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Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

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Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#31

Post by NickM »

darkerside wrote: post #28
seibelj wrote: post #23

Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at environmental cost, but that simply isn't true. I can create digital goods and services which people buy, and this increases GDP, and it doesn't hurt the environment and is indeed economic growth in the realest sense. I can even give massages all day, and this also doesn't destroy the environment.

There an upper bound created by the limits of possible human time spent. You can raise them with technology or population growth, but there again, you're bumping up against ecological constraints.

You can raise them with technology or population growth, but there again, you're bumping up against ecological constraints.

Population growth, yes, but technology? Why can't technology continue to improve in terms of efficiency and environmental impact as well as productivity?

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#32

Post by lkrubner »

Wages have been mostly flat, so consumers have no extra money to engage in additional buying. Since the Great Recession of 2008, the top 1% of the income distribution have absorbed 125% of productivity gains. This is the reverse of what we saw in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s when strong labor unions were able to win 110% of productivity for workers, so that the share of national income going to labor increased. Now the opposite is happening, with the share of national income going to labor decreasing.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#33

Post by colechristensen »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #8
sp332 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't explain crop tonnage going up while fertilizer and water use are going down.

Did it occur to you that, like ordinary consumer products, industrial products also oversell their efficacy? There was just a paper released about a widely used pesticide that did not appear to actually increase yields. If the question is, how does crop tonnage go up without water and fertilizer use, maybe the answer really is a computer helped people plan better and be less wasteful. Or all the least efficient farme…

Corn yields have been going up a bit more than 1.5 bushels per acre since hybrid breeding started in the 1930's going from a steady ~25 bu/acre to >170/acre today.

Farmers haven't just been adding a bit more fertilizer and water every year, and it has been going on long before computers.

Many factors go into it: soil management with tilling practices and fertilizers, pest and weed management, improvements in irrigation and drainage, better harvesters which leave less on the ground, but very much most importantly, plant genetics.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#34

Post by undershirt »

seibelj wrote: post #23

Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at environmental cost, but that simply isn't true. I can create digital goods and services which people buy, and this increases GDP, and it doesn't hurt the environment and is indeed economic growth in the realest sense. I can even give massages all day, and this also doesn't destroy the environment.

But doesn’t economic growth means an increase in consumption, however immaterial the product is? Meaning, there will still be a limit in what people can (not to mention want to) consume at the point we are saturated in Content™, so more people will just have to be made to increase economic growth.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#35

Post by bluGill »

NickM wrote: post #31
darkerside wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There an upper bound created by the limits of possible human time spent. You can raise them with technology or population growth, but there again, you're bumping up against ecological constraints.

You can raise them with technology or population growth, but there again, you're bumping up against ecological constraints. Population growth, yes, but technology? Why can't technology continue to improve in terms of efficiency and environmental impact as well as productivity?

There are physical limits to efficiency. In different technologies were are different distances away, but there are always limits that we cannot exceed. We can get creative about not needing to get close to the limit, but the limits are always there stopping us.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#36

Post by mempko »

seibelj wrote: post #23

Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at environmental cost, but that simply isn't true. I can create digital goods and services which people buy, and this increases GDP, and it doesn't hurt the environment and is indeed economic growth in the realest sense. I can even give massages all day, and this also doesn't destroy the environment.

If technological efficiency had any effect on lowering overall consumption, we would see that now. But we don't. Consumption in real terms is increasing at an exponential rate. This is called The Great Acceleration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Acceleration

Turns out people use the efficiency of technology to just consume more. Your internet goods and services might increase consumption somewhere else. Some of it is even explicit. Google Ads is a digital service that explicitly is designed to increase consumption. In fact, all the great technology companies (Microsoft, Google, Apple) are designed around the idea that people will consume more. The tech industry, in aggregate, has been designed around getting people to consume more. Even Tesla, a green play, is designed around more consumption. Tesla could have been a company where you paid them, and they took your car and converted it to be an electric car by stripping the engine and adding batteries. This kind of play could have reduced real consumption. But that's not what Tesla is about.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#37

Post by qsymmachus »

seibelj wrote: post #23

Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at environmental cost, but that simply isn't true. I can create digital goods and services which people buy, and this increases GDP, and it doesn't hurt the environment and is indeed economic growth in the realest sense. I can even give massages all day, and this also doesn't destroy the environment.

This is incorrect. Every economic output requires material inputs.

> I can create digital goods and services which people buy

Your digital goods and services require physical machines to run on. These machines are made of physical materials, including some rare earth minerals that are costly to extract. These machines require energy to run, which also requires material inputs.

> I can even give massages all day, and this also doesn't destroy the environment

Human beings like yourself require material inputs to live – food, shelter, energy, to name only a few. Just by being alive on a biosphere, you are impacting the environment in some way. The size of that impact depends on your individual lifestyle.

There is simply no such thing as "immaterial" economic production.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#38

Post by Wohlf »

darkerside wrote: post #28
seibelj wrote: post #23

Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at environmental cost, but that simply isn't true. I can create digital goods and services which people buy, and this increases GDP, and it doesn't hurt the environment and is indeed economic growth in the realest sense. I can even give massages all day, and this also doesn't destroy the environment.

There an upper bound created by the limits of possible human time spent. You can raise them with technology or population growth, but there again, you're bumping up against ecological constraints.

I don't doubt there is, but we really don't know when we'll hit the limits technology allows for. Present and future technological plateaus may just be temporary.

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#39

Post by georgeburdell »

I didn’t see it addressed in the article so I’ll slip on my tinfoil hat for a moment...

Could this be related to growing income and wealth inequality? Poor people buy less stuff, and presumably rich people get rich by not buying more stuff commensurate with their incomes. Even the falling fertilizer consumption might be explained if poorer people are shifting to more processed junk food.

The article notes 1970 as the critical turning point, which is the same year Piketty identifies in his book Capital as the inequality turning point in the U.S. and Europe

Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy

#40

Post by gimmeThaBeet »

darkerside wrote: post #28
seibelj wrote: post #23

Some people say growth can't happen forever, and all growth comes at environmental cost, but that simply isn't true. I can create digital goods and services which people buy, and this increases GDP, and it doesn't hurt the environment and is indeed economic growth in the realest sense. I can even give massages all day, and this also doesn't destroy the environment.

There an upper bound created by the limits of possible human time spent. You can raise them with technology or population growth, but there again, you're bumping up against ecological constraints.

Productivity growth is in that equation, which is also in admittedly short supply. Probably the most underrated essential factor of growth in a mature economy.
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