The End of the World is Near-Not! 1
The debate on global warming caused by human consumption of hydrocarbons appears to be over. We are told that the polar ice cap will melt. Bangladesh will get inundated. Hurricanes will increase in intensity. Crops will fail. Riots will break out. Anecdotal evidence of the coming catastrophe mounds day by day. A glacier in the Antarctic is shrinking. The NorthWest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific (that many generations of explorers looked for in vain) has almost opened up- only 60 miles of ice floes remain unmelted in the summer. The Sacred Phallus of Siva that forms every year from ice almost didn’t appear this year: the Himalayas must be getting too warm. Stranded polar bears have been spotted drowning as the ice floes they are standing on melt. Sea turtles are said to be dying off because the ocean is too warm for their eggs to hatch.
An entire doomsday industry has sprung up. Scientists who are unable to predict next month’s weather, are confidently predicting climate change into the next century. Even mathematicians are getting in on the act. The MSRI had a workshop called “Climate Change: From Global Models to Local Action”.
Everyone is an environmentalist these days. The Sierra Club has been out front sounding the alarm on global warming. Just as, in medieval times, you could buy indulgences from the Vatican to atone for your sins, these days you, can buy carbon credits to neutralize your emissions. Arnold Schwarzenegger has converted one of his seven humvees ( a monstrous gas-guzzling four wheel drive vehicle used mostly by the US military) to run on bio-fuel, to show his commitment to the cause. Al Gore has jetted himself around the world, lecturing on the Inconvenient Truth of the coming catastrophe. Bono was at the G8 summit cajoling world leaders into action. 
So how good is the track record of the Sierra club and others on making such global predictions?I remember another set of dire predictions from the early seventies, when I was in middle school in India. The impending catastrophe of that time was the population explosion. Hundreds of millions of people were predicted to starve to death in the 70s and 80s, in India and elsewhere, something that could not be averted even by a crash program by the wealthiest nations. The Economist and The New Scientist printed many charts and graphs and mathematical formulas driving home the scientific basis of the predictions. The British children’s magazine I used to read then (Look and Learn) did its share to scare the bejeesus out of us about the coming food shortages. It resonated with us because in the sixties, in my childhood, there really were some near-famine conditions in parts of India. Things had gotten better, but perhaps all these smart people knew that it was only a temporary reprieve?
As it turned out, the world did not self-destruct from overpopulation. While there still is famine in parts of the world, notably Africa, the conditions have improved remarkably for most of us. The number of humans did increase substantially: from 3.7 billion in 1970 to 6.6 billion now. But the average person is better fed now than at any time in human history. Rather than famine, the major health problems of the world now are obesity and diabetes, because the meaty diets of the developed world are displacing the traditional lean food of the masses. It is the rich who are thin now; they can afford gym classes and calorie-restricted diets.
Moreover, many of the most populated countries are also the ones with the most rapid economic growth. Japan and Western Europe, which have the slowest population growth, are worrying today about having too few young people to support their elderly. The US does not worry, only because of the large influx of young immigrants into the workforce.
So why did the predictions of a catastrophe fail so completely, although the population did explode? Every additional human being is a new mouth to feed, but also a pair of arms to work and a new brain capable of thought. In populous countries like China and India that provide cheap mass education, the generation born after the seventies is the backbone of the labor force. They generate wealth in call centers, factories and the cubicles of software companies, more than paying for the increased demands on resources required to sustain them.
The median age in India is merely twenty five, while Brazil’s is twenty nine. That in China is higher (34) because of a draconian population control program. The US is older (median age of 39) but is unique among the industrialized nations in having a stable age distribution. These are the major young nations of the world. Together they make up a little less than half the world’s population.
The oldest country, among the major economies, is Japan with a median age of 44; Italy and Germany (43) are not far behind. What is worrisome about these countries is not the age itself, but the trend: the fertility rate is abnormally low there and people are living to advanced old age. Immigration, legal and otherwise, saves the US from this difficulty. Russia (38) is unlikely to get any younger-there is no substantial immigration into Russia and it has a low fertility rate. Russia is one of the few places in the world where the total population is expected to decline.
The young nations, with investments from the advanced economies of North America and Europe, are poised to dominate the world both as consumers and producers. They will also dominate culture, as the young always have. The Sixties were a time of cultural transformation in the US, caused by the post war baby boom. A similar transformation led by the population explosion of the seventies is already under way, but this time on a global scale. Their values will displace the existing ones.
Ironically, it is precisely the generation born of the population explosion that will support the aging populations of the developed world. If you retire today and invest your savings in the stock market, you are hoping that these young people will be productive enough to provide you with a return for the rest of your life. Rather than cause a catastrophe, the near-doubling of the world population turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to all of us.
Population increase in the absence of liberty could indeed be catastrophic. There are a few pockets in the world where, for one reason or other, things have not worked out. Except in Africa, the problem is not lack of food or poverty. It appears that not all the ills of the world have an economic explanation. The youngest nation in the world is Yemen (the land that gave us coffee and Bin Laden) with a median age of just 17. There may indeed be reason to worry about instabilities in the Middle East: the early phases of the population boom there shows different trends than in the rest of the world.
The doom-sayers of old did not take into account the fact that scientific progress can totally transform the fortunes of billions of people. The new strains of wheat and rice developed by great scientists such as Norman Borlaug made enough food to feed the billions of people born in the population explosion. Only in Africa has this green revolution not taken place. Borlaug, who recieved the Congressional Gold Medal this week, has proposed a program for Africa, similar to the amazingly successful one he gave to Mexico and India. In his view, the problems there are fixable too. Borlaug is not as famous as some of the other people who received the Congressional Gold Medal (John Wayne) but who has had a more beneficial effect on humanity than him?
Other technical advances like satellite communication, cell phones and computers have made it possible to integrate this vast new population into the world culture. This information exchange is leading to an even faster pace of economic growth. The more people there are in the world, the more talented people there are who can fix its problems.
So let us not get too depressed by the doomsday predictions of today. There was a time not too long ago when people used to hunt whales not for food but for fuel: their blubber was melted down and used in lamps. Before the whales went extinct, petroleum was discovered as a substitute for whale oil. In time we will find a substitute for petroleum too. Somewhere in the world the next Norman Borlaug is growing up, who will develop a source of energy that is not polluting. Perhaps the world will warm as predicted, but we will find a way to thrive in that warmer world. May be we should let the people from an inundated Bangladesh to emigrate to the newly fertile and warm Siberia.
Technorati Tags: Demographics, Doomsday, Global Warming, Norman Borlaug, Population Explosion
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July 20th, 2007 at 1:11 am
I think the science behind global warming is pretty strong. Also weather is not the same as climate. I can say with confidence that the daytime temperature in Delhi will be at least 40 C in summer a 100 years from now (if global warming does not occur). If temperatures increase as predicted, i.e. 2 to 6 degrees over the globe with the maximum relative warming at the poles, then we can expect summer highs to be around 2 degrees more on average. That can make a difference as those of us who have lived in India know (38 C is a lot cooler than 40 C
The exact effects of global warming on human civilization and the ecosystem will likely remain unknown until these effects are felt.
The people of Bangladesh already find it difficult to immigrate to India as do the people of Mexico to the US. That’s not because of lack of living space. What makes you think Siberia will accept the people of the inundated world?
You are optimistic that we’ll find a substitute for petroleum and still maintain the same energy wasting lifestyle. I can’t see any natural resources at this point of time that can provide a carbon free substitute, carbon sequestering will increase fuel costs significantly, solar energy has yet to reach high efficiencies and you can’t fly planes with it, wind energy depends on the vagaries of nature, and so on. And with the tiny amounts of money being spent on energy research I don’t see any change attitudes in the near future. I think the global warming and energy issues are serious problems that need to be solved soon.
Also, why didn’t the green revolution work out in Africa? And would the green revolution have been possible without serious agricultural research (and subsidies) in the West?
July 20th, 2007 at 6:03 am
Biswajit,
I can see that it may be possible to predict what happens to an average quantity over along period of time ( century) even if you cannot predict its instantaneous value over a shorter time ( month). This must be the weather vs climate distinction you are making.
But I remain skeptical of such extrapolations in the case of global climate, as many small factors we don’t yet know about might have a big impact over a long period of time. The argument is that the Earth’s climate is unstable and is sensitive to small changes in parameters such the percentage of CO_2 in the atmosphere. If that is the cause (sounds plausible to me) how do we know that it is not also sensitive to other parameters not under human control such as a small change in the Sun’s luminosity or some random fluctuation in the ocean currents? It is only the general skepticism of an outsider, as I am not a geophysicist. My attitude is that even if I find the extrapolations rather bold, I should accept it tentatively as it is made by people who have more specialized knowledge. So let us assume that the warming will occur.
This is similar to the predictions a generation ago that a global population explosion will occur. It did. What did not happen are the dire consequences predicted from this explosion. A main reason is the green revolution: the food production rose at an even greater pace than the population. Also, I argue, the new people were far more ingenious and productive than anyone had expected. They are more than paying for their consumption, which is why the calamities predicted did not happen.
So my expectation is that the world will warm. Delhi probably will be hotter by two degrees, sea levels probably will go up a few inches. But life will still be better because we will find a way to create the energy that will pay for the required air conditioning. The area lost to human habitation from warming will be replaced by others that are gained. In any case there are still many quite habitable parts of the world, even in crowded countries like India. Arizona today supports a large population which would have been impossible before air conditioning and artificial irrigation. May be Rajasthan would be an analogue in India. So the problems are technological, economic and political to live with the warming, not finding a way of stopping it. Population control was not the main solution to the last crisis.
The comment about Bangladeshis moving to Siberia was meant as a joke. They are more likely to emigrate to parts of India. The flow of humans across political borders is a natural phenomenon that cannot be stopped by any fence or law. Bangladeshis will continue to find a way into India and people of Mexican origin will be the majority in the Southern US very soon, no matter what the current populations in these countries think about it. And both India and the US will be better off for it. People trying to survive are more ingenious than those trying merely to preserve their standard of living. There will be tensions and struggles along the way though.
All of which really brings us to the energy shortage. There is no question that this is the great technological challenge today as food production was in Norman Borlaug’s time. To take the example of his work, the funding for his research in Mexico came ultimately from the US through international agencies. The amount needed was tiny compared to the billions spent on weapons research or even fundamental scientific research. Apparently that was enough. In addition to scientific skills, Borlaug also had the vision and charisma to convince the developing nations to adopt his ideas. People of that sort are rare: maybe one in a billion, but then we should expect to have six of them in the future. One was enough to solve the food crisis.
So what will replace petroleum? We don’t know now, any more than people in the nineteenth century knew what would replace whale oil. There are several different energy problems. What is a non-polluting way of producing electricity? What is a way of making energy available to remote villages? How to cool and heat homes in cities? Or fuel for vehicles? I don’t know answers any more than any one else. But answers will be found when needed.
It might be a combination of the ideas we hear about these days. Solar for remote villages and for communications. Nuclear for making electricity: only in the US is there a knee-jerk reaction against it. Synthetic fuels (NOT biofuels) for airplanes and such. Better batteries for cars. Given the economic incentives, these solutions will catch on, just as third world farmers quickly adopted Borlaug’s high yield varieties. Much of this is not glamorous research scientifically. I think it is unlikely that some fundamental breakthrough like fusion holds the key. It is probably sweating the details of the science we already know. Borlaug was not Mendel.
There already are signs that creative people are thinking up solutions. I ran across a remarkable wind farm in Tamil Nadu.
Although I was making a joke about him, Arnold Schwarzenegger is in fact a good example of a politician who sees the opportunity presented by the energy shortage. California might be a better source of funding for energy research than the Federal Government. It has an economy as big as most countries, so it can be a major player.
The green revolution didn’t happen in Africa because, unlike India or Mexico, it did not have responsible governments which would take up the cause. Times have changed a bit. Perhaps the future will be different. Borlaug has been active there too.
http://www.ifdc.org/New_Design/Whats_New/Borlaug%2520AFS%2520Release%2520Final.pdf
It is true that the green revolution would not have happened without US subsidy of agricultural research. But the amount needed was small. It was an even lower priority in the fifties than energy research is today.
Thanks for an insightful comment. I know my audience is small, but I hope they are all like you.
July 23rd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Dear Rajeev, this is the first post I have read on your blog. It won’t be the last. I found it at once heartening and rather alarming.
In the first instance, I am heartened that, unlike the reality-averse brand of politically fueled pseudo-science pedaled by the likes of the current US administration, you do not seem to be denying the material fact of global warming, its overwhelmingly probable causes, nor its likely physical outcomes if present forms and patterns of production-consuption persist . Your brand of reasoned optimism appears to stem from a sense of how we might deploy our collective creative resources to meet the likely scenarios that we at this time, with our present forms of knowledge frame as catastrophic.
So, I am glad that you appear to acknowledge that the predictive science is sound. Insinuating that it is otherwise has been the insidious intent of the spin that corporations such as Shell have spent many millions of dollars propagating (’Global warming or hot air?” - no more than willful obfuscation in the guise of debate).
Of course, we can not know with mathematical certainty what outcomes await us, of course we are figuring systems of great complexity, on ranges of scale from the cosmic to the molecular, and of course one of the things that we do know with certainty is that there are certain things we cannot know with certainty. That said, because of the nature and scope of these predictions, and the powerful consensus behind them, it would be unspeakably irresponsible to adduce the existence of formal uncertainty, even slight substantive uncertainty, as reason for proceeding as if what will not necessarily be the case will not be the case.
I wanted to make clear at the outset that I am not reading your brand of intelligent optimism as the rhetoric of ‘the-market-will-deliver-us-from-a-situation-we-are-denying’. That said, I also think you underestimate the strength of the interests that deploy this rhetoric (this underestimation is disconcerting because in many ways your tone sounds superficially similar to such rhetoric). For instance, I grew up in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, and there, for half a century, multinational oil companies (aligned with the interests of the world’s richest nations and in league with their colluding junior parters of the Nigerian military and their junior partners the local elites) have devastated a rich and diverse ecosystem, destroyed cultures and lives, and driven a people to armed resistance.
Perhaps your optimism about the possibilities of humans collectively striking out in new directions should be somewhat tempered by a figuring in of the forces of inertia that such interests as are vested in the current industrial-ideological status quo exert. Indeed, in the shadow of the Cheney-Bush position — so transparently serving the interests of those that profit so massively from the current hydro-carbon energy configuration — it should surely be reckoned that such forces are not merely forces of inertia, but interests that, as in the Niger Delta, are willing to waste entire regions, to actively murder opponents (should this sound to wildly conspiratorial, one need only research into the well-documented complicity of Shell in various massacres and judicial murders in the Niger Delta, particularly during the 1990s).
Yes it is true, as you point out, we humans are ingenious, adaptable, creative. And creativity is by definition unpredictable, so, who knows what novel insights, what elegant technological solutions, what marvelous inventions await us tomorrow that will transfigure our forebodings of doom into bright futures?
But there are myriad ethical and political questions that you do not seem to address seriously. Given that we are likely to create massive displaced aggregate populations over the next decades, do we not need to urgently consider their fates, not in some abstract frame of possible technological fixes, but in actual, morally informed institutions of policy formation and implementation. One can talk, ironically, about migration from Bangladesh to Siberia, but what practical, material considerations are we to make for these displaced millions? Is it ethically acceptable to sacrifice the actual homes, cultures, livelihoods, lives even, of millions (of mostly already poor) peoples to some enthusiastic, but vague, vision of human creativity? It is the failure to answer, or even pose, such questions in your post that I find alarming.
For this is what your post does not acknowledge, global warming is in many sense a current crisis, not a future threat. For many non-human life forms, for instance, it is a present danger - extinction rates have increased precipitously over the last few decades. But most of all, for all its insight into the potentials of creativity, what your post does not admit of is that we might rather change our minds - that is, change some of the underlying premises that drive our hyper-consumption, change our values, be creative poetically. We need to ask, ‘what is the good life?’, not merely, ‘how can we find new ways to power our air-conditioners?’
July 25th, 2007 at 8:33 am
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