Living Within Limits, by Garrett Hardin

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Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos, by Garrett Hardin, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993.

These comments are based in large part on notes composed by Darrell Huwe. This includes much of the material presented in class, as well as further commentary.

No Escape

Not into space

Expensive.
Many generations to any habitable planet.
Therefore must control population anyhow.

Not to "perpetual motion"

The laws of physics are immutable.

Population Theory

Malthus started it in 1798: population growth is bound to outstrip food supply.

But that did not come true for Europe and North America - - - yet.

Dreams are dashed; for example, private aviation is shrinking...

Information - mutable science

Predictions can themselves influence the results.

Leads to uncertain data.

Encourages taboos.

Optimism

Example: oil reserves.

Discovery is "good news," but actually means that the resource is being depleted that much faster.

Usury Compound interest grows exponentially. A $100 savings bond at 7% annual interest yields roughly $100,000,000 in 200 years. Debt, not wealth, is growing. Society needs failure mechanisms, such as bank failures political revolutions inflation

Fertility

Like usury, fertility is also exponential in nature: the more you have, the faster they breed.

Any net rate of population increase, however small, will eventually saturate the Earth.

There must be a failure mechanism - - - death.

All living species increase in the absence of external limits, such as food supply, with a characteristic doubling-time:

For bacteria, 20 minutes;
For fruit flies, 50 hours;
For pheasants, 9 months;
For North American bison, 2.6 years;
For people, 13 years (ref. Bikini);
For elephants, 35 years (ref. Darwin).

In most periods of human history (and pre-history) the population of a rural village will exhibit random fluctuations from year to year that are quite comparable in size to the long term growth of 5% to 10% observed over a 70-year "ripe old age" lifetime. These random fluctuations are driven primarily by weather and its impact on the harvest, secondarily by wars or epidemics.

Regulation

The population is clearly being regulated. There is negative feedback (comparable to the example of a thermostat).

What might drive a Malthusian "demostat?"

misery
birth control

Overpopulation causes misery and vice, which decreases fertility and increases mortality, bringing the actual population back to the "set-point."

Underpopulation causes unusual good health, which increases fertility and decreases mortality, bringing the actual population back to the "set-point."

What has been done and what might we do to "change the setting?" Technology of modern medicine might be thought of as "death control."

Co-evolution: people and artifacts change together

Future orientation: how should we plan?

Secular Changes

What will the temperature of a room do if you change the setting on the thermostat? It will have been fluctuating slightly above and below the old set-point. Initially it will change steadily toward the new set-point. Once it reaches the new set-point, it will begin to fluctuate again, slightly above and slightly below the new set-point. The more or less steady change from the old set-point to the new is called a "secular change."

Human population of the Earth has exhibited three secular changes:

Somewhat less than a million years ago, in response to the tool-making revolution;
Perhaps 12,000 years ago, in response to the agricultural revolution;
Perhaps 200 years ago, in response to the scientific-industrial revolution.

In each of the first two cases, the population rose rapidly and then leveled off (or at least rose much less rapidly), for an extended period of time, until the next revolution. It seems reasonable to expect that the current revolution's secular change is nearly played out. What will happen next? There are three more-or-less plausible scenarios:

We are not yet in fact at the end of the secular change - the world's population will keep rising rapidly for quite some time to come.
The fertility reductions that have been observed lately in many countries are real, and the population will stabilize at a level somewhat above the present one.
The population of the Earth will collapse back to the sustainable carrying capacity as resource wars, starvation, and disease take their toll in the absence of fossil fuels.

Diminishing Returns

Added input does not forever yield same added output.

Each technological revolution must "saturate".

Hubbert's Pimple

Hardin follows Hubbert [1974] in projecting that world petroleum production will reach a peak around the year 2000, and be back down to 1900 levels well before the year 2100, at approximately 1 per-cent of the peak production rate.

On a time-scale of millenia, the production of petroleum will thus be a very narrow spike.

The fourteenth century deforestation of western Europe provides a chilling parallel.

Falling off the Exponential Growth Curve

People's expectations have been built up for continued exponential growth in energy consumption. As we have seen from many perspectives, it is at least plausible that the exponential growth will stop and be followed by a leveling-off and then a decline.

The phases of public and private reaction to this unexpected scenario are described by Hardin as follows:

Fear and denial, while growth continues, but at a less-than-expected rate.
Shock, as growth stops with consumption at a peak that is well short of the value expected at that date on the basis of the former exponential growth.
Social chaos, as energy use actually declines. Hardin believes that this phase will occur long before energy use has declined to two-thirds of its peak rate.

Alvin Weinberg

[See page 156.]

Alvin Weinberg was for many years the Director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, involved in both nuclear weapons and civilian nuclear power. In 1974, he said:

The price that we must pay for this great boon is a vigilance that in many ways transcends what we have ever had to maintain: vigilance and care in operating these devices [nuclear power reactors], and creation, and continuation into eternity, of a cadre or priesthood who understand the nuclear systems, and who are prepared to guard the wastes. To those of us whose business it is to supply power here and now, such speculation about 100,000 year-priesthoods must strike an eerie and unreal sound.

Hardin makes the point that no nation has been stable for 1,000 years, much less 100,000 years!

Demographic Transition

May be "malign" instead of "benign".

Benign demographic transition involves a major drop in death rate, followed some years later by an equal drop in the birth rate. The total population has a one-time-only increase.
Malign demographic transition involves a major drop in the death rate, followed some years later by an increase in the death rate to match a perhaps slightly lower birth rate. The total population has increased, "one-time-only" in this scenario also, but at the end of the transition people are breeding like flies and dying like flies.

Even post-transition countries have non-zero growth rates.

Global Problems

Carrying Capacity
Pollution

Democratic remedy requires mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.

A Double-C, Double-P Game

[See page 237]

"CC-PP: Commonized Costs and Privatized Profit"

Walter Lippmann, between the first two world wars, and more recently Milton Friedman, have pointed out the fact that most business people, workers, and comsumers believe in the free market in general, for others, but seek at every opportunity to escape having it applied to themselves.

As Hardin points out, "This inconsistency violates the fundamental assumption of ethical theory that moral principles must be symmetrical - sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."

Hardin goes on to say that business success is more often achieved by fashioning "a bifurcation in the accounting system that channels the costs of [the] enterprise to society, while directing the profits to [the entrepreneur]." This is making the costs common and the profit private, hence the appellation, "CC-PP."

Control Desired family size is probably already too large. Be nationalistic, control immigration, quit feeding the world. Empower women: the historical record is very clear that women who have control of their own reproductive lives have fewer children.

Dick Piccard revised this file (http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~piccard/entropy/hardin.html) on February 1, 2006.

Please E-Mail comments or suggestions to "piccard@ohio.edu".