Does Philosophical Materialism Tend to Indirectly Increase Global Warming?

There are two definitions of the word “materialism.” One refers to a lifestyle emphasis, and the other refers to a philosophical position. Materialism as a lifestyle emphasis means centering your life around the acquisition and enjoyment of material things. A person pursuing a materialistic lifestyle may organize his life around getting a bigger house, getting a bigger or faster car, buying fancy clothes and gadgets, and so forth.

A person's carbon footprint is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted as the result of a person's consumption activities. Assuming that what we are told is correct (that increased carbon footprints tend to increase global warming), it is rather clear that lifestyle materialism tends to increase global warming. If a person thinks that “happily ever after” means a 2000-square-foot home and two big gas-guzzling cars, along with frequent trips to luxury hotels in distant cities, he may well have a carbon footprint much greater than if he put little value on such things.

Philosophical materialism is something quite different from lifestyle materialism. Philosophical materialism is the position that matter (or mass-energy) is all that exists (with the possible exception of blind impersonal forces such as gravitation, or laws of nature). Not believing in any type of deity, spirits or souls, a philosophical materialist thinks that this earthly life is the only life a human will ever have, and that no one will have an afterlife.

You might think that whether a person is a philosophical materialist has no relevance to global warming. But this may not be true. There is a reason for thinking that philosophical materialists may be more likely to have higher carbon footprints, and do more of the activities that increase global warming. The reason has nothing to do with the philosophical materialist's lack of belief in a deity. The reason has to do with the philosophical materialist's lack of belief in an afterlife.

Let us imagine two people, one named Joe and another named Jane. Joe is a hard-boiled philosophical materialist. He believes that this earthly life is the only life he will ever live. But Jane believes rather vaguely in some type of afterlife. She thinks that when she dies she may continue to live on in some type of heaven. She also thinks that perhaps she will be reincarnated, and come back to our planet to live another life.

Joe's attitude is summarized by slogans such as “you only live once.” Believing that he will have no afterlife, Joe thinks that this earthly life is his only chance to see the world's wonders and enjoy various types of pleasure. So Joe may create in his mind a “bucket list” consisting of a list of items he wants to do before he “kicks the bucket.” These may be items like this:

1. See the view from the Eiffel Tower.
2. Walk on the Great Wall of China
3. Take a glass-bottom boat tour in the Great Barrier Reef
4. Climb to the top of the Uluru rock in Australia
5. Swim in some beautiful lagoon in Tahiti

A "bucket list" of places to see before you die

Doing all of these things and other items on Joe's “bucket list” will add to global warming. That's because Joe will have to buy lots of jet plane tickets, and jet planes dump lots of carbon dioxide high into the atmosphere. But Joe justifies this by saying to himself, “This is the only chance I'll ever get to see such things.”

Joe may also buy himself a big home with a high carbon footprint, reasoning, “This is the only chance I'll ever get to live well.” And he may buy himself some gas-guzzling car or recreational vehicle, reasoning, “This is the only chance I'll ever get to drive well,” or “This is the only chance I'll ever get to see the whole USA.” With such reasoning, Joe's carbon footprint gets higher and higher.

But now let us consider Jane. Jane does not assume that her pleasures will be limited to the pleasures she gets during her earthly life. Jane thinks she will have some kind of afterlife, and that such an afterlife may offer unlimited opportunities for different kinds of pleasure. Thinking that she may find herself in some magnificent heavenly realm that totally surpasses the splendor of the home of the richest billionaire, Jane doesn't think along the lines of, “This is the only chance I'll ever have to live in grand style.” Jane thinks that perhaps as a disembodied spirit she may be able to move around to any place on the planet she wants to go, or that perhaps she will be reincarnated and have additional opportunities for physical earthly experiences. So she doesn't engage in thinking along the lines of, “This earthly life is my one chance to see the Great Wall of China.”

When it comes to eating habits, there may also be a difference between Jane and Joe. Jane may believe or suspect that all animals have souls, and this may cause her to limit her meat eating or may cause her to become a vegetarian. Jane may reason that raising pigs and cows for food may cause suffering for animals with souls, and that we should therefore not eat such animals. But not believing in any types of souls, Joe may eat lots of meat. In fact, when he comes to a restaurant, Joe's attitude of “this life is my only chance for pleasure” may cause him to try some meat dish he has never tried before. This is relevant to global warming, because the raising of animals for meat is one of the biggest contributors to global warming.

Now, who is more likely to have a higher carbon footprint, Jane or Joe? It seems that Joe will be much more likely to have a higher carbon footprint. Joe's thinking may well lead him to engage in activities that increase global warming. But Jane's thinking may make her less likely to engage in a high-carbon-footprint lifestyle.

It is certainly true that we can imagine a rather austere philosophical materialist whose carbon footprint is low. The main driver of a high-carbon lifestyle is not any philosophical position but a consumerist culture which is constantly sending us silly messages implying that your success in life is proportional to the size of your house, the size or cost of your car, and the distance you travel in jet planes. But by encouraging the thinking that this earthly life is our only chance for satisfaction, philosophical materialism does nothing to put a check on such a consumerist culture. So compared to rival assumptions, philosophical materialism does a bad job at discouraging the high consumption that worsens global warming. Although philosophical materialism does not necessitate lifestyle materialism, philosophical materialism may tend to encourage lifestyle materialism, which tends to increase global warming.

The armchair considerations here don't prove anything, but a systematic scientific study could shed further light on such a topic. I suggest this as a topic for a scientific researcher looking for a topic for a scientific paper. I can imagine such a study being done at low cost. You simply submit question lists to a wide variety of age groups and income levels, asking people both about their philosophical and religious beliefs and also about their consumption practices and carbon footprints. Then you look to see whether there is any correlation between the two.

The Case For Denying "Like" Votes To Conspicuous Consumption Posts

For a long time Americans have engaged in what is called conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption means spending money on something largely in hopes that other people will notice how you have spent, and think to themselves: wow, he must make good money, or wow, he must be raking in the dough.

Back in the 1960's, conspicuous consumption was a little bit hard to practice. If you bought a new car, it was pretty easy – you would just leave the car parked out in front of your house where people would be sure to notice it. But if you bought some fancy new household item, it might be a lot harder to get people to notice it. For example, if you bought a 26-inch color TV (which most people didn't have in those days, because they were pretty expensive), you might have to throw a party to get people to notice your fancy new expenditure. Or if you went on an expensive vacation, you would have to make sure to send postcards to all of your friends, so that they would notice your lavish consumption.

But nowadays it is so much easier to practice conspicuous consumption. You simply spend some money lavishly, and then go to your favorite social media, to make a type of post that I call a conspicuous consumption post. Such a post is designed to get your friends to say to themselves: wow, he must have a pile of cash.

A "conspicuous consumption" post on social media looks like this

These days the conspicuous consumption post has become so common that what I will now suggest may be regarded as an unforgivable social heresy. What I suggest is that in most cases when you see this type of “conspicuous consumption" post, you should deliberately not grant it a “like” vote on your social media.

There are four reasons I can think of for denying “like” votes to conspicuous consumption posts. The first reason is that when many hundreds of millions of people practice conspicuous consumption, it tends to worsen global warming. Most examples of conspicuous consumption involve increasing your carbon footprint, the amount of carbon dioxide that you are contributing to the atmosphere. If, for example, you take your vacation by traveling all the way to a Pacific island to go swimming (rather than swimming at your local beach), you are greatly increasing your carbon footprint. Or, to give another example, if you buy a second or third car that you don't really need, the manufacture of such a car involved (directly or indirectly) a large increase in your carbon footprint. So if conspicuous consumption practiced by the masses is a large contributor to global warming, then we should not be encouraging conspicuous consumption --- and it seems that we do encourage it when we give “like” votes to social posts that trumpet someone's conspicuous consumption. Such votes establish a kind of reward system for conspicuous consumption behavior that may be inappropriate from an environmental standpoint.

The second reason I can think of for denying “like” votes to conspicuous consumption posts is that such votes may encourage behavior that (when practiced by many millions) tends to worsen the problem of resource depletion. Resource depletion is the fact that many important human resources such as oil, coal, water, and various metals are being used up at an alarming rate, creating a severe danger that within a few decades there may be grave shortages of some of these things. There is a quite significant chance that oil production may peak within 10 or 20 years, and that oil shortages will be one of the biggest problems of the 21^st century. As discussed here, we are tapping out many of the aquifers that are used to supply freshwater, meaning that water shortages may be one of the biggest problems of the 21^st century. The projected supply of some of the main metals used by consumers is only a few decades. Given such troubling resource depletion issues, it would seem that to live frugally and modestly is the most socially responsible way to live, not to live according to a “conspicuous consumption” lifestyle. It would also seem that we should not (with our social media votes) be encouraging conspicuous consumption in our friends.

The third reason I can think of to avoid giving “like” votes to conspicuous consumption posts is that such posts may help to encourage unwise or inadvisable financial behavior. Here's an example. You know a restaurant cook in Westerly, Rhode Island, a guy who is struggling to meet his mortgage. Rather than taking his vacation enjoying the beautiful beaches near Westerly, the cook takes his vacation in insanely ritzy and ridiculously expensive spots in southern France. The cook then puts up some social media posts, hoping to get those “like” votes. By giving such posts “like” votes, you are encouraging this guy to engage in the same financially reckless behavior next year. It would seem to be better if such a person gets no social media reward, and starts to spend his money more cautiously.

Or, to give an another example, suppose you know some old man (with two adult daughters) who is using up his modest savings on a “bucket list” tour of the world. If you see his social media posts of this tour, why give “like” votes that almost send an “I approve of you spending money this way” message (if you actually think he should be saving the money so that his daughters can inherit it)?

The fourth reason I can think of to avoid giving “like” votes to conspicuous consumption posts is that if we reduce the number of conspicuous consumption posts, perhaps our social media experiences will become more intellectually and spiritually rewarding. Aren't you sick of an endless stream of “look what I bought” posts and “look at this fancy place I went to” posts? Wouldn't it be better to read more social media posts that explore the feelings and ideas of your friends, rather than how they are spending their money?

I admit that denying “like” votes to conspicuous consumption posts is difficult, so let me suggest some exceptions to such a rule (so I won't sound like such a dour old skinflint). If I know someone spends his money responsibly, and doesn't have too high a carbon footprint, I may well give him a “like” vote for a conspicuous consumption post, particularly if I think the consumption he is displaying is just a kind of “rare indulgence” type of thing. If a conspicuous consumption post shows some great scene of natural beauty, or some scene of tender emotion, I will also give a “like vote” to that, on the grounds that my “like” vote is a salute to the scenery or the emotion, rather than the related consumption. Also, if a person says something clever or witty in his conspicuous consumption post, I may also give a “like” vote to it, on the grounds that I am saluting that person's words rather than his conspicuous consumption.

But what if you see the ordinary, uninspired, all-too-common “look at my lavish feast at this fancy restaurant” post or “look at my fancy hotel room” post or “look at this expensive thing I just bought” post? My suggestion is: stiff them, by not clicking that “like” button.

The 5 Likeliest Roads to Ruin

Anders Sandberg recently wrote an essay entitled The 5 Biggest Threats to Human Existence. Since Sandberg is a Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, we might expect him to get things right. But I think only some of the five items he mentions are substantial risks to human existence. Below is Sanberg's list, along with comments on each item in the list.

#1. Nuclear war

There is no arguing with this item on the list. Some people seem to think that the threat of nuclear war ended back when the Cold War ended, but that is not true. The United States and Russia still each have about 8000 nuclear weapons. With recent tensions related to Ukraine, it sometimes seems as if the Cold War is still here. You also have to consider the threat posed by other nations with large nuclear stockpiles, such as India and Pakistan.

#2. Bioengineered Pandemic

There is also no arguing with this item on Sanberg's list. The danger of a killer super-virus run amok seems as real as ever, particularly in light of the recent discovery of some smallpox virus vials in a Maryland lab, along with the discovery that some workers at the Center for Disease Control were exposed to live anthrax virus. Both news items suggest that conditions at biological research labs are more lax than we imagine. One can only imagine how conditions are at some foreign labs that might be brewing up the next super-virus in their labs. The terrifying thing about genetically engineered viruses is that they can in theory be created in small labs that could be hidden anywhere.

#3. Superintelligence

Here is the first misfire in Sanberg's list. This is the idea that intelligent machines may take over the planet and get rid of us. But there is almost no chance that this will happen in the foreseeable future. For superintelligence to develop, Moore's Law must stay in effect for several more decades, meaning that computer hardware power and speed doubles every 18 months. But a computer chip expert recently predicted that Moore's law will not stay in effect past the year 2020, as engineers find it harder and harder to pack more processing power into a tiny space.

There is also the fact that superintelligent machines would requires software billions of times more powerful than existing computer software. Computer software development does not grow at any exponential rate comparable to Moore's law. Computer software development progresses at a much slower rate no greater than about 10% per year. Technologists have imagined that we will be able to take some gigantic shortcut to machine intelligence, by scanning the human brain, and transferring “the software of the brain” to the computer. This is fanciful wishful thinking, and there is no particularly good reason to think this will be possible any time soon.

#4. Nanotechnology

I think Sanberg also errs in putting this item on his list. If you believe Eric Drexler about nanotechnology, then we will be able to use it to achieve precise atomic manufacturing, something which would have earth-shaking results for manufacturing (and might create gigantic risks along the lines of “gray goo” involving nanotechnology run amok). But I suspect that such hopes and fears are overblown. Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley thought that Drexler is way off the mark, that it won't be possible to ever use nanotechnology for precise atomic manufacturing, and that there is no risk of nanotechnology running amok along the lines of the “gray goo” scenario.

#5. Unknown unknowns

I guess you cannot argue with this vague item on Sanberg's list, except by saying that such an item doesn't belong because the purpose of such a list is to warn of dangers, so there's not much point in including this vague catchphrase.

What items should we list as the five greatest risks to human civilization? I would suggest the list below.

#1 Nuclear war

This items is included for the reason listed above, that there are still many thousands of these weapons in existence.

#2. Bioengineered Pandemic

This item is included because it seems all too possible that some future lab might brew up a virus far more deadly than Ebola or smallpox, and all too possible that such a virus might escape such a lab (by design or accident).

#3. Environmental ruin

Why did Sanberg omit this item from his list? Far greater than the risk of superintelligence or nanotechnology is the risk that we will make the planet uninhabitable for ourselves (or barely livable for ourselves) by our polluting activities. There is the possibility that global warming might cause various events (such as the melting of methane hydrates or excessive ocean acidification) that act as feedback loops which then create even more global warming. The result might be human extinction. For a post estimating the odds of such an extinction, see here.

#4. An attack from beyond our planet, natural or purposeful

This item (ignored by Sanberg) includes all threats from outside our planet. One such threat is the threat of a large solar flare that ruins all of our electronics, in an event similar to an electromagnetic pulse attack. Another such threat is the risk of an asteroid or comet striking our planet. If an asteroid only 20 kilometers wide hit our planet, it could be enough to kill everyone (most dying from starvation caused by a nuclear winter). Still another threat from the skies is the threat of an extraterrestrial invasion. Invading extraterrestrials might decide to wipe us out entirely and take the planet for themselves. While each of these threats is rather remote, together they add up to a significant risk. 

#5. Resource depletion

Many are worried that Peak Oil will soon occur, causing a downward spiral of civilization. If we run out of easy-to-obtain oil, the whole forward momentum of our current civilization may start to reverse, leading to a downward spiral of collapse. It may seem unthinkable that this might cause a collapse of civilization, but no one in the Roman Empire around 350 AD imagined how great a collapse would occur in the centuries ahead.

What can we do to reduce these risks? We can accelerate programs for dismantling nuclear weapons. We can tighten up international treaties on biological warfare, and protocols for inspecting labs that might create biological weapons. We can increase the modest funding of astronomical programs to monitor near-earth asteroids. What can the average person do? He or she can help reduce risks #3 and #5 by doing the same thing – conserve and reduce consumption that uses up our resources and worsens global warming. Remember, you can't really consume your way to happiness, but we just might consume our way to extinction or collapse.

A New Environmental Rallying Cry: Remember the Shoe Man

When it comes to rallying cries, nothing works better than a call to remember something. “Remember the Maine” worked like a charm as a rallying cry during the Spanish American war. “Remember Pearl Harbor” worked even better as a rallying cry during World War II. Now there is a possibility for a new rallying cry in the war against global warming, overconsumption, and ecological ruin. The new rallying cry: remember the Shoe Man.

The Shoe Man is a term we may use for the poor troubled soul who recently had to accompany his girlfriend on an excessive shopping trip. After buying lots of expensive stuff, the woman wanted to go to one more shoe store to buy more shoes. The man complained that the woman already had enough shoes to last a lifetime. After arguing with the woman, the man then jumped to his death from the seventh floor of a shopping mall, crashing into a display counter on the ground level, as described here.

The death of the Shoe Man is a kind of miniature metaphor that may symbolize the peril of our consumerist creed, the unofficial religion preached to us by many a slick television commercial. The Shoe Man died unexpectedly, as a side-effect of reckless overconsumption and runaway consumerism. The same thing may happen to many millions of humans if man continues his current ways, in reckless disregard of the ecological limits of our planet. We may shop and spend our way to an environmental hell, as our planet gets hotter, our water supplies diminish, and our oceans get more and more acidic.

Every time you buy something, it increases your annual carbon footprint, which is basically how much you are contributing to the global warming problem. The carbon footprint of a pair of shoes is between 20 and 200 pounds. Buying a pair of leather shoes might easily be the equivalent of dumping your body weight in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Sadly we do not have imprinted on our brains the message “Respect the planet's limits.” Madison Avenue has imprinted on our brains the mindless message: for the rest of your life, accumulate more and more and more stuff.

Consider the common case of a person who labors long hours to fill up closets with clothes worn only a few times, and fill up a kitchen with appliances not used very often. Such a person is rather like the silly squirrels who spend so much of their time working very hard to gather acorns, and then end up using only 25% of the acorns they store.

But perhaps the Shoe Man may not have died in vain. We can use his death to help keep in check the kind of reckless overconsumption that pushed him over the edge. Here's how it could work.

When your husband asks for some cash to buy another electronic gadget he doesn't need, just because the gadget is the hot new thing, say to him: remember the Shoe Man.

When your wife asks for the credit card to buy another outfit she doesn't need, just because all her friends are dressing that way, say to her: remember the Shoe Man.

When your child asks for some money to buy some useless plastic thing he doesn't need, mainly because he can make a picture of it and use it as a cool Facebook post, say to him: remember the Shoe Man.

And if any of these people ask you, “Who is the Shoe Man?” you can answer like this: the Shoe Man was a poor guy who jumped to his death from the seventh floor of a mall, because his lady love bought too many shoes – don't make me into the next Shoe Man! 

 

Changing Our Rituals for the Sake of Planet Earth

In my earlier post Give the Earth a Christmas Present by Giving Nobody a Christmas Present, I commented on the environmental costs of Christmas shopping. I suggested that it would be better for our planet for you to give no one a Christmas present, or to give Christmas presents only to small children. I also mentioned how the practice of putting up Christmas trees is lamentable from an environmental standpoint (we should we planting trees to help fight global warming rather than cutting trees down for ceremonial purposes). I forgot to mention that another environmentally friendly approach is to give a gift card, which helps to avoid the problem of landfills being filled up with unwanted gifts (since the person who uses the gift card can get exactly what he wants).

Are there any other rituals that we might want to change for the sake of the environment? I can't think of much of an environmental case for modifying the celebration of other annual holidays in the United States. An Easter basket doesn't have much of an environmental cost, nor does the fireworks we watch on the 4^th of July (because many thousands of people watch the same set of fireworks). Thanksgiving also doesn't have much of an environmental cost, seeing that poultry farming generates less greenhouse gases than beef, and only a single bird is consumed in the traditional US Thanksgiving meal.

But there are two other rituals that we might want to modify for the sake of the environment: weddings and funerals. First, let us look at the environmental cost of weddings.

In the United States the average cost of a wedding has grown to about $25,000. That's way too high for a generation that has record high levels of college debt. The modern American wedding has become an exercise in conspicuous consumption. Too many people are having weddings that are too large and ornate, for the sake of making a statement about their level of affluence. People feel under social pressure to have a big wedding so that other people will know or think they are well-off and successful.

A wedding ceremony by itself does not have a high environmental cost, nor does a wedding reception. But a big wedding might have a large environmental cost if quite a few people takes planes to go to the wedding. Imagine if you invite 20 of your friends from distant cities to attend your wedding. That adds up to 40 different jet plane trips all because of your wedding. The total carbon dioxide footprint of such a wedding might be ten times greater than the entire annual carbon dioxide footprint of someone living in a Third World country. That carbon dioxide helps to worsen global warming.

So I suggest a simple rule of thumb for weddings: do not invite to your wedding more than 10 people who will need to fly to the wedding. Also, try to set the location of your wedding at a place that will minimize the amount of air travel that will be required by your invitees. It may make a great Facebook post to put up pictures of your wedding in the middle of Yosemite Park, but if six of your most important invitees live near Philadelphia, it is much better from an environmental standpoint to have your wedding near Philadelphia. By doing in this case what's good for the environment, you will also be doing what's good for the pocketbooks and wallets of your wedding attendees.

You may be thinking: I must have a big wedding, because it will be the most important day in my life, and I will think about it hundreds of times in the future. But it doesn't work that way. From my own experience I can predict: you will quickly stop thinking much about your wedding day once it is over; you will become absorbed in your future activities; and you will almost never think about your wedding day for the rest of your life. So why bother making such a spectacle out of a day you'll hardly ever think about once it's over?

Now let's look at another ritual that we should modify for the sake of our ailing planet: funerals.

As for cremation versus burial, I see no big difference from an environmental standpoint between the two, provided that someone uses a simple coffin rather than some mahogany showpiece used as a final blast of conspicuous consumption. You use up less by cremating, but then you release more greenhouse gases, so there's no big difference ecologically.

The main way in which funerals can have a high carbon dioxide footprint is if many people use jet planes to travel to the funeral. If there are 20 attendees from distant cities at your funeral, that may end up being 40 plane trips, which may mean a carbon dioxide footprint far greater than the annual carbon dioxide footprint of the average person in the Third World.

Unless you are someone with a very strong religious belief about funerals, I advise you to explicitly instruct your family: do not have either a funeral or a wake for me if I die. This is exactly what I have told my own family, along with instructions that my body be cremated. I don't want people contributing to global warming by taking a jet just to attend a funeral or wake related to my death.

What about if someone dies who has not expressed any wishes about a funeral? I think such a person should not be given a funeral. Save the $5000 or more it will cost for a funeral, or donate the money to fight hunger or plant trees or help some other cause.

If many jet travelers attend a funeral, it just isn't green

Some people think that a loved one may be disappointed in the next life if he or she fails to see a funeral, or sees only a few people at his funeral. That does not seem a credible notion. It is quite possible that our consciousness does not survive death, and it is quite possible that we do survive death and go on to some higher state of consciousness. But if someone does move on after death to some higher state of consciousness, we can imagine that person confronting eternal issues of truth and morality, but we can hardly imagine that the person will be considering such a trivial matter as how many people went to his funeral.

If you can't give up on the idea of a funeral, but want to do something with a lower environmental footprint, consider this option: a virtual funeral. A virtual funeral is an online web site where people can write tributes to a departed love one. Anyone can create one by creating a new Blogger blog with a name such as JohnDoeFuneral.blogspot.com. The initial post can contain a picture of the departed love one, a written tribute, and an invitation for anyone who knew him or her to comment on his life. Readers can then add tributes as comments to the initial blog post.

A site like this will last for years, since Google's Blogger service does not delete blogs, even if they have few readers. Compare that to a regular funeral, which only lasts about an hour.

Give the Earth a Christmas Present by Giving Nobody a Christmas Present

Yesterday was Black Friday, the traditional first day of the Christmas shopping season. But before we rush to buy Christmas presents for our friends, we should consider: what is the environmental cost of our holiday habits?

One of the world's great environmental problems is overconsumption in developed countries. We in the United States consume at a wasteful and excessive rate that is causing various forms of environmental problems.  Among the problems of overconsumption are the following:

1. Global warming. Almost every thing that we buy and consume requires energy use which contributes to global warming. It uses up energy to manufacture goods that you see stocked on department store shelves, and it requires energy for the items to be transported from the factory to the store. If you then send a package that travels quite a distance, that will require an additional energy expenditure. Since almost all energy in the United States is currently created by oil, gas, and coal, this energy use ends up contributing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, which makes global warming worse.
2. Trash accumulation. Americans generate an average of 4 pounds of trash per person per day. The accumulation of this trash is a horrendous environmental problem. Christmas gifts have a higher-than-average likelihood of being discarded, for the simple reason that so many gifts are just wild guesses about what a person wants. Even if you ask a person what he wants, he will often say, “Oh, I don't need anything.” Then you end up guessing about what the person wants. All too often the person getting the gift will just toss it out, thinking, “How could he have thought I wanted that thing?”
3. Resource depletion. Resource depletion is a huge environmental problem on the same scale as global warming. We may soon reach peak oil (the point at which the global demand for oil exceeds the supply). Peak coal may occur within a few decades. Forget the old canard that we have hundreds of years of coal. More recent estimates are much gloomier, suggesting that production may plummet after a few decades, with one study suggesting US coal production may have already peaked. These facts are relevant because almost every thing you buy at a department store required the use of fossil fuels for it to be manufactured, and the supply situation for fossil fuels is troublesome. We should save our fossil fuels for things we really need (such as feeding and heating the world), rather than using them for some fancy Christmas gadget such as a waffle maker that someone will use only a few times. There is also the fact that within several decades we are expected to run out of several important metals. We should not be using up metals for gifts that people aren't likely to use much.
4. Pollution. Besides global warming, there is the fact that the manufacture of goods helps to produce smog. Today a large fraction of the goods bought in the United States come from factories in China. But Chinese cities are facing horrible smog problems, partially because of all these factories. That shopping cart full of gifts may be helping to hurt the lungs of the Chinese.

This year, give the Earth a Christmas present by giving no one a Christmas present. Or, give Christmas presents only to small children. Adults don't need the items typically bought as Christmas presents. Adults need a healthy planet that offers clean skies, moderate temperatures, and ample supplies of energy and metals, rather than a smoggy, trash-filled, depleted planet that is running a fever.

But, you may ask, what can I put under my Christmas tree? There's a simple answer: don't buy one. When the planet needs every tree it can get to soak up our global warming pollution, there is no sense in the custom of cutting down a tree every year to put in your house for a month. This year rather than having a tree cut down so you can have it in your house, you should instead plant a tree. 

 Christmas trees are green, but Christmas usually isn't

Will Extreme Longevity Cause an Ecological Hell?

Over at the very entertaining web site io9.com we had yesterday a facile and naive example of excessive technological optimism, written by George Dvorsky. The piece was entitled No,Extreme Longevity Won't Destroy the Planet.

I don't object to the title: we can overheat and pollute Earth to our maximum ability, and the planet will still be around, and habitable to many forms of life. I do object to the reasoning in this piece that we need not worry about environmental problems that would be caused if the human lifespan were to vastly increase.

Dvorsky claims, “Over the course of the next several decades, and as we eventually (and hopefully) cross into the next century, humanity will progressively shrink its global footprint on the planet — a footprint that, for each of us, is impossibly large right now.” But he does nothing to support this amazing claim that man's footprint on the environment will shrink in the next few decades. We have every reason to believe that this claim is false. Our footprint on the planet is getting worse every decade, as population grows, as consumption increases and as the global warming pollution and other types of pollution get worse. A large part of the problem is that more and more people in Asian and Third World countries are developing Western patterns of consumption, such as all of those Chinese who are buying cars.

Dvorksy asks, “How are we going to feed everybody?” He notes that “we are way off track if we are going to feed everybody by 2050,” citing this study. Besides mentioned genetically engineered crops, all he can do to support the idea of food abundance is to cite the theoretical arguments of Eric Drexler about nanotechnology, and to note that a Star Trek type replicator would help the problem. Not a very compelling case. Drexler claims that precise atomic manufacturing will allow for an age of superabundance, but his claims were extensively criticized by Nobel Prize winner Richard E. Smalley.

Dvorksy then asks,”Where are we going to get all that energy?” He mentions only two technologies: concentrated solar power and space-based solar power. But concentrated solar power is feasible only in places such as Spain and Nevada where there is a very high amount of daily sunlight. Space-based solar power is a speculative system, and no one knows if it will work. 

Dvorksy then finishes up his case by saying that we really have enough room for everyone, since we can build mega-pyramids to house people, and if necessary we can move people into outer space. That's pretty lame reasoning, given the huge costs (both financial and environmental) of doing either of these options.

Overall, I find that Dvorksy has made a very weak case for what he seems to be arguing for, that we can have super-prolonged lifespans without worrying much about the environmental effects. At least Dvorsky's piece is not quite as naïve as a similar recent piece at the SeriousWonder.com web site, which can be summarized as: “Google is working now on age extension. Next stop:utopia.” (The piece now comes up as a blank page, so I won't link to it.)

Consider a few points relating to what man is currently doing to the planet. Today there is a news report saying Health of Oceans Declining Fast.  The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) warns that the oceans are being warmed by global warming, facing an acidification threat. Stocks of fish are rapidly declining because of overfishing. NASA just released an air pollution map showing huge air pollution levels in India, Europe, and China. The IPCC just released a new report warning about how global warming is imperiling our planet. We are rapidly depleting the fertility of our planet's top soil as discussed here,

with one professor saying that we have only 60 years of usable top soil left. There is a huge risk of future water shortages. Currently nearly one in ten US watersheds are stressed as discussed here, with China, India, and the Middle East facing worse water supply problems. 

Schematic Depiction of Future Environment Problems

It would seem that all of these problems will get much worse if suddenly the human life span increased by several decades. So a cavalier attitude of “no problem, new technology will handle it” seems doubtful.

I think that in the short term there is not much risk of environmental degradation caused by extreme lifespans, because probably for a good long time it will only be rich people who can afford the medical treatments needed for such lifespans. But if we ever get to the point where a large fraction of the people can afford 120 year lifespans, we would then need to introduce new laws or social sanctions to prevent an increase in environmental degradation caused by longer human lifespans.

I can think of two possibilities. One stern possibility is to introduce legislation requiring sterilization (whenever necessary) for anyone who has his lifespan extended way beyond the current limit. This would prevent situations such as a 160 year old man becoming a father at ages 20,22, 45,47,49, 55,57, 65, 75, 77, 85, 87, 95,97,99, 105,108,111, 120, 122, 131,133, and 141. Of course, just mentioning required sterilization brings up all kinds of unpleasant memories and associations, but this might be a rare case when it might be morally justified. 

Another possibility would be to introduce legislation that would tend to make it extremely difficult for any person with a super-extended lifespan to consume at a very high rate in his later years. One can imagine an age-adjusted tax code which slaps very high consumption taxes on people who try to live in great luxury (with a high carbon footprint) after achieving a lifespan greater than 90 years.

In effect, society would then be saying to an 80-year old: You want to live fifty more years? Those years have got to be green years.

An Elysium Future?

This week I saw the new science fiction film Elysium starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster. I thought the movie was fairly plausible and realistic, with the exception of one laughable scene in which a computer expert looks at a few screens of hexadecimal code for a few seconds, and then deduces the extremely complicated task the program was designed for. (This scene is utterly unrealistic because no programmers can read hexadecimal, and even if the program had been written in a more high level language, it takes programmers hours or days to figure out what any complicated program is doing just by reading programming code.)

Credit: Sony Pictures

The movie is set in the year 2154, and depicts a vast gulf between the poor and the rich. The poor are living on an overcrowded, run-down, over-polluted Earth. The rich are living in a huge luxurious rotating space station orbiting Earth. The space station rotates to produce artificial gravity, and those on the space station have an almost suburban lifestyle, with lovely houses and lawns, in addition to medical devices which can cure any health problem. But those left on Earth live in conditions like the filthy shanty towns of third world nations.

There is actually a plausible Malthusian case to be made that the future may resemble the future shown in this movie, although the movie does nothing to explain what caused the world to reach the state the movie depicts. Let us look at some of the factors that might end up producing a world rather like the world depicted in Elysium, not in the next century but in this century. When I refer to a world like the world in Elysium, I don't specifically mean a world in which the rich are living in outer space. I mean instead a world in which the many live in squalid, run-down, overpopulated conditions, and the lucky few live in wonderful high-tech splendor, isolated from the unlucky rabble. The isolation is more likely to occur by the rich fleeing to gated communities, fenced mansions, or high-rise buildings.

Here are factors that may lead to a future like the movie Elysium.

Peak Oil and Peak Coal

Our civilization is centered around cheap oil, but in the future oil may be very expensive, and the global demand for oil may soon far exceed the amount of oil we are producing. In the United States, the production of oil peaked in the early 1970's, and oil production has also peaked in many other countries. Oil is a nonrenewable resource, and we probably only have decades left of crude, easy to get oil. Although there is significant disagreement among experts, many predict that before long the global production of oil will peak, and then begin declining at a rate such as 2 percent per year. This will be at the same time that the world's demand for oil will be growing, as more and more people in countries such as China and India start to drive.

The situation regarding coal is a little brighter, as coal production is expected to increase for a few decades. But many experts predict that coal production will peak around 2040 or 2050, and then begin to sharply decline, because of the depletion of limited fossil fuel resources. This is exactly what happened locally in Pennsylvania, which was once a center of coal mining, until it mined itself out. If coal production plunges, it will be good for the environment, but a potential disaster for civilization. Imagine a time around 2040 when more and more internet-loving people are using ever more electricity, to power their digital devices and to cool their homes (increasingly necessary because of global warming). Then imagine coal production starts plunging because of resource limits. After a few decades of dwindling electricity, the result would be grim. Solar power and wind power will help to bridge the gap, but many are worried that there will still be a huge energy crisis in this century that degrades our civilization.

Overpopulation and Overconsumption

The world population is growing at a rate of about 74 million per year, and experts predict that the population will grow to about 9 billion by the year 2050. Perhaps more worrying than the growth in population is the growth of consumption, with increasing numbers in countries such as India and China
adopting Western lifestyles that include driving, heavy use of electronic gadgets, or heavy meat eating. Increasing levels of consumption and population are straining the Earth's resources and causing environmental harm. For an example, we only need look at the air pollution levels in China.

Global Warming and Soil Depletion


Global warming was not an element in the movie Elysium, but it is easy to imagine global warming playing a part in the sad birth of a planetary landscape like the one depicted in the movie. Global warming may shorten the growing season and may lead to increased droughts in prime agricultural areas. Another severe problem is soil depletion, a process by which soil gradually loses nutrients that it took centuries to acquire. The combination of global warming and soil depletion may mean that we are not able to meet the food demands of the future, possibly resulting in widespread famine.

Water Shortages

Another problem that may lead to a future like that of the movie Elysium is future shortages of fresh water, as described here. For example, the movie is set in Los Angeles, and the California Department of Resources says that if more water supplies aren't found by 2020, the region will face a shortfall nearly as great as the amount consumed today. The Wikipedia article on water scarcity says, "The water tables are falling in scores of countries (including Northern China, the US, and India) due to widespread overpumping using powerful diesel and electric pumps... This will eventually lead to water scarcity and cutbacks in grain harvest.”

Growing Economic Inequality

Another trend that may lead to a future like that of the movie Elysium is the accelerating trend towards wealth inequality , meaning the excessive concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. The graphic below illustrates very vividly the ridiculous excesses of wealth inequality in the United States. As wealth inequality has grown steadily worse over the past twenty years, we have every reason to suspect things will get worse in the future.

Credit: Stephen Ewen

Dystopia or Utopia?

So are we likely to see an earthly dystopia like that depicted in the movie Elysium? I can merely give the same answer given by last year's World Economic Forum's annual report on future risks. The report said that we are now planting the “seeds of dystopia.” If we continue with business as usual, we may well see a grim future like that depicted in the movie, a future of the fortunate few and the miserable many.

We probably won't see the super-rich fleeing to luxurious space stations, as in the movie. But we can expect to see more and more gated communities in which the rich flee to try to live in their own little worlds of comfort, from which the suffering masses are excluded.

One of the ways we can help prevent such a future is by introducing hefty luxury taxes on very expensive items, which will discourage excessive extravagant consumption, and help encourage a more equitable distribution of wealth. Every time a millionaire buys a mansion or a yacht or a jet or a diamond necklace, he or she should be paying a large luxury tax.

The Consumption Bomb

Most of us have heard about the Population Bomb – the thesis that a growing human population will wreak environmental havoc, such as mass starvation. But many think that the real ticking time bomb in our future is not so much a Population Bomb but instead what may be called the Consumption Bomb. The Consumption Bomb is sometimes defined as the threat to our planetary health caused by ever larger numbers of people adopting Western patterns of consumption, causing catastrophic levels of pollution, global warming, and resource depletion.

The following graph compares growth in population and growth in consumption during the period from 1995 to 2005. The blue bars represent increases in population. The orange bars represent growth in consumption.

This graph makes clear: growth in consumption is increasing much more dramatically than growth in population.

Our main environmental problem is not necessarily that the world's population is too high. Our main environmental problem is that the world is consuming too much. Overconsumption is causing the world's carbon dioxide levels to rise to dangerous levels. To support our extravagant consumption levels, we are depleting our limited supplies of fossil fuels, reducing the fertility of our soil, raising the acidity of the oceans, overusing our limited aquifers of water, and engaging in deforestation that reduces the trees we need to soak up the ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide caused by our wasteful lifestyles.

Now some will look at the above graph and think: so it's all the fault of those Chinese and Indians that have done things such as ditching their bicycles for cars. But it's not just growth in consumption we should consider, but also which countries are consuming the most now.

Below is a graph showing carbon dioxide usage in tons per capita per year. This is more or less equivalent to a graph showing consumption levels per country. 

From this graph we can see that the lion's share of consumption is being done by people in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Saudi Arabia. Even though consumption has been rising in China and India, the per capita consumption in those countries is still less than a third of what it is in the United States.

So we should therefore discard the previous definition of the Consumption Bomb, which was phrased to put the focus on recent adopters of the Western lifestyle. We should instead define the Consumption Bomb simply as the threat to our planetary health caused by high-consumption lifestyles, wherever they may be followed. With this definition we realize that it is not some nouveau riche Chinese who are the main drivers of the Consumption Bomb – it is mainly the citizens of the United States, Canada, Australia, and Saudi Arabia (along with, to a lesser extent, the citizens of ten or fifteen smaller nations).

One of the main catalysts of overconsumption is consumerism. Consumerism is almost a kind of secular religion that is preached to us from birth in a thousand ways, by evangelists such as the pitchmen of Madison Avenue. We are conditioned by television to judge the worthiness of a man by the size or the shininess of his car, or the number of square meters in his house, or how far he traveled for his vacation, rather than what is in the man's heart or mind. Consumerism compels us, in the words of one writer, to borrow money we don't have, to buy things we don't need, to impress people we don't like.

How can you help reduce the devastating ecological blast effects of the Consumption Bomb? Simply consume less. Here are a few things you can do:

1. Eat less meat. According to one study, if a family of four gave up eating steak for just one day a week, it would be the equivalent of taking their car off the road for three months.
2. Drive less, and take public transportation. Stop driving to some place you don't need to go to just to get some photo for a Facebook status update.
3. Stop using Facebook to celebrate frivolous overconsumption. Don't buy some thing you don't need because it would make a nice picture for you to post on Facebook, and don't go to some fancy hotel so you can post a Facebook update to impress your friends. And stop pressing the Like button when you see other people posting photos that document their own frivolous overconsumption. You are only encouraging such people to engage in excessive consumption.
4. Live in the smallest apartment or house you can comfortably live in. When the housing bubble burst, many a family was ruined because it didn't follow this rule.
5. Drop the slogan Bigger is Better, and adopt the slogan Small is Beautiful. Small cars and small homes are beautiful, as are bicycles. Big cars and big homes are (with some exceptions) relics of the past that we should not be building any more.