response to the controversial book Limits to Growth, which argued that societies were on a path to "overshoot" the planet’s natural resources, Stiglitz said: "There is not a persuasive case to be made that we face a problem from the exhaustion of our resources in the short or medium run."
Today, Stiglitz has changed his tune: "If our patterns of living, our patterns of consumption are imitated, as others are striving to do, the world probably is not viable."
Take China, which is on track to have 572 million cars on its roads - 70 million shy of the total number of cars in the entire world today. It’s not just cars - hundreds of millions of people worldwide are making a shift to meat protein from grains. This means trouble because it takes ten pounds of grain to produce one pound of pork (under conventional agricultural practices) and more than double that to produce a pound of beef.
Also, China’s domestic production of rice, wheat and corn 'peaked' in 1998 and hasn’t returned to similar levels since.
Cooperation among nations is critical, the authors wrote, to stave off massive hunger. However, the specter that governments may ultimately concentrate on grabbing, instead of sharing, global resources means the situation could get ugly - fast.
The authors also noted that we’ve endured scarcity before (e.g. WWII). But this time there’s a vital difference: the decline of cheap oil. America bounced back from the Great Depression and a traumatic war in large part because it had access to apparently limitless supplies of cheap fossil fuel domestically. That isn’t the case any longer. "So far," the authors wrote, "the oil industry has failed to find major new sources of crude oil. Absent major finds,
prices are likely to keep rising, unless consumers cut back."
Which brings us back to necessity: we will have to change our behavior, whether we like it or not. This has profound implications, including, according to Stiglitz, rethinking traditional definitions and measures of progress, which for nearly two centuries have been based on producing and consuming ever more.
The Reverend Malthus argued that the maintenance of human happiness was dependent on tough, decisive action when times get difficult - as times always eventually do. The alternative is misery. It is this capacity to understand what’s going on and respond accordingly, he said, that sets Ages apart from one another.
Clearly, modern times are becoming difficult - and are likely to grow more so. The maintenance of human well-being is already a trial for millions of the planet’s most needy and this tragedy, too, is likely to grow. Therefore, I think it is safe to say that we have entered a transition from one Age to another - a point reinforced by the President of the United States, of all people, at his press conference in late April, who said: "You know, we’re transitioning to a new era, by the way…[and later] We’ve got to understand we’re in a transition period."
The question is: transition to what? And how will we respond? What tough, decisive action will we take to maintain our well-being? I’m curious to find out.
