A good analysis, but one place I'd disagree with you is the inherent assumption that the number of productive people required to care for each non-productive person is constant. Increased automation - especially AI - will shed jobs, at the same time as we need more people in the care professions - so we'll see a shift in the kinds of employment towards the things humans do better than machines.
The area this breaks down is the "economic" side of caring - this fails if all the wealth from reduced requirements for labor ends up in the hands of oligarchs rather than being distributed. This, of course, is part of the doughnut economics way of looking at things.
On the physical aspect of caring, in East Asia they're already hoping domestic robots will help share the load --i anticipate in the next ten years we'll have domestic robots as a luxury good and eventually they'll get cheaper and cheaper. That may help with dishes and reporting falls and maybe even loneliness.
But the economic side of caring is, in my opinion, the bigger issue. I have no expectation that I will have access to social security when I am old, and pension plans will fail if current demographic trends continue. and I don't think oligarchs come even close to approaching the problem--if we forcibly seized all the billionaires funds and wealth today it would fund mere weeks of government spending in the US.
I'm not suggesting domestic robots - though I'm sure the trend to saving labor in the home will continue. I'm suggested a shift in employment from jobs that get automated by AI to jobs (such as caring) which benefit from emotion and human qualities.
Yes - especially for those of you living in failed states (like the US) expectations of social security must be dropping rapidly. Not because of demographic trends, but because the wealth is more and more accumulated - not just the billionaires, rather than distributed, to a greater or lesser extent, as it is in Western Democracies.
Excellent analysis, Neal. You mention AI replacing labor, and I'd be curious to see your complex system analysis extended to further include this dynamic. Especially the massive and rapidly growing depletion of ecological capital in the form of mineral mining, energy consumption, and water use and contamination caused by AI and data centers. Included in this added complexity would be something like Jevon's paradox, where cost savings involved in AI replacement of labor seems to mean that the technosphere will expand ever more rapidly. Economic costs decreasing leading to increasing ecological and hydrological costs. Thanks again for sharing your insights. I much appreciate how you apply your mind and communication to systems in dire need of it. Cheers.
My sense of things is that the tighter bottleneck is ecology and not energy. Yes I expect the technosphere to expand, and I expect energy consumption per capita to increase globally. But I also expect there to continue to be significant advances in solar and nuclear energies.
I don't think energy can substitute for everything tho, and what most concerns me is biodiversity loss, land degradation, disruption of water cycles, and ocean weirding/destruction.
For sure, me too. The ecological and hydrological effects of increased mining and water use by data centers seems most concerning, and underdiscussed regarding the expansion underway. Seems folks tend to think of data processing as nonphysical.
Hi Neal, I have been following you on and off for quite some time now, and just now found your posts here. Really inspiring work, I will keep reading your thoughts!
As you correctly stated here, the problem is more about overconsumption than overpopulation - in fact, what makes us humans a "virus" to Earth is not just our presence, but rather our way of living (and here I extend it to all human activities, not only food production). In my agricultural studies I frequently encountered the problem of "feeding a growing population with shrinking available land", with agriculture being depicted as the villain and one of the main contributors to climate change and ecological issues. While it is true, I think part of the problem is also on the way we (Western world citizens) consume food. A non-negligible amount of environmental and social problems related to food systems arise from our (again, Western world citizens) need for food that is always fresh, good looking, often coming from the other side of the world, etc. As I read in some comments on previous posts, part of the solution to the problem is about shifting from global markets to local ones, from all-year-round availability to consuming seasonal produce, from cold storage to traditional and energy-savvy food preservation methods.
Yet, food is essential for life, so I kind of dislike this narrative, where all other human activities are somewhat discarded. We can change the way in which we produce our food, but we still need food to survive. You say we need 2500 kcal a day, but that's just for eating. How much more calories does an average European or American need on a daily basis, in terms of fuel, heating, electricity? In my opinion, the real issue is the way we live. Those advocating for the solution being regulating the human population often blame African countries for their extremely high birth rates. Some say the top 10% wealthiest people own the same as the remaining 90%. I guess it is the same, if not worse, in terms of resource (energy, water, land) use. In short, reducing the population in developing countries is not a solution, as long as our consumption habits, and Western population, remain approximately the same. What we would rather need is a significant reduction in the population of the world that consumes much more than its environment can sustain (it's happening already, but I don't know if it will suffice), or a rethinking of our society as a whole to adhere more tightly to what ecological limits we have (also very hard).
A final thought about carrying capacity. I agree that intensification has shown its limits and is not viable in the long term. But on the same side, you would also agree that extensive systems would require significantly more land than what is currently under cultivation. I also agree that ecological restoration would increase productivity in some areas, but the climatic/ecological limits are nevertheless a real limit. Your work in Al-Baydha has been fantastic, but my question is - by how much did you increase the carrying capacity of that land? You say it was approaching 0 when you started, how much could it be now? 1, 10, 100, 1000? With that climate, anything more than 0 is a huge improvement, but still we should get a grasp of the absolute potential of such interventions. Even if the improvement was significant, would there be people willing to fund such things? It took you several years to achieve that, I can only imagine the work hours and capital investments it required, also considering it is a relatively small plot. How many people could rely exclusively on that land for a living? Perhaps a few families? Is it worth it?
I have also seen, on the Instagram account of the Al-Baydha project, that the whole has now apparently moved to a housing scheme. Is there still something going on on the agricultural/ecological side to really understand more on the increase in carrying capacity?
Yes, overconsumption is a common way of seeing the issue, but bear in mind that there are two billion Chinese and Indians, and billions of Africans who would like to consume at similar levels. Part of working with nature means working with human nature, and from what I understand part of human nature is a desire to consume. Moreover, i don't think there is any palatable way to force less consumption per capita, unless you're open to very violent and oppressive measures.
For a whole host of reasons, population is going to start shrinking, and that trend will continue in Africa as more women are educated and as development happens. That doesn't solve the issue though--just provides one more dynamic to take into account.
Next post will be on the carrying capacity issue--i hope to resolve the sharing vs sparing argument in the coming posts.
A good analysis, but one place I'd disagree with you is the inherent assumption that the number of productive people required to care for each non-productive person is constant. Increased automation - especially AI - will shed jobs, at the same time as we need more people in the care professions - so we'll see a shift in the kinds of employment towards the things humans do better than machines.
The area this breaks down is the "economic" side of caring - this fails if all the wealth from reduced requirements for labor ends up in the hands of oligarchs rather than being distributed. This, of course, is part of the doughnut economics way of looking at things.
Hi Mitra!
On the physical aspect of caring, in East Asia they're already hoping domestic robots will help share the load --i anticipate in the next ten years we'll have domestic robots as a luxury good and eventually they'll get cheaper and cheaper. That may help with dishes and reporting falls and maybe even loneliness.
But the economic side of caring is, in my opinion, the bigger issue. I have no expectation that I will have access to social security when I am old, and pension plans will fail if current demographic trends continue. and I don't think oligarchs come even close to approaching the problem--if we forcibly seized all the billionaires funds and wealth today it would fund mere weeks of government spending in the US.
I'm not suggesting domestic robots - though I'm sure the trend to saving labor in the home will continue. I'm suggested a shift in employment from jobs that get automated by AI to jobs (such as caring) which benefit from emotion and human qualities.
Yes - especially for those of you living in failed states (like the US) expectations of social security must be dropping rapidly. Not because of demographic trends, but because the wealth is more and more accumulated - not just the billionaires, rather than distributed, to a greater or lesser extent, as it is in Western Democracies.
Excellent analysis, Neal. You mention AI replacing labor, and I'd be curious to see your complex system analysis extended to further include this dynamic. Especially the massive and rapidly growing depletion of ecological capital in the form of mineral mining, energy consumption, and water use and contamination caused by AI and data centers. Included in this added complexity would be something like Jevon's paradox, where cost savings involved in AI replacement of labor seems to mean that the technosphere will expand ever more rapidly. Economic costs decreasing leading to increasing ecological and hydrological costs. Thanks again for sharing your insights. I much appreciate how you apply your mind and communication to systems in dire need of it. Cheers.
Hi Tim!
My sense of things is that the tighter bottleneck is ecology and not energy. Yes I expect the technosphere to expand, and I expect energy consumption per capita to increase globally. But I also expect there to continue to be significant advances in solar and nuclear energies.
I don't think energy can substitute for everything tho, and what most concerns me is biodiversity loss, land degradation, disruption of water cycles, and ocean weirding/destruction.
For sure, me too. The ecological and hydrological effects of increased mining and water use by data centers seems most concerning, and underdiscussed regarding the expansion underway. Seems folks tend to think of data processing as nonphysical.
i've got a business concept for the water aspect of it, but it's contingent on what i'm building now.
Oh man, that's quite a teaser. Excited to hear about it.
Hi Neal, I have been following you on and off for quite some time now, and just now found your posts here. Really inspiring work, I will keep reading your thoughts!
As you correctly stated here, the problem is more about overconsumption than overpopulation - in fact, what makes us humans a "virus" to Earth is not just our presence, but rather our way of living (and here I extend it to all human activities, not only food production). In my agricultural studies I frequently encountered the problem of "feeding a growing population with shrinking available land", with agriculture being depicted as the villain and one of the main contributors to climate change and ecological issues. While it is true, I think part of the problem is also on the way we (Western world citizens) consume food. A non-negligible amount of environmental and social problems related to food systems arise from our (again, Western world citizens) need for food that is always fresh, good looking, often coming from the other side of the world, etc. As I read in some comments on previous posts, part of the solution to the problem is about shifting from global markets to local ones, from all-year-round availability to consuming seasonal produce, from cold storage to traditional and energy-savvy food preservation methods.
Yet, food is essential for life, so I kind of dislike this narrative, where all other human activities are somewhat discarded. We can change the way in which we produce our food, but we still need food to survive. You say we need 2500 kcal a day, but that's just for eating. How much more calories does an average European or American need on a daily basis, in terms of fuel, heating, electricity? In my opinion, the real issue is the way we live. Those advocating for the solution being regulating the human population often blame African countries for their extremely high birth rates. Some say the top 10% wealthiest people own the same as the remaining 90%. I guess it is the same, if not worse, in terms of resource (energy, water, land) use. In short, reducing the population in developing countries is not a solution, as long as our consumption habits, and Western population, remain approximately the same. What we would rather need is a significant reduction in the population of the world that consumes much more than its environment can sustain (it's happening already, but I don't know if it will suffice), or a rethinking of our society as a whole to adhere more tightly to what ecological limits we have (also very hard).
A final thought about carrying capacity. I agree that intensification has shown its limits and is not viable in the long term. But on the same side, you would also agree that extensive systems would require significantly more land than what is currently under cultivation. I also agree that ecological restoration would increase productivity in some areas, but the climatic/ecological limits are nevertheless a real limit. Your work in Al-Baydha has been fantastic, but my question is - by how much did you increase the carrying capacity of that land? You say it was approaching 0 when you started, how much could it be now? 1, 10, 100, 1000? With that climate, anything more than 0 is a huge improvement, but still we should get a grasp of the absolute potential of such interventions. Even if the improvement was significant, would there be people willing to fund such things? It took you several years to achieve that, I can only imagine the work hours and capital investments it required, also considering it is a relatively small plot. How many people could rely exclusively on that land for a living? Perhaps a few families? Is it worth it?
I have also seen, on the Instagram account of the Al-Baydha project, that the whole has now apparently moved to a housing scheme. Is there still something going on on the agricultural/ecological side to really understand more on the increase in carrying capacity?
Sorry for the extremely long comment...
Thanks,
Nicola
Hi Nicola,
Yes, overconsumption is a common way of seeing the issue, but bear in mind that there are two billion Chinese and Indians, and billions of Africans who would like to consume at similar levels. Part of working with nature means working with human nature, and from what I understand part of human nature is a desire to consume. Moreover, i don't think there is any palatable way to force less consumption per capita, unless you're open to very violent and oppressive measures.
For a whole host of reasons, population is going to start shrinking, and that trend will continue in Africa as more women are educated and as development happens. That doesn't solve the issue though--just provides one more dynamic to take into account.
Next post will be on the carrying capacity issue--i hope to resolve the sharing vs sparing argument in the coming posts.