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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

#71

Post by ralala »

bluGill wrote: post #35
NickM wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We might migrate to other planets. Also time and space are relative.

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

#72

Post by abstractbarista »

qsymmachus wrote: post #37
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…

Ahh but those machines are constantly becoming simultaneously more efficient and more powerful. And soon enough they'll all be ran on renewable energy.

OP said nothing about growing the population. His statement can be true even as world population growth is slowing.

Like many things, there may be no purely immaterial, but there is much (and increasing) practically immaterial.

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

#74

Post by LoSboccacc »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #53

From the article: It suggests that economic growth in a mature economy does not necessarily increase the pressure on the world's reserves of natural resources and on its physical environment. Jesse Asubel has been looking at "dematerialization" for a long time[1] but it has only been relatively recently, now with a couple of decades of additional data to look at, that it is getting the attention I think it deserves.…

> Its nice to see this reality (of how extrapolating is bad because things change)

...but when they do that same thing on earth temperature everyone loses his mind

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

#75

Post by azernik »

UK-Al05 wrote: post #44
undershirt wrote: post #34

Earlier 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

Inflation is removed from "real" (yes, that's the technical term) growth numbers.

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

#76

Post by LoSboccacc »

abstractbarista wrote: post #72
qsymmachus wrote: post #37

Earlier 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…

Ahh but those machines are constantly becoming simultaneously more efficient and more powerful. And soon enough they'll all be ran on renewable energy. OP said nothing about growing the population. His statement can be true even as world population growth is slowing. Like many things, there may be no purely immaterial, but there is much (and increasing) practically immaterial.

we need to build the first solar power plant only using the output of a smaller solar plant, so electric digger, hydroponics for food, electric smelters etc. after that it's all downhill.

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

#77

Post by azernik »

danans wrote: post #19

I wonder what this will look like in a renewable energy world where the cost of energy on the margin drops to the the small operating cost + the principal/interest on the capital expenditure. We might actually see a reduction in GDP in that case, especially if coupled with ever increasing production efficiency for energy consuming processes. In that case, we might have to re-evaluate how we define "success" to be les…

Falling costs of similar goods and inputs are treated as deflation in economic statistics. "Nominal" GDP would fall in that case, but "real" GDP, which is the number everyone cares about, would still rise.

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

#78

Post by azernik »

sachdevap wrote: post #27
novok wrote: post #7

Earlier 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?

Very large scale, just not in the exact form GP is describing; instead, farmers drop stationary internet-connected sensors all over their fields, their sampling equipment GPS-tags results from every core sample, and tractors have computer-controlled equipment to feed location and quantity information to chemical dispensers.

See e.g. https://home.agrian.com/what-we-do/ for a company that manages this process.

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

#79

Post by swid »

theferalrobot wrote: post #48
qsymmachus wrote: post #37

Earlier 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…

>Every economic output requires material inputs. They didn't argue that it didn't and that fact doesn't prevent perpetual growth. You can do more with less.

It does though. Proof (if you want to call it that, I accept it is not formally valid) via contradiction:

There is the immaterial economy which which might theorize can perpetually grow.

There is also the material economy which is rooted in real physics - ie, materials, energy (it will always take some energy to heat up water and prepare food, for instance). Can we rule out that buying metal and building material become completely free? Or that the cost of energy will be reduced to zero? If there is limited supply, there must be some cost and if that cost is too low, someone will buy it up, corner the market, and start charging the correct price.

If so, the material economy cannot grow forever (outside inflation, which is not real economic growth).

If the material economy cannot perpetually grow, but other parts can, then eventually that part of the economy will completely eclipse the non-material economy. As the part that perpetually grows goes to infinitely, the relative value of the part of the economy rooted in physical limits will be worth relatively nothing.

Which contradicts the earlier point part of the economy can perpetually grow when some parts do not, unless the parts which cannot perpetually grow simply become free.

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

#80

Post by seibelj »

qsymmachus wrote: post #55
tboughen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your point is true on a basic level, I think The parent’s point is on to something. There must be a level of economic production that falls below the level of emission that can be absorbed without contributing to climate change. Furthermore in <1billion years everything on earth dies anyway (due to an expanding, ageing, sun) - so it is sustainable to use <1billionth of non-renewable resources.

> There must be a level of economic production that falls below the level of emission that can be absorbed without contributing to climate change You're right, there absolutely is such a level. The important point is that to stay at or below that level, you have to give up on the idea of perpetual, infinite growth. The inputs and outputs must remain constant. My point was that there's no such thing as "immaterial" gr…

There is indeed perpetual growth. As long as the economic transaction benefits both of us, as all non-coercive economic transactions are, then the result is net-positive. This is why free trade is a good thing - we decide to trade because it benefits both of us. If trading resulted in a loss for one of us, we wouldn't trade.
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