Phil
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Ilargi, above:
“There’s steady state economics, of course, John Stuart Mill, Georgescu-Roegen, Herman Daly, but that field is, for my taste, too strongly linked to Mill’s “The end of growth leads to a stationary state”, while in my view a stationary state is as incompatible with physics, let alone the human brain, as perpetual growth is”
Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, in a sction entitled “The Steady State: A Topical Mirage” in his 1975 essay “Energy and Economic Myths”:
“… there are simple reasons against believing that mankind can live in a perpetual stationary state. The structure of such a state remains the same throughout; it does not contain in itself the seed of the inexorable death of all open macrosystems. On the other hand, a world with a stationary population would, on the contrary, be continually forced to change its technology as well as its mode of life in response to the inevitable decrease of resource accessibility. Even if we beg the issue of how capital may change qualitatively and still remain constant, we could have to assume that the unpredictable decrease in accessibility will be miraculously compensated by the right innovations at the right time. A stationary world may for a while be interlocked with the changing environment through a system of balancing feedbacks analogous to those of a living organism during one phase of its life. But as Bormann reminded us [7, p. 707], the miracle cannot last forever; sooner or later the balancing system will collapse. At that time, the stationary state will enter a crisis, which will defeat its alleged purpose and nature.”
I think we can safely conclude that Georgescu-Roegen was no fan of ‘steady-state’ either.
I keep asking whoever will listen (not many) what proportion of one’s gross income does one need to save if they’re working for 40 years and will be retired for 20 years, given a shrinking economy with resource-scarcity price inflation.
The assumption is that our pension investments will always make enough money to keep us comfortable for our whole retirement. They’re not going to anymore, so we’re each going to have to contribute a LOT more into our pension funds in future.
Or realise that it’s all a scam and turn to tax-funded benefits for the retired.
Spot on, Nicole.
I raised the issue of the sustainability of ‘renewables’ in a blog post entitled Bootstrapping Sustainability over a year ago.
It’s not a patch on sunweber’s excellent blog posts mentioned in these comments, but I have a few interesting links for additional reading.
Transnational electricity Supergrids etc will have an effect on simple things like trade deficits/surpluses. This’ll need to be factored in to any cost/benefit analysis (but probably won’t be).
And this one from Bloomberg, November 23rd, 2011
London Banks Seen Rigging Rates Losing Credibility With Markets
I too have a growing collection of glass jars, some of which will be used to make autumn chutneys and jams.
One summer holiday in my teens I got a job at the local Coca Cola factory, supervising the bottle-washing machine. A bit tedious 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week but that machine was powered mostly by renewable energy (hydroelectricty). Not bad for the early 70s. When I look back to those days I often think that our lifestyles then were greener than they are now.
Back then, we re-used glass bottles, nowdays we take them to the recycling depot and the glass is smashed and melted down to help make new glass. Probably much more energy-wasteful than washing and refilling.
Am I alone in wishing that the byline be at the top of the post rather than at the bottom of it? These things matter! Doom, gloom, etc 🙂
