New York Times and the environment.

In browsing the NYT website today, I came across 3 environmentally related articles (2 of which require the browser to pay).

One was an overview opinion piece on obtaining oil independence and reducing CO2, and thus global warming. That article was pollyannaish, with ginormous techno-optimism, and no discussion of lifestyle factors which contribute to the problems, or possible economic consequences of adopting different standards. Nor did any of them provide any perspective by saying like “x/y/z% of energy is used for industrial/residential/commercial purposes. Plans 1, 2, and 3, will reduce emissions by a, b, or c%”. In broad strokes, it’s technically correct, but if I had a few free hours, I’d nitpick it out to at least 2 or three times its original length.

When urban dwelling apartment/condo residents with roommates who commute by train and recycle (how I wish chicago’s head were not up its ass on this one) are not differentiated from SUV commuting suburban residents with 2 to 3 times the floor space, and the enormous energy consumption that results, it irks me. I don’t think people are aware enough of those issues. Not nearly.

John Tierney wrote a piece in his column denying that population growth was a problem. And suggesting that efforts to control population growth (like China’s draconian regulations) created more problems than they solved. I’m iffy on population growth as a problem. It has caused serious problems in the past (e.g. Rwanda). And more people do consume more, leading to the increased side effects of such. Many of which have serious externalities.

The story on population problems is tricky. Malthus predicted that since nobody was making more land, agriculture, and thus productivity had a natural limit. And as people approached that limit, no one would have an individual incentive to breed less, so people would have less land, and thus less food. The US as a whole is nowhere near a Malathusian crisis at this moment. Fortunately, Manhattan is able to justify its existence to the parts of the world that export food. The world as a whole is closer than the US, but not quite there. Parts of the world (like Rwanda, as Jared Diamond convincingly argues in Collapse) have already experienced Malthusian crises.Others have existed for a very long time at stable population levels, without continual geographic expansion. I’d prefer not to push the envelope on this one. It’s very tricky.

I don’t equate continual population growth with happiness. Stabilizing the population seems like a good idea to me. Sooner or later, birth control, abortion, infanticide, famine, drought, plague, war, or genocide will get the job done. Imho, the earlier on that list, the better.

The final article was not from the opinion section, unlike the other two, and didn’t demonstrate the same techno-optimism, even if it did demonstrate a woefully inadequate understanding of economics. They talk about how demand will outstrip supply, and the headline, “A Power-Grid Report Suggests Some Dark Days Ahead”, doesn’t talk about rising prices, it talks about decreasing supply. That’s not the goddamn same as rising demand. I’m deeply skeptical of the alarmist claims that we’ll have a shortfall on energy. Distribution difficulties, perhaps. But if the aforementioned suburbanites, requiring 10 times as much wire per person to get their electricity, are not charged based on the distribution costs (I really don’t know whether they are at present, but I kinda doubt it) then maybe we will have some dark days.