Editorial: Russia and Limits to Growth

So I have recently finished reading The Limits to Growth (the 30-Year Update, that is; poring over the original seems a bit redundant). And I found myself agreeing with a lot of what it said.

Let’s start with clearing up a major misconception. Several cornucopian commentators have tried to discredit its ideas by claiming that its predictions of global apocalypse failed to materialize – instead, the world has seen remarkable economic growth since 1972. These criticisms are unfounded. Firstly, it explicitly states that it does not make predictions – it merely sketches out different scenarios based upon assumptions of the future resource base and ecological resilience, and the political and social responses to resource depletion and ecological degradation. Furthermore, the vast majority of collapses are projected to happen in the middle to late period of the twenty-first century.

The central argument is that while growth is exponential, both its sources (hydrocarbons, metals, minerals, etc) and the sinks for the pollution that resource extraction, processing and disposal produce (soils, oceans, air, etc) are limited. Although sources are typically very large on paper, only a fraction of them are economically recoverable – all the low-hanging fruit are picked first (supergiant oil fields, rich copper ore deposits, etc), leaving only remoter, deeper and more dilute resources (polar oil, unconventional liquids, etc). Their extraction costs soar exponentially and consume an ever greater portion of the industrial base, leaving less room for consumer products (vital for political stability), the agricultural base, investment in capital stock renewal and environmental mitigation.

On the other hand, the ever greater volumes have to be excavated and processed to produce diminishing returns per unit of capital employed lead to rising pollution, which negatively feeds back into the agricultural base. Rapid climate change coupled with declining oil and fertiliser output may lead to catastrophic falls in agricultural output, which could only be mitigated for a time by diverting capital and energy into this sector – but which would hurt the long-term prospects for renewal in their sectors. And so on. Basically one gets the sense of how interconnected all these systems are and how the failure to move decisively towards a sustainable economy now will lead to collapse down the road – and the later we postpone reducing our ecological footprint, the greater the crushing we’ll experience between the Scylla of resource depletion and the Charybdis of pollution overload.

The criticisms from markets and technology also fall flat on their faces. Markets are implicitly modeled in World3 (the name of the simulation) as resource allocations are typically automatically transferred to the sector of most pressing need. (Actually, if anything the models are more market-driven than our own world, since we have perfect information and instant responses in the former). As for technology, unless concrete steps are taken to reduce material throughput, improvements are simply soaked up by the Jevons paradox. Unless technological progress is extremely rapid (e.g. as envisioned by singularitarians), there will sometime come a tipping point when efficiency improvements no longer make up for decling agricultural and resource yields and soaring pollution, and world population and human welfare collapse. Although I am personally partial to the theories and timelines put forth by singularitarians, it is dangerous and irresponsible to view them as infallible oracles, especially when the move to a sustainable society is both feasible, and attractive per se (at least today, when we are still on the upwards slope of economic progress).

However, there are many indications that the World3 models are actually pessimistic representations of what will really happen. It leaves out corruption, military expenditures, wars and political disruptions – although vital, they are too hard to model with any degree of rigor. Chronic food and energy shortages will lead to civil unrest and political instability, necessitating greater expenditures on law enforcement and assorted populist gimmicks. Statistical bodies will manipulate inflation and GDP growth figures to preserve a simulacrum of stability, even as creeping normalcy converges to an ever darker reality. There will be a scramble to secure the world’s remaining sources of high-density resources, which will lead to a greater share of the industrial base being devoted to military production. Elites will mobilize support for permanent war and surveillance by citing the moral imperative of fighting freedom-hating terrorists and maintaining peace, security and stability.

Meanwhile, long before they disintegrate political systems will transition to corruption systems, dedicated to preserving the old order for as long as possible while draining their denizens of their precious bodily fluids…

OK, let’s not go there. There are two important things the book leaves out. Firstly, it fails to mention that technology itself relies on a technological base, which, as with all others, requires energy inputs to sustain itself. It will probably be one of the first things to be downsized when physical limits start pressing down on the economy. The hen that lays the golden eggs will probably be the first to get cooked. Secondly, there may be sudden and catastrophic increases in pollution. Climate change may be abrupt and catastrophic. A collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet would raise sea levels by several meters and wipe the world’s ports and more importantly, much of its prime agricultural land. The Amazon is increasingly vulnerable to a conflagration that will turn it into desert, releasing more CO2 than I care to look up in the scientific literature. Increasing temperatures may unleash uncontrolled methane emissions from melting Siberian permafrost and oceanic clathrates.

In conclusion, past the point of irreversible decline a controlled retreat to sustainability becomes ever more and more unlikely, because of a) the inertia of past pollution emissions and capital investments, b) political crisis in a society predicated on permanent growth will lead to short-term thinking and ever more exclusively stopgap solutions and c) eventually institutional collapse will make it impossible to fund and implement new energy-efficiency or pollution-control technologies on any sufficiently large scale or even maintain already existing infrastructure devoted for those purposes.

What I’ve outlined above is an apocalyptic scenario where overshoot leads to a population cull from the Malthusian agents of famine, war and pestilence by the end of this century. Social complexity will plummet to a lower, more stable level and technological will regress. It is not an inevitable outcome, perhaps even very unlikely, but I think it is in principle possible. As such, this is what I believe should be the long-term issues Russia will have to face in a world with limits to growth:

1. Russia is very well endowed.

It has a significant portion of the world’s hydrocarbons, metal and mineral reserves. Meanwhile, global warming will shift global oceanic transport routes to the Arctic, make remote resources more accessible and eventually open up vast tracks of land to sustainable human settlement. The latter is one of the three bases on which I suggested the world is possibly headed for a Russian century (back then, I had yet to appreciate the central role of energy in the economy).

2. Russia may be one of the last bastions of functioning government.

The corrolary is that other places will face socio-political collapse well before it does (already, failed states like Haiti, Zimbabwe, North Korea and now possibly Pakistan could be ominous portents of what is to come). If global warming and resource depletion undercut the carrying capacity of Asian lands to a sufficient extent, there will be two possible scenarios.

a) Russia will experience mass refugee inflows.

Collapse of the overpopulated Asian countries will result in as many as hundreds of millions of environmental refugees clamoring at Russia’s borders. Just as Canada for the Americas and Scandinavia for Europe, Russia may become a ‘population sink’ for Eurasia. Although denying them access would be unethical, it has to be done on Russian conditions. They will have to be pro-actively integrated so as to maintain social stability and so that they help rather than hinder the attainment of sustainability.

b) Russia will face a deteriorating security environment.

The wildcard is China. Although it has transformed itself into an industrial titan and is rapidly assimilating new technologies, even now it is beginning to face immense environmental and resource constraints. It may start to view forcible expansion into Siberia as preferable to certain domestic collapse.

For now, relations are cordial if not very trusty (Russia has practically ceased arms exports to China). Both are in an anti-American marriage of convenience. As American hegemony over Eurasia becomes more unsustainable with every passing day (or so it seems now), this key bond will dissolve away. For now, Russia’s nuclear arsenal effectively deters China, but this could be mitigated within a few decades if China made a truly serious commitment to develop its ABM capabilities. It has to be watched carefully, and if amidst its mounting problems it appears that it has set long-term goals involving Siberian expansion, then Russian military modernization must assume a very high importance.

3. Russia must build a sustainable society.

Russia should use the surplus it received from foreign hydrocarbons sales to aggressively implement energy efficiency measures and build a green energy infrastructure. Oil companies should not get tax breaks, as has happened recently, since that will only have a short-term positive impact on oil extraction (decline will resume quickly and at a faster rate). The industrial base can be expanded, considering that in a few decades it may well have to accommodate far more people than today.

The over-riding social priority should be education, since that is by far the most important source of productivity and key to expanding the technological base. (One idea I would implement today is massively increasing pay within academia and devoting much more money to equipping labs, sponsoring research, etc. With the Western economies in turmoil, I believe there is now an excellent window of opportunity to snatch back some of the hundreds of thousands of researchers who left Russia in the 1990′s, if the ideas above were coupled with a good advertising campaign). Concentrate on IT, nanotechnologies and AI research, since these are the best long-term prospects for economic ‘dematerialization’.

4. Russia must preserve sovereign democracy.

Because subjugation to Western interests would simply involve becoming a resource-supplying appendage of it, whereas the overriding goal must be to build a sustainable civilization within its own borders. In an era of potential converging catastrophes Russia must also not allow short-term popular influences on its political system, although maintaining a democratic consultative mechanism with a system of checks and balances is vital for maximum flexibility in decisively dealing with emerging problems.

A Parable

Once upon a time, a group of chimps lived in a forest. Eventually they lost most of their fur, evolved an opposable thumb and learned to cut down the trees and farm the land when their numbers became too large for the forest to support by itself. With time they came into contact with and started trading with other, similar tribes. They joined up their clearings with pathways. Eventually the entire forest buzzed with their commerce and industry.

However, eventually they realized that most of the forest had been cut down to make space for farms, forges and log houses. The soil was becoming dessicated in many places and wells were drying up. Agricultural output per chimp was stagnating. Rumors and rumors of wars over the remaining patches of forest began to spread around the world.

Primate seers prophesied the coming of a deserted, uninhabited wasteland; some added that before this there would be a flash of light and the good chimps would ascend to the sky (they were vague on the technical details), while the bones of the evil chimps would dot the lone and level sands. Typically the set of good chimps was equivalent to the set of their own tribe.

Most just kept believing that the future would only get better – more farms, more log houses, more forges per chimp.

But a few had the insight that despite the mounting stresses, a better tomorrow could be secured for all with purposeful, intelligent action. Awakening to the grim reality around them, local chimp communities imposed limits on lumber consumption, improved the output per log of their forges and increased their crop yields via sustainable agro-forestry. After intensive scientific research, they started planting bio-engineered trees that were taller, leafier and produced the most durable lumber and the most delicious and abundant fruit. The new forests were so aesthetically and spiritually fulfilling that everyone voluntarily abandoned the ground and started living in their treetops.

The tribes that had less foresight, who were less educated, and who had big populations on marginal lands, were less fortunate. Many died prematurely of famine, war and pestilence; others tried scaling the re-emerging forests, although as often as not they were pushed back down by those already above. The elites of some tribes managed to wall themselves off and sent out mercenaries to collect tribute from those left outside; the proceeds were used to plant new forests for their own use, using seed samples bought from the successful tribes. Meanwhile the majority languished in the expanding deserts down below.

Eventually, all the trans-chimps ascended into the treetops. The forest once again covered the whole earth, but now it kept growing, and growing, and growing – until it merged with the stars.

Now, do you want to die in the desert or live amidst arboreal abundance?

The choice is still mostly yours.

But it won’t be so forever.

Related posts:

1. Review of “Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al.)
2. Emerging Technologies: Limits to Growth vs. Moore’s Law
3. Editorial: Annals of Resurgent Russia – It’s the Economy (in 2007), Stupid!
4. Editorial: Annals of Resurgent Russia – CIA World Factbook 2008
5. Editorial: Some Thoughts on the Financial Crisis