The world’s resources are limitless. I’m not joking. In a world of finite materials – and a finite 88 keys on a piano – resources are no more limited than are melodies and harmonies. Even if we stick to the Western musical scale, we will never run out of tunes. This is because tunes are not raw materials, somehow just there, waiting to be discovered: they come into being with the creativity of people.*

The same is true of resources. I’ve just discovered this wonderful phrase:

Resources Are Not, They Become

It was coined by economist Erich Zimmermann and has since been taken up in argument against the persistently rearing ugly head of Malthus (e.g. brilliantly by Thomas R. DeGregori [1]). No matter how many times Malthus has been disproven – by humanity’s ingenuity, and famously in more recent times in the Simon-Ehrlich wager – still he keeps popping up in various forms, currently in the guise of environmentalism. It’s boring to have to keep on defending humans from this conservative, misanthropic idea, but it’s all the rage at the moment, so I guess we have to.

The difference with today’s Malthusians is that they do not target the poor and the Africans and the Indians, as Malthusians once did. At least, they pretend not to. Their main target is the Western lifestyle, with its supposed over-consumption. But this leads them to attack the poorer countries’ efforts to develop too, for example in their opposition to the construction of dams to control the effects of monsoons in India or the use of GM crops in Africa. In their view of the world, people are better kept in their place, in small numbers at the mercy of nature. People are always the problem.

My Cat’s Electric Blanket Once Belonged to Alfred Russel Wallace’s Grandmother

I believe that people are not the problem, but the solution. People are not drains on society but contributors to it, and the more people there are, the more ideas we generate. The concept behind Resources are not, they become is that resources are not found but created, by the application of ideas. Petroleum was not a resource for the people of the neolithic. It only became one when we learned how to get it and use it, and when we had a need for it. Likewise, it will no doubt cease to become one when we work out how to use something better.

Like music and language, human society is open-ended. There will always be new music; in language there will always be novel phrases that make sense (I submit this: “my cat’s electric blanket once belonged to Alfred Russel Wallace’s grandmother”); and there will always be new resources. The ever-changing ideas and techniques of people continue to remake the world and society. It is simplistic and ahistorical to see the world’s resources as an ever-dwindling cake.

I think the big problems are under-development and poverty. And this of course means that policies are partly to blame. In the decades following Malthus India was seen as a lost cause, with a population growing so fast that it could not possibly sustain itself. Indeed, famine was celebrated by many in Britain as a natural check on over-population (incredibly, that odious idea lives on here and there even now). In the event, after suffering seven famines under British misrule, it was technology and complementary policy that ensured that, today, India has been famine-free since independence in 1947, even while the population has grown unimaginably.

I conclude from all this that policies seeking to prevent development – for example, calling a halt to the Gibe III dam in Ethiopia or banning GM crops – are, potentially, profoundly bad for humanity; and therefore that ideas and campaigns promoting such policies should be vigorously challenged.

Note: I’d like to provide some context here by adding that, by most measures, things are getting better for people throughout the world, as summarized in this collection of graphs from New Scientist.

*If you’re inclined to pick apart the analogy, how about this: the keys represent chemical elements, chords represent raw materials (there is a certainly a sense in which basic harmonies were discovered), and melodies and chord sequences (thus incorporating time) represent resources. I think that works, even without bringing in microtones.

[1] Resources Are Not, They Become: an Institutional Theory, Thomas R. De Gregori, Journal of Economic Issues 21, 1987, included in Evolutionary theory in the social sciences, Volume 4 by William M. Dugger and Howard J. Sherman.

Further reading:
The Simon-Ehrlich Wager on Wikipedia
The Doomslayer by Ed Regis, Wired 5.02, February 1997
The Post War Intellectual Roots Of The Population Bomb by Pierre Desrochers and Christine Hoffbauer in The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development
No to Neo-Malthusianism at Spiked Online

To describe nuclear power as clean might seem perverse, given that some of the waste produced is so dangerous that there is no containment material that won’t be destroyed by it, and that it remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years.

But last week the government finally said yes to the construction of up to ten nuclear power stations, at least some of which might be up-and-running by 2020. They’ve put off the decision for a long time. New Labour, motivated for so long by the desire to be liked, refused to face the impending energy crisis. Now that the closure of many of our existing nuclear power stations is fast approaching (several over the next twenty years), and now that they have the fortifying experience of not being liked, they’ve bitten the bullet.

Generally, my main concern is for progress, for economic development, which I believe is the basis for a society of free and equal people, living fulfilling lives. A wealthy, technologically advanced country like Britain needs base load power stations, ones that provide a constant flow of power. It looks like renewables cannot provide much of this, so the answer must be coal, oil and nuclear. Given the need to reduce CO2 emissions, this means we need to go for nuclear or clean coal – or both. From this perspective, nuclear power is very important, because clean coal is still in its infancy.

Nuclear can be considered clean because it does not pollute the environment. Although the high-level waste is extremely dangerous, in practise it doesn’t actually harm people or the environment, if stored correctly. And there isn’t much of it. Ten new nuclear power stations with a lifetime of sixty years would produce 40,900 cubic metres of this waste, which is half the volume of the Albert Hall. (1) The projects for the waste’s short-term and long-term containment look good: Managing our Radioactive waste Safely (Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, PDF)

Nuclear is now one of the safest, cleanest ways we have of producing energy, but it got a bad name for itself in the eighties and nineties. This is partly owing to scientific ignorance and a mis-perception of risk, but the nastiness of the nuclear industry couldn’t have helped either. “The nuclear industry, for most of its life, has been, to put it at its mildest, economical with the truth” (2)

While I’m broadly supportive of the new plans, I can sympathise with those who aren’t and who know how despicable the industry has been in the past. It’s been run by a secretive cabal of shamans and priests, jealously guarding their power against outsiders. I don’t know how much it has changed, but can we afford to hold things up while they get their act together? We certainly need a completely open, honest and unapologetic nuclear industry, not one that will reinforce the perception of witchcraft. But we also need to get started on the new stations now.

My fondest childhood memories are of living in the little village of Fairlie, a mile or two south of Largs, on the North Ayrhsire coast. In this part of Ayrshire the towns cling to a narrow stretch of land between the sea and a big lump of uninhabitable high moorland, now called Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park, extending from Greenock in the north to West Kilbride in the south, and inland to Lochwinnoch and Kilmacolm. And with Cumbrae, Arran and Bute enclosing the Firth of Clyde, this stretch of coastline has a sheltered, cosy feel to it. It’s dramatic and picturesque, but not overwhelming (I’ve only just realized that I have this knowledge, or appreciation, after having been away for a long time.)

View Larger Map

Hunterston nuclear power station faces across the bay, from underneath the cliffs at Portencross, to Fairlie and Cumbrae, and it was part of my childhood world, along with the huge ore terminal. The memory of seeing Hunterston “A” – the old Magnox reactor, now being decommissioned – illuminated at night, is strong. I visited it once (although it was probably Hunterston “B”, the newer but less attractive station just next-door), as part of my physics class, and I was struck by how empty it was. Self-centred cynical adolescents we may have been, but even we were awed by the caverns of concrete and steel, and the cathedral-like proportions, and just the thought of that massive hidden power was enough to convince us that we could feel it under our feet and buzzing in the air.

A few dozen metres out to sea are the intake and outlet stations for the cooling system. I remember being struck by the sight of the big bubbling patch where the warmed water was returned to the sea. You can see both the intake and outlet very clearly on the satellite image. The white blob is the latter.

Now that I’m in Edinburgh, my local nuclear power station is Torness, on the coast of East Lothian. You get a good view of it from the East Coast Main Line railway. A couple of years ago, one of its walls became a projector screen for Europe’s biggest art installation, Lumin de Lumine by Ken McMullen. See a picture of it here on this particle physics website.

(1) The Future of Nuclear Power, DTI, May 2007
(2) Reporting the Nuclear Industry: Sorcery versus Common Sense, The Uranium Institute

Government go-ahead:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7179579.stm

The water head – the vertical distance from the turbine to the intake at the reservoir, is 600 metres, the highest in Britain. That’s just as well, because there aren’t any big rivers up there, and to get a half-decent flow they’re having to gather together a number of burns.

http://www.topomatika.hr/Applications/turbine-en.htm

The power station will use a Pelton turbine. The American Lester Allan Pelton invented it in about 1870, and it’s still going strong. It’s pretty much the most efficient way of getting the energy out of a jet of water. It works by getting energy from the force of a high-speed jet, not from the pressure of the head of water. And with a high head of 600 meteres you can get a pretty fast flow going.

We’re not about to run out of rain any time soon – any more than we’re about to run out of wind – so it’s as sustainable as you can get. Some members of the walking community were opposed to it, at least in the beginning, but it’s generally viewed favourably by environmentalists and it’s popular with the locals. (As it is, the area isn’t much frequented by walkers anyway, and it’s primarily been only a deer and grouse hunting area for a long time.) It’ll have a capacity of 100 megawatts, which is a huge contribution to the country’s energy – the equivalent of 50 wind turbines.

Scottish & Southern Energy seem to have been very careful not to disturb any important or sensitive species of wildlife. Concerning the water vole, they even went as far as to establish that the dam and reservoir will destroy only a few disused burrows. Whether the presence of a single water vole at the bottom of the valley would have stalled the project, I’m not sure.

If you can’t get enough of all this water engineering, the scheme featured in a radio program by Adam Hart-Davis a couple of years ago, when construction was just beginning. You can still listen to it here. Also, have a look at my other posts, on the Great Man-made River Project and the Loch Sloy Power Station.

BBC report
Edinburgh Evening News report
Glendoe scheme official site

I hope we begin to see more of this sensible approach to the world’s problems. It is just one among many and should be tackled in a rational way. Currently, climate change porn has us westerners in paroxysms of indulgent self-loathing, which has nothing to do with making the world better.

I’m interested in the whole mitigation vs. adaptation argument. As with many things, bits of both will likely be required for a good solution. But it seems likely that the best kinds of mitigation are industry- and government-led actions to develop more efficient and cleaner fuels, and things like CO2 storage, which is looking much more promising now with the publication this week of research findings by the University of Leicester and the British Geological Survey, in the journal Planet Earth.

The big problem I have is with the misanthropic moralizing; with the idea that humanity is a blight on the planet, an idea that is (a) useless, and (b) full of contradictions. That developed countries should be guilty of their advancements, and that developing countries should refrain from their own development, are views that seem very common amongst greens, and media commentators of that colour. I feel it is only misanthropy, or an antipathy to civilization, that must lie at the root of these views.

I have many opinions surrounding these issues, but let me leave you with a modest contention: species self-loathing, the idea that there are too many people and that we are “killing the planet”, is all part of the spirit of the times, and is not a good guide for action aimed at solving the world’s problems; and the facts of climate change are distorted when seen from this perspective, leaving us less able to deal with it sensibly. Fair?

Polar bears have been in the news quite a lot over the past few years. Just yesterday I saw a feature on a Canadian Polar Bear centre, in the Metro. There is much concern over their future. According to Kassie Siegel of the Center for Biological Diversity, polar bears could be extinct in less than 40 years. (Don’t wait to save the polar bear, from January 8th 2007).

The article is saying that:

1. Numbers are declining
2. Numbers will continue to decline
3. They will probably become extinct unless we halt human-caused climate change

Regular readers of this blog will know that my thinking on the environment runs against the prevailing opinion, but I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I’m not fair. I accept that climate change might be affecting polar bears. Come to think of it, it must be: the climate has always changed and species have always been forced to adapt, or have died out. In particular, top predators have always been sensitive to changes in their habitats because of their specialized adaptation and relatively small numbers. So perhaps we should do something to prevent them from dying out.

OK, if we value the polar bear, then yes. But, first of all, this should apply whether or not human action is the culprit (or should we only protect biodiversity from human threats, because of species responsibility? This stance would appear to be more to do with the human concept of ethics than with an assessment of the intrinsic value of natural variety. Natural catastrophes and changes can lead, as they have in the past, to drastic reductions in biodiversity. The mass extinctions are the most obvious examples).

But here’s the crux. (3) implies the mainstream argument, that individually we should cut our consumption, and that as a society we should lessen our footprint on nature. My own opinion is that this argument is wrapped up in the guise of a new religious dogma, what I’ve just vainly decided to call the Doctrine of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change (DCACC). Anyway, whether it’s dogma or not, the argument is explicit in Kassie Siegel’s swaggering dismissal of sceptics – you should read the article: personally, I get a sense of impatience and polemical bullying from it. As an example of serious scepticism it’s worth pointing out that a letter, signed by 60 scientists, was sent to the Canadian Prime Minister last year, asking him, essentially, not to be so taken in by the DCACC. Read it here.

It might be – she’s pretty open about it – that this story is being used as another example of how we are “killing the planet”*, the motive being to get accross the big message. The DCACC is ready and waiting to be restated and applied in many similar cases; that is, the cases are handpicked because of their utility in ramming home the DCACC. Now, I don’t accept the DCACC, and I don’t accept the need for individually curbing consumption – in fact I think it’s a dangerous and backward idea, but that’s another story. The conclusion as to action doesn’t logically follow, even if you accept the DCACC: if we have caused the endangerment of species through agriculture it doesn’t necessarily follow that we should go back to being hunter-gatherers: that conclusion depends upon other things, such as political outlook.

But aside from all that, it will be good to look at how the facts are being used here, so: are polar bears in fact dying out?

It must be frustrating for many people who think about climate change and related issues, that something which one feels one should be entitled to get an answer to, is actually answered in seemingly contradictory ways by different people, many of whom are respected experts. In this case, some say that polar bears are dying out, others say that they’re not. Some talk about a decline in numbers, others, a rise in numbers (here’s a blog post where Jennifer Marohasy – former director of the environment unit at the Institute of Public Affairs in Australia – talks of a rise in numbers. I haven’t looked into it yet but on the face of it it seems very respectable, although I was under the impression that the Australian polar bear was already highly endangered) What’s going on? At the time of writing, I don’t yet know the answer. I expect that one side is more on the side of truth than the other. It would probably strengthen my general standpoint if it turned out that polar bears were not dying out, because that would be one less justification for the DCACC (because it so happens that it’s being used as such). But it might go the other way.

I want to do this because I, like many, am frustrated and confused by the statistics. This is partly because of bad reporting and the scientific ignorance of the media. As the bad reporting in this area is normally of a sensationalist, alarmist environmentalist character (it’s fair to say that, yeah?), I am bound to find that the DCACC is partly bolstered by misrepresentations. This doesn’t make it wrong of course, and in this investigation my mind is open.

I’ll publish my findings in another post very soon.

*killing the planet
Although I’m aware that this phrase isn’t actually used by Siegel in the article, it occurred to me to examine it, because it’s become part of the language. What does it mean? How do you kill a planet? Let’s see how it’s used in these articles that came up in a Google search. (The ones I selected are from respectable or high-profile publications, writers or organizations.)

First, from the Independent: Eau, no: Clean, healthy and pure? Hardly. Bottled water is killing the planet

The phrase only appears in the headline. The crux of the article is that bottled water requires lots of energy and it’s no better than tap water. So in this case it appears to be shorthand for the DCACC. It’s saying here’s another example of how you are really bad. But does a major rise in temperatures risk the life of the planet itself? It seems likely that it would risk some biodiversity, and, without investment, some human populations, but what does this have to do with planet death? Even if you take it to mean the death of all life, that is not something that, as far as I know, any scientist has predicted. While I agree that bottled water is a bit silly – living in Scotland I’m blessed with lovely tap water – I also think it’s silly to single out one product. Civilization uses up a lot of energy, and bottled water is just one small convenience. In my opinion the article is a tabloid-style piece and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Another one from the Independent, this time a comment piece by Charles Secrett, environmental adviser to the Mayor of London and executive director of Friends of the Earth from 1993 until 2003: We are killing the planet. That is not an exaggeration

“We have got to make the connection between our own lifestyles and big, global problems like climate change.

The couldn’t-care-less attitude puts our future in peril. Our generation and future generations cannot afford it – we are killing the planet. That is not an exaggeration, but a scientific fact.”

This is an odd conception of science. If it makes more sense to invest in technologies and global infrastructure, encouraging development everywhere, so that we might adapt to changes in climate, the science can hardly be said to point to the need for changes in individual behaviour. It is political polemic. Friends of the Earth’s orientation is anti-development, and they are in positions of influence at the moment because mainstream opinion has fallen in to line with their ideas. Again, from a scientific standpoint, although he appeals to science, it is difficult to take it seriously. I’m not sure what the statistics were that he refers to, but as it stands the piece uses killing the planet in an emotive and rhetorical way whilst attemting to establish it as unquestionable fact, but without any scientific argumentation. Even if you don’t accept my views, you can surely concede that in this case killing the planet is placard-language and doesn’t bear scrutiny.

Here’s one from the WWF website (that’s the World Wide Fund for Nature, not the World Wrestling Federation): Is your lunch killing the planet?

“A simple everyday office lunch may seem innocent at first purchase but could be responsible for rainforest clearance, endangering wildlife, bankrupting small farmers and poisoning water supplies.”

I hope you’ll forgive me for finding this rather bizarre and amusing. Anyway, how does it imply planet death, and what is planet death? We’re no nearer finding out what it means.

Here’s one from the Mirror: Why Garden Centres are Killing the Planet

I think we’re beginning to see a pattern here. Journalists are very fond of the phrase. It’s ideal for headlines, where they make use of apparently absurd juxtapositions to attract the attention.

George Monbiot is a famous proponent of the DCACC. In this piece he says:

“Like Bush, Blair will contemplate anything except restraining the people who are killing the planet. While the UK produces 2.2% of the world’s greenhouse gases, the companies which extract the fossil fuels responsible for over 10% of global emissions are listed on the London Stock Exchange.”

This gives it a bit more of a leftish, anti-capitalist hue, but is still simply about the DCACC, and doesn’t stop to explain how the changes might cause the planet to die.

Well, I’m pretty unimpressed. The phrase is facile, sensational and rhetorical, and loosely coupled with facts. It’s often accompanied by a moralizing sentiment designed to make us feel guilty. It reminds me of something I wrote when I was about 14, for my English class, in which I blamed the motor car for the needless deaths of millions (ahead of my time!). If these people want to convince me of the truth of the DCACC, they should refrain from using this kind of adolescent sensationalism.

Clearly James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis has been influential: the Earth as a living organism. But even before that we had Mother Nature, so I suppose that, as with anthropomorphism, it’s natural to think of things in this way. This partly explains why it’s so strong as a metaphor, but I’ll assume that it is just a metaphor, because these people seem not to mean “there is an actual living organism called Earth and humans are in the process of ending its life”. At least, this meaning is not central to their arguments.

But to conclude, it seems to me that the phrase is pretty useless in a reasonable argument, and I think that the reason it’s so readily accepted is that the changes that are taking place in the world are widely seen as part of a trend towards utter destruction: things are always getting worse and the ultimate outcome is the annihalation of all that is good. This is the mood of the age in the western world, and I don’t think it has anything to do with reality.