User:Gaeanautes/Risk, Pessimism & Collapse

Global catastrophic risk
'''#Potential sources of risk > #Anthropogenic > #Global warming, #Ecological disaster, ... '''

Mineral resource exhaustion
Romanian American economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, a progenitor in economics and a paradigm founder of ecological economics, has argued that the carrying capacity of Earth — that is, Earth's capacity to sustain human populations and consumption levels — is bound to decrease sometime in the future as Earth's finite stock of mineral resources is presently being extracted and put to use; and consequently, that the world economy as a whole is heading towards an inevitable future collapse, leading to the demise of human civilisation itself. Ecological economist and steady-state theorist Herman Daly, a student of Georgescu-Roegen, has propounded the same argument by asserting that "... all we can do is to avoid wasting the limited capacity of creation to support present and future life [on Earth]."

Ever since Georgescu-Roegen and Daly published these views, various scholars in the field have been discussing the existential impossibility of distributing Earth's finite stock of mineral resources evenly among an unknown number of present and future generations. This number of generations is likely to remain unknown to us, as there is little way of knowing in advance if or when mankind will eventually face extinction. In effect, any conceivable temporal distribution is bound to end up with universal economic decline at some future point.

References

Pessimism
#Technological and environmental > ...

Entropy pessimism
'Entropy pessimism' represents a special case of technological and environmental pessimism, based on thermodynamic principles. According to the first law of thermodynamics, matter and energy is neither created nor destroyed in the economy. According to the second law of thermodynamics — also known as the entropy law — what happens in the economy is that all matter and energy is transformed from states available for human purposes (valuable natural resources) to states unavailable for human purposes (valueless waste and pollution). In effect, all of man's technologies and activities are only speeding up the general march against a future planetary 'heat death' of degraded energy, exhausted natural resources and a deteriorated environment — a state of maximum entropy locally on Earth; 'locally' on Earth, that is, when compared to the heat death of the universe, taken as a whole.

The term 'entropy pessimism' was coined to describe the work of Romanian American economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, a progenitor in economics and a paradigm founder of ecological economics. Georgescu-Roegen made extensive use of the entropy concept in his magnum opus on The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Since the 1990s, leading ecological economist and steady-state theorist Herman Daly — a student of Georgescu-Roegen — has been the economists profession's most influential proponent of entropy pessimism.

Among other matters, the entropy pessimism position is concerned with the existential impossibility of distributing Earth's finite stock of mineral resources evenly among an unknown number of present and future generations. This number of generations is likely to remain unknown to us, as there is little way of knowing in advance if or when mankind will eventually face extinction. In effect, any conceivable temporal distribution is bound to end up with universal economic decline at some future point.

Entropy pessimism is a widespread view in ecological economics and in the degrowth movement.

References

Collapse
'''Societal collapse > #Theories > #Linking social/environmental dynamics, ... Population pressure and mineral resource exhaustion ''' + '''Economic collapse > #Alternative theories of economic collapse > #Austrian school, #Georgism explanation, ... Georgescu-Roegen's theory of Earth's ever decreasing carrying capacity '''

Romanian American economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, a progenitor in economics and the paradigm founder of ecological economics, has argued that the carrying capacity of Earth — that is, Earth's capacity to sustain human populations and consumption levels — is bound to decrease sometime in the future as Earth's finite stock of mineral resources is presently being extracted and put to use; and consequently, that the world economy as a whole is heading towards an inevitable future collapse, leading to the demise of human civilisation itself.

Georgescu-Roegen is basing his pessimistic prediction on the two following considerations: Taken together, the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the second half of the 18th century has unintentionally thrust man's economy into a long, never-to-return overshoot-and-collapse trajectory with regard to the Earth's mineral stock. The world economy will continue growing until its inevitable and final collapse in the future. From that point on, ever deepening scarcities will aggravate social conflict throughout the globe and ultimately spell the end of mankind itself, Georgescu-Roegen conjectures.
 * According to his ecological view of 'entropy pessimism', matter and energy is neither created nor destroyed in man's economy, only transformed from states available for human purposes (valuable natural resources) to states unavailable for human purposes (valueless waste and pollution). In effect, all of man's technologies and activities are only speeding up the general march against a future planetary 'heat death' of degraded energy, exhausted natural resources and a deteriorated environment — a state of maximum entropy on Earth.
 * According to his social theory of 'bioeconomics', man's economic struggle to work and earn a livelihood is largely a continuation and extension of the biological struggle to sustain life and survive. This struggle manifests itself as a permanent social conflict that can be eliminated neither by man's decision to do so nor by the social evolution of mankind. Consequently, we are biologically unable to restrain ourselves collectively on a permanent and voluntary basis for the benefit of unknown future generations; the pressure of population on Earth's resources will nothing but increase.

Georgescu-Roegen was the paradigm founder of ecological economics and is also considered the main intellectual figure influencing the degrowth movement. Consequently, much work in these fields is devoted to discussing the existential impossibility of distributing Earth's finite stock of mineral resources evenly among an unknown number of present and future generations. This number of generations is likely to remain unknown to us, as there is little way of knowing in advance if or when mankind will eventually face extinction. In effect, any conceivable intertemporal distribution of the stock will inevitably end up with universal economic decline at some future point.

References