Dodging The Carrying Capacity Bullet

In the early fifteenth century, the Chinese had larger, stronger boats than the Europeans did, propelled by oar and sail. They got out of the sea-going business as a cost-cutting measure about seventy years before Columbus' famous voyage. Since then -- and for the moment -- it's been a European planet.

Before the Renaissance (Columbus' time), plague had wiped out a large fraction of Europe's population. This deprived Europe of hands and minds, but also spared it mouths to feed. Colonization, beginning during the Renaissance,  enriched Europe more by giving it new new continents for excess population than as a source for gold. Europe dodged the carrying capacity bullet.

By the eighteenth century, timber was reduced enough in Europe to force a fuel conversion from charcoal to coal. In 1856, the world's first oil well began pumping near Titusville, Pennsylvania. Henry Ford began mass producing Model T automobiles in 1909, but World War II showed us what oil could really do.

The New World is settled and full. We've pumped half the oil, and it will keep getting harder and more expensive to pump what's left.

What is Carrying Capacity

What is carrying capacity?

Carrying capacity is the environment's ability to provide for a population. Foxes need a certain population of rodents, whales need plankton.

Humans need...

It's interesting that primitive farmers could stay in the same place longer than hunter-gatherers, but degraded their territory more thoroughly. The farmers needed the materials and fuels for the technology they needed to farm, and because of the higher yields, there could be more of them, and all those hands were useful for farm chores.

21st century humans need...

Extinction

Animals become extinct because they don't behave in way that fit the place where they live. The dinosaurs were okay for millions and millions of years, then a comet put a lot of dust in the atmosphere, and the world couldn't grow enough food to support them. Evil scientists put deer on an island where there hadn't been any, and where there weren't any animals that eat deer. The deer had it pretty good until there were too many deer, and they had eaten all the food.

Environmentalists believe that humans are like the deer on the island, sometime before all the food was gone.

Libertarianism & Carrying Capacity

Somewhat facetious blog title. I'll keep snottiness to a minimum.

Anybody -- even liberals -- can use this as a kind of Cliff Notes for one brand of environmentalism. I'll be more likely to simply describe an idea or behavior than make a case for it. My prejudices, but I'm not pulling them out of the air, and I'm not taking them uncritically for some Green Vatican.

First try:

Garrett Hardin's The Tragedy of the Commons from 1968 makes a case against libertarianism that demands consideration: A society in which individuals -- even marginally -- rationally maximize their own benefits eventually exceeds carrying capacity.