The UN’s Mass Extinction Fiction

20 Monday May 2019

Posted by pnuetz in Biodiversity, Central Planning, Environment

Tags

African Elephants, Beepocalypse, Biodiversity, Bird Eater Tarantulas, CO2 Emissions, Dan Hannon, Extinction, Gary Wrightstone, Global Greening, Habitat Loss, IPCC, IUCN Red List, Jimmy Carter, Matt Ridley, Non-Native Species, Paris Accord, Polar Bears

A big story early this month warned of mass extinctions and a collapse of the planet’s biodiversity. This was based on a report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). A high-level presentation of the data by IPBES was constructed in a way that is easily revealed as misleading (see below). But the first thing to ask about bombastic reports like this is whether the authors are self-interested. There is big money in promoting apocalyptic scenarios and public programs to avert them. Large government grants are at stake for like-minded scientists, and political power is at stake for biodiversity activists worldwide. Like many other scare stories reported as “news”, this one feeds into the statist political agenda of the environmental Left.

Exaggerated claims of species endangerment are not a new phenomenon. We’ve heard grossly erroneous forecasts of polar bear extinctions, frightening but false warnings of a “beepocalyse”, and faulty claims about declines in the population of African elephants. These are headline-grabbing and more thrilling to report than mourning the prospective loss of an obscure species of cave lichen. But a mass extinction is something else! Dan Hannon reminds us of the following:

“In 1980, for example, the Jimmy Carter administration distributed to foreign governments a report claiming that, by the year 2000, 2 million species would be wiped out. In fact, by 2010, there had been 872 documented extinctions.”

Of course, that figure does not account for the multitude of new species discovered. There are many. Recent examples just gruesome enough to garner attention are the three new species of bird eater tarantulas discovered in 2017.

In the more general mass-extinction context of the IPBES report, the blame for the extremely pessimistic outlook is placed squarely on human activity. The authors allege CO2 emissions as the primary culprit, which is at best a theory and one at odds with the chief driver of extinctions during the industrial era. That is the introduction of non-native species into environments having flora or fauna unable to withstand new competitors. Matt Ridley elaborates:

“The introduction by people of predators, parasites and pests, especially to islands, has been and continues to be far and away the greatest cause of local and global extinction of native fauna.”

There is no question that the IPBES report on extinctions was intended to create alarm. As Gary Wrightstone demonstrates, the lack of rigor and misleading expositional techniques used in the report are a tell:

“… the data were lumped together by century rather than shorter time frames, which, as we shall see accentuates the supposed increase in extinctions. … The base data were derived from the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List, which catalogues every known species that has gone the way of the dodo and the carrier pigeon. Review of the full data set reveals a much different view of extinction and what has been happening recently.”

The more granular charts Wrightstone presents are indeed contrary to the narrative in the IPBES report. And Wrightstone also highlights the following in a postscript:

“In an incredibly ironic twist that poses a difficult conundrum for those who are intent on saving the planet from our carbon dioxide excesses, the new study reports that the number one cause of predicted extinctions is habitat loss. Yet their solution is to pave over vast stretches of land for industrial scale solar factories and to construct immense wind factories that will cover forests and grasslands, killing the endangered birds and other species they claim to want to save.”

The enduring extinction racket is one among other fronts in the war on capitalism. The IPBES report must use the term “transformative” a thousand times, as it recommends “steering away from the current limited paradigm of economic growth“. Matt Ridley highlights the faulty attribution of alleged declines in biodiversity to “western values and capitalism”:

“On the whole what really diminishes biodiversity is a large but poor population trying to live off the land. As countries get richer and join the market economy they generally reverse deforestation, slow species loss and reverse some species declines.”

And Ridley also says this:

“A favourite nostrum of many environmentalists is that you cannot have infinite growth with finite resources. But this is plain wrong, because economic growth comes from doing more with less. So if I invent a new car engine that gets twice as many miles per gallon, I’ve caused economic growth but we’ll use less fuel. Likewise if I increase the yield of a crop, I need less land and probably less fuel too.”

It’s no coincidence that future extinctions foretold by IPBES are predicted to have drastic impacts on less-developed countries. It thus appears that IPBES exists in a happy synergy with the UN’s climate Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as proponents of the Paris Accord and the entire climate lobby. An objective that helps them garner support around the globe is to redistribute existing wealth to less-developed countries in the name of environmental salvation. That would prove a poor substitute for the kinds of free-market policies that would truly enhance prospects for economic growth in those nations.

The threat of mass extinctions is greatly exaggerated by the UN, IPBES, climate change activists, and members of the media who can’t resist promoting a crisis. Any diminished biodiversity we might experience going forward won’t be solved by limiting economic growth, as the IPBES report claims. Instead, advances in productivity, particularly in agriculture, can allow expansion of native habitat, as recent experience with reforestation and global greening demonstrates. This principle is as applicable to under-developed countries as anywhere else.

The kinds of centrally planned limits on human activity contemplated by the IPBES report are likely to backfire by making us poorer. Those limits would impose costs by misallocating resources away from things that people value most highly. They would also force people to forego the adoption of innovative production techniques, leading to the substitution of other resources, such as inefficient land use. And those limits would deny basic freedoms, including the unfettered use of private property.

Deceits of the Climate Claimants

23 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by pnuetz in Global Warming

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Tags

Al Gore, Alpine Tree Lines, Armadillos, Desertification, Global Greening, global warming, Ocean Acidification, Polar Bears, Social Cost of Carbon, Steven Hayward

Well-meaning souls innocently parrot the global warming narrative but generally know little of the controversies surrounding its validation, or lack thereof. That includes much of the mainstream media. Every warm day is evidence of global warming. Every cold day is evidence of extreme volatility brought on by climate change. Every big storm, every forest fire, and every endangered species is attributed to warming. The poles are melting, the sea is rising, the sky is falling, and it is mostly bullshit. But in the meantime, the mythology of global warming has become an all-purpose cudgel for state oversight and “redistributive justice”, primarily to the benefit of the “climate change industrial complex. The myths are repeated so frequently that many accept them as facts. Here, I list a few of these myths along with information that should give pause to anyone tempted to take them too seriously.

The science is settled: There are a number of great scientists who dispute the global warming narrative (and see here). But a few studies have claimed incredibly widespread consensus (97%) among scientists that mankind drives climate change. These studies are generally plagued by biased samples of scientists (sometimes including non-scientists), faulty selection and classification of paper abstracts, and direct involvement of climate activists in the research process. These studies tend to present the “consensus” as one side of a stark dichotomy, with no nuance or middle ground for those subscribing to anything less than the inevitability of a warming catastrophe.

Record high temperatures: The temperatures that are almost always reported are surface temperatures that are subject to extreme bias. The most drastic bias is caused by increasing urbanization. Urban weather instruments are often sited in areas with an increasing amount of impervious ground cover, which absorbs sunlight and heat, leading to the so-called “urban heat-island effect”. This has imparted an upward trend in urban temperature readings. Moreover, urban temperature readings tend to be over-sampled in estimates of global surface temperatures, reinforcing the distortions in measured warming.

Melting poles: Arctic sea ice extent has been in modest retreat since 1980, when satellite measurement began to allow more accurate readings. The Antarctic, however, has shown a trend in the other direction, as shown in this piece by Judith Curry. In the same article, Curry shows that specific Arctic locations had less sea ice 6,000 to 8,000 years ago than today. For more complete information on satellite-era trends in sea ice extent, see this informative reference page (scroll way down for Antarctic information). Looks like Al Gore’s dire prediction that the poles would melt by 2007 was just a little off target.

Polar bear extinction: We are constantly seeing warnings of polar bear extinction on social media. Memes feature desperate-looking bears stranded on ice floes, drifting away from their cubs. Perhaps you aren’t supposed to know that polar bears are extremely strong swimmers. Or that the polar bear population is been thriving, increasing by an estimated 10-20% since 2001. So whether or not the past few decades have seen a decline in sea ice, the bears seem be doing just fine.

Rising sea levels: The rate of increase in sea levels over the past 8,000 years has been vey slow relative to the 10,000 years prior to that, when they rose at rates of up to 5.5 meters per century. That compares to recent rates of about one foot per century. Predictions that islands in the Pacific would be swallowed by the seas have not come to pass. In fact, satellite images show that more of the world’s sandy shorelines accreted than receded between 1984 and 2016, This does not appear to be a crisis by any means.

Increasing storms: No, the frequency and intensity of tropical cyclone activity has decreased since 1900, a trend that has continued unabated over the past 20 years. I know of at least one study suggesting otherwise, but it is based purely on modeled relationships, not hard data, and not tested against data. The frequency and intensity of droughts and floods has been flat to declining as well. And while more weak tornadoes are detected today than in the past, the frequency of moderate to strong tornadoes has decreased over the past 45 years.

Desertification: Increases in carbon concentration have not been associated with desertification, as the media seem to have concluded. As noted above, the frequency of drought has been steady to declining. In fact, precipitation data suggests that patterns of variability in rainfall do not square with the predictions of climate models. In fact, the world has seen an increase in green vegetation since 1985, even in arid regions.

Ocean acidification: The reported declines in ocean pH levels over the past few centuries are actually smaller than the normal seasonal variation in pH levels. The presumed negative impact on sea life appears, after all, to be minimal to nonexistent (see the same link).

Higher alpine tree lines: We’ve been waiting. It hasn’t happened, but that hasn’t stopped some activists from stating it as established fact.

Armadillo northward migration: I’ve heard this cited as “proof” of global warming. The range of armadillos extended as far north as southern Missouri and Kansas in the early 1970s, so this isn’t new. In fact, armadillos began their migration northward into the U.S. before the mid-1800s. Some biologists have attributed the migration to warming but acknowledge many other reasons, including more forested habitat in the north and factors such as movement of cattle by rail. Armadillos burrow and are able to keep warm underground in the winter. Of course, a series of warm winters can bring them further north along with other species, but a few cold winters can take a toll on the population and push them south again.

U.S. carbon criminality: U.S. CO2 emissions have been in almost steady decline on a per capita basis for at least seven decades, long before the carbon freak-out began. The declines have resulted largely from the normal market process of competitive efficiency in production. China leads the world in total annual CO2 emissions by a wide margin, about 80% ahead of the U.S. in 2017. Total U.S. emissions actually declined in 2017 for the third straight year, while emissions in China, the EU, and for the world all increased. In fact, China was actually in compliance with its pledge under the Paris Accord despite the increase, so the pledge was not especially ambitious.

High social cost of carbon: The estimates used by the Environmental Protection Agency are plagued by poor methodology and are subject to great uncertainty. Some studies rely on a series of tenuous causal links, such as CO2 emissions to global temperatures to ice melt to sea level to real dollars of coastal damage many years hence, all without considering variances at each stage, and assuming zero effort to adapt or mitigate damages over long time frames. A shortcut approach relies on historical correlations between temperatures and such measures as heat-related deaths, labor productivity and real output. These estimates extrapolate old relationships to the distant future and ignore the very real human tendency to adapt. The underlying assumptions are undercut by such basic facts as ongoing migration to warmer regions. The estimates also fail to account for the likelihood that warmer weather will improve agricultural productivity.

The public’s interest in climate change has waned, and no wonder: sensible people do not buy hype and demands for sacrifice in the face of contradictory evidence. Revelations of statistical fraud have led to even more skepticism. And when your “proof” is founded on model extrapolation, often theoretically-based rather than empirically-based, you’re skating on thin scientific ice. At this link, Steven Hayward has an interesting take on the public’s increasingly jaundiced view of global warming activism:

“Scientists who are genuinely worried about the potential for catastrophic climate change ought to be the most outraged at how the left politicized the issue and how the international policy community narrowed the range of acceptable responses. Treating climate change as a planet-scale problem that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”

Markets, Ingenuity and Genuine Sustainability

22 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by pnuetz in Environment, Markets, Scarcity

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Atmospheric CO2, Decoupling, Factor Productivity, Global Greening, Human Ingenuity, James Ward, Jesse Ausubel, Malthusian, Reason.com, Resource Efficiency, Ronald Bailey, Sustainability, Technical Change, Technology Diffusion, Thomas Malthus

Will mankind drain the world of resources and ruin the environment? Must we curtail economic growth in order to ensure our long-term survival? Only if we give up on markets and give-in to central economic direction and control. Ronald Bailey at Reason.com covers the technical assumptions underlying a recent piece of neo-Malthusian “research” purporting to demonstrate the impossibility of environmentally-sustainable economic growth. Bailey’s article makes a great follow-up to my last post, “The Greening-Carbon Nexus“, in which I discussed the bloom in vegetation taking place around the globe attributable to greater levels of atmospheric CO2.

Bailey describes the concept of “decoupling” resource use from economic growth as fundamental to long-term environmental sustainability. This is another twist on good old-fashioned growth in factor productivity. In the new research cited by Bailey, Australian hydrologist James Ward and his co-authors assert that population growth and consumption will eventually overwhelm technological advance. However, it has long been recognized by demographers that freedom from need and growth in material comfort reduces fertility. Bailey notes that world population growth has been decelerating for many years, and the global population is likely to stabilize within a couple of decades.

Ward, et al lean heavily on assumptions about how various classes of resources are not substitutable, and that mankind will run-up against hard production requirements for minimum resource use, a point at which many tradeoffs become impossible. Bailey summarizes their results:

“They crank the notion that there are nonsubstitutable physical limits on material and energy resources through their equations until 2100, and they find that eventually consumption of both rise at the same rate as economic growth. QED: Economic growth is unsustainable. Or as they report, ‘Permanent decoupling (absolute or relative) is impossible for essential, non-substitutable resources because the efficiency gains are ultimately governed by physical limits.’“

Bailey proceeds to pick apart the assumptions made by Ward and his co-authors. First, even if true, those assumptions would apply with much more force to physical outputs, as opposed to service outputs. The latter are likely to continue on a path garnering an increasing share of world output over time. More fundamentally, Ward, et al give short-shrift to the limitless potential of human ingenuity. A few specific examples of the physical limits they contemplate are already verifiably false, having been overcome by technological breakthroughs. This includes agricultural productivity related to enhancements in plant photosynthesis, new manufacturing methods requiring dramatically fewer raw materials, and methods of energy production that are already available, if not yet heavily relied upon. A glaring assumption made by Ward, et al is that the use of fossil fuels will continue to grow through at least the year 2100. In fact, existing alternatives such as nuclear power might well be more economical. Ironically, greater adoption of nuclear power is held hostage by the political resistance of groups who oppose the burning of fossil fuels.

Bailey also cites the work of Jesse Ausubel, whom I cited at length in a post on “rewilding” in 2015. Ausubel’s work shows that Americans’ use of a variety of productive inputs already has “decoupled absolutely” from production, or is approaching that point. That includes farmland, water, timber, plastics, aluminum and steel. Our use of all of those things has peaked and is now in decline. Ausubel’s work implies that “decoupling” is just a matter of time for many other resources for which use is growing at rates declining relative to production. These trends will spread overseas with continued economic development.

Efficiencies like these are a direct effect of technological advance, but the process of technical change is dependent on incentives, which are, in turn, dependent on market prices, profit opportunities, and secure property rights. First, the funding of research into new techniques and methods is driven in large part by market incentives. That’s the real mechanism at play when we marvel that “necessity is the mother of invention”. Necessity, of course, is often manifest in scarcity of existing productive inputs and high input prices.

New technologies present profit opportunities by promising lower input costs, greater production, or other competitive advantages. The adoption of a new technology nearly always entails short-run costs and long-term rewards, both of which are driven by market prices. As the pace of adoption accelerates, the costs of new technologies tend to decrease along with scale economies and sheer experience, reinforcing the process of diffusion. The driving force in all cases is the competitive market and freedom to trade for one’s own benefit. The increasing efficiency of resource use embodied in the “decoupling” phenomena is dependent on the existence of accurate market incentives and secure rights to the rewards that efficiencies in production can bring.

And what if government responds to political pressure by imposing bureaucratically-established production limits, market quotas, efficiency standards, process rules, regulatory reporting, and tax penalties. Apart from direct confiscation and the additional confiscatory risk these actions entail, compliance requires producers to ignore market incentives to one degree or another. These measures force adoption of less efficient technologies than the market would dictate and add resource costs that would otherwise be absent. The inescapable fact is that market incentives are blunted or destroyed in the process; the consequent waste of resources prevents the kind of natural improvements in factor productivity that lead to decoupling and sustainability.

Sadly, such regulatory actions are often borne out of private rent-seeking efforts. Dominant market players believe that smaller competitors will struggle under the compliance burden created by regulation, so they work with government officials in an effort to have these rules promulgated. This adds a greater degree of market concentration and monopoly power, which implies an efficiency loss relative to competition. Under the protection of regulators, dominant players can survive for too long using wasteful techniques and inputs. Fortunately, with time, new technologies often outpace even these dominant players and the outmoded regulatory rules they rely upon.

Just as wasteful are authoritarian efforts to promote new technologies before the market is ready to adopt them. Picking technological winners and losers is fraught with peril for society. The government usually lacks the foresight possessed by the market, forcibly redirecting resources from one use to another with little consequence for failure except at the taxpayer’s expense. The premature investment is prone to burdening society with stale or defective early versions of new technology. This is not a reliable way to achieve efficiency in resource use. One of the sure signs that such efforts entail waste is the propensity for insiders to be awarded subsidies for promoting politically-favored technologies. Government is invariably drawn to such opportunities for graft.

I conclude with a quote of my earlier post on Ausubel’s work (linked above):

“It’s worth emphasizing that the nature rebound already taking place in the developed world is largely a product of free market capitalism and the growth in wealth and technology they have made possible. A great benefit of secure property rights for society, and for the environment, is that owners have powerful incentives to husband their resources. Likewise, the profit motive gives producers strong incentives to reduce waste and improve productivity. As economic development becomes more widespread, these incentives are promoting a healthier balance between man and nature.“

The Greening-Carbon Nexus

17 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by pnuetz in Environment, Global Warming

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Atmospheric Carbon Concentration, Climate Change, Climate Consensus, David Henderson, Global Greening, global warming, Harrison H. Schmitt, Matt Ridley, Pollution, Rand Paul, Rodney W. Nichols, Roy Spencer, Thomas Malthus

Satellite records show that our world is experiencing a remarkable “greening” in the 21st century, to the seeming chagrin of the environmental left. There is now more vegetation than two decades ago, and greener vegetation, across as much as 50% of the Earth’s vegetated surface area. That area is expanding as well, and the creeping greenery has improved soil moisture levels in some drylands. This bodes well for agricultural productivity, putting another nail in Malthus’ coffin. The satellite studies have concluded that most of the enhanced vegetation is attributable to greater concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, as opposed to warming or other possible causes. An interesting feedback is that the enhanced vegetation increases natural absorption of CO2, providing an enhanced carbon sink. This, in turn, has caused a pause in the growth of atmospheric carbon cencentration.

The environmental left knows these developments tend to undermine their preferred narrative that human emissions of CO2 must be reduced — at any cost. In fact, already there are warnings that global greening will “outgrow its benefit” as the greater volume of plants begins to decay, releasing carbon. You just can’t make some people happy! But not all of the carbon release from plant decay adds to atmospheric carbon — some is soil-bound — so the greening should provide a fairly durable carbon sink.

Global greening was one of the major motifs in Matt Ridley’s 2016 Global Warming Policy Foundation Lecture. Ridley covered various evidence of greening, but he also discussed the failure of a large contingent of climate researchers to follow a legitimate scientific approach to the study of climate change. Instead, they have politicized their field of study, committing a few noteworthy frauds along the way:

“It is irresponsible not to challenge the evidence properly, especially if the policies pursued in its name are causing suffering. Increasingly, many people would like to outlaw, suppress, prosecute and censor all discussion of what they call ‘the science’ rather than engage in debate. …

No wonder that I talk frequently to scientists who are skeptical, but dare not say so openly. That is a ridiculous state of affairs. We’re told that it’s impertinent to question “the science” and that we must think as we are told. But arguments from authority are the refuge of priests. Thomas Henry Huxley put it this way: ‘The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin’.

What keeps science honest, what stops it from succumbing entirely to confirmation bias, is that it is decentralized, allowing one lab to challenge another.“

It is all too true that policies advanced in the interests of curbing a slight warming trend cause real suffering, and the pain is heavily concentrated on the most impoverished. The presumed benefits of activist climate-change policies are speculative, at best. They have little chance of reversing atmospheric carbon concentration on their own.

Ridley makes note of the substantial evidence that sensitivity of the climate to airborne carbon concentration is low. This has become increasingly evident with the unfolding of a consistent record of over-forecasts of global temperatures by climate forcing models. Roy Spencer provides insights about these models in a recent discussion of global warming and “dodgy science” on his blog.

There is a widespread myth that 97 percent of climate scientists believe human activity is the main cause of global warming. In fact, that claim was based on a paper counting citations, not scientists; the methods used in the study and the citations themselves were also questionable. I have reviewed that evidence here on Sacred Cow Chips. David Henderson reviewed it here. A large number of studies find fault with so-called “consensus” pronouncements. They should always be viewed with suspicion.

There is also a lively debate underway over whether CO2 should be considered a pollutant! I exhale, therefore I pollute? To the extent that fecal matter is considered a pollutant, is it fair that to say that CO2 is, too? After all, both are anthropogenic. No, they are not even close in terms of an immediate threat to human health. As a philosophical matter, the idea that anything done by man is “unnatural” denies the fact that we are a very part of nature. Obviously, CO2 is not in the same class as pollutants like sulfur dioxide, ammonia, carbon monoxide or toxic metals. Today, these pollutants are very common in many parts of the world, and they are very threatening to human life. Effective mitigation technologies are available, but instead, in the developed West, we fixate on an increase in CO2 concentration of 100 parts per million over many decades, the climate implications of which are de minimis.

Rand Paul’s Facebook page has an ungated link to a WSJ.com commentary by Rodney W. Nichols and Harrison H. Schmitt on “The Phony War Against CO2”. Their commentary provokes questions as to the motives of the environmental left, and certain members of the research community, in shilling for the cause. That we would fight the greening of the globe, and the potential agricultural benefit it could bring, is bizarre. To devote enormous resources to an endeavor that is largely futile is a waste and a tragedy.

Capitalism Is The Bounce In Nature’s Rebound

04 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by pnuetz in Free markets, Human Welfare, Technology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Agricultural productivity, CropMobster, Dematerialization, Elon Musk, External costs and benefits, Fish Farms, Food Cowboy, Forest plantations, Global Greening, Hydrogen production, Hyperloop, Jesse H. Ausubel, Luxury public goods, Peak use, Property Rights, Reforestation, Rewilding

What forces account for the great shift toward “rewilding” now taking place in our world? Is it green activism and government action? Not from the looks of the photo above, which shows a giant field of solar panels powering an airport in India. Hailed as a great accomplishment by greens, the view from above provides a clue to the absurdity of absorbing vast resources to replace cheap, traditional power sources with politically-favored solar for just a few buildings. Fry the birds, burn the taxpayers! That’s certainly not rewilding, nor will it get us there. Neither will a cluttered landscape of giant, noisy windmills that slice up avian life, provide only intermittent power, and are left to decay once taxpayer subsidies go away.

Rather, the world is returning to nature via many forms of technology, resource productivity and capitalism. How is that possible? Here is a monograph by Jesse H. Ausubel on “rewilding”, the rebound of nature taking place around the globe. It might make you feel more optimistic about prospects for human prosperity and the joint survival of mankind and planet Earth. There is no question that the changes he describes are primarily driven by powerful private incentives. However, Ausubel’s positions are largely technical, not oriented toward a particular social or economic philosophy. He presents compelling graphical evidence and references to support his technical claims. In what follows, I’ll try to summarize some of the most salient points he makes in the report. Some [bracketed comments] in the bullet points are my own thoughts:

Land once used in agriculture is being returned to nature as “acreage and yield [have] decoupled. Since about 1940 American farmers have quintupled corn while using the same or even less land.” The same is true in other parts of the world. “The great reversal of land use that I am describing is not only a forecast, it is a present reality in Russia and Poland as well as Pennsylvania and Michigan.” Moreover, there is no cap in sight for farm yields. He credits “precision agriculture, in which we use more bits, not more kilowatts or gallons.“
Even more impressive is the fact that “rising yields have not required more tons of fertilizer or other inputs. The inputs to agriculture have plateaued and then fallen, not just cropland but nitrogen, phosphates, potash, and even water.“
A tremendous quantity of food is wasted, but Ausubel cites new web-enabled initiatives such as Food Cowboy and CropMobster that hold great promise in rerouting wasted surplus to areas of need. “The 800 million or so hungry humans worldwide are not hungry because of inadequate production.” [Well, production might be inadequate in their vicinity. And “waste” is relative, so to speak. It is typically uneconomic to avoid all wastage, and social pockets of hunger exist for many reasons unrelated to the operation of markets in food. But improvements in technology can make it feasible to reduce wastage at little cost.]
“If we keep lifting average yields toward the demonstrated levels …, stop feeding corn to cars [corn ethanol – another activity subsidized by government], restrain our diets lightly, and reduce waste, then an area the size of India or the USA east of the Mississippi could be released globally from agriculture over the next 50 years or so.“
Land released from agriculture contributes to reforestation, a process that is underway in a number of countries. “In the USA, the forest transition began around 1900, when states such as Connecticut had almost no forest, and now encompasses dozens of states. The thick green cover of New England, Pennsylvania, and New York today would be unrecognizable to Teddy Roosevelt, who knew them as wheat fields, pastures mown by sheep, and hillsides denuded by logging.“
Our demand for forest products is in decline, which also contributes to reforestation. Forest plantations (accounting for about 1/3 of wood production) are much more productive than harvesting wood from natural forests. Land devoted to wood plantations can displace the harvesting of a much larger area of natural forest.
Carbon dioxide (as well as nitrogen) is adding to “global greening“, which according to Ausubel is “the most important ecological trend on Earth today. The biosphere on land is getting bigger, year by year, by 2 billion tons or even more.” [Importantly, this greening provides an important offset to any tendency for human greenhouse gas emissions to warm the environment.]
“Dematerialization”: After the 1970s “…a surprising thing happened, even as our population kept growing. The intensity of use of the resources began to fall. For each new dollar in the economy, we used less copper and steel than we had used before.” Ausubel and some colleagues studied the use of 100 commodities in the U.S. over time. “… we found that 36 have peaked in absolute use; … Good riddance to asbestos and cadmium. … 53 commodities we consider poised to fall. These include not only cropland and nitrogen, … but even electricity and water…. Only 11 of the 100 commodities are still growing in both relative and absolute use in America.“
Ausubel shows that certain emissions in the U.S. have decreased in relative terms, and sometimes in absolute terms. [The latter were mostly induced by public demands for pollution control regulation, but relative declines also reflect the ability of the private economy to generate growth. However, the value of certain regulations is questionable from both a public finance and a public health perspective.]
He is very high on maglev technology and especially the “hyperloop”, Elon Musk’s proposed tube for high-speed maglev travel between LA and San Francisco. [I do not share his enthusiasm for some of the reasons discussed in “High-Speed Third Rail For Taxpayers“. Large-scale, publicly-subsidized infrastructure projects often fail in terms of costs vs. benefits. However, the economics of the hyperloop might prove more compelling.]
Fertility has been in decline throughout the world for decades. Slower population growth obviously complements technological advance in providing for material human welfare.
Oceans and aquatic life are an area of real concern, in Ausubel’s view. “Fish biomass in intensively exploited fisheries appears to be about one-tenth the level of the fish in those seas a few decades or hundred [of] years ago.” [This is a classic tragedy of the commons in which no property rights are defined until the catch is in.] Fish farming is a promising alternative that can reduce the strain on wild fish populations.
A final section on potential changes in the human diet is provocative. Ausubel discusses the promise of hydrogen supplies in creating proteins for our diet. “A single spherical fermenter of 100 yards diameter could produce the primary food for the 30 million inhabitants of Mexico City. The foods would, of course, be formatted before arriving at the consumer. Grimacing gourmets should observe that our most sophisticated foods, such as cheese and wine, are the product of sophisticated elaboration by microorganisms of simple feedstocks such as milk and grape juice. … Globally, such a food system would allow humanity to release 90 percent of the land and sea now exploited for food.“

In concluding his monograph, Ausubel addresses whether his optimism is misplaced, having focused so much on positive trends in the developed world and relatively little on less developed countries. Here is his response:

“My view is that the patterns described are not exceptional to the US and that within a few decades, the same patterns, already evident in Europe and Japan, will be evident in many more places.“

None of this is to deny the existence of external costs and benefits to the natural environment, which private parties might ignore in cases of ill-defined property rights or difficulties in litigating damages. Regulation may be a reasonable alternative for internalizing obvious external costs and benefits, but even then, markets can play a valuable role in fashioning the most efficient regulatory approach. In fact, with advances in environmental consciousness, private parties often find it in their best interest to internalize obvious external costs.

Having achieved a sufficient level of prosperity, a society may decide to convert some of the gains into public benefits through various forms of regulation or other public initiatives. In essence, these may be characterized as “luxury public goods”. The danger lies in the mistakes government often makes in the imposition of costly measures, and in allowing excessive taxes and regulation to subvert the very market processes giving rise to prosperity. This is particularly dangerous to welfare and growth in the underdeveloped world, as illustrated by opposition from environmentalists to efficient fossil fuels. That leaves the poor no alternative but to continue to burn wood indoors for heating and cooking.

It’s worth emphasizing that the nature rebound already taking place in the developed world is largely a product of free market capitalism and the growth in wealth and technology they have made possible. A great benefit of secure property rights for society, and for the environment, is that owners have powerful incentives to husband their resources. Likewise, the profit motive gives producers strong incentives to reduce waste and improve productivity. As economic development becomes more widespread, these incentives are promoting a healthier balance between man and nature. Greenies: capitalism can be your friend!