Are there limits to growth? There must be because the planet we live on is finite. Therefore, it must be that there are limits to growth. But I believe that there are no practical limits to growth. The distinction between the theoretical and practical is important because it has implications regarding our moral imperatives.
In this bit, I continue my reply to Akshay’s comment. The previous bit was Energy and Power. In his comment, Akshay wrote:
However, as most serious proponents of the limits-to-growth point out, the most immediate limit-to-growth is the ability of the biosphere to absorb the wastes generated by the industrial capitalist economy, starting of course with the most well known carbon-dioxide/green-house gases limit.
In the above, there’s an unspecified reference to “most serious proponents of the limits-to-growth.” So let me assume that such limits-to-growth proponents are represented by the Club of Rome and their “Limits to Growth” report, published in 1972. Its thesis was that continued economic and population growth given finite resources was unsustainable.
I believe that resources are not finite in any meaningful way. I have argued that point in the past and I believe I will continue to do so in the future.
But the anointed consistently declare that we are running out of resources, and we must immediately mend our ways — or else.
Their hysterical warning “Repent sinners, for the end is nigh” is as old as the Christian bible and equally silly.
Every such warning has been discredited and buried, only to be resurrected by a new batch of doomsayers in every generation. Their claim is that the past was awesomely good and the future is guaranteed to be dire — unless humanity confesses its sins and repents. It’s stupid Christian bile of sin and redemption.
I am reminded of what the British historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800 – 1859) wrote:
“We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who say [that] society has reached a turning point – that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us and with just as much apparent reason. On what principle is it that with nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?”
He wrote that almost 200 years ago in 1830. It still holds true. That question, though rhetorical, is important and the answer is simple: the doomsayers are simply wrong. They are empirically wrong and they are analytically wrong. Empirically wrong because the evidence shows them to be wrong. Reason and logic proves that they are analytically wrong.
The limits-to-growth people are just trapped in a Malthusian fallacy. It’s true that Malthus got his arithmetic right. At the time of his gloomy prognostications, his assumptions that population grows geometrically but food production grows arithmetically were approximately true. But unfortunately for him and fortunately for humanity, things changed around precisely the same time that he published his thesis on “An Essay on the Principles of Population” in 1798. Food production outpaced population growth. His mistake was that he underestimated human adaptability and innovation.
We humans are dynamic, complex and adaptive. And the world we create reflects that. The fear that we are running out of resources is a load of easily dismissed nonsense using only a bit of reason. Why? Because resources don’t exist in nature; we humans create resources.
That point was made brilliantly by the economist Julian Simon in the 1970s in his book “The Ultimate Resource” (available for free on the web) but the Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich (author of the best-sellers “The Population Bomb” and “The Population Explosion”) fails to understand even now in the 21st century CE. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
How do we create resources? We invent technology. We figure out how to do things. That knowledge of how to do things is the precise definition of technology. And then we use technology to create resources. Since there’s no upper bound to the amount of technology we can potentially have, there’s no upper bound to the resources we can have.
The most important resource we create using technology is undoubtedly energy. I call it a super resource or an uber-resource. Given sufficient energy, there are no resource constraints.
But Akshay asks, what about the natural limits to the biosphere’s ability to absorb the waste generated without breaking down? Good point. The waste-disposal sink’s capacity should be considered; and if found wanting, rejected.
Let me relate a story that James Burke frequently used to illustrate a point. If you had told the average Londoner in the 185os that one day people in London would have personal carriages to go about town, he would have fallen off his bar stool laughing his head off contemplating the insane spectacle of London being immersed 14-feet deep in horseshit. Point being that that guy could not have imagined cars with internal combustion engines running on fuel that was extracted from the ground and not horse drawn carriages.
Alright, I need to get some food. I’m not done. I will continue in the next bit. I look forward to your thoughts and ideas.
Thank you, good night, and may your god go with you.
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 
Here are some counter-points that come to me ‘off-the-top-of-my-head’. If time permits, I’ll later write up a more well thought out and better presented response.
You say that the limits-to-growth people are just trapped in a Malthusian fallacy. But, if you look at the devil’s bargains made to make food production keep pace with exponential population growth, you’ll realize that Malthus “may have been early, but not wrong” as Michael Burry would put it.
The dark side of the green-revolution, that is not discussed in polite society, is that for every calorie of food produced, 10 calories of fossil fuel energy is used. I myself found this claim to be utterly unbelievable, and had to check the data and do the math to confirm this.
Like the good professor, John McCarthy [1], we can ask: “So what? Once fossil-fuels are depleted, we can switch to using abundant solar energy directly instead. After all, solar panels work best in deserts, and won’t compete with agrarian land”.
As I mentioned in my earlier comment, yes solar energy is indeed abundant, so what’s the problem? Amateur limits-to-growth people say: fresh water for growing crops would be the problem, and John McCarthy responds: “Big deal, we’ll just pump sea water and reverse-osmosis it, problem solved!”
As an economist in 2024, I believe that you can already see the problem here, that John McCarthy writing in 1995-98 could not. I mean, if there is a multi-year drought in Central Valley, California, do you think the California government’s response would be to start pumping water from the Pacific ocean, reverse-osmosis’ing and providing it subsidized to Central Valley farmers, so they don’t go bankrupt? Like they say, I have a bridge to sell you, if you believe that! Heck, California cannot even stop gangs-of-thieves from pillaging luxury outlets in San Francisco!
… more on this later.
[1] John McCarthy’s essay which I’m paraphrasing is: https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
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Life on earth is carbon based. So called “Fossil Fuels” are also renewable albeit at a little slower speed. When using sun light nature creates a tree, it is creating a renewable resource.
The “waste” argument is so human centric!!!
Well the entire climate change hysteria is human centric non sense anyway
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