248 comments on The World's Expected Carrying Capacity in a Post Industrial Agrarian Society
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That's an excellent look at food and agriculture without fossil fuel inputs, and also a sensible analysis of carrying capacity with its nod to other species and population distributions.
Here's something else to consider regarding post-peak effects. It's probable that following peak energy there will be a dramatic decline in per-capita GDP in the developing world.
We know that the developing nations, characterized by low energy usage, are also the ones that have the highest TFR, well above replacement. That means that even as energy declines their populations will keep rising. In the case of Pakistan, the UN Medium Fertility Case projects that the population will rise from about 165 million today to 344 million by 2050 - a rise of 110%.
The research of Kummel and Ayres (as reported in David Strahan's excellent book "The Last Oil Shock") has indicated that every additional 1% growth in energy use results in approximately a 0.7% growth in GDP. If this same relationship holds in decline as well, total GDP will drop along with energy use post-peak.
In a recent speculative analysis (World Energy to 2050) I concluded the world total energy supply would decline to about 70% of its present value by 2050, for a 30% drop. Of course, that decline would vary from country to country depending on the mix of energy they consume. In a lucky coincidence I did a detailed calculation for Pakistan yesterday, and concluded that the decline there would be on the order of 45%.
If that happens, I'd expect the GDP of Pakistan to decline by 45% * 0.7 = 33% by 2050. The effect of combining such a drop with the projected rise in population is obvious: a drop of 66% in average per capita GDP. That implies a decline from an average of $2650/person today to a mere $884/person in 2050.
Given the inevitable rising cost and increasing scarcity of nitrogen fertilizer due to the loss of natural gas supplies, the unavoidable conclusion is that fertilizer use in the developing world will drop dramatically, cutting grain yields sharply just when greatly increased yields are needed.
The developing world faces a gloomy future as their ranks are swelled by their fertility as well as the impoverishment of many borderline nations, just as energy supplies start to decline and fertilizer costs begin to soar.
As you say, how populations will decline is a matter of sheer speculation, but when one takes regional and national disparities in energy and fertility into account along with the effects of climate change, aquifer depletion and soil fertility loss, some decline seems inevitable.
GliderGuider,
Firstly I think you need to ditch Fig3 in your analysis, it detracts from an otherwise good piece of work. Notwithstanding the value of the ELM, to extrapolate based on such a small data set is erronous and misleading IMO.
Having said that your analysis does give some hope and points to a future where conservation and efficiency are numero-uno considerations.
Personally I think we will see much much larger introduction of PV than you are predicting given the upcoming TF technologies and perhaps double your Wind rollout. Far from being dead-zones the Oceans will be bought to life effectively tripling usable area (actually its better than tripling as oceans are 'more 3D' -i.e. we don't just rely on 1 metre of topsoil but tens of metres of depth). Nuclear will undergo a renaiscence.
The thing I see scuppering survival is a potential collapse due to the shock of decline but surely once the cause of decline is widely recognised and the full extent of the problem grasped it will be full steam ahead on the solution?
Nick.
On reflection, I agree with your comment about my inclusion of net exports in this analysis. It really belongs in a yet-to-be-written chapter on geopolitical influences on the energy supply. Accordingly, I've dropped the entire discussion from the article.
As I say in the article, the speed and depth of penetration of wind and PV is fraught with unknowns. Worse, it will vary drastically from country to country - I would expect Germany to end up with a much higher amount and proportion of wind power than Indonesia, for instance. I'm content with my projections as they stand. In fact I think I've been uncomfortably optimistic. If developments prove them to have been pessimistic, so much the better for humanity.
How exactly are the oceans going to be brought back to life? The state of the oceans is among the most dire of any ecosystem on Earth right now. As Scripps oceanographer Jeremy Jackson is fond of hyperbolizing, we have eaten everything in the oceans over a meter long. All that's left seems to be jellyfish and plastic. I'm not sure how to revitalize an ecology that's been that badly damaged, especially within the next 40 years. But maybe that's just my doomer heart mourning.
Full steam ahead yes, but within tightening resource constraints and a closing ecological/environmental window. There's no advantage in denying the challenges.
Haha, I'd better not go in the sea then as I am over a metre long myself!
Seriously though the oceans do represent a great opportunity for humanity but it takes a bit of lateral thinking. The upwelling zones of the oceans are amongst the most productive areas -where deep sea nutrients enter the sunlit upper layers of the ocean plankton blooms cause huge amounts of life to be found. There's about 30+ metres of sunlit region so it represent a vertical stacked farm opportunity in theory.
Do some research on OTECs -Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. A by-product of this energy conversion technolgy is deep sea, nutrient rich water by the kilo-ton...
Another by-product is fresh water. So we already have three major prodcuts that look to be in shorter supply: Energy, Water, Food and there are a lot more. I am one of the editors of www.otecnews.org -OK its currently just a fascinating bit of 'GreenTech' but given a fair wind...
Regards, Nick.
Another view on the oceans:
It really doesn't matter how deep you go fishing. The productivity of the oceans is dependent on the amount of solar energy that falls on the surface. All living things are, ultimately, solar powered via photosynthesis.
You've entirely neglected the ocean thermal vent ecologies powered by the endogenous heat energy of the Earth.
We could start eating these vent worms:
Doesn't that look tasty?
Some people even think that those thermal biosystems are the origin of life on earth and, gosh, they could amount to a tiny fraction of the bio-productivity of the ocean even today.
I am of course seriously joking.
"In the case of Pakistan, the UN Medium Fertility Case projects that the population will rise from about 165 million today to 344 million by 2050 - a rise of 110%."
"The effect of combining such a drop with the projected rise in population is obvious: a drop of 66% in average per capita GDP. "
Of course, there is one thing you seem not to have considered - one or both of these projected trends might impact the other. For example, medium sized families that are already struggling for cash might decide not to become large families. Alternatively or additionally, poverty induced by the second trend could lead to earlier death and so reduce the population rise. It seems to me the UN population projection shows what would happen if the resource base existed to support it, while the peak oil trend simply says that the resource base will not exist. As such, I don't think mapping it out 40 years and saying "it'll be a catastrophe" is useful - because before it becomes so it will be a trend with it's own negative feedback.
Of course I am assuming that the people of Pakistan would, on the whole, rather have fewer children than watch some of them starve. If they choose to do things differently, well, that really is their business.
The eventual thrust of the argument I'm starting to make here is that these trends are in fact antithetical. This initial positioning simply outlines the influences using some well-accepted (in the case of the UN projection), academic (in the case of Kummel and Ayres) and speculative (in the case of my energy analysis) trends and relationships.
There is obviously going to be feedback. The question is what the feedbacks paths are going to be. If an outcome is unsupportable, as this one may well be, there are several ways events could unfold. Energy inputs (and their derivatives, food and GDP) might be increased above the projection by redirecting discretionary expenditures to the energy sector. Population might fall below the projections, either voluntarily through fertility control or involuntarily through mortality increase. Efficiencies may be introduced to make better use of the existing energy. Some combination of all these (increased energy, decreased fertility, increased mortality and increased efficiency) is probable, but the relative contributions of each are quite speculative at this point. Which factors one believes will dominate depends at least as much on the mindset of the analyst as on the data.
What does not seem speculative is that in a country where energy availability is declining as population continues to rise, and the combination of those two slopes exceeds the rate at which efficiencies (or foreign aid) can be introduced, eventually something has to give.