Working landscapes, environmental correctness

According to a 2001 agricultural economic report, “urban expansion claimed more than 1 million acres per year between 1960 and 1990″ in the United States, and that expansion follows one of two two routes: 1. expansion of urban areas or 2. large-lot development (greater than 1 acre per house). (Heimlich 2001)

 

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Land trusts throughout the United States have reacted to this trend of the loss of agricultural land to urban developers by working to protect farms and ranches (and some mixed-use tree farm operations) by creating easements for them as “working landscapes.” For purposes of discussion, forests have been teased out from the farm and ranching portion of ‘working landscapes’ since even, “Tree plantations are more biodiverse [than an annual crop], even though such plantations may be less complex than a ‘wild’ stand.” (Dekker-Robertson 1998)

Let’s not fool ourselves, no perfect solution exists (whether it be market-driven, government mandated or mixed enterprise) to our environmental needs for open space. On the contrary, compromises must be found. No right and perfect answer exists; only “good enough” exists.

At first glance, the creation of working landscapes appear environmentally correct. One would have thought allowing ranching and farming families to stay in business and ostensibly ward off urban encroachment would have been a good thing. After all, they are our neighbors and as such they hold a special place in our hearts (mine included). Now, I’m not as certain, at least from an ecologic or economic vantage point. Working landscapes now appear to be a form of environmental correctness.

What impresses me about the “working landscapes” solution is that it is neither government mandated nor is it funded by tax dollars (except to the degree that land trusts are tax-exempt as 501.C.3s). Farmers and/or ranchers who agree to a land trust’s requirements to maintain a working landscape bolster the land’s economic production.

What concerns me regarding “working landscapes” is that agriculture is arguably the most ecologically disruptive activities we humans engage in. There is no question that we are better off due to the invention of agriculture. Yet, we have become more efficient at growing food and fiber which means fewer acres are needed to grow food per capita. The upshot then is, saving a ranch or farm may not be our wisest course of action and freeing the land up for other uses (even urbanization) may actually be beneficial. As a result, working landscapes may not be better for our environment than urban development.

Proponents give an array of arguments for preserving, protecting, and maintaining working landscapes. (Arizona Land and Water Trust n.d.) (National Park Service 2008) (Morse 2010) These include preventing:

1. Loss of regional identity, distinctiveness, and character and its corollary loss of context for stories linking people to the land and an estrangement from the landscapes sustaining us

2. Unraveling of traditional social/economic relationships to the land and loss of special products of place

3. Loss of models in sustainable landscapes and living cultures

4. Fragmented landscapes

5. Loss of biological diversity

6. Food insecurity

7. Climate change


Below are my responses to each of these arguments and why I think they are overblown.

1. Loss of regional identity, etc.

Not just in the U.S. but also worldwide, the stories and the character of the land and those who work it are being lost. This comes as a byproduct of progress, the homogenization of time and place. Since humans began trading with one another and thus specializing in the products we did best, we have lost the ability and knowledge of how things are made. We have lost the ability to fashion projectile points from rock. The Stone Age did not come to an end from lack of stones; they were replaced by other and better materials and made into new products. Maintaining working landscapes to prevent loss of regional identity, distinctiveness, and character is, at best, a rear-guard effort that will devolve into a situation where tourists will stop to interact with docents who will explain how it used to be done. In other words, I believe that the working landscapes will become anachronisms


2. The unraveling of traditional social/economic relationships to the land and loss of special products of place.

The second reason to prevent loss of social/economic relationships for those “special products of the place” aligns itself closely to the first argument of preventing loss of place. Prevention again is a rear-guard action. As has been happening for the last ten thousand years because of trade and specialization, places are becoming more similar and less distinctive. Farmers, displaced from the ‘Euxine Lake’ when the sea level rose and broke through the Hellespont, brought their seeds with them, so Northern Europe lost its special products of place when the farmers planted the newer emmer and einkorn wheat grains. (Ridley 2010) The items we treasure as distinctive to place may not be as permanent as we would prefer to believe. Just because something is what we happen to have in our memory does not mean that it has always been that way.

As for those special products of place, we no longer manufacture Acheulian hand axes. After all Acheulian hand axes used to be quite special; the most important item for people, no matter the place, for one million years. (Ridley 2010) Yet, we no longer fret that no one uses them anymore. Once an item or process has been replaced, we have to move on–I do not see how farming and ranching is any different.


3. Loss of models in sustainable landscapes and living cultures.

The term “sustainable” is the term du jour and means many things to many people. Yet the loss of this “sustainable landscape” stems from its inability to provide an income sufficient to ward off other encroaching income streams: farming/ranching became unsustainable from an economic point of view. That is the land succumbs to its “highest, best use.” Rather than being something to mourn, the trade from one use to another may be a natural outcome toward greater sustainability. By trading land for money, the rancher or farmer may prove to be better off than before. “Interdependence of the world through trade is the very thing that makes modern life as sustainable as it is,” says Matt Ridley, “suppose your local wheat farmer tells you that last year’s rains means he will have to cut his flour delivery in half. You will have to go hungry.” Today, you benefit from a global marketplace; “in which somebody somewhere has something to sell you so there are rarely shortages, only modest price fluctuations.” (Ridley 2010)

“Economists have long recognized the welfare gains from specialization and trade,” wrote Steve Sexton on the Freakonomics website. “The case for specialization is perhaps nowhere stronger than in agriculture, where the costs of production depend on natural resource endowments, such as temperature, rainfall, and sunlight, as well as soil quality, pest infestations, and land costs. Different crops demand different conditions and vary in their resilience to shocks. So California, with mild winters, warm summers, and fertile soils produces all U.S.-grown almonds and 80 percent of U.S. strawberries and grapes. Idaho, on the other hand, produces 30 percent of the country’s russet potatoes because warm days and cool nights during the season, combined with rich volcanic soils, make for ideal growing conditions.” (Sexton 2011)


4. Fragmented landscapes.

This argument makes little sense. Farming and ranching patch quilts our landscape. Farming is a disruption of a natural landscape (often through deforestation) to grow food or fiber. Today, much of our fiber, though not our food, can be made from petroleum products with a much smaller footprint than agriculture. Urban areas need much less space compared to agriculture. The urban areas in the United States occupy about 3 percent of the U.S. whereas agricultural land occupies nearly 50 percent. (Frey 1995) It would seem more advantageous to have land revert to its natural state through use of greenbelts around urban areas.


5. Loss of biological diversity.

This argument aligns with the previous: the loss of biological diversity already happened when the area changed to agriculture. Agriculture fragments and disrupts natural habitats. In addition, predators to the crop, flock or herd (which are often displaced by the agriculture pursuit) are subdued through mechanical and chemical means. Maintaining working landscapes means ensuring the loss of biological diversity, not preventing it.


6. Food insecurity.

The desire of the land trusts is to protect small family farms and ranches because they are close by and therefore can provide food and fiber. Steve Sexton, writing on the Freakonomics website says, “[I]mplicit in the argument that local farming is better for the environment than industrial agriculture is an assumption that a ‘relocalized’ food system can be just as efficient as today’s modern farming. That assumption is simply wrong. Today’s high crop yields and low costs reflect gains from specialization and trade, as well as scale and scope economies that would be forsaken under the food system that locavores endorse.” (Sexton 2011)

And, as noted by Jesse Ausubel, this argument does not stand up: “For centuries, farmers expanded cropland faster than population grew, and thus cropland per person rose. When we needed more food, we ploughed more land, and fears about running out of arable land grew. But fifty years ago, farmers stopped plowing up more nature per capita. Meanwhile, growth in calories in the world’s food supply has continued to outpace population, especially in poor countries. Per hectare, farmers lifted world grain yields about 2 percent annually since 1960. Two percent sounds small but compounds to large effects: it doubles in 35 years and quadruples in 70.

“Vast frontiers for even more agricultural improvement remain open. On the same area, the average world farmer grows only about 20% of the corn or beans of the top Iowa farmer, and the average Iowa farmer lags more than 30 years behind the yields of his most productive neighbor. Top producers now grow more than 20 tons of corn per hectare compared with a world average for all crops of about 2. From one hectare, an American farmer in 1900 could provide calories or protein for a year for 3 people. In 1999 the top farmers can feed 80 people for a year from the same area. So farmland again abounds, disappointing sellers who get cheap prices per hectare almost everywhere.” (Ausubel 1999)

Lastly, the United States Department of Agriculture is not sounding the full alarm, yet: “[Urban expansion] is not seen as a threat to most farming, although it may reduce production of some high-value or specialty crops. [emphasis added] The consequences of continued large–lot development may be less sanguine, since it consumes much more land per unit of housing than the typical suburb.” (Heimlich 2001)


7. Climate change.

Preventing climate change (by proclaiming his pet project prevents it) seems to be the last bastion of the scoundrel. Whereas it used to be that everything caused pollution, it now gets weighed by its “carbon footprint.” Sexton says this about the advisability of small farms for lowering carbon emissions, “The Harvard economist Ed Glaeser estimates that carbon emissions from transportation don’t decline in a locavore future because local farms reduce population density as potential homes are displaced by community gardens. Less-dense cities mean more driving and more carbon emissions. Transportation only accounts for 11 percent of the carbon embodied in food anyway, according to a 2008 study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon; 83 percent comes from production.”

Summary

So, to a Physiocrat or Romantic, preservation of so-called working landscapes may make sense. They preserve viewscapes, allow a traditional way of life to continue (ranching and farming), help our agricultural neighbors survive in these difficult economic times, and help maintain a region’s distinctiveness and character.

However, from an ecological and economic perspective maintaining agricultural holdings makes very little sense. “The worst thing for the environment is farming,” says Dr. Pamela Ronald, “It doesn’t matter if it is organic [or conventional]…You have to go in and destroy everything.” (Voosen, 2010) We currently use nearly 40% of Earth’s ice-free land for our food and fiber needs. According to one source, that’s an “area 60 times larger than the combined area of all the world’s cities and suburbs.” (Wilcox 2011)

If the area figure cited is even close to true (and it appears that it’s close to the mark), then it is more beneficial to allow farms and ranches to revert to wildland (and urbanized area), especially if they are not economically viable.


Sources

 

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If California’s timber industry falls, will anyone hear it?

Lands owned by state and federal government now contribute little to California’s wood supply (see the graphic below). Private landowners (the green area) now carry nearly all the burden for California’s timber harvesting and its wood demand. (Source: California Forestry Association CA Timber Harvest Statistics 1978-2009.)

As previously noted on this site:

Our California forests have the capacity to produce all the wood we need and export some as well, yet we import 75% of our wood. You can bet the wood we import wasn’t harvested under restrictions as comprehensive as those within California’s Forest Practices Act. Did any of the harvests have a Timber Harvesting Plan that took water and wildlife into consideration?

And just how much wood do we Californians consume? According to a paper published by the University of California at Berkeley, Californians used somewhere around 8.5-9 billion board-feet in 1999. Given that CA’s consumption grew by ~3 to 4 BBF from 1990 to 1999, we may currently consume 11-12 BBF. How much do we harvest in California? According to data from the California Forestry Association, about 1.6 BBF, i.e., about 15 percent of what we use, leaving 85 percent to come from other places.

The Hunger Games

The day after Thanksgiving when we think to ourselves, “Wow, I really ate too much,” seems apropos for considering how the rest of the world eats. This infographic shows the highest 20 and lowest 20 countries by calories consumed per person. Roll your cursor over a country’s number to see the calories per person and the percent of income paid for those calories. A good example to start with might be Israel (3540 calories per head and 17.9% of income) and the Palestinian Territories (2130 calories per head and 66.0% of income). The United States weighs in at 3770 calories per head and an average food cost 6.9% of income.

Visualizing The World’s Calorie Consumption

A visualization of the 20 highest and lowest calorie consuming countries compared with those same countries’ percent of income spent on food. Built by Food Service Warehouse.
Source: Food Service Warehouse

Food Service Warehouse says “The calories consumed by country (per capita) data comes from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN). The percent income spent on food comes from various household expenditure surveys (conducted independently by country by various research bodies) which are the most useful and reliable measure of this type of countrywide statistic.”

The infograhic is a snapshot; we have progressed over the last 200 and especially the last 35-50 years. “The daily food intake in developing countries has increased,” wrote Bjorn Lomborg in the Guardian (2001), “from 1,932 calories in 1961 – barely enough for survival – to 2,650 calories in 1998, and is expected to rise to 3,020 by 2030. Likewise, the proportion of people going hungry in these countries has dropped from 45% in 1949 to 18% today, and is expected to fall even further, to 12% in 2010 and 6% in 2030. Food, in other words, is becoming not scarcer but ever more abundant.”

The the United States Department of Agriculture assessed the state of world food security in 2007. Their report echos Lomborg’s words:

The rise in global per capita food consumption during the last few decades has been largely driven by rising consumption in developing countries. At the global level, per capita calorie consumption (all food available for consumption) increased by 17 percent from 1970 to 2005. Daily per capita calorie consumption in developed countries increased nearly 9 percent since 1970 to 3,418 in 2005. While consumption in developing countries was much lower than that in developed countries, 2,722 calories in 2005, it rose at a much faster rate during that 35-year period, more than 27 percent. (Food Security Assessment, 2007  GFA-19, Economic Research Service/USDA)

Since 1970, food availability has increased more rapidly in developing countries

The world is not perfect, and 925 million people face malnutrition every day. Yet, we have made progress. Instead of more and hungrier people we (through the green revolution and other advancements) have forced the trend down. Let us give thanks.

7 Billion Reasons to be Thankful

Last month, the world welcomed the birth of Danica Camacho of the Philippines.[i] The United Nations chose her to represent the arrival of the seven billionth person on Earth. And, even though the UN picked Halloween, this event is more in keeping with Thanksgiving.

Danica has inherited a better world than her mother.

She has been born into a healthier, wealthier, safer, and better-educated world. A world her grandparents and great-grandparents never dreamed of. Today’s average Filipino is twice as rich and lives 18 more years than the average Filipino of 1961.[ii][iii] Today’s average Filipino mother has nearly four fewer births than a 1961 mother.

Please note that I am not saying that she has it good. Danica certainly does not have it as good as an American baby; the average American’s income is nearly 15 to 30 times greater than an average Filipino’s (depending on the method used to compare incomes).

I am saying baby Danica was born into a world whose people (compared with 1961) are richer, healthier, happier, with a lower birth rate and exceedingly better off than 100 years ago.

Little Danica will probably be healthier than her mother due to increased availability of vaccinations, sanitary facilities, and clean water. She will have 70 percent less chance of contracting malaria than someone had only twenty-five years ago.

Danica will probably live in a city; today, more than half our planet’s population lives in an urban area. According to the United Nations Population Fund, cities “can deliver education, health care and other services” efficiently, due to compactness and that can relieve stress on natural habitats.[iv]

She will probably own a cell phone, since 80 percent of Filipinos already do.[v] In her developing country, Danica will be able to use her phone to find the best places to market her goods or services and where to find the best prices for what she needs. “Data services such as mobile-phone-based agricultural advice, health care and money transfer could provide enormous economic and developmental benefits,” wrote Tom Standage in The Economist.[vi]

She will probably go to school and be literate. “More than four-fifths of the world’s population can now read and write,” wrote Charles Kenney in Foreign Policy magazine, “And progress in education has been particularly rapid for women, one sign of growing gender equity.”[vii]

In fact, the world she entered is better than just six years ago and, given our current trend, extreme poverty (defined as less than a 1985 dollar a day), could be gone by 2035.[viii] A report issued by the Brookings Institution estimated “that between 2005 and 2010, the total number of poor people around the world fell by nearly half a billion people, from over 1.3 billion in 2005 to under 900 million in 2010.”[ix]

While you may scoff that far too many still live in soul-crushing poverty, the world is better. Better, by definition, is better. Instead of the world’s poor losing ground to being poorer, sicker, less well off, they are healthier, wealthier, and more prosperous than even ten years before.

That trend marks a first in our world’s history and we should give thanks this Thanksgiving season. Of course politicians and the high priests of Green theology can reverse the trend with calls to burn carbohydrates (biofuels often made from food) instead of hydrocarbons (oil and gas) for energy; thus driving up the price of food for those least able to pay for such claptrap. “I’m sorry about taking food out of your mouth, but we need to curb global warming for your own good.”

Let us give thanks for a world moving, for now, in the right direction. Although no one would argue the world is perfect, the strides made are striking. Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Note: Many of the numbers used in this article came from the World Bank. And others from www.gapminder.org, the brainchild of Swedish doctor Hans Rosling. Gapminder exhibits trends by having circles (representing countries) move in relation to two variables over time. It has some ready-to-go graphs, such as “The Wealth & Health of Nations,” that will whet your appetite for more.

Footnotes:

[i] CSMonitor.com As world welcomes ‘7 billionth baby,’ UN says empowering women is key to stability (http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2011/1031/As-world-welcomes-7-billionth-baby-UN-says-empowering-women-is-key-to-stability )

[ii] In 1961, the average income per person (GDP per head) in the Philippines was around $1623 per person per year and the average life expectancy was 54 years (6.95 children/woman). Today, the average GDP per head has nearly doubled to $3204 (that is adjusted for inflation) and average lifespan is 72 years (3.03 babies/woman). In 1961 the average rate of birth per 1000 was 44. In 2011, it is around 25. And, 1961 was way better than 1911 where the Filipino GDP per head was $980 with average life expectancy of 31 years (5.94 children per woman). (Source: Gapminder desktop and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/world/india-leads-push-to-7-billion/)

[iii] According to the world bank little Danica’s lifespan average is 71.5 years which is identical to the world average for a female born today (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.FE.IN/countries/1W-PH?display=graph)

[iv] UNFPA Urbanization: A Majority in Cities: Population & Development (http://www.unfpa.org/pds/urbanization.htm (accessed 11/4/2011)

[vi] Mobile marvels | The Economist, (http://www.economist.com/node/14483896 )

[vii] Kenney, C. Opening Gambit: Best. Decade. Ever. Foreign Policy Magazine, (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/08/16/best_decade_ever )

[viii] Ridley, M. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, p 15, 2010, HarperCollins (http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/rational-optimist-how-prosperity-evolves)

[ix] Chandy, Laurence, G Gertz, Poverty in Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty from 2005 to 2015, Brookings Institution. 2011 (http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2011/01_global_poverty_chandy.aspx)

Postcard from the Earth: What a Wonderful World

I hear babies cry. I watch them grow.
They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know.
And I think to myself: what a wonderful world.

What a Wonderful World by G. Weiss, G. Douglas, and B. Thiele

It’s photos such as these, time Lapse views of Earth from space, that makes one grateful to be alive today.

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Will Living Simply Help Save the World?

Jane Goodall 3
Image via Wikipedia

Last month, famed primatologist Jane Goodall was quoted on the Huffington Post as saying, “The world is in a horrible mess … We need to starting changing (sic) the way we live, from the clothes we buy to the food we eat. We need to change our greed and materialism. We need a critical mass to realize that we need money to live, rather than to live for money.” Or, to put that another way, “Live simply, so that others (including non-human species) may simply live.”

Now I have enormous respect for Dr. Goodall; her studies into the habits of chimpanzees shifted our thinking about primates, but I disagree with her assertion. As counterintuitive as it sounds, it is because we want to buy more stuff that our world even becomes ever more sustainable.

Dr. Goodall may base her statement in logic and The Litany: that is, we are killing ourselves because the more of us there are, the faster we consume the natural resources we humans depend upon for our very survival.

We have heard The Litany for so long it becomes almost calming.

“The water is polluted and the air is worse. We’re washing away topsoil from our farmland; and what we aren’t washing away, we’re paving over. The more technology we manufacture, the less livable becomes our world. Humans produce too many babies. Our exploding population increases poverty and misery and decreases habitat for every other living thing that we share this tiny and fragile world with.”

The only thing is, The Litany has been with us for thousands of generations. Consider this second-century quote from the early-Christian writer, Tertullian, “We are burdensome to the world, the resources are scarcely adequate for us…”

This is not to say that, collectively, we do not affect our world significantly–we do–in good and bad ways. I am only saying that our impact is decreasing due to our acquisitiveness.

You see, the more we trade goods and services, the more we trade ideas as well. Matt Ridley, author of “The Rational Optimist,” says ideas “have sex.” Like DNA recombining to make unique individuals, bits of ideas cross-fertilize with others to make better ways of doing things. “In a nutshell,” Ridley writes [PDF], “the most sustainable thing we can do, and the best for the planet, is to accelerate technological change and economic growth.”

It will be technological change (caused by trade) that makes the world more habitable for all its species, and not a decision to spend less on luxuries. History bears this out:

  • Land was freed up from agricultural production not by eating less meat, but by using machines for farming (since machines don’t need pasture).
  • It was the discovery of how to use coal, instead of wood, to power machines that saved forests, not from deciding to use less wood.
  • More land was freed up by making each acre more productive via synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, not by fasting once a week.
  • Whales were saved from extinction, not by lowering the amount of whale oil one bought, but by people buying the newer and more affordable kerosene (derived from coal) for lighting.
  • Even habitats can benefit from trade. According to Susan Hecht writing in the publication, Nature, El Salvador’s forests have increased, not shrunk, due to globalization, Salvadoreans working abroad send remittances to relatives so they no longer have to clear forests for subsistence farming.

While logic and The Litany tell us that we will run out of resources very soon, humanity’s track record for thousands of generations shows the world has become less polluted and more resilient. Prophets have preached “the end is near” since the dawn of man–they still do. But, far from being the world’s executioner, globalization and the consumerism it cultivates, are its salvation.

So, will living simply help save the world? In a word, no.

Living simply will simply not save the world. But globalization will.

 

Fried Green Sustainability

 

English: The cover of the second edition of Th...
Image via Wikipedia

In the movie, Fried Green Tomatoes, Cathy Bates waits for a parking space only to have it taken by two female twenty-somethings who blow her off with, “Face it lady, we’re younger and faster.” She rams her tank of a car into their tinier VW convertible. Bates’ parting shot is, “Face it, girls. I’m older and I have more insurance.”

If one lives long enough, one can gain perspective from living and observing. It may boil down to “been there, done that, and I have more insurance.”

I was eighteen when the Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the moon and photographed an earthrise.

Their iconic photo taken from the moon, with the earth looking like a blue-green spaceship, galvanized my Boomer generation around the environmentalist cause.

That photo shows how finite the world is, and it sounds counter-intuitive to argue that anything on it is limitless. Resources and energy need to be conserved if we are to survive on this small orb spinning in the vastness of space, do they not?

What cannot be seen in that photo is the unlimited collective intelligence of the people that inhabit that amazingly beautiful place.

“The availability of almost everything a person could want or need has been going rapidly upwards for 200 years and erratically upwards for 10,000 years before that,” Matt Ridley points out in The Rational Optimist. “This generation of human beings has access to more calories, watts, lumen-hours, square feet, gigabytes, megahertz, light years, nanometres, bushels per acre, miles per gallon, food miles, air miles and, of course, cash than any that went before.”

The counter-argument says our resources are part of a zero-sum game, if we humans become better off, other species are worse off—this is the “Environmentalist’s Paradox.”

Bear with me; I’m going to argue that the trend Dr. Ridley extols will continue, and our non-renewable resources are nearly limitless. As a result, I am not a “live simply, so others can simply live” kind of guy. Not that I am against living simply or witty aphorisms, but that it is wide of the mark. To paraphrase P.J. O’Rourke, our resources are not like a pizza, if I eat too many slices you won’t have to eat the Domino’s box.

The end of our resources has been foretold before. In 1865, the British economist, Stanley Jevons predicted the end of coal. In his book, The Coal Question, he wrote that Britain’s easy ride was over and soon coal, which, powered their industrial revolution, would be gone. It was “physically impossible” to continue. Therefore Britain needed to decide “between brief greatness and longer continued mediocrity.” William Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, found Jevons’ argument so compelling he begged Parliament to pay down their national debt while they still could.

The ink had barely dried on Jevons’ book when the output of coal rose and the price fell. The first oil well was sunk in Pennsylvania six years later. Today, Britain still produces coal.

Jevons assumed it was coal that was needed to fuel their industrial revolution, rather it was energy, and because the human mind knows no limits, there’s a lot of energy in the world. For instance, right now, in the United States, natural gas in shale deposits holds the promise of energy for another 250 years at present consumption levels. Each year, the world will “use about 450 exajoules (about 1250 billion kilowatt-hours of energy) of fossil fuel,” Matt Ridley wrote in the Times of London, “Total oil, gas and coal resources in the Earth’s crust are estimated at more than 570,000 exajoules.” In other words, we have over a millennium’s worth of energy left in just fossil fuels.

I may not change your mind to believe that the world will continue to have enough energy and resources. As the late Julian Simon said, “First, humanity’s condition will improve in just about every material way. Second, humans will continue to sit around complaining about everything getting worse.”

But for me, not only is the glass half-full, there’s evidence that it’s fuller than ever before and everyone will have more to drink soon. Think about that the next time you hear someone say, “Our current rate of consumption is unsustainable.”

Trust me; I’m older and have more insurance.

Footnotes

[iii] According to “The Shale Gas Shock” by Ridley, “World energy consumption is less than 500 exajoules per year, equivalent to approximately 500 TCF (trillion cubic feet of natural gas). Thus recoverable shale gas resources of, say, 8,000 Tcf (i.e., 20-30% of in-place resources) would last at least a century if their consumption displaced half of conventional gas use (which is 23% of total energy use). In January 2011 the International Energy Agency raised its estimate of how long world gas reserves will actually last to quarter of a millennium.”

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