Just to be fair, this is an other response from skeptics,
note: it does not say that the task of sustainable
future is impossible.
>
>
>
> From: "Jay Hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> You are out of date Eva. I am not borrowing terms from physics. The laws of
> thermodynamics are now part of the sustainability literature at all levels.
> Here is clip from one a new book I just bought:
Since two predictable responses have already been sent, I'll take
the contrary view.
Indeed, there are several economist who have been making the point that
economics habitually ignores the laws of physics (and math), and are
attempting to bring such considerations to the table. I'm not sure
about the ``sustainability literature'' (or even what that is), but there
are those who are attempting to complement economics by ``closing the
loop.'' This effort has a 20 or 30 year history, but so far has had
little effect on the Nobel's economics committee. It is, so far as I
can tell, sound science and nothing to raise ones skeptical hackles.
(That's not to say any particular writer without a sound science
background won't misuse terms in a way that will upset a physicist,
only that the sources from which they draw are not woo woo.)
For example, you may want to check out Garrett Hardin (e.g., Living
Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos, Oxford
University Press, 1993), or Albert A. Bartlett (a physicist, if I recall
correctly). Both are wonderful curmudgeons who keep hammering home the
point that exponential growth is faster than most people realize, and
that when you take a resource from the environment it is, essentially,
gone.
(Aside: Hardin likes to point out that money does not grow, only debt
grows. That is, compound interest is a growing debt on somebody else,
and it is illogical to expect it to grow forever. He documents the case
of a man who left several $1000 accounts set to mature in 500 or 1000
years. The result will be more accumulated debt than available in most
national treasures. The courts upheld the accounts after the banks
challenge---a violation of the laws of mathematics. So, sometime in the
next 500 years or so bank's holding these accounts will have to find a
way to go bankrupt---the historical method of handling compound debt.)
> THE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF GROWTH
> by Douglas Booth; Routledge, 1998
> http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415169917
>
> [snip]
>
> Economic circular flow and the environment
>
...
> As Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and Herman Daly have gone to great lengths
> to demonstrate (Georgescu-Roegen 1971, 1973; Daly 1991 a), economists have
> failed in the construction of their macroeconomic models to recognize that
> the laws of thermodynamics dictate an absolute scarcity of energy and
> matter. It is this absolute scarcity that in turn negates the macroeconomic
> concept of circular flow.
Hardin tells of a 1970's world economics conference attended by a
variety of scientists. The scientists kept pointing out to the
economists that their plans violated the laws of thermodynamics until,
in exasperation, one of the economists says ``well, the law of
thermodynamics might change.''
> The second law of thermodynamics basically says that when used to
> perform work, energy is converted to a more dispersed, less useful form. To
> put it another way, whenever energy is used, some of it is given off in the
> form of waste heat. The entropy of energy increases. No energy-using process
> is 100 percent efficient. Entropy is the amount of energy in a system that
> is not available to do work in that system. An automobile burning petrol
> converts energy in a concentrated form into motion and waste heat. The
> automobile moves, but some of the energy is converted into waste heat
> unavailable for work.
As noted, there is a lot of matter and energy sitting around, and the
earth is not a closed system (but it does take in finite amounts of new
energy), and that indeed efforts to recycle attempt to reuse material,
etc. Ah, yes, that's the entire point of ``sustainable growth''
(scare-quotes because Bartlett calls sustainable growth an oxymoron).
You take and use in a way that allows the system to keep running, with
the available energy input. Currently, we are rapidly converted finite
resources from a usable to a less usable form, and doing it by
generating energy accumulated over a billion years in fossil fuels,
with the expectation that we can do this in an exponentially increasing
way forever.
Maybe, just maybe, we will be clever enough to find new sources of raw
material and energy, or new ways to make use of waste material, and do
this in a way that does not collapse the ecosystem or accelerate the
next mass extinction. Maybe not. We are betting a lot on our
cleverness, and so far nature has shown itself to be more clever by
half.
Anyway, I don't find anything overtly wrong with the review, or find in
it any reason to not read the book---where the author may be more
careful with his terms.
Mike
--
Michael D. Sofka [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CIS Sr. Systems Programmer AFS/DFS, email, usenet, TeX, epistemology.
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY. http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/
The addition of the word "sustainable" to our vocabulary, to our
reports, programs, and papers, and to the names of our academic
institutes and research programs, is not sufficient to ensure that our
society becomes sustainable.
-- Bartlett's 16th Law
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
