Energy and Human Ambitions on a Finite Planet, 2021a

19 A Plan Might Be Welcome 326
19.4 Upshot on the Plan
<strong>Human</strong>ity has historically not needed a master plan. Plenty of space,
resources, <strong>and</strong> natural services allowed unwitting expansion. Yes, wars
occasionally broke out over contested resources, but generally in localized
regions. This state of affairs will continue to be true until it isn’t any
more. That is to say, just because something has never happened before
does not mean it cannot. Earth has never hosted 8 billion high-dem<strong>and</strong>
humans, yet here we are. <strong>Human</strong> imagination is not the ultimate limit
in this physical world. At this juncture, it would be prudent to heed the
warning signs <strong>and</strong> attempt to make a plan for survival/prosperity.
Currently, it is hard to imagine any global consensus arising around
a plan. Even if able to maintain the current level of global resource
dem<strong>and</strong>, 36 those who use resources at a much higher rate than average 37
may have to scale back as the world equilibrates, <strong>and</strong> this will not easily
be agreed upon. Academic circles may be the only place from which
a credible plan might emerge, 38 but any such plan would likely be
ridiculed <strong>and</strong> discarded as impractical.
36: It is not at all clear that we could.
37: Ahem, America.
38: Who else would pay for it?
The silver lining is that some folks have thought about alternative ways
to structure the economy allowing ab<strong>and</strong>onment of growth <strong>and</strong> living
within ecological limits. Some of the elements of this plan are very
appealing. Only if embraced on a large scale would it be feasible to
migrate in this direction, <strong>and</strong> it is unclear what circumstances might
bring about such an attitude change, if it is possible at all.
19.5 Problems
1. To visualize the scale of the $100 trillion global economy relative to
the value of the earth—conservatively one million times larger—
let’s think in terms of animal volume. Volume scales like the cube
of linear dimension. How much would you have to shrink a dog
in linear scale for its volume to be one-millionth its original size?
If the typical scale of a dog is 0.5 m, how large is the shrunken
version, <strong>and</strong> what animal is about this size?
2. Subjectively, how much more do you think a planet teeming with
biodiversity is worth compared to a comparable planet harboring
no life at all? Express as a factor: 1.2 times as much, 2 times as
much, 10 times as much, 100, 1 million etc.
The value likely goes up if your own biology
is adapted to that same life-filled planet: it
becomes special to you as almost a part of
you.
3. In analogy to the clueless cats in Box 19.2 <strong>and</strong> the paragraph
following, describe how we might plausibly destroy something
valuable on our planet without underst<strong>and</strong>ing it fully enough to
repair the damage.
© 2021 T. W. Murphy, Jr.; Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Lic.;
Freely available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/energy_ambitions.