[REAL Green]

Perhaps a final goal of getting down to two to three billion determined by how well the rest of the environment is doing. A truly sustainable population would be the goal.

I have done lots of study in the past decade here and there on population because I am a student of the decline process. A population of 1BIL with people consuming around 1900 levels seems to be the best estimate of a longer-term carrying capacity. If we consider a more realistic population/consumption level considering a less rigorous carrying capacity restraint then a 1930 population of 2BIL seems optimal. That level still allows a great deal of specialization required for modernism. It is likely too much for a good carrying capacity longer term at a human/planet optimum but it is conceivable humans could green up dramatically with activity guided by green wisdom. The materializing step down from globalism1 to globalism2 could halt population growth rates significantly because of emerging food productivity issues. The forecasts of the past for food production increases for 11BIL people is totally unrealistic. I feel like 7BIL is a population ceiling considering global output may be hit 30% and may not recover to pre-pandemic levels IOW peak globalism means peak population.

[vtsnowedin]

A 1930 population of 2 billion using say 2035 technology would put a lot less strain on the environment then the 1930 population did. Most if not all of your base metals could come from scrap yards and recycling with perhaps no need for any new mining. Solar and wind power could provide all electrical needs including passenger cars and perhaps even air travel so fossil fuels could be a thing of the past. Agriculture could be confined to the best land allowing forests and jungles to revert to a natural state. Fishing on the high seas being curtailed by reduced demand would allow recovery of fish stocks etc. etc.
How to do things with a reduced population is not a problem it is getting to that reduced population without environmentally catastrophic wars that is the tough nut to crack.

[EnergyUnlimited]

A 1930 population of 2 billion using say 2035 technology would put a lot less strain on the environment then the 1930 population did. Most if not all of your base metals could come from scrap yards and recycling with perhaps no need for any new mining.

Base metals you could grossly recycle. Some rarer metals as well.
However many technology critical elements would gradually be gone for good.
Few Lanthanides could be recycled from magnets... and probably from nothing else.
Too low concentrations in tech gadgets to make it feasible.
Other Lanthanides not used in magnets - not recyclable from most of scrap containing them.
The same with many semiconductor elements like tellurium, gallium, indium, germanium etc.
Selenium will be available as long as sulfuric acid is produced in industrial quantities.
Once this acid is no longer produced in large scale - kiss good bye to nearly all advanced tech and most of fertilizers.
Hafnium, rhenium or few platinides will join unobtainium ranks.
Silver is also getting dispersed into non recyclable forms.
Gold could be recycled and refined for long time.
But metals critical to technology will gradually become not available in required quantities.

How to do things with a reduced population is not a problem it is getting to that reduced population without environmentally catastrophic wars that is the tough nut to crack.

Easy.
SuperCOVID anyone?

[Newfie]

The surest way to get the population to that level, or below, is to carry on BAU. That will deplete our necessary resources (food, oil, water), destroy and sense of fiscal responsibility (as if it now exists), which will open us to even more pandemics and assure nothing is done about climate change. All that crap will start various wars for resources combined with mass migration of starving folks.

Then we will be down to 1 billion easy.

I think the better question is how to stop the population from falling well below 1 billion.

[vtsnowedin]

The surest way to get the population to that level, or below, is to carry on BAU. That will deplete our necessary resources (food, oil, water), destroy and sense of fiscal responsibility (as if it now exists), which will open us to even more pandemics and assure nothing is done about climate change. All that crap will start various wars for resources combined with mass migration of starving folks.

Then we will be down to 1 billion easy.

I think the better question is how to stop the population from falling well below 1 billion.

Thankfully BAU is always changing. We are undergoing a major change this spring and Business will not be as usual come fall.
The biggest fear is that some resource war will go nuclear and no one knows how far one of those will escalate.
The real question then becomes how to persuade all of the worlds peoples to stop increasing their numbers using non violent means.
Educating girls and providing effective universal and affordable birth control appear to be all that is needed in that regard.
Then we just have to muddle through until declining birth rates take the pressure off so we can turn efforts to replacing fossil fuels etc. .

[Newfie]

VT,

That whole argument about upgrading women’s lives and they will reduce birth rate is true. The problem is it’s based on the idea that these high birth-rate poor women need to have a much higher standard of living. And we are not moving in that direction.

IIRC the UN has been increasing its estimated maximum population because its old growth estimates were too optimistic.

I wish that your suggestion was possible. It may have been at the beginning of the green revolution, but so that did was to give us another shot of population growth.

[vtsnowedin]

VT,

That whole argument about upgrading women’s lives and they will reduce birth rate is true. The problem is it’s based on the idea that these high birth-rate poor women need to have a much higher standard of living. And we are not moving in that direction.

IIRC the UN has been increasing its estimated maximum population because its old growth estimates were too optimistic.

I wish that your suggestion was possible. It may have been at the beginning of the green revolution, but so that did was to give us another shot of population growth.

Well all of that has been based on models and we know how well modelers have been doing lately.
By the time Covid-19 works its way through Gaza and the rest of the middle East and on through India the modelers will have to reset their toys with new data and the results will probably be much different then recent projections.

[Newfie]

VT,

What happens there, almost no matter what, will be most interesting.

I was reading a report today from Sweden where they tried a very relaxed lockdown to ge herd immunity. The government Dr. was saying that they were having a lot of disease but that they had managed to get 20% of the city with immunity and expected to soon have herd immunity.

It sounded so much like the numbers coming from NYC, although there was no comparison in the article, but NYC was hit hard and has about 20% infection rate.

So one should ask “Were New Yorkers just really terrible at lockdown? Or did lockdown not actually achieve anything in NYC?”

Maybe it’s a bad question but it jumped out at me.

[vtsnowedin]

I do not see Sweden as fairing any better then New York. Their daily new cases is still increasing and their CFR based on their figures is 12 percent.

[REAL Green]

“The data is in — stop the panic and end the total isolation”
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/ ... -isolation

“The appropriate policy, based on fundamental biology and the evidence already in hand, is to institute a more focused strategy like some outlined in the first place: Strictly protect the known vulnerable, self-isolate the mildly sick and open most workplaces and small businesses with some prudent large-group precautions. This would allow the essential socializing to generate immunity among those with minimal risk of serious consequence, while saving lives, preventing overcrowding of hospitals and limiting the enormous harms compounded by continued total isolation. Let’s stop underemphasizing empirical evidence while instead doubling down on hypothetical models. Facts matter.”

I posted this because this point of view must be examined based upon the casualties from the building economic shock underway. Healthy productive people are facing ruin and death it is just it will not be in our faces like pictures of overflowing hospitals. I am not an expert on the medical side of this crisis although I have read numerous medical accounts. The problem is I am unsure what to believe in detail. I am much better with the business and finance side since that is my education and experience.

If this demand shock situation is handled less bad some necessary good can come out of it. I say less bad because it is a given that bad policy will be part of any effort to mitigate the economic shock this global shut down has caused. The necessary good is the destructive change to businesses and industries that should not be. This also represents an opportunity to introduce a force of degrowth that is needed if like me you see honest science saying all growth is destructive. Since some growth is less destructive so allow the more destructive growth to die.

It is clear globalism1 was building up tectonic forces of risk. This is a result of financial repression and liquidity easing plus the moral hazard of it all. Assets markets were at nose bleed levels not representing future earning reality at all. This was more a casino than a price discovery tool. Markets are still far too high but I doubt for long.

This shock might be a treatment but not a cure for the consequences of years of bad behavior. I am under no illusion, pain and suffering are ahead but this is true of any path taken. I am most worried by the food chain. We have had a few years of weather problems in key areas. China lost much of its pork production. Locust have hit Africa hard. There have been economic problems from trade disputes. When you combine past events with this global lockdown disruption a picture comes into view of economic dislocation plus food production issues.

If we can survive this shock some good will come out of it. It is a shared experience so no side is going to gain much over the other like a war situation. It is not clear how much good will come out of it but it can so what is needed is an understanding of the potential for good and tailoring policy to try to capitalize on this. Businesses need to merge and some sectors liquidate excess capacity. Retail is a good example. New business behavior with more work at home. Some industries should be shrunk like travel and leisure. It is often said never let a crisis go to waste in a sarcastic way about the maligned forces but this is true of the forces of good too.

[Newfie]

I do not see Sweden as fairing any better then New York. Their daily new cases is still increasing and their CFR based on their figures is 12 percent.

I was comparing Stockholm where the reported CFR was 20%, same an NY CITY.

[Newfie]

Real green,

Good post. I would quibble with one item, decreasing leisure. We should encourage people to find ways to enjoy their leisure so that they do no harm. Tearing around national forests in quads does no good. Reading a book is a different matter.

[vtsnowedin]

I do not see Sweden as fairing any better then New York. Their daily new cases is still increasing and their CFR based on their figures is 12 percent.

I was comparing Stockholm where the reported CFR was 20%, same an NY CITY.

Immunity and CFR are two different things Tho I suppose if you have become a fatality in the CFR you are immune as you can't get it again.
I saw somewhere a expert saying that true herd immunity doesn't come into play until after 60 percent of the herd has been infected and has antibodies. If that is the case every country we have decent figures on still have a very long way to go before that will help.

[evilgenius]

It's amazing how people panic when they hear that the government is spending large amounts of money. One of the first things they say about it is almost always something about how a normal household could never sustain itself through borrowing. Well, normal households can't create money through an act of law.

I don't know why it is that people have such a hard time understanding money. It is only worth what it is worth because the people believe it is worth that much. It's not worth that because someone did some work that is somehow holy and deserves respect. The prices of things are set by markets. Those always treat money as an object of belief. How much money there is has a direct bearing upon that belief.

What is going on surrounding globalism is political. The conservatives have tapped into fear over people's immediate futures because people don't understand money. Nearly everyone criticizing globalism does so out of an argument that focuses on the amount of debt that appears to be holding it up. What the country faces is the continued dominance of a small group of people over the vast majority because people fear the future enough to turn over control to those who offer something that sounds good. They would accept the destruction of their futures for a crust of bread today, and a song and dance over how much there is to fear out there.

What happens with money is that it expands and contracts in total size. This is expansion or contraction of the money supply. When people borrow more money the money supply grows. This is because banks use loan IOU's as a basis to loan more money. The banking system is where money is generally created or destroyed. However, the government can create money through an act of law.

When governments normally create money they sell bonds to match it. They don't go about interacting with the money supply directly. They allow bond sales to commit the money they create, so that it will not expand the money supply and induce inflation. They prefer the people's level of borrowing, their economic activity, to influence the money supply.

In America, there are a significant number of people who have not kept up with the times. They insist upon involving themselves with the economy in a relationship that is not 'modern.' They want to borrow money in order to enjoy the things of life rather than to set up a situation of advantage out of which an income can be derived. They don't borrow to capitalize themselves. Essentially, they want to compete with all of the hewers of wood and drawers of water for an income. The way that American cinema fantasizes about the effectiveness of jiu jitsu upon complex enemies, as in a movie like the Matix, only supports my contention.

With globalism comes a different sort of order, classified under a hierarchy. Because the system does not encourage people to make themselves better, rewarding but not suggesting, they spend too much time fantasizing about getting rich quick and or indulging in conspiracy theories. But the sort of work necessary in a country at the top of the hierarchy is more intellectual than that. They want to be consumers who look upon the receipt of another Amazon purchase as a thing of wonder, when they ought to looking with wonder upon the supply chain for their business which strings its way all the way from where the package came from.

[Newfie]

Yes, I miss typed, I meant folks who had been infected and received immunity.

So let me try this again...

So the comparison weals between STockholm and NY CITY.
One tried to lockdown hard.
One tried a very loose lock down.
They had similar infection rates, about 20%.
I don’t know who had higher fatality rates/M, NY City rates are very high.

So does this prove NY’ers can’t lockdown or that the lockdown has little effect?

I understand some say 60% recovered for herd immunity. The Sweed said the were at 20% and well on their way to herd immunity which he hoped to reach in a few weeks.

He also said they tried to let younger folks go about their business while they worked hard to isolate the aged.

MAYBE it will turn out Stockholm attains herd immunity while NY City does not, both with similar death rates.

[Newfie]

Perhaps a final goal of getting down to two to three billion determined by how well the rest of the environment is doing. A truly sustainable population would be the goal.

I have done lots of study in the past decade here and there on population because I am a student of the decline process. A population of 1BIL with people consuming around 1900 levels seems to be the best estimate of a longer-term carrying capacity. If we consider a more realistic population/consumption level considering a less rigorous carrying capacity restraint then a 1930 population of 2BIL seems optimal. That level still allows a great deal of specialization required for modernism. It is likely too much for a good carrying capacity longer term at a human/planet optimum but it is conceivable humans could green up dramatically with activity guided by green wisdom. The materializing step down from globalism1 to globalism2 could halt population growth rates significantly because of emerging food productivity issues. The forecasts of the past for food production increases for 11BIL people is totally unrealistic. I feel like 7BIL is a population ceiling considering global output may be hit 30% and may not recover to pre-pandemic levels IOW peak globalism means peak population.

o

Real Green,

Here is an article you might find interesting.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... n-new-deal

Amid the misery and chaos caused by the coronavirus pandemic, there are some short-term consolations. The precipitous drop in road and air traffic has left the air cleaner and the skies clearer. For advocates of a Green New Deal (GND) – a vast, state-funded green infrastructure project, including a total transition to renewable energy and the construction of mass transit systems – there are reasons to be optimistic. As the severity of the unfolding global recession becomes clear – the IMF predicts a 3% global contraction – the GND looks like the best route to recovery.

I think this article truly puts the lie to the GND, it’s a capitalist scheme to sustain growth.

I’m very much AGAINST the GND because of its focus on building us out of this mess. Its supporters language harkens back to WWII with “a Manhattan Project kind of effort” to build new green infrastructure. It perpetuates the lie that we can sustain the high energy consumptive life style we now lead and fix the climate. Green washing are it’s worst.

[REAL Green]

Real green,

Good post. I would quibble with one item, decreasing leisure. We should encourage people to find ways to enjoy their leisure so that they do no harm. Tearing around national forests in quads does no good. Reading a book is a different matter.

I agree and have related this need for an adapted leisure in my blog realgreenadaptation.blog. I point to leisure that returns to the old ways of local community-based activities that embrace lower energy and consumptive activities. The examples are numerous and fully documented in historical writing. For example, when I lived in Germany in 86 I was invited to a village outside of Nuremberg where I was living and working for a utility contractor. The event revolved around this small village cooking several pigs up and then there was a feast with plenty of excellent locally made beer and schnapps. There was singing and dancing. This was a working feast that included processing and preserving the pigs in the many different ways the village had handed down for generations. I am not saying reject modern leisure per say but instead adapt it with more localism and less travel and high energy and consumptive behavior. Do we really need the amount of extreme spectator sports like we have today when cities move large populations to a central point to enjoy sports? Do me need destination vacations like we have or working vacations of the business world to the extent they are at? In my opinion this macro behavior needs to be rethought in light of forced degrowth that globalism2 will result in.

[vtsnowedin]

Yes, I miss typed, I meant folks who had been infected and received immunity.

So let me try this again...

So the comparison weals between STockholm and NY CITY.
One tried to lockdown hard.
One tried a very loose lock down.
......

It is too early to tell which city had the better outcome and why. Stockholm has about 1.8 million people and has very different living conditions then New York and much less ethnic diversity. Truly an apples to Oranges comparison before the different Covid-19 strategies. The government there has backtracked on one report saying they discovered an error in it that they did not make public as of yet. New cases countrywide in Sweden have not dropped off yet with a new daily high yesterday of 812.
A month or two from now things will be clearer.

[vtsnowedin]

. Well, normal households can't create money through an act of law.

.

A country, even the USA can not print money indefinitely or they will end up like Zimbabwe with billion dollar bills good only for latrine paper.
For citizens there are sound reasons to borrow money such as a house to live in while building equity in it or a car to commute to a job that pays the bills. There are also unsound reasons for borrowing as well. Vacations, entertainment, excessive spending etc. All gain nothing for the purchaser and retain no value even to the point when the bills come due.
Governments also have good and bad reasons to borrow. An interstate highway system good, studies why monkeys clench their jaws bad. National defense , good,Pork barrel defense contracts the military does not need or want, Bad.
The present rescue package is and was necessary but we will soon come to the point where further spending will not save the economy or lives and will be beyond our ability to pay back and that debt if taken on will cause more harm then the Covid-19 will.

[REAL Green]

. Well, normal households can't create money through an act of law.

.

A country, even the USA can not print money indefinitely or they will end up like Zimbabwe with billion dollar bills good only for latrine paper...The present rescue package is and was necessary but we will soon come to the point where further spending will not save the economy or lives and will be beyond our ability to pay back and that debt if taken on will cause more harm then the Covid-19 will.

Money printing is a bit deceptive a picture for what the US and others are doing. It is a nice illustration for what the FED is doing but is fails to describe a much bigger issue of liquidity and maintaining functioning financial markets that are many and varied. It also misses the fact that some actions are central bank and other treasury. Paper currency is not being printed. Many types of money supply are instead being juiced becuase the system is starved for liquidity sources. Demand is down so not much threat of inflation now. Inflation may surface as might deflation in the worst of all worlds with defaults too. It is a good time to clean house.