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Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy
81–90 of 316 posts
Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy
#82I think the subtext here is obvious to people on HN, but isn't this because so much value is generated using electrons on increasingly efficient computer systems?
That doesn't explain crop tonnage going up while fertilizer and water use are going down.
Glyphosate.
Glyphosate, with GMO crops or without, means you don't need to till your land. It's enabled a huge fraction of productive acreage to become no-till or low-till, which preserves soil nutrients, aids soil water absorption, reduces agricultural runoff, improves cover-cropping, and more.
There are a variety of farming practices that contribute to the efficiency of agriculture, but no-till is absolutely central. The late 90s through early oughts saw big increases in no-till acreage, up to ~20% of all land by 2002, precisely when fertilizer inputs started to decline. It sits between 40-50% now.
Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy
#83Some 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…
on efficiency increasing net consumption, this is called Jevon’s Paradox:
Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
A hypothetical example is drones going through a field and manually picking out weeds, increasing yield with the same amount of resources. Similarly you can get fine grained ‘crop analytics’ through drones scanning the field and acting in response.
And on what scale is this actually happening?
I don't have any figures citations since my knowledge comes from when I used to hang out on Precision Agriculture forums, but it's common and getting more so. As drones get less expensive, it's easy to sit in your den and fly over the fields looking for the areas where you should go out and spray some more, or drive over in your UTV and take a closer look at that "weird spot" on the "back 80."
Farmers are very aware of the benefits of technology (why else would you spend half a million $ on a combine?) and will take it up if they see a benefit.
Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Paying more for things is also considered growth. Presumably higher quality content
More energy is required to create or obtain higher quality content. Some call this the “energy primacy” of the economy that is often not accounted for when talking about GDP growth—which I suspect is one of the reasons economics has been termed “the dismal science.”
Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy
#86Is this simply because manufacturing is offshore?
That would only explain manufacturing inputs.
Also analyzed are building materials and agricultural inputs. Buildings can't be off-shored, and if anything, we're a net exporter of agricultural products. So the analysis holds.
Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
A desktop from a decade ago can still run productivity software, especially if you run Linux or another operating system that doesn't cut off support for non-technical reasons. It is true that some physical resources are going to be required e.g. electricity - but in general we are wasting tons of precious resources building "disposable" devices like cell phones that are used for only 2 years to do tasks that have li…
>but in general we are wasting tons of precious resources building "disposable" devices like cell phones that are used for only 2 years to do tasks that have little economic value.
This is wrong in two ways. 1) Cellphones don't just last 2 years; lots of people have older models. Sure, a bunch of people get rid of theirs after 2 years, but then they go to the secondhand market, where people like me buy them for a small fraction of their original price and keep them for another year or two before reselling them. Frequently, older phones eventually find their way to developing nations where people can't afford the latest iPhone. Your argument sounds like someone whining about people leasing a car for "only" 3 years; what do you think happens to cars after the original owner trades it in?
As for "little economic value", that's just plain ridiculous. Smartphones have enabled all kinds of things that just weren't possible or easy before: managing your bank account remotely, sending money to people (e.g. Venmo), GPS navigation, communicating without playing telephone tag, etc. And they do it with much less energy than any PC uses.
Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy
#88Wages 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…
>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.
Yeah, but this is a good thing. The labor class is a very strong supporter of the political party that pushes policies which increase the income gap, and votes strongly against anyone who tries to change this or go back to the policies you're talking about. So they're getting exactly what they're voting for.
Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy
#89Some 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.
Even if this is would be true, is the idea that everyone shall work as and end in itself because of a dogmatic growth goal? At what point do we realise that it's based on artificial scarcity?
Re: Americans Are Using Less Steel, Paper, Fertilizer, and Energy
#90Some 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…
> There is simply no such thing as "immaterial" economic production.
To quote a wise man, "The immaterial has become ... immaterial"