The Plundered Planet

Writing on NetGreen News, Paul Mackie, formerly of the World Resources Institute, provides a book review of Paul Collier‘s latest book, The Plundered Planet: Why We Must–and How We Can–Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. In general, he agrees with Oxford Economics Professor Collier’s assertion:

“The romantics (environmentalists) are right that we are seriously mismanaging nature and that our practices are indefensible. The ostriches (economists) are right that much of what is said about nature is ridiculously pious, casting the rich world as the villains and the rest of the world as their victims. But they are also each half wrong. Both will take us to oblivion, albeit by different routes.”


Professor Collier says they are “half wrong” because, (economists) believe nature is an asset “to be exploited for the benefit of mankind,” and well environmentalists (apparently) are rigidly pious.

According to the description on Professor Collier’s page:

“(We must confront) global mismanagement of nature. Proper stewardship of natural assets and liabilities is a matter of planetary urgency: natural resources have the potential either to transform the poorest countries or to tear them apart…(Collier) [o]ffers concrete suggestions for how to fix the problems–including global warming, food shortages, and violent conflict–that result from improper exploitation of natural resources…”


I will put Professor Collier’s book on my “to be read” list and give it a look. Not too long ago I would wholly have agreed with him.

Now, I think, in spite of our natures, we are taking far better care of the earth than ever before. I’m skeptical that the effects of food shortages and violent conflict are the result of “improper exploitation of natural resources.” People respond to incentives, if there is a demand for a good or service, producers react by trying to market that. Recall, the food shortages of 2008 were, in part, the result of the Kyoto Protocols causing nations to move toward biofuels which pulled farmland out of food production for biofuel (and caused deforestation for palm oil plantations). Technology, rather than being a force destroying the earth, has a benevolent effect as well.




One more thing about fixing the food shortages. Tim Worstall has this to say in a rebuke of Johann Hari’s speculation of the shortage’s cause:

The wise, omniscient and altruistic politicians and bureaucrats could send a fax to all farmers telling them to plant more. Signs could appear in every breadshop telling us all to eat our crusts.

Except, of course, those wise, omniscient and altruistic politicians and bureaucrats are precisely the fuckers that got us into the mess in the first place by insisting that we should put wheat into cars rather than people.

1.4 earths: sustainability and overshoot, or 6 earths and the moon for dessert

I like to think of myself as a good person of the Boy Scout variety–trustworthy, brave, kind, helpful, etc.–except without the homophobia. You probably like to think the same (of yourself, not me). Well, according to the Global Footprint Network’s “Footprint Calculator” it would take six earths if all 6.7 billion of us lived a wicked, self-absorbed, and self-indulgent lifestyle such as mine, or yours for that matter. Turns out my footprint falls within the average for an American. And, according to the Footprint Network, because of selfish people such as you and I, it takes 1.4 earths to support our sorry butts. In other words, they say you and I are taking more than our fair share through overharvesting of pretty much everything, and depleting the earth’s future cupboard as a result: we’re overdrawing the earth’s bank account and living on credit; we can do it for a short time but over the long-run it bankrupts the earth.

Shoot, maybe I’m not a good person. Already, I can hear the Footprint police shaking their organically carbon-neutral fingers at me, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Why can’t you be like the North Korean peasants? They live on just five per cent as much as you by eating only dried yak dung. Now turn around, put that bag of chips back and turn off the air conditioner, television, computer, washing machine, answering machine, lights, refrigerator, freezer, hair dryer, water heater, radio, MP3 player, everything that requires energy. And, while you’re at it…don’t breathe so much!” Sigh…oops, I put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, I guess I’d better go buy some carbon offsets; but if I buy offsets that means turning on something and that means using energy. Sigh…

Like the Global Footprint Network, Bill McKibben pessimistically sees limitations, “(W)e’re going to have to figure out how to stop focusing on our economies of growth, and start thinking about survival. That means embracing local, smaller-scale ways of living, like it or not.”

Others optimistically see limitless opportunities for humans and our globe. Optimism is a tough sell. Molly Ivins said, “It’s hard to argue against cynics–they always sound smarter than optimists because they have so much evidence on their side,” but she never met Matt Ridley, the Rational Optimist. He has evidence that says we need to keep going the way we’ve been going if we want to not simply survive but thrive. While McKibben tells us to slam on the brakes to keep the world from careening off the cliff; Ridley, with an Indiana Jones grins, says “Trust me. Floor the accelerator.”

In the foreword of his book, “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves,” Ridley writes, “I find that my disagreement is mostly with reactionaries of all political colours: blue ones who dislike cultural change, red ones who dislike economic change and green ones who dislike technological change…(H)uman progress has, on balance, been a good thing…(The world) is richer, healthier, and kinder too, as much because of commerce as despite it.”

You see, the more we trade goods and services, the more we trade ideas as well. Those ideas he says, “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 says, “the most sustainable thing we can do, and the best for the planet, is to accelerate technological change and economic growth.”

While cynics and pessimists may sound smarter, in the past they have been wrong about the future. Despite their warning Jeremiads of deprivation and doom, we live longer and better, and on far less land than ever before.

I’m feeling better about myself already.

Comment on a HuffPo column

Here’s a comment I posted on an opinion piece written by Richard Stuebi, The Petroleum Industry: Past the Tipping Point?

Interestingly, where it’s the minerals and non-renewable resources that should run out: oil, gold, aluminum, etc.; it’s been the renewable stuff that’s proven to be exhaustible: mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, cedars of Lebanon, gorillas. The paradox is that by using non-renewables, we are able to conserve the renewables. Perhaps we need to use more oil and natural gas? For instance, two-thirds of the wood used in the world goes toward cooking and heating in the developing world. Butane could replace that wood and drastically cut CO2 emissions and cut health problems caused by wood stoves.

Let’s not gush about our clean energy options


Estimates regarding the rate of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil blowout get spewier with each succeeding news cycle. The mess being made requires that we Americans consider what we are willing to pay—economically and environmentally— for energy.

I didn’t see President Obama’s live televised remarks to the nation on the BP oil spill but watched it online. He apparently chose not to use the speech I drafted, “Our Energy Future,” for his text. More’s the pity. He chose another path and the punditocracy are weighing in on how he said it and what he said or, more likely, didn’t say. It was a sober speech, part elegy and part jeremiad. I agreed with much of what he said: stanch the spill, help the Gulf Coast clean up and get back on its feet, investigate the blowout’s cause, tighten the regulatory oversight, and hold BP accountable.

Then our President went on set out his vision, “Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil… Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America’s innovation and seize control of our own (energy) destiny.”

It’s a nice vision, full of gumdrop trees and candy kisses where the air will be so pure from our clean energy that we would have to smoke six packs of cigarettes each day to remember what the air used to be like. In the oil-free America the air will be so clean that the sun will seem like it’s gotten a new lease on life, it will be so bright. That is, if we can see the sun for all of the photovoltaic panels that we will need to power our electric cars, electric SUVs, and electric pickup trucks; electric eighteen-wheeler trucks, electric trains, electric motorcycles and scooters, electric boats and ships, and electric planes and jets. You see, our transportation industry runs on oil and if we want to replace the high-density energy of petroleum with wind or solar we’re going to need a LOT of space.

So, instead of gumdrop trees where birds flit about, imagine 32,150 square miles of wind turbines that kill eagles and interrupt bird migrations. That is what is needed to meet California’s present electricity needs, which are in the neighborhood of 97,000 megawatts. Or, instead of candy-cane cactus, imagine 5,770 square miles of solar photovoltaic panels in the Mojave Desert (about 20% of the Mojave) disrupting habitats of endangered plants and animals. Imagine the new power transmission lines to deliver the electricity. Granted, to some extent, this is “inside-the-box thinking;” some PV panels can be put on rooftops so that not all the displacement would be on undeveloped land (One source I checked had put 27 PV panels on his average sized house in sun-rich Austin, TX. The panels produced about one-third of a typical family’s electricity use.).

Now imagine where those “guilt-free” “clean-energy” machines will be manufactured. If you said, “the United States of America,” thanks for playing; you may sit down. You’re wrong. Try China. So instead of getting our fossil fuel from countries such as Canada and Mexico (only 11% of our domestic oil supply comes from OPEC), we will get our batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines from China instead. Wind turbines, photovoltaics, and electric car batteries need rare-earth metals (such as lanthanum and neodymium) and China has a near monopoly on rare-earth mining. America’s one rare-earth mine closed in 2002. It’s not that rare-earth metals are terribly rare, it’s that mining for them leaves radioactive waste. China’s state-run economy won’t care about such concerns. It will ignore the short-term environmental consequences to lock up the market and get the (low-paying) jobs for growing its middle class.

So-called clean and green energy carries considerable downsides, just as fossil fuel does. Since all actions have consequences, costs and benefits have to be assayed. As that great Roman philosopher, Anonymous, once observed, “Res ea non est quae prandium gratuitum aquet.”

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.