3. Limited Planet Earth
3.2 Resource Scarcity
So, the problem of climate change can be solved if we really want to. The more general problem, that the Earth's resources are finite, cannot.
I highly commend the scientists who wrote the book “The Limits to Growth” for modeling the world so far into the future. We humans rarely do that. And so far, reality has proven the authors right. The developments in industrialization, population growth, food production, environmental pollution, and resource exploitation have largely followed their standard scenario (“business as usual”). This is remarkable for a prediction that is by now 50 years old!
The book warns that we will reach the limits of growth. If we do not limit growth through political decisions, it will be forced upon us by resource scarcity. This will cause the curves for industrial production, food production, and population to decline. Translating the mathematical model back into reality, it means that resources are extracted more slowly and at higher costs, because the easily exploitable deposits are exhausted. That fields yield less due to over-fertilization. And that due to rising food prices, widespread famine leads to many deaths, as there simply isn’t enough food to go around.
But why are we still in the “business as usual” scenario? The book has garnered enough attention that the problem is well known. And by now there are more than enough other studies addressing and confirming its core messages. Why is humanity so foolish as to run headlong into its own destruction?
The decisive reason is our world government. Or rather, the fact that we don't have one. The UN is nothing more than a prestigious debating club, even if science fiction often suggests otherwise. Only what all veto powers (USA, China, Russia, France, and the UK) agree on can be enforced against the will of a country. How rare this is could clearly be seen in the UN's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine (or its response to the Syrian civil war, or its response to the war in Yemen, ...).
The only thing that could conceivably be called a world government is our economic system, capitalism—notoriously ill-suited for managing resources that belong to the public, such as fish stocks in the oceans, or clean air.
In the foreseeable future, our world consisting of a collection of sovereign states won’t change. Nor will the prevailing economic system of the world, capitalism. Regardless of which ideologies may prevail in individual countries.
For the well-being of the Earth, the community of states will therefore continue to deliver only a minimal consensus. Too late and too little.
For example, Germans might elect The Greens with an absolute majority because they are completely convinced that we must reduce our resource consumption. With laws and draconian taxes, the new government steers the country into that direction. Saving resources is either mandated or becomes the only affordable option due to new taxes. But all of this naturally incurs enormous costs (far greater than the energy transition and CO2 reduction).
The citizens are willing to accept a decline in their wealth, it’s why they elected this government after all. Perhaps their perceived quality of life even increases. But products made in Germany also become more expensive and lose competitiveness in the global market. This puts the economy into a downward spiral (Germany is an export nation), the debt burden grows, and the foreign policy options of the federal government shrink more and more. Countries like China, India, or the USA, which do not attempt to curb their own resource consumption, produce more instead. Their wealth grows, and their foreign policy influence increases. Just as states that promote progress benefited in the previous chapter, states that do not curb resource consumption benefit here. They prevail, and with them, unchecked growth. This fundamental problem, where those who consume common resources without regard for others have the advantage, is called the “tragedy of the commons”.
The voluntary limitation of our resource consumption, rightly demanded by the book “The Limits to Growth”, will not happen. It is incompatible with the political and economic structure of our world.15
It is still not true, however, that we are plunging into an inevitable disaster because humanity is incapable of stopping the growth of our resource consumption. What we are plunging into instead is a race. A race between the growing resource hunger of humanity on one side—and the expansion of our resource extraction across the rest of our solar system on the other.
This may seem absurd at the moment, when we can only transport tiny amounts of material into Earth orbit at astronomically high cost. But once one understands the exponential increase in scientific progress, it becomes clear that this cost problem will be solved. Once we can utilize the raw materials and space of our entire solar system, we suddenly have a billionfold amount of everything. The problem of scarcity is permanently solved, scientific progress from then on growing much faster than our demand for space and raw materials.
The advantage scientific progress grants us before the utilization of non-terrestrial resources, is shifting the target line (by reducing resource demand and by recycling raw materials).
So, all the research in better understanding the dynamic system of Earth and humanity, in order to prevent a tipping point, is by no means futile. No is the effort to explain these connections to us laypeople, so that we are willing to support the necessary adjustments. We should just always be aware that this is nothing more than postponing the moment when population growth and environmental pollution lead to food shortages.
Whether this shift will be sufficient, I do not know. It remains a race. Without being able to stop the continuous growth of resource consumption, this balancing act must eventually fail. Until then, we must have won the race into space.
So let’s take a quick look at its two possible outcomes...
1. Scenario: We lose the race.
All materials will continue to be transported into orbit by rockets. And while rockets are becoming more efficient through better technology and increased size, launch costs remain high enough that the development of Earth orbit is still progressing slowly. There are tourist space hotels and research stations. Some precious metals are mined from asteroids. But only wealthy citizens and nations benefit from all this. It does nothing to help the famines that plague poor countries on Earth. The rich countries have no trouble purchasing or producing needed food—even if food expenses rise and further strain social systems.
By necessity, the willingness of rich countries to help is decreasing: Hungry refugees are being turned away at the borders. Even though food donations of course occur—there isn’t enough for everyone.
Where climate change and environmental damage reduce the quality of life in wealthy countries by too much, areas will be domed to create controlled environments. Coastal cities will be protected with dikes, and other climate adaptations will be implemented, because they are necessary. The industrialized nations have the strength and the capacity to handle this.
There will likely be an increase in wars over resources, but between poor countries. Rich countries don’t need to attack other rich countries, since their existence is not under threat. And for poor countries, it is hopeless to attack rich countries. Military spending continues to rise in order to enhance this deterrent effect.
As long as no nuclear power is threatened in its existence by food scarcity, society should continue to exist and research should proceed. The news will become significantly darker, with hundreds of millions dying of hunger in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. However, this does not fundamentally change the lifestyle in wealthy industrialized countries.
And while humanity's resource demand is thus limited by many of the poorest people dying, progress will eventually lead to a serious breakthrough into space. Due to competitive pressure between industrialized countries and large corporations, if nothing else. From then on, resource scarcity begins to ease again, as habitats in Earth orbit provide new living space and food on a large scale.
2. Scenario: We win the race.
The decline in costs from larger and more efficient rockets to bring material into Earth’s orbit is only the beginning. Soon, a number of corporations begin seizing the new profit opportunities. Space hotels, research stations, the mining of precious metals from asteroids, and energy generation via satellites are starting up. The satellites simultaneously serve to reduce solar radiation reaching Earth in order to slow down climate change. A lot of supporting infrastructure is being created in Earth orbit for all these projects.
Advances in materials research and manufacturing, as well as automation, make large-scale projects possible to simplify access to space (e.g., space elevator, skyhook, etc.). The amount of existing infrastructure in orbit makes these projects attractive. Therefore, a megacorporation, the USA, China, or a group of states decides to finance and build such a project to secure its dominant position.
After this large-scale project is completed (construction time maybe 10 to 20 years), the amount of people and materials leaving Earth increases dramatically. An enormous number of new habitats emerge, for which vast amounts of materials are extracted from asteroids. The energy supply of Earth comes from outer space (unless we somehow manage to solve the problem of cheap nuclear fusion). With cheap energy on Earth, water and food can be produced in practically unlimited quantities. How much the poor countries benefit, depends mostly on the willingness of the rich countries to donate. But since the wealth of the rich countries is soaring, there is a good chance that enough money will be donated to prevent hunger crises at least. Perhaps even enough that effective state-building takes place and states can escape poverty.
Here, the next lines of conflict will likely emerge between the rich states of Earth on one side, and space colonies*, seeking independence because they have a completely different culture, on the other.