Are things getting better or worse, in terms of personal lifestyle and the broader environment ? Lomborg focuses on GDP as a measure of increasing personal wealth. However, this has been criticised for incorporating "defensive" expenditures - eg. that on dealing with accidents and providing additional security. There are measures of economic welfare which in fact posit a decline_ in lifestyle. Certainly, there are some value judgements built into these assessments - but when you consider that in principle the typical Japanese citizen is as "wealthy" as the typical Australian, and compare the density of their cities and associated lifestyle, you begin to see problems.
John gave a talk about the nature of growth, comparing our current situation to the natives of Easter Island, and suggesting the need for individual wealth through a smaller population rather than a larger population.
I noted that a larger population means that development and distribution costs can be shared between more people. Some things will become cheaper with increased population. But, equally, things which were scarce to start with_ will become scarcer - land is one example.
But land does invite more careful examination. Partly its our desire to hold onto our quarter acre blocks which prompts the spreading of the city. David, however, thought it was zoning laws which force housing to be in quarter acre blocks; zoning laws force the city to spread out when it need not do so.
Are things better or worse ? David thought that our expectations have inreased, and that's the effect; James thought that we are now less able to afford a home and raise a family. I thought it unclear; but certainly, in terms of how compact the city was a few decades ago, we are more likely to have to travel good distances to where we going.
But there is the idea that "the division of labour is limited only by the size of the market" - this focuses on what is made possible through increasing population. And David said that immigrant do not necessarily take away jobs - they can generate them through their need for services. There's going to be the two factors, but I'm not sure they will necessarily cancel ...
Not that I want to have a go at migrants - it may make sense to have a migrant intake for the sakes of being humane, regardless of the effects on the economy - but there seems a presumption that the economy will always provide full employment, that it will "make use of" the whole population seeking work. This seems to be an assumption to me - I suspect there's another variable determining what goes on. After all, we do have unemployment - real unemployment, not just that caused by the bubbling of the economy with between between jobs for short intervals.
Lomborg talks about the litany, and that problems are overstated. And perhaps he's onto something. He does provide some insidious examples of data massaging. But he does not engage with the issue of just how concerned we should be with issues - if we are becoming more concerned about issues as the world is becoming less risky, perhaps we're catching up with how concerned we should have been all along. Rates of change are different to absolutes.
David, however, said that Lomborg was focusing on the prioritisation of problems, rather than saying how concerned we should be about them, which is a standard economic way of looking at things. However, Lomborg does see fit to criticise "The Litany" - so it does seem an omission not to engage with the issue of how concerned we should be.
Speaking economically, Lomborg notes that the more wealthy a nation, the lower the pollution. This seems to prescribe we should just sit back and let increasing wealth solve the problems. However, there are two issues. The first is that the improving environment may be the result of improving government and regulation - and while these may correlate with wealth, there may be a point to pursuing them separately rather than "waiting" for wealth to fix the problem. Second, it could be that a differential of wealth provides the opportunity for the wealthier nations to "export" their pollution to poorer nations. So, rich countries can export their pollution to poorer countries as long as their are poorer countries - but its not clear what will happen when all countries are roughly on the same level.
There's food productivity and oil, which were somewhat linked. Lomborg talks about the agricultural productivity of land going up and up. But in Brian Fleay's book "decline of the age of oil", it talks about the declining energy productivity of land. In this sense, it seems to emphase the energy via fossil fuels - rather than the total energy budget, which must presumably use some sunlight in photosynthesis. David thought that this was misleading - we are getting more output per unit of land because we are putting in less labour and more energy - and we're doing this because it makes sense to do so, not because we're "running out".
David thought the comment that we've "only" managed to increase food production on track with population a strange one. If we made more food than required, we'd be wasting it.
Lomborg posits increasing food production with time. However, I have concerns about the costs of these increases. Soil might be degraded (people did think of soil erosion as an issue). Further, to the extent we are farming animals, intensive practices could be more cruel to the animals, and moving carcasses more rapidly through an abattoir can be unsafe and unhygenic; and using antibiotics in production is encouraging more resistant bugs to develop; using hormones is dangerous at worst and disconcerting at best. Further, intensive farming generated the mad cow disease problem.
Paolo and Chris bought organic foods, the free range foods; so at least in wealthy countries we have a clawback.
Lomborg talks about an ongoing supply of oil as more discoveries are made. However, Fleay talks about the new discoveries being either smaller amounts of oil per well, or taking more energy to extract. The "quality" of the reserves being found is diminishing. James noted there had been fraud through the over-statement of reserves by oil firms in order to maintain share prices.
Hugh suggested that western nations have decided to keep oil in the ground; people disagreed with this motive - for example, Thatcher closed down mines not to keep coal in the ground but because they were not economically viable. Apparently though, Chavez has limited oil production to keep a reserve for the future.
A major prediction of Fleay and others is the Hubbert curve - the idea that world oil production must peak and go into decline. Now, many people think that this is the reason why we've had a recent oil price increase. But, David viewed this as a short term effect, caused by particular current circumstances rather than an "in principle" inability to supply world oil needs. The current factors involve a limit on pumping capacity at oil wells, together with oil pumps being taken out of operation through arab conflict and Hurricanes around the Americas. Another factor would be the increasing Chinese demand for oil. But, as more pumps are built, David sees no short term limit on the oil provided to the planet - perhaps prices could even decline ?
David noted that there was lots of oil in oil sands and shale. However, I noted it is a lot more difficult to extract, and the process will probably be very polluting.
Fleay notes the "Energy Profit Ratio" (the energy required to release the energy contained in a given amount of oil) is in decline. However, the energy reqired to extract oil may not be a great proportion of operating costs. The cost of infrastructure, the cost of exploration and so on may be significant. Of course, you could say the cost of infrastructure is represented by the "contained energy of oil involved its production" - but I suspect you'd get a lot of energy out for a the energy involved in, say, fabricating an oil platform. Talking about the "value" of the oil rig in dollar terms separately to its energy cost may still be a more meaningful measure.
James noted that diminishing Australian reserves would impact on the Australian balance of payments. That's a separate issue to "world wide effects", but is nevertheless a significant local issue. David said that many nations have no oil of their own, but get by through trading for what they need. Australia could do similar - we would be as wealthy if we were purchasing oil, but we'd still get wealthier. He felt the statement "We won't be able to afford the oil" lacked meaning. The "contemporary position" seems to be that this lack of local oil will pull the economy negative - David says the economy will still grow, just not as much as otherwise.
Still, perhaps the Balance of Payments is an issue - that's a separate topic to debate. How "independent" vs. "interdependent" does our economy need to be in order to proper ? How "valuable" do our exports need to be ? Should we take some sort of strategic action ?
David also criticised the statement "oil demand will exceed supply". Economically, demand and supply must equal at the equilibrium price. It may be valid to say "the demand and supply curves will shift to result in significant price shocks".
Malthus predicted we'd be up against a wall for population, but predictions by himself and Ehrlich have not been validated. But there has to be a fundamental limit to how much material in the form of nutrients together with the fixed amount of sunlight falling that plants can convert. I wondered what it was. David thought that the number was so high as to be uninteresting. Certainly, it does start to look like "prophets of doom" need to properly engage with fundamental limits in order to make their cases - and they've been intellectually lazy in not doing so so far.
Wild fish stocks are being depleted. However, David felt this was caused through overfishing prompted by a "Tragedy of the Commons" situation, rather than us engaging with some fundamental limit over how much fish the oceans of the world can supply. It reminds us of how ineffective international institutions are in limiting the excesses of particular nations.
Lomborg does not distinguish between plantation forests and old-growth forests, and looks at changes in the proportion of the world's landmass put over to forests and other uses, while ignoring that transformation from old-growth forest to plantation forest and farming is going ahead at quite a rate.
David did not see the difference between the two types of forest; Chris and others said that old-growth forest had more biodiversity. David noted that Redwood forests are naturally occurring monocultures. It seemed to me that just because nature does strange things sometimes, that's no reason that we should. David then wondered why we were giving so much credit to the way nature had done things.
This prompted a discussion on the difference between "brown" and "green" issues, and also "deep ecology". "Brown" issues are the "local" environment - do we have parks ? Are our cities polluted ? "Green" issues are the "properly" green - the state of forests we might never visit. Going further than "Green" issues, we have "deep ecology" - the idea that nature has an intrinsic value of its own, regardless of whether we are in a position to appreciate that or not.
A further issue was Greenhouse warming - which we'll get to soon. Assuming the world does warm up, it will be a good thing for life overall. In this case, we must re-emphasise concern over Greenhouse warming as a "Brown" rather than a "Green" issue. It comes back to the definition of what an "environmental" issue is.
Yes, "life at large" may prosper. But many current animals will become extinct which otherwise would not have. Its a strange balance to draw. David did suggest we should place the equivalent of "Salmon Ladders" in order to facilitate the migration of species as climates change.
But, getting to Greenhouse issues. Here's a some issues which have either come up since Lomborg wrote his book or were ignored in that book.
Forests are not always in equilibrium with their environment, with growth of new material being balanced by the rotting of old material. The total biomass of a forest can grow, particularly if we have extra CO2 and/or other favourable conditions. The Amazon is known to be doing this.
If the world heats up and the Amazon declines in size - which could be caused by more sporadic rainfall - then this would release more CO2 as what was the Amazon rots, and we could have a runaway reaction (feedback loop).
Its important to realise that a rainforest is dependent on continuous rain - distribute the same amount of rain unevenly through the year, and the rainforest will decline. Climate change is not just "increases" in rain - it can be changes in the distribution over the year.
Certainly, "generic forests" improve with a "general" increase in rain, and we can expect an increase in growth. But "rainforests" are critically dependent on the annual distribution of rain.
While there's been an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere, it does not match what we'd expect through the industrial activity we do have. Some of it is absorbed into the oceans and increased biomass around the world. But that still leaves an increase in atmospheric CO2 - and we've not seen an increase in atmospheric temperatures.
James (and others ?) did point to other evidence of global warming separately to atmospheric temperature increases - retreating glaciers for example.
But recently it's become apparent that particulates in the atmosphere have made the world more refelective - so balancing out the greenhouse heating. And paradoxically, as we get better at reducing particulate pollution, the greenhouse effect will become more apparent.
Much methane is known to be stored as Methane Clathrate at the bottom of the ocean, and also in Siberia. Methane is a stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. A small man made temperature increase could trigger a runaway release of methane with a much larger temperature increase.
The sun heats up the equatorial region disproportionately. Left to itself, natural thermal transfer around the world would leave the equatorial region a lot hotter. However, the Gulf Stream "convects" heat northwards, heating up the UK and the surrounding area.
However, the operation of the Gulf Stream is dependendent on the water around the Ice Cap being salty, meaning the water sinks to the bottom of the ocean - and the melting of the icecaps could disrupt the Gulf Stream, with a dramatic effect on Europe.
As the oceans get hotter, this generates more hurricanes. These could have quite an impact. Tim Flannery says the total energy budget represented by hurricanes has been increasing.
David noted that there would be feedback effects which would work in the opposite direction. Certainly, a general temperature increase (along with increased CO2 of itself) would increase plant growth, which would absorb some of the CO2 increase. However, the Gulf Stream seems a particular phenomena which we could not expect to be replaced merely because we'd hope for such a replacement.
I've heard Tim Flannery say that there are "very few helpful feedback loops" or something similar. It sounds like this is statement operating from an awareness of the total number of possible positive and negative feedback loops. Yes, in this realm the earth's climatic effects may well be assymetric. Well, there have been dramatic naturally occuring climate changes.
I was concerned about the effect of rising ocean levels snuffing out Island nations. David felt it would be cheaper to resettle such people. I questioned the ability of international institutions to compensate people. David also suggested that change had made people who made horse carriages redundant. I suggested that carriage makers had implicitly taken an interest in the economic system around them, unlike Islanders; David suggested that Islanders were using microwave ovens and were participating in the world economic system in a similar fashion.
Bangladesh and coastal settlements were an issue; but we didn't seem to disagree enough for much detail to come out.
David, while not wanting to give priority to Island nations, nevertheless felt that Greenhouse warming should be managed. One idea he'd heard was growing fish in currently unpopulated oceans areas - their skeletons would drop to the bottom of the ocean and put away carbon as calcium carbonate.
David characterised Kyoto as an "agreement amongst wealthy nations excepting the US and Australia". Can't remember much else ...
These were not explicitly discussed, but I thought I'd throw them in for completeness.
Lomborg notes that prices of most commodities have gotten cheaper over time. This makes things unfortunate for third world countries who are in debt and need to export those commodities, but its an interesting notion - it flies in the face of predictions of "food shortages" - at least as measured by these prices.
What, after all, is price ? I see price as a way of comparing the value of different items. If commodity prices have gone down, they must have gone down compared to something else. Or is it meaningful to say the price of everything has gone down ?
Lomborg notes that there is lots of water, but it is unevenly spread. Further some arid nations get by on very little water per capita. In a very significant sense we could get by with less water. But it would hurt - there would be a significant transition cost. We could make really serious use of greywater - but it would be a helluva cost to retrofit so much household infrastructure.
Our allegergies are increasing. But it is not clear whether it is caused by "external" chemical factors or lifestyle changes. Here I agree with Lomborg.
Cancer fatalities are in decline, after you correct for age and other factors. However, an important factor is treatement. The stats could hide an increase in incidence, even if we are better at preventing fatalities. Regardless, you could say that the net impact of society is to reduce cancer deaths. But ... perhaps you could reduce them further with further changes to society.
Lomborg talks about the Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology equation. As a population becomes more affluent, its population will diminish. And its possible that technological improvements will act to reduce enviromental impacts as well as "letting us buldoze bigger areas".
Still, population projections are for a doubling of the world's population the next 100, to about 11 billion people (after which it should stabilise). But it is a matter of what is given and what is dependent. That's a lot more people. And a lot more of them are supposed to become affluent.