Thursday, May 02, 2013

Is the world doomed?


Socialism is very often described as a steady-state economy, one of zero-growth but in its early days ending growth will not be a realistic option to deal. Billions of people in the developing world want access to more resources, and fully deserve those resources as much as those of us in the rest of us in order to rise out of poverty. Roughly one billion people alive today on the planet have access to automobiles, air conditioners, and central heating. The other six billion do not. Two billion lack access to a toilet. One billion lack access to electricity. The bulk of the growth to come over the next few decades – in energy consumption, in CO2 emissions, in food consumption, in water use – will all come from the developing world. It isn’t about building mansions or driving SUVs. It is growth that reflects the aspirations of billions of people around the world to rise to a level of comfort that nearly everyone in the more developed world – even those we consider poor – enjoy. A socialism that doesn’t allow billions to rise out of poverty and to at least this modicum of comfort is not a very appealing one. A world without growth is a world we’re very likely to enjoy.

The problem isn’t growth, per se. Nor is the problem that our natural resources are too small. While finite, the natural resources the planet supplies are vast and far larger than humanity needs in order to continue to thrive and grow prosperity for centuries to come. The problem, rather, is the type of economic system we have which determines the manner and efficiency with which we use these resources.

Today, global grain yields average around 3.5 tons per hectare. In the US, they average around 7 tons per hectare. Indeed, the best farms in the US routinely get double the US average yield, so even this level is far from the maximum achievable. US farmers (and farmers in other rich countries) can afford fertilizer, mechanized farm equipment, irrigation systems, pesticides, and other tools that boost agricultural yields. Bringing developing world farmers access to the same tools would boost yields as well, potentially doubling them, which is more than the 70% increase the FAO believes is required by 2050.

This leads to the possibility that if we could raise food yields faster than demand, we could shrink the amount of land we use to farm. For instance, between now and 2100, total food demand may roughly double (driven more by increasing meat consumption than by population). If, in that time-frame, we could triple farm yields, then we could, potentially, grow all the food necessary to meet demand only two thirds of the land area used today. That, in turn, would free up roughly 10% of the world’s land area, which could be returned to wilderness, to managed forest, or some other use. Whether or not we’d do this will depend upon society’s deciosion to reforest the planet or return land to wilderness. But if we innovate fast enough in lifting crop yields, we would have the option.

Wild fish stocks are under threat of extinction yet farm live-stock are under no such threat. Shifting from hunting fish to farming fish – where the farmers have the incentive to keep their stocks healthy – could do a tremendous amount of good for wild fish. Advances in sustainable fish farming and creating fish farms that are cleaner and better for the oceans around them, can produce protein far more efficiently than land animals, and remove the threat of extinction from wild fish.

Nor should water scarcity be a problem. We live on a water world. Water is abundant on our planet. Oceans cover 70% of the Earth’s surface. Even freshwater is vast in quantity. It literally falls from the sky. However, humanity can only easily access about a tenth, or 0.1%. If we could efficiently convert salt water to fresh, we’d have access to a vast supply of water to use in growing crops and sustaining human civilization. The energy needed to desalinate a gallon of water has fallen by a nearly factor of 10 since 1970. We are able to filter and recycle dirty water more efficiently, allowing communities to re-use wastewater.

Solar panels on less than 0.3% of the Earth’s land area would supply many times more energy than humanity needs for the next few decades. it’s roughly 1/100th of the area that we use to grow crops and graze livestock. And it’s 1/60th of the area covered by the world’s deserts. With a small fraction of the planet’s deserts we could capture abundant energy to power the world. And we are still left with wind and wave and tidal power systems and other forms of re-newables.

The potential supply of energy and of food is greater than humanity will need for the next century. Under capitalism, we’re consuming finite resources and heating up and polluting the planet – a trend with disastrous consequences should it continue unchecked. With socialism, we innovate better and tap more efficiently and cleanly into an enormous supply of fundamental natural resources the planet provides. Is the world fated to be a dystopian future, where billions of people live in poverty on a wrecked, overcrowded planet? Or an even worse world where climate change has wrecked the planet, crashing human populations to the point of extinction Or is the future going to be a better place than today, one where all of our problems have been solved, and people live in peace and prosperity?
Adapted from here

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Alan, doesn't your argument pre-suppose a somewhat sudden change in productivity - presumably alongside the relatively sudden nature of a political revolution to socialism.

But while politically at least, the revolution will presumably be some sort of "event", is it not more accurate to think of the economic and production/distribution changes to be more of a gradual process.

This evolution of the productive forces would likely start well before the end of capitalism (ie as states throw every reform going in order to buy off a growing socialist population), and moreover would continue well into the first few generations of socialism.

I say the first few generations (rather than months, years or decades) because - as I see it - the socialist majority (or large minority) that is of course the prerequisite for socialism, will recognise that things cant change overnight (particularly if we need to bring energy, CO2 and resource depletion issues into the equation), and will be satisfied with a "generational" rate of equilibration between regions. Bear in mind that - as measured in exclusively quantitative, consumption terms (eg calory intake, range of different shampoos available in your local store, etc) - workers in the rich regions will presumably experience a decrease (albeit offset by massive quality of life improvements, in terms of qualitative aspects such as stress, alienation, work/life balance, nutrition etc), while workers/peasants in the majority underdeveloped regions will still experience massive qualitative and quantitative improvements (eg life expectancy/health, education, pollution etc).

Indeed even with no net increase in global production, I would have thought that just the conversion from production for profit to that of use would almost immediately and relatively effortlessly make a massive difference to workers in all regions, as production is diverted away from the socially useless and towards the socially useful.

I am wary of the sort of "big bang" scenario that your article implies - even if it wasnt your intention (though I think you have written some similar interesting stuff on this subject before). It doesn't make for good propaganda I think, making the socialist transformation sound too daunting and cataclysmic for many sympathisers to actually comprehend. If that is the case, then of course, we just have to live with it even if it does make our case harder to swallow, but personally I think this is a nettle we need not grasp, or even envisage, and we can instead present a reasonable argument that the shift to socialist production would not only start from a more favourable position than at present (ie capitalism would have already shifted mountains to buy off the rising socialist awareness), but would deliver instant benefits ("low-hanging fruit") just by changing the relations of production, and we (that is humanity, whether the poorest of the underdeveloped regions or the mature capitalist regions) would not expect changes in productive forces to develop in anything other than by an "organic" and sustainable evolution.

Brian Gardner
Glasgow Branch, SPGB

ajohnstone said...

Much of what you say i don't think i would disagree too much with.

I do rather expect a re-direction of the productive forces to be a relatively swift one. From swords to plough-shares and a host of other waste ending and the resources being diverted.

As you say capitalism itself is making many self-sustainable production forces possible,(even without the threat of an imminent socialist society), simply by making them more cost-effective and profitable. However, it has had the capability of abundance and satisfying all for a hundred years or so and there were "cheaper" political alternatives available to counter "revolutionary" urges of those denied the benefits.

Having recently returned to what was a relatively poor and under-developed country after an absence of 20 yrs i can see how fast change can take place in living standards and most of all expections in life. The point being that the actual practicality and mechanics can be implemented surprisingly quickly, even in conditions when aspects of capitalism holds it back.

It is true to say that we need not increase food production, only eliminate the waste.

Within consumer capitalism, there is a profusion of duplication of effort (the shelves of shampoos) but even here we have different "store brands" that are made by the same processor and are identical but simply packaged differently and sold as different.

We have two scenarios available, a pessimistic capitalism will destroy the world (some days i wake up to that nightmare vision) or the optimistic, where people will make the decisions and plan and allocate the wealth of the world. Ideas transform relatively quickly - in a flash - so perhaps i am not as wary of the big bang thesis. But it is a process, as you say, not a single event but even the seemingly instanteous nuclear explosion is a chain reaction.

I look forward to the next production-for-use report, Brian. These issues have to be discussed and debated. It may not be devising blueprints but it is laying out guide-lines and to convince others we have to demonstrate what is possible and what can and should be done. In that sense we could be called Possibilists !