June 4, 2008

I was sad to learn that Bill Shatner is a Malthusian. He believes that overpopulation is the core of all of our problems. How sad. After all, his own career is proof of the possibility of the human being.
In the many ways he makes money, in everything from bran cereal to cheap airplane tickets to pulp sci-fi suggest that he’s not doing so badly from overpopulation.
I can’t believe that the philosophy of Gene Rodenberry was about there being too many people. A man that is so full of joy and vigor like Shatner who has time and time again proven pessimists wrong in his career would have such a glum view of the world and its prospects.
We are better off then we ever have been. Certainly we’re better off than when young Bill Shatner tried to go to McGill on a Jewish quota.
James Kunstler in his book "A World Made By Hand" is another one of these backwards thinkers. We make more oil than ever. We are not past our peak. The bottom line is that China is supposed to be an economic superpower by 2050. How is that going to happen if there is no more oil? Both things can’t happen. There is going to be enough oil for everyone. It’s just a matter of unplugging the taps, and that’s going to happen as well as people realize that the luddite view that we’ve peaked and are now declining is as legitimate a belief as that that the shape of Mount Everest can tell us how many chickens we’ll produce next year. We should rest assured that these predictions will be no more legitimate than the prediction of the book that was the basis for Soylent Green in the 1960s, the one that we would all run out of food in the 1980s or the prediction by a number of experts, including the economist Simon, that we would run out of oil by 1980. We were supposed to be in an ice age by now according to some in the 1970s. Nuclear war has not reduced the planet to a diamond pit. Always bet on the human race.
We have more oil, food and more of nearly every other commodity than we ever had before. Some are going up in price, but not because of any shortage. There are lacks of infrastructure and planning. There is speculation. But no shortages.
These same declinists have been wrong time and time again about most everything. Some were even wrong about Bill Shatner’s career. But we keep listening to them. They get rich and we overcome and forget about the fact that we made them rich. Free entreprise and capitalism hard at work. Hurray!
The risk that these unsound theories might take hold is greater if we render them self-fulfilling. We make oil scarcer by making it less available by limiting production or infrastructure and increasing taxes on it. The real test about any of these predictions coming true will be met by our ability to resist the unfortunate supporters of doom. Those who stand up and say things will be well aren’t usually met with support. The media doesn’t like good news. It’s hard to focus optimism.
That’s why democracy is important. And not just the kind at the ballot box, but the general popular will that is felt in even the most sodden dictatorships wherein a country, like China, bends to the pressure of its emerging middle class not to deny it the things that the Western world has enjoyed. It could be the American Dream, but it might be larger families or good medical care.
Ask yourself honestly: If China is going to be an economic superpower in the next 20-30 years, how can we possibly be going to the point where we would have no oil left. It doesn’t make any sense. China has 1/5 of the world’s population and it’s economic wellbeing depends on the US continuing to be an economic dynamo. Therefore, one can’t believe there won’t be enough oil. Even amongst those politicians that claim they advocate anti-oil policies, there will come a realization that they can’t politically survive if they continue to forward these policies. The oil will become available.
It might take some time and the sadness I have is that we may have to go through a mild slump like the 1970’s before we finally come to a new realization where we stop fantasizing that sanely regulated capitalism is the only way to deliver all goods, including energy. If there are going to be new and exciting alternatives, they are not going to be delivered by a government subsidy or program. They are going to occur by innovation driven by private capital demand.
The brilliant and exciting new idea about steam capture that was mentioned in the Atlantic Monthly is one of those. Green Spirit also has some great ideas like the revisitation of nuclear power in all sorts of guises, some of which are surprising. France at this very moment gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear sources. Sweden also relies on nuclear energy as well as hydro electricity. That’s why it’s one of the few countries that has met its Kyoto guidelines for carbon emissions.
Coming to these practical realizations will be sooner than later, I hope. But the political climate, as ever, could distort the progress so that we go through far more pain than we should. Those who think we’re going to power our economy through an ear of corn are short-termists, especially those who think so out of a desire for profit. The ones that understand that saying we’re addicted to oil is tantamount to saying we’re addicted to food are the true long-term thinkers.
This conclusion tempered with efforts to find other practical solutions to our energy desires and needs will lead to a better solution. It is difficult for people to understand that 6 billion people on earth are far less than the number of people that could be supported by the planet. The resources of our oceans and seas far outweigh all of the resources we’ve used in history.
Does this mean we should not have any care for husbandry or conservation? No. But the truly honest environmentalist is the one who realizes that the best way to husband those resources is through the private system and the removal of regulations and subsidies, incentives and counter incentives and other practices that countervail the natural forces that determine what resources our world economy needs.
If the environmental fight is couched in terms of the private economy, free thinkers everywhere score points. We need to show how fighting pollution, improving our environment and conditions of the air and water and other efforts to make the world cleaner are simply better managed and at lower cost by private delivery systems. This is similar to the strategy that a Thatcherite would pursue for government service delivery and that many other conservatives have said they want to pursue (with overall success, though mixed in some cases). There is no reason why they could not make the same compelling argument for this whole area of policy as we do in such things as competitive assistance for health care or education.
In these sectors, and in particular for infrastructure, conservatives have always argued that there is no reason why the government could not continue to regulate or provide standards for these fields. All we argue is that the actual service should be delivered privately rather than by the government itself.
Why should the government pay for the cost of building the road? It should restrict itself to designing the paramaters for the road and then on the basis of a logical approach. Three inches of gravel may be required of a specific grade, but the government should not dictate where that gravel comes from. The road would be essentially owned by the private company and a toll charged. This is green too, because a toll is a more efficient way of using the road than one that is completely free. The user pays something for using something that creates congestion.
The government doesn’t have to provide scrubbers. It should simply set minimum regulations of emission standards. We do this already. There could be many other areas where this is also more sensible, such as water and sewage treatment. The asset would be private as well as the investment. Therefore, the private company would ensure that it works more efficiently and is kept repaired to make the most money possible.
We do need to upgrade our infrastructure. Taxes don’t have to go up to provide these facilities if we allow the private sector to deal with it in return for a certain level of royalty. It benefits us all to have the infrastructure. This leads to a better environment for the community and provides jobs and revenue as well. It also leads to expertise that could be very useful in the rest of the world, for countries like China and others that are developing infrastructure, who will see their quality of life improve.
Look at Victoria Harbour in BC. It’s obvious the government has botched the job. Private companies could clean up the mess. Sewage is the real pollution there, not greenhouse gasses. It’s disgraceful and embarassing.