concerns are precisely what you're discussing with this entire "rant", despite your dismissal of the subject.
As resources become scarcer, demand and competition for it will increase, thus it will rise in value. Simple as that.
This is Junior Achievement stuff here, Jay.. What am I missing?
Here is what Roscoe missed, or I poorly explained:
We can say that there is 12 million more $. We cannot say that there is 12 million more gallons of gasoline.
If we assess the value of a gallon of gasoline in terms of $ we fundamentally misrepresent gasoline. Why?
Money has no value; it is a social construct. It represents nothing. Gasoline, exists in a finite supply. If we think of Gasoline in terms of $ we have missed the fact that at some time there will be no more Gasoline yet $ will continue to exist as it always has; as a concept; as an idea.
When we think about items, resources, supplies in terms of their financial cost we miss the simple point that, perhaps, I did not convey. So allow me to state it here:
When we run out of resources everyone dies. When you use a resource which is not or cannot be renewed you bring us a step closer to everyone being dead.
So whenever you do something you are effectively bringing humanity one step closer to its end. When you mow your lawn you bring us one gallon closer to having no more gasoline, ever. When you consume a resource, throw away a screw, you bring humanity one step closer to having no more of that resource.
Which is why we ought to stop discussing the value of resources in terms of $ and discuss them in terms of the survival of the human species.
That was my point.
But, by that rubric, you're still dealing squarely in the subjective.
What constitutes "Survival of the Human Species"?
What percentage of the species must survive? Survival at what level of social comfort? of technological comfort? of what level of sophistication?
You surely see that you're simply trading one subjective quantification for another, right?
Humanity will not cease to exist when we run out of oil or any other comparable resource. We will no longer have some of the modern comforts without finding new resources to replace them, but we as a species will continue to live. Those resources essential to human survival, food, water, and shelter, are all renewable.
And, yes, capitalism is a sustainable endeavor. The biggest issue currently hindering technological progress towards newer energy resources, is lack of necessity. Sure, people say it is necessary, but the oil companies are raking in record profits. People say they can't afford gas, but we continue to buy it. We as a society are lazy, and haven't yet found any real motivation to improve it.
Because capitalism is so powerful, when it becomes financially worthwhile to those with the resources to do so, new sources of energy will be made available.
"Because capitalism is so powerful, when it becomes financially worthwhile to those with the resources to do so, new sources of energy will be made available."
But that's the problem with capitalism. It is based on finance and economics and money. It is not based upon what would behoove society, the human species, individuals. It's not based on anything, really. Capitalism is about the accumulation of weath.
My place of work does not recycle. Why? It costs more to recycle than it does to just throw things away. It would behoove society if everyone recycled. But not everyone does because our primary fixation is upon finances rather than behooving society and sustaining the planet.
You know how capitalists talk about "he wants to save a spotted owl instead of save your job"? You know how people put the planet and a stack of gold bars on opposites sides of a scale and find that to be compelling rhetoric?
That's capitalism. Shoving your head up your ass and thinking that money has some value, worth, and utility.
But you can't breathe money.
You can't drink money.
You can't survive for long by eating money.
Capitalism, however, would have you believe otherwise. Because as long as we have money we'll have things to buy with it.
Except it doesn't fucking work that way.
"What constitutes "Survival of the Human Species"?"
FAIL.
Fail my ass. What's to say the Human Species consists of me, and my family and friends, and to hell with anyone else who doesn't please me.
Who doesn't meat my minimum requirements for intellegence, or any other condition?
Because.. clearly, allowing idiots, my my viewpoint, to stay around, and accidentally or uncaringly use up these finite resources? That seems pretty cut and dry as devaluing those resources.
If these "sub-People" aren't being sustained by them, the subsequent resources will be used MUCH more efficiently. Effectively they act as a larger drain on resources than one adequately educated and responsible person.
I'm honestly asking you by whose definition are we talking survival, and by whose definition we're talking species?
Because once you try to measure something in those terms, these are the questions that will be raised.
I hate to say it, but Kyle's absolutely right on this, because of a fundamental misunderstanding of Capitalism on your part. or, rather, a conflation of unrestrained capitalism and perceived intent.
You're comparing apples and oranges, pitting an idealised version of ideology up against a theoretical and undefined measurment.
Kyle's not right, though.
"When oil becomse truly scarce, then gas prices and electricity will sky rocket far beyond their current prices. This is when people will focus on discovering new resources."
First of all, when we use all of the petroleum we do not simply lose gasoline. We lose everything we use petroleum to make. What happens when we have no more plastic, no more oil based lubricants?
Why, we simply recycle the plastic we have. Ok, what do we use to fuel the recycling plant? Coal generated electricity. Ok, but we ran out of petroleum. So, what are we using to lubricate the turbines? How are we transporting coal to the power plant? What are we using to fuel that form of transport? What are we using to fuel the factories used to construct the materials needed for that wind turbine, that solar panel, that nuclear reactor? Of what are we building those materials when we're out of oil?
But leaving all of that aside the larger issue is my problem with this idea:
"This is when people will focus on discovering new resources"
You know how I said that Earth's resources are finite? It is not the case that we can continually find more. Eventually we run out.
Part of the problem is that people embrace the notion that we are living on a planet which perpetually produces that which we need in the quantities we need. But there is a finite amount of petroleum, a finite amount of copper. There is a finite amount of fresh water, of oxygen, of food.
When we run out? We do not just magic more into existence. We all die.
Life on Earth is not in a state of perpetual continuation into eternity. There is an end date.
When we increase our rate of consumption we increase the rate at which we move towards that end date.
That's why I do not understand your "what constitutes survival" question. I'm not talking about some Fallout-esque post-apocalyptic world. I'm talking about the point at which no human being exists.
And how mowing your lawn, leaving a light on, throwing away a piece of paper, moves humanity a step closer to that point.
The financial component of the rant, by the way, is about how valuing resources in terms of an infinite, unending fabrication (currency) is problematic.
We can always get more $. We cannot always get more gas.
Which is why valuing gas in terms of $ is moronic; there is no way to create a sensible $ value for gasoline...except to be shortsighted and doltish.
Like I said in the rant. We can price gasoline based upon what it takes to obtain it and arrive at a $4 value. OR we can look at the total finite amount of gasoline available to humanity, ever, and put a value on that then use division to arrive at what a gallon costs.
When you look at the value, price, of gas in terms of production? $4 a gallon.
When you look at the value, price of gas in terms of it being a finite resource?
Well, what happens when you divide infinity?
See, J, you fail to realize one of the singular principlees of physics. We can neither create nor destroy matter. We don't simply use up a resource, then poof it no longer exists. That is oversimplifying the case. Chemical reactions do occur, but the same amount of matter still exists just in different forms. As a planet, we have two never ending sources ( for all intents and purposes billions and billions of years is never ending) of energy that we haven't even come close to properly utilizing, those being the sun and geothermal energies. And when it comes to materials, you are shortsighted there also. Once again, for all intents and purposes we have never ending supplies of strong construction metals and concrete. Plastic is merely our lazy way out. Lubrication can easily be performed with vegetable oils and other naturally occuring lubricants. You greatly underestimate the ingenuity of human kind. Contrary to popular belief, the sky isn't falling.
The only real resources that are finite that you can complain about are water and land. These are the two that will really come to bite us in the ass as the third world countries continue their population booms. Simple modern comforts be damned, when push comes to shove they can be replaced.
Jay, you're talking about basically Victorian-era obligations to be responsible for all mankind's benefit. When you boil it down, you're proclaiming that my use of anything impacts you and others, so I'm in some part responsible for that. Which is fine, as a position.
What you're failing to recognize is what I've been trying to point out to you, that whole MASSIVE genre of Victorian Literature which involves one member of society who has taken it upon himself to define what is and isn't human for himself, the monster who is simply applied Victorian morals to a skewed perspective of whom one is obligated to.
You're arguing for the greater good, without asking who defines it. You're taking it for granted, when even your greater good leads to the extinction of the species. You do recognize that, yes?
That in the vaccuum of your argumentative position, you're putting forth People Survive over everything? Which leads to overpopulation and food shortages?
"We can neither create nor destroy matter. We don't simply use up a resource, then poof it no longer exists."
That is demonstrably false. Burn a gallon of gasoline. Poof! It no longer exists. Sure, what actually happens is that it gives off energy and changes form. But what is important to note is that it is no longer gasoline. And given that we have a finite amount of petroleum eventually there will be no more gasoline.
"Once again, for all intents and purposes we have never ending supplies of strong construction metals and concrete."
No we do not. Yes, we can recycle metal. But that quantity of metal is itself finite. There is a finite amount of copper on Earth.
"You greatly underestimate the ingenuity of human kind."
This is the ingenuity of human kind:
Q: What happens when we run out of gasoline?
A: We find replacement A.
Q: What happens when we run out of replacement A?
A: We find replacement B.
Q: What happens when we run out of replacement B?
A: We find replacement C.
Q: What happens when we run out of replacement C?
on, and on, and on without ever recognizing that at some point it stops and we all die.
That's not ingenuity. That's repeatedly slamming your dick into a sliding glass door with the hope that next time it won't hurt.
"Jay, you're talking about basically Victorian-era obligations to be responsible for all mankind's benefit. When you boil it down, you're proclaiming that my use of anything impacts you and others, so I'm in some part responsible for that. Which is fine, as a position."
Oh, that's the misunderstanding.
I'm not arguing for an obligation or responsibility. I'm not doing ethics. Ethics is dumb.
I'm trying to get people to recognize the facts of the situation.
There is a finite amount of petroleum, of gasoline. When we run out we have no more. And every gallon used brings us a gallon closer to having none.
It's up to individuals to decide what they want to do with that information.
I'm just attemping to rip appart that veil of ignorance which says "we're fine" and replace it with a recognition of the finite nature of Earth's resources.
Because I do not think that people fully understand the reality of the situation.
They're preoccupied with other things, you see, and they don't ever really think about it.
And now we're back to YOUR fundamental misunderstanding.'
People do NOT think like that. it's not that they don't think about it, it's that they have consciously decided to ignore it and deal with the conequences.
Back to Kyle's first post. People are fundamentally lazy.
I'm resorting to hard core tactics to put an end to this, by the way.
Follow the uncoded link, boys and girls-
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/02/nanoengineers-create.html
I fully understand that we are burning oil faster than the earth can produce it. I don't deny that. I also don't believe that no more gas, no more plastic, no more copper will bring about the downfall of all of mankind. To believe this is asinine.
We have had access to plastic and electricity for less than a single percentage of the history of man. How could the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Sumerians have ever survived without such necessities?
And to the other point, the one resource that modern man has had access to for a proportionally long time that has come up in this mess, metals. There isn't even close to a shortage on metals, nor will there ever be in the foreseeable future. Sure we may run out of a specific ore eventually, but remember that more than one metal can fulfill a purpose. If, and this is a big if, we were to run out of new metals to harvest, there would be massive collections of scrap metals that could be melted down and reused, and it would quickly become a business to do such.
Trust me, as soon as it becomes financially viable to dig through landfills and other waste collections, we as a society will do so to reuse that which we have tossed aside.
As I said earlier, the only real scarce resources we have today are land and fresh water. We will run out of those long before our species is wiped out due to exhausted oil supplies.
Actually, what's driving the ENTIRE conversation is the scarcest of resources, despite it's abundance.
Time.
Lifespan.
We're going over ground about whether or not we'll be here.. and how we'll leave our impression here once we do leave.. etc.
"We have had access to plastic and electricity for less than a single percentage of the history of man. How could the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and Sumerians have ever survived without such necessities?"
That's fair.
Though, we do have to consider the transition between these types of lifestyles. And while it is entirely speculation I'm inclined to think that human beings are more adept at moving forwards than backwards.
Hmm...
Not all people will have to move as far backwards as you may think, though. We obviously will, but there are tribes in the Amazon who still have yet to interact with the outside world. There are still people in remote parts of third world countries that are self sufficient, relying only on renewable resources.
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