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Bartlett ignores that solutions can grow exponentially, not just problems. See, for example:
http://unbridledspeculation.com/2011/03/17/the-exponential-gains-in-solar-power-per-dollar/
http://unbridledspeculation.com/2011/06/09/solar-cheaper-than-coal-in-3-5-years-ge-and-first-solar-think-so/

The Club of Rome made the same mistake in the 1970s.

See also:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

It's so sad how much despairing and conflict-promoting minisinformation is in this discussion.

Beyond that, there is room for quadrillions of humans in space habitats, and we've been able to build them (in theory) since the 1970s. You'd expect "nerds" might be more optimistic. Who is profiting from this despair?

Interesting points. You'd probably like Julian Simon's writings:
    http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

And this:
    http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php

Long term though, if we expand into space, we can get plenty of soalr power using big mylar mirrors.

And consider even this for current needs (though it perhaps questions your point on increasing energy use when better design sometimes outpaces growing demand):
    http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm
"Roughly one-third of the energy content of a gallon of gasoline produced from California wells is input from natural gas. Less than 2/3's is net energy (probably a lot less!). So I can get 24 miles in my ICE on a gallon of gasoline, or I can get 41 miles (at 300wh/mile) in my RAV4EV just using the energy to refine that gallon. Alternatively - energy use (electricity and natural gas) state wide goes DOWN if a mile in a RAV4EV is substituted for a mile in an ICE!"

The primary problem with our current system is externalities. If users of fossil fuels were paying the true cost of pollution, disease, defense, and risk, solar and wind would have been cheaper since the 1970s...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

Still, ironically, people have known since the 1940s or so how to make safer thorium nuclear power, but it was not developer precisely because it was safer (you can't easily make bombs with it).

As for the question you pose on moving forward socially, James P. Hogan had some ideas in "Voyage From Yesteryear":
    http://www.jamesphogan.com/books/info.php?titleID=29&cmd=summary
"The book has an interesting corollary. Around about the mid eighties, I received a letter notifying me that the story had been serialized in an underground Polish s.f. magazine. They hadn't exactly "stolen" it, the publishers explained, but had credited zlotys to an account in my name there, so if I ever decided to take a holiday in Poland the expenses would be covered (there was no exchange mechanism with Western currencies at that time). Then the story started surfacing in other countries of Eastern Europe, by all accounts to an enthusiastic reception. What they liked there, apparently, was the updated "Ghandiesque" formula on how bring down an oppressive regime when it's got all the guns. And a couple of years later, they were all doing it! So I claim the credit. Forget all the tales you hear about the contradictions of Marxist economics, truth getting past the Iron Curtain via satellites and the Internet, Reagan's Star Wars program, and so on."

Other ideas:
    http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science.html

Great points. Somewhat related:
    "What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream" by Noam Chomsky
    http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

And:
    http://disciplinedminds.com/

I liked the other reply, too.

Still, it is true that worries about potential crisies can lead to innovation as responses:
    http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

So there is a process going on, even if the media may be driven by more extreme dynamics.

http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004123.html
http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-with-solar-power-wind.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
http://www.remineralize.org/

Lots more if anyone looks..

You make a good case, and you probaby would like this book by Bernard L. Cohen that says much the same:
    http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/BOOK.html

Also, at some point, even with meltdowns, we can just site new nuclear plants where the old one melted down. So, Fukushima is now a good place to site more plants, as is Chernobyl, given the evacuations and the grounds are already contaminated. We could also produce synthetic fuels in those areas and ship them elsewhere. And we could build lots of robots to do the work.

Thorium reactors are even safer and we have much more thorium (thousands of years) than uranium and plutonium (hundred years?) for reactors.. But ironically it is said that thorium technology was not developed in the 1940s and 1950s precisely because it was safer and you could not make bombs from it.

With all that said, I'm still rooting for stuff like solar roadways, maglev wind, or the Rossi/Focardi eCat.
    http://www.solarroadways.com/
    http://www.maglevwindturbine.com/
    http://pesn.com/2011/05/31/9501837_Cold-Fusion_Number-1_Claims_NASA_Chief/

Even various forms of hot fusion are looking promising.

Although solar thermal could have done the job from the 1970s and on. Renewables IMHO have been cheaper than fossil fuels when you consider the externalities like pollution, health impacts, risks, defense costs, and so on.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

One can argue about the externalities from different nuclear options (such as who pays for the permanent evacuation around Fukushima or follow on effects like loss of agriculture or other economic problems in the area). If we do see a nuclear resurgance, it is going to look very different than today's plants (or should).

Conventional nuclear tends to be fairly centralized which has various political implications in a democracy. Yes there ideas like Hyperion, but they still probably require big central plants to make them and reprocess them. Mainstream nuclear in general requires a higher level of transparency then our society seems capable of on a sustained basis so far. Fukushima is just one more example of that lack of transparency or foresight.

Still, it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, as if our society ran off of cheap thorium power, our politics might be better and less short-term if it assumed abundance instead of scarcity.

The good news is, we have lots of energy options, and the human imagination continues to invent more of them:
    http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR40.txt

There is no current "overpopulation" problem. Almost every human produces more than they consume. See Julian Simon's writings, for example:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

There is also room for quadrillions of people in space habitats in the solar system built from asteroidal ore, even if the Earth itself might be deemed at some point by some people to have, for aesthetic reasons, too much of a crowd. So, that notion of "overpopulation" is just bunk for an advanced industrial society such as ours. We can produce lots of energy and recycle resources and prevent or clean up pollution if we want to, the problem is that our mainstream economic system does not properly account for externalities. Mainstream economics is broken, not the idea of the more the merrier.

So, since children are net producers over their lives, my your logic, should not parents be credited from society with a lot of money for having a child or raising a child? :-)

You are also pushing some notion of merit pay or punishment fines, trying to somehow turn parenting or being a child into a series of economic calculations. But for any job involving creativity, it turns out that merit pay reduces performance. That is what research really says, despite conventional wisdom that says something else. See:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us "
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Or:
"Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes"
http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm

So, IMHO, your analysis and recommendations are based on two very flawed assumptions about both resources and motivation. However, your suggestions are in accord with the kind of implicit and explicit curriculum in most schools. So, your plan in itself probably a result of schooling and the ideas about "human nature" it embedded in you, like people do not do things without external motivations.

Also, as you probably believe in a "free market" based on your approach, why should money be forced to be spent through specific places that call themselves schools? Why not let parents decide how best to spend the funds, including by just having the time to spend with kids educating them? Why create and support soulless institutions to raise children instead of prosperous families and healthy neighborhoods?

Related as an alternative if you really want to follow your free market suggestions to perhaps better conclusions:
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"Some form of free-market system in public schooling is the likeliest place to look for answers, a free market where family schools and small entrepreneurial schools and religious schools and crafts schools and farm schools exist in profusion to compete with government education. I'm trying to describe a free market in schooling just exactly like the one the country had right up until the Civil War, one in which students volunteer for the kind of education that suits them, even if that means self-education. It didn't hurt Benjamin Franklin that I can see."

Although as I believe in the importance of a redistributive "basic income" as a right of citizenship in our society, I still think each citizen is going to need a monthly check to make the free market work, especially as robotics, automation, better design, and voluntary social networks displace more and more paid work. That's another assumption implicit in your analysis -- that there will be "jobs" around for these kids and that productivity as citizens will be measured in monetary terms.
http://en.wik

Thanks for your insightful reply. I'll have to read "The Gripping Hand" to see if I agree; I had not known there was a sequel: :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gripping_Hand
"A crucial plot element of the book is the idiom "on the gripping hand", a three-armed variation of the idiom "On one hand X, on the other hand Y." The saying is native to the alien Moties, who have three arms, one of which is stronger but possesses less finesse. The idiom has also gained some use among fans of the book.[1]"

Actually, as an analogy to the blockaded of the Moties, are there intellectual blockades by some aspects of an elite trying to keep regular humans from expanding intellectually or economically? :-) Related:
"Chapter 7: The Enclosure of Science and Technology: Two Case Studies"
http://yupnet.org/boyle/archives/162

Nanotech may have been slow to develop for other reasons (see Amara's Law or Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns), but nanotech-related science is reshaping our economy, and 3D printing of plastic and other materials (like with MakerBot or RepRap) is shaping up to be the next big thing. So, as with Amara's law, it is easy to get the pace of an exponential trend wrong from a linear perspective. Also, there may be specific issues (thermal limitations, statistical issues) on why Drexler's original nanotech stuff may never play out as he outlined (biological cells may be as good as it gets for reliable mechanisms on that nanotech level, even if nanotech structures like blended materials or diamanoid may still be useful). From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Amara
"We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

I'd agree that conflicts may well exist in the future over what are essentially issues of identity and aesthetics (or even religious/spiritual issues). I liked your Dyson sphere example. And, to an extent, those issues are with us even now, some people might prefer there was only a billion (or less) people on the Earth, and some others even might want the solar system left the way it is (no more disfiguring footprints on the Moon, etc.). The Negative Population Growth people come to mind, for example, and that NPG meme has grown all too common in the US environmental movement IMHO:
http://www.npg.org/

I'm more in the Jerry Pournelle/Julian Simon "Survival with Style" camp for now myself:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/2009/Q2/view570.html
"Survival with Style said that Carter and the gloomsters were wrong, we were not headed for a nearly inevitable collapse, we would not have an enormous die-off of humanity, there would not be a billion people dead of starvation, and the US didn't need to join the poor nations: the best thing the US could do for the world would be to get rich. And there were ways to do it. Despair is not only a sin, it's a blunder. Back in those days I was one of the few who went to college campuses to say things like that. I was opposed by the faculty; most of the students wanted to hear that they were not headed for lives of poverty and gloom. But I sure felt alone for a while there."

However, with that said, because I believe were are entering an age of abundance, I think we can "survive with style" while still, for the most part, being respectful of the natural environment (especially regarding habitat loss and pollution) as well as working towards things like a basic income for all of humanity. My very belief in potential abundance suggest

The weight of the Earth comes in useful in calculating how many space habitats you could build from it. :-)

Let's see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder
http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Space_habitat
http://ramblingsonthefutureofhumanity.blogspot.com/2009/10/designing-space-habitat.html

You can support 15 million people with a habitat requiring 3000 million metric tons of mass (if I got that right), or about
3 billion tons. (One could also ballpark that mass calculation, but I won't right now, just by thinking about a shell of six feet deep material with some surface area.)

The Earth weighs, as above, about 5 billion trillion imperial tons (close enough to metric tons). So, if we vandalized and vaporized the Earth to build space habitats (not that we know how yet), we could build a trillion space habitats that each support 15 million people. Or, that would be about 15 billion billion people, or about a billion times more people than the Earth supports now. I have not double checked that, but it sounds more or less right within a thousand or so. :-)

Anyway, while I don't recommend disassembling the Earth to make way for a space habitat(or hyperspace) bypass, as there are plenty of asteroids and moons in the solar system that are easier to use for mass, and it makes sense to preserve Earth as a historical landmark to our past, this points out that people like William Catton who are spouting imminent danger from "overpopulation" are more just lacking basic math skills and some imagination. :-)
"[p2p-research] Earth's carrying capacity and Catton"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004123.html
"Bottleneck: Humanity's Impending Impasse, by William R. Catton, Jr."
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5954
Contrast with someone who though the empowered human imagination was the ultimate resource:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

These calculations have life-and-death consequences as relate to human wars and decisions about having children or abortions. Seriously. Whether someone is stockpiling ammo for the "overpopulation die-off" or trying to get a job at NASA or private or volunteer efforts to build space habitats or even just design better solar panels hinges on this sort of basic math.

The consequences that flow from this simple calculation about the weight of the Earth and the weight of a space habitat in comparison are politically profound. They suggest we should not be fighting over oil as a form of dogma-driven collective "suicide" but instead should be putting a lot of time and effort in developing a serious space program and other advanced technology, but from an abundance paradigm where the wealth is widely shared, not a scarcity paradigm where wealth is tightly hoarded. See also my essay:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based ap

Solving that distribution problem wouldn't take more resources now, would it? Moving all "that food we can produce" would happen with magic fairy dust, right, not fossil fuels. Distributing all that food would happen with magic neo-awesome materials, not vessels made of iron.

Actually it would. The earth contains a hell of a lot of solar energy. 175 petawatts worth. Just 1 day of solar = all the oil in the world. The earth also contains, in the oceans, enough uranium for 1000 years of current energy use, in the most inefficient case. We could solve all our problems right now if we went nuclear. However, the environmentalists prevented this. All those ships and trucks and V8 cars could be powered by synthetic gas and diesel made from CO2 in those powerplants. So, as a result of the suppression of these advanced technologies, we're going to have to go solar. This will be more expensive, but that's life.

You don't have to believe we are running low on many key components to modern life. In 30 years from now you will live it.

I predict that 30 years from now, we will be living comfortably. I also predict that many people will think the world is on the verge of collapse. Just like it was in 1980, when we'd starve in 2000. But, it did not happen, because the principles of finite resources, while seemingly logical, are wrong. Just like it is logical that heavy things fall faster, but this is in fact false. Humans, and so-called "mythical unicorn tears" will always find a way around it. The best example is the whales. It was not the advocacy of Greenpeace that saved the whales, but the capitalism of Standard Oil. Just in time for the whale species and depletion of whale stocks, the "mythical unicorn tears" of ground oil. Now, the same must happen again. It will not be the advocates, but the capitalists who save the glaciers. Julian Simon is a great author about these issues.

And if China and India come anywhere close to a fully developed economy that allows the majority of its residents to live "modern" lives you'll be lucky to get 15 years of your comfortable life before the serious difficulties begin.

They're going nuclear, and we should be too. The fact that they are using more resources is good, because affluence == less population growth. More nukes, less protests.

What's easier to accept, "This is a load of crap! Pass me the bucket o' wings, I gotta watch this in high-def" or... "Damn it, I'm a part of the problem, too!?"

Depends on what kind of a person you are. If you are a rational person, then you just want to sit down and eat food and watch TV/do what ever. Meanwhile, if you have a system of moral values about consuming less, then you go out an criticize, and attempt to tax people for their personal choices.

> Wouldn't unchecked growth create poverty, famine, disease, and other social problems?

Not necessarily. In a free economy, the more people the better. It's broken areas without rule of law, or too much as in the case of dictatorships, that have starvation problems.

Doomsayers have been saying we'd starve by 1980, then 1990, then 2000, then 2010, then 2020. When will they realize that the principles of Malthus are simply wrong at their core? Julian Simon, a man before his time, took a bet about resource scarcity with doomsayers. The doomsayers lost, big.

Have you seen or read about what Albert Bartlett has to say?
See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

When you listen to what both have to say, you find that what Julian says is right, provided you simply ignore the living conditions of those in societies where resources are so scarce, they are as good as absent - Africa for instance.

Julian talks of how technology will keep coming up ("optimist") so that we will deal with energy scarcity effectively, by innovating our way out of the problem.
And he gives as example the 2nd half of 20th century and technology as proof.
But what about Africans? And South and south East Asians? And several South Americans?
Bartlett's claims explain even those people's plight.

Julian wrong - wont even consider all data points.
Bartlett right - considers all data points.

But if you live in USA, you may not even know that a world exists outside your 50 states.

>>>We should change our behaviour,

Get rid of all the stupid environmentalists who opposed nuclear energy. They are responsible for global warming, not SUV drivers. If they were gone, we would have no CO2 from electricity today. We already have the technology to make gasoline and diesel in nuclear powerplants, it just needs to be put together and scaled up. So, we would likely have no CO2 from cars today, either.

Doomsayers have been saying we'd starve by 1980, then 1990, then 2000, then 2010, then 2020. When will they realize that the principles of Malthus are simply wrong at their core? Julian Simon, a man before his time, took a bet about resource scarcity with doomsayers. The doomsayers lost, big.

Then read Julian Simon for an interesting rebel view.

Thanks for the reply.

How is there a natural scarcity of materials when the Earth is so big, and the solar system is even bigger?
"Advanced Automation for Space Missions"
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/

How is there a scarcity of energy when the Earth receives 10,000 times what the human race uses from sunlight (and there are also vast geothermal energy reserves)? Nuclear missiles to fight over oil fields and land are so ironic, because the same technologies would let us build habitats in space or build solar panels (or nuclear power systems). For half of one year's US defense budget, the USA could move to entirely renewable energy sources with energy efficiency, and be way more intrinsically secure than depending on long supply lines that need to be guarded by soldiers.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan
http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/books/pb3/pb3_table_of_contents
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power

So, I'd suggest that when people fight over land and raw materials, it is mainly either through ignorance, lack of imagination,
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
or through some sort of racket.
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

I'll agree with you that power over other people is a motivator for some people, but maybe we have to stop worshiping such people and start labelling that as mental illness? Another vision of an abundant society where that does not happen is James P. Hogan's "Voyage From Yesteryear":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear

Whether "people" are on top of the food chain is a matter of opinion. Bacteria and fungi eat humans in the end. And humans are roughly 90% bacterial cells by numbers and 10% by weight (mostly in the colon).

Maybe rather than create mind reprogramming technology, what we need to do is stop using the kind we invented already, which is present in compulsory schools, which were designed to create obedient soldiers and robot-like workers who would do whatever they were told, no matter how vile or boring:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/7a.htm
"""
The particular utopia American believers chose to bring to the schoolhouse was Prussian. The seed that became American schooling, twentieth-century style, was planted in 1806 when Napoleon's amateur soldiers bested the professional soldiers of Prussia at the battle of Jena. When your business is renting soldiers and employing diplomatic extortion under threat of your soldiery, losing a battle like that is pretty serious. Something had to be done.
The most important immediate reaction to Jena was an immortal speech, the "Address to the German Nation" by the philosopher Fichte--one of the influential documents of modern history leading dire

Then, if there is possible resource contention, rather than pass laws about IDs, it would seem that the most essential thing to do is to help everyone to use their imagination as "The Ultimate Resource"
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
to address any potential scarcity problems and create material abundance for all. People have already been doing that for hundreds of years, for example, Benjamin Franklin who made the pot bellied stove and bifocals and refused to patent any of that.

By the way, fossil fuels are not cheap overall, they are just profitable to a few.
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461
"According to a 2000 study for the Department of Energy, there is a significant cost attached to the mere fact of our dependence. Supply disruptions, price hikes, and loss of wealth suffered through the oil market upheavals have cost the U.S. economy around $7 trillion (1998 dollars) over the 30 years from 1970 to 2000. ...
Milton Copulus, the head of the National Defense Council Foundation, has a different view. And as the former principal energy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a 12-year member of the National Petroleum Council, a Reagan White House alum, and an advisor to half a dozen U.S. Energy Secretaries, various Secretaries of Defense, and two directors of the CIA, he knows his stuff. After taking into account the direct and indirect costs of oil, the economic costs of oil supply disruption, and military expenditures, he estimates the true cost of oil at a stunning $480 a barrel."

Coal has huge costs in environmental damage and health costs (from mercury pollution and other things). It actually takes more electricity to make gasoline from crude oil that in would take to make an electrical vehicle go the same distance a regular car goes on one gallon.
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm

It's been known since the 1980s that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels (or nuclear) when you account for external costs and risks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy.[1] In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current. [2]"

Anyway, please name ten jobs you do not think could *not* be fairly easily automated over the next twenty years as robotics and AI continue to advance (at least to the point where one human can do the work of ten now)?

My take on that:
"60 jobs that will rock the future... (not)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004216.html

So, as I see it, the urgent need is to rethink the basis of our economy before then.

There is room for quadrillions of people in the solar system if we build space habitats, so IMHO talk of birth control based on resource constraints is premature. :-)
"The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps"
http://www.amazon.com/Millennial-Project-Colonizi

"Advanced Automation for Space Missions"
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
"""
What follows is a portion of the final report of a NASA summer study, conducted in 1980 by request of newly-elected President Jimmy Carter at a cost of 11.7 million dollars. The result of the study was a realistic proposal for a self-replicating automated lunar factory system, capable of exponentially increasing productive capacity and, in the long run, exploration of the entire galaxy within a reasonable timeframe. Unfortunately, the proposal was quietly declined with barely a ripple in the press. What was once concievable with 1980's technology is now even more practical today. Even if you're just skimming through this document, the potential of this proposed system is undeniable. Please enjoy.
"""

Some individuals are still working towards that vision; one example:
    http://www.openvirgle.net/

Ultimately, we will ideally end up with self-replicating space habitats that can duplicate themselves from sunlight and materials from the moons or asteroids of the solar system. There is enough relatively easily accessible materials to make habitats for trillions of people, probably quadrillions of people, and their associate biospheres. After we do that, then we can get back to talking about "Peak Oil" and limits to growth. :-)

The ultimate resource is the human imagination:
    http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

Why not shift 90% of the US defense budget to NASA? We're just making more enemies with most of it, anyway. :-(

Places with huge problems also tend to have legacies of intervention by foreign governments and foreign corporations. The Earth has no resource limitation problems in the long term:
"Earth's carrying capacity and Catton"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004123.html

But, with robots on the way, it's easy to see why many think life is cheap because masses of human labor are no longer needed for the earlier exploitation:
"Robot videos and P2P implications (was Re: A thirty year future...)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-November/005926.html

That is the deeper problem we need to address as a society, how to move past the irony of having all these tools of abundance but people using them to make artificial scarcity. We need to stop using military robots to enforce a culture of work on humans and instead make robots to do the work. We need to stop building nuclear missiles to fight over oil wells on Earth and instead use the same basic technologies to produce power or make accessible resources in space (I'm a renewable energy fan more than nuclear though). Here are some other ways to move past that irony:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
http://www.michaeljournal.org/lesson1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
http://www.freecycle.org/
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/free_matter_economy?page=0%2C1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3d_printing
http://www.mel.nist.gov/programs/slim.htm
http://www.remineralize.org/
http://www.thevenusproject.com/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C (Surviving America's Depression Epidemic)
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
http://www.honestfoodguide.org/
http://www.global-mindshift.org/memes/wombat.swf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery

There are lots of solutions rather than kill off people or prevent them from being born when there is so much abundance for everyone these days through modern technology. You want to stop suffering? Break the link between a right-to-consume and being able to sell your labor on a market where automation and better design is removing good jobs every day, like people said would be a problem even back in 1964:
http://educationanddemocra

Government, by definition, cannot create wealth; it can only transfer or destroy wealth.

Trade (i.e. capitalism) creates wealth.

The people of Mexico have been historically generally impoverished precisely because of either the brutal excesses and mismanagement by their domestic government, or by interference from foreign governments and Bretton Woods institutions -- e.g. setting trade quotas very much like Gosplan would. (...which includes restricting the movement of People: The Ultimate Resource.)

Vat-grown, or printed, meat products are produced using the same basic techniques as other forms of printed tissue culture. Tissue engineering of this type was first developed for medical use in the production of autologous tissue for organ replacement. However this sort of tissue culture was soon found to be useful for the direct production of meat for food on spacecraft and habitats in deep space. See bioforgery.

To achieve the goal of meat production, muscle and other flesh cells are grown on a specially constructed biopolymer scaffold, which replicates the natural extracellular matrix found in living animals. This scaffold is generally printed using a rapid 3d printer device, although several other related techniques such as foaming and self-assembly are also used. Cultured cells are then implanted into the scaffolding, and these cells are induced to bind together into muscle-like or vascular tissue. Once the meat block, known as `slab', is established, the tissue is supplied with nutrients and allowed to grow by as much as 400% by volume before harvesting. To ensure the slab has a healthy texture it is stimulated into regular contractions, simulating exercise; the slab is attached at each end to strain gauges to measure the force of contraction. Each slab is connected to a generous supply of nutrient fluid often closely resembling blood.

Matter compilers in meat factories to produce foods. So, this looks like an interesting area of thought to explore further. Starting with cell culture techniques would be the smart thing to do, then confirming that we can identify particularly nutritious cells, and then working on some tissue growth techniques. Maybe this will start with burn victims?

Artificial cells, tissues, organs compilation,
Background notes on tissue engineering,
Engineering human tissue (paper),
An odd government website,
Obligatory Wikipedia article linkage,
Organ printing,
This source is claiming lab-grown meat in five years,
Fetal farming (what?),
New-Harvest.org for bringing cultivated meat closer to reality,

> Might cost us dearly

Would, which is the entire problem. A freemarket capitalism might be able to leap over the problems, and still provide not just an equal quality of life, but continue with an ever-increasing one, even in the face of global warming, when compared to strict regulations that reverse it.

In other words, measure quality of life in 100 years, with and without Kyoto and other restrictions, and the world with continued global warming might very well have a higher quality of life, more people, etc. This is not an unreasonable outcome. And if it were to be true, would people touting massive intervention be any friend of humanity?

No need to check it out of the library. It's on the Web, at his web site.

And here's a true heretic who, gasp, suggests growth in developed countries is actually a good thing.

In a free, advanced, educated society, the more people, the more scientists and engineers. The more scientists and engineers (especially driven by greedy businessmen looking to solve problems for the masses to enrich themselves), the more people working to solve the problems, and the better human lives are.

The non-intuitive result is that this development greatly outstrips the problems of the environment to begin with. More importantly, it outstrips the quality of life a more command-and-control economy would have.

For you nerds out there, in two parallel worlds, one with Kyoto, and one without, the one without would be ahead every step of the way in terms of quality of actual human lives.

Oh, I forgot the downside:

1. There's nothing like a powerful motor vibrating the whole car when you're out on a date. Many nerdly enviromentalists wouldn't understand this, though.

By the way, lest someone think I am one, I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth. A powerful, throbbing, free society with millions of engineers and scientists will advance human society and cure any environmental issues a lot faster than they crop up, and a hell of a lot faster than would happen were more draconian environmental laws passed. Counter-intuitive, but true. Two parallel worlds, one with Kyoto, one without. With will lag further and further behind in quality of life for people.

Famous science writer Isaac Asimov expressed the bewilderment of a person who at least faced up to this intellectual predicament, as Ehrlich et. al. do not. Asimov read about the resources bet and then wrote:

Naturally, I was all on the side of the pessimist and judge my surprise when it turned out he [Erlich] had lost the bet; that the prices of the metals had indeed fallen; that grain was cheaper; that oil...was cheaper; and so on.
I was thunderstruck. Was it possible, I thought, that something that seemed so obvious to me - that a steadily rising population is deadly - can be wrong?

Yes, it could be. I am frequently wrong.

Julian Simon destroyed Erlich, but, like a seductive psychic who still bilks the public, he remains around years, hell, decades after his debunking.

> the planet becomes over-crowded

Actually, the concept of overcrowing is an invalid one borne of images of starving 3rd world nations. A world of a hundred billion, if a free world, would be a wonderous one at that. Imagine the rate of techonological development.

I was going to post a comment about Julian Simon but IExplorer crashed when I clicked "Submit".

Normally that's not a problem as I have learned long ago to copy the entire comment (double-confirmed as I actually cut then paste it back in) I've just typed before clicking "Submit" because there are many problems that occur (one of them is that IExplorer doesn't remember what you entered when you hit the "Back" button when you get the "Slow down Cowboy!" screen.)

Anyhoo, IE is too damned stupid to copy its cut-and-paste text to the system clipboard until, presumably, one of its windows loses focus. IE crashes. Text lost. I want more MS quality in MY applications!

> We have gone through the cheap energy and are
> starting now on increasingly expensive energy.

Expensive by prior standards, but not current. In reality, not imagined fantasies, it gets cheaper and cheaper faster than it gets harder and harder, barring government intervention. That's why the "sustainable development" people with their governmental command-and-control crypto-socialist political philosophy don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

What about the cost of us living with lesser technology than we otherwise would have had, thanks to the slowing of the economy of any of various proposed (and real) environmental laws?

Guess what, people? The cost of 99% of environmentalism hurts more than it helps; any advantage is a magnitude or more less helpful than the truncated economy the enviro laws lopped off, and it ain't even close. I mean, it's not even a contest.

Non-intuitive? Yes. True? Yes again.

Julian Simon.com is the guy who preceeded this Lombard guy in the news.

He noted (this is my description, not his words) that free societies will rise to the occasion of need much better than command and control economies. In fact, and this is even more important, they are so powerful they will adapt to any shortages, so much so that the things that are "short" will never appear to be in shortage because people will look harder for new sources, find substitutions, and build in efficiencies.

He had a famous bet in 1980 with a gloom and doom cartoon of a character (you'd think he was a straw man to be knocked down, but he's real) called Erlich. "Pick any 10 resources, your choice Erlich, that you, Erlich, think will be scarce or run out. Barring any government intervention, I claim they will be cheaper, which is the only meaningful economic measurement of scarcity."

Erlich took the bet, picked his ten items (copper, etc.) and lost. Not only was stuff cheaper, but it was mostly (all?) cheaper not even discounting inflation.

Simon stands there saying, "Don't tell me about the weather, or about forest cover. That's like betting on the condition of the track. I am betting on the speed of the sprinters."

Pick general health, nutrition, life span, general wealth, any real, actual measure of human progress, and a free economy will be ahead of a command and control one, and you will not have shortages.

> The only way to do it is for people to exercise
> reproductive responsibility. A naive hope, but our
> only chance.

You seem to be worried that a growing population is a serious problem, rather than a fantastic boon to humanity, as is actually the case. We all need to stop reading 1970's sci-fi stories and get with the picture.

> Can you imagine the amount of resources it would
> cost to move that many people to Mars and to
> provide for them there a livable environment?

Exactly. The purpose for colonization was to spread humanity, and not because of the "Lost in Space" model, where somehow we magically create enough space ships to ship enough people to make a dent in the world population.

Not that it couldn't be done, but nothing short of an impending catastrophe like our sun going nova would make work like that.

Of course, we all know high population is "bad", but that sentiment may be more based on images of starving people in third world countries than in any meaningful economic sense. As far as real-world scientific advancement goes, big population good, good, good. The more people, the more problem solving capacity to solve all these problems environmentalists worry about. Which will win, the problems or the problem solving ability?

The past two hundred years on this planet show that not only is this anti-common sense view accurate, the race isn't even close.

What over-population issues? Current numbers indicate that in the worst case scenario( reproduction doesn't slow down wuickly enough in africa and mid asia) the world population will max out later this century. I can only reffer you to Julian Simon.

> "Sure, when the price of transportation is
> prohibitive, then people will spend decades
> developing alteratives.
>
> Unfortunately, during that time in development,
> there will be NO transportation, or very little."

Actually, economists have demonstrated time and time again that the alternatives will be developed long before needed. Prices for transportation will continue to drop unless government intervention comes to "help us", in which case prices rise. Thanks, gov't., for the "help".

>> even billions if the practice really takes off
>> in the overpopulated 3rd world
>
> Why is it that the 3rd world is always thought
> of as "overpopulated"?

Overpopulated in the sense that they don't keep up with food production. That is more a government issue, though, as in too much government.

> Is the problem really too many brown people?

Absolutely not. There aren't enough people on the planet, the more the better. Just keep a strongarm government that "knows what's best" out of it.

I would argue the better goal is to spread out more. This will drive for more demand on oil, which will cause even further benefits of economy of scale, not to mention drive further effeciencies of production. I'll bet the quality of life of my people after 30-60 years exceeds yours. BTW, your choice on measurement of quality of life, too.

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the period of skyrocketting salaries. It was the period of the disappearing middle clases. It was the season of cheaper products than ever before, including gas. It was the season of

what was the topic again? Oh, yeah. The middle class is disappearing.

Sorry, wrong answer.

> One of the problems with the point of view that
> this essay takes is that it neglects 'precaution'
> in favour of the idea that we should be more
> concerned with short term economical gain.

A thousand needless regulations adds up to massive economic slowdown.

> Even if we are only right 1 in 10 times on
> whether something can cause damage to the
> environment, I would rather waste the money
> controlling the nine than sweeping the one under
> the rug.

Run two planets in parallel, one with this idea, one that is very skeptical about environmental regulations, and in two hundred years, one will be a hundred and seventy years ahead of the other in technology, wealth, and standard of living.

And here is the key point economists understand and environmentalists don't. It will be ahead at every single stage of the game.

> Global Warming, Pollution...they won't destroy the
> earth, but it sure as hell could kill humans ( or
> atleast lower their overall quality of life ).

Kill? Doubtful. Lower quality of life? Very doubtful. Lower quality of life more than the combined effects of massive environmental regulation? Completely wrong.

Umm...if this would have happened, it would have been 50 years ago, a century after the industrial revolution began.

No, politics will always be about blathering pap to the hoi polloi, and have nothing to do with any logic whatsoever.

Do you think any senators actually understand, say, environmental science (much less the even more esoteric and dubious extreme disasterous economic effectswhich don't exist.) or are they just posturing?

Do you think they continue to reject Internet sales and other taxes because they are concerned for Internet development (an intellectual recognition of the economics of a booming, but neonate, sector) or because they fear their asses being handed to them at the next election (note: hoi polloi working for you instead of the power hungry.)

This applies to all types of technology and areas of life. That's why this guy kicks ass, and why people have such a hard time understanding it. Do you want people passing draconian laws about the looming HD limit in 3 years -- OMFG we have to do something? Nahh, that would be stupid, as it is for environmental problems, real or otherwise. Relax, open your minds, and realize the Truth.

> I find it very difficult to believe that a
> person can live entirely on the resources
> provided by an arbitrary area 2000 square feet
> in size

They don't live that way, of course.

Capitalism will solve this problem easily (which is the point of arguments like this, and from whence they came.) For example, people wouldn't each live on 2000 ft^^2. They'd build big buildings called "apartments" and move into them, leaving tons of land for something called "farming". Real farming, for profit.

By the time you reach a point of ridiculousness, say 10 trillion people, humanity will easily be able to move out to the stars. Even then, it's doubtful they'd have problems remaining on-planet. The more people, in a free society, the better. Free is key here, and is something that never enters into most commentator's opinions, which are the basis for communist and socialist command-and-control economies.

I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.

> If gasoline cost $30 a gallon, there'll be a lot > less driving no matter how dorky public transit > seems at first.

There are very good reasons to believe that won't ever happen.

> Either way, barring a *huge* population
> expansion, we won't run out of power - ever.


Julian Simon would argue that a huge population would generate solutions to the problems even faster, thus benefitting people even more.

> McDonald's is destroying the rainforest and killing innocent cows!

Somebody got me with a very similar statement just the other day.

Poor guy, lacking critical thinking ability, didn't realize that massive destruction of the environment, especially when done for farmland, has been an incalculable boon for humanity. Europe's forests have been mowed down for a thousand years and they haven't exactly died out yet.

As for killing an innocent animal (or "executing something that doesn't want to be killed"), well, it tastes really good!


It's time for all those "truth lovers" out there to learn the real truth. A problem isn't a "problem" if, when you come out the other end, humanity is better off than without the "problem."

> The US Dollar, the Euro, and the Yen are 'real
> money'. Gold is just metal.

Yes, but metal that is valued by most people, and those who don't value it do recognize that most others do, hence they value it indirectly.

Gold, or other precious metals, are the original money, being one half of an exchange of goods for goods. No one wants a scrap of paper, they want stuff. In that sense, your "real money" is just garbage. (Note, though, that during war, the US "garbage" went up in buying power, while "real", gold-based Kuwait currency was worthless.)



Anyway, Julian Simon wins out in the end, even with gold, at least since Carter left office and the government stopped believing in Nobel-prizewinning (literally, not a sarcastic comment) economic theories about chronic inflation.