SUNDAY, JAN 5, 2020: NOTE TO FILE
Growth's Mandate
Let's keep on keeping on
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: PROSPERITY AND GROWTH, FROM THE WIRES, CREATING A BETTER WORLD
Abstract: Humanity is at a fork in the road. Perhaps we can take both paths, including the one less traveled by. In 2012, the Chinese Communist Party wrote the goal of an ecological civilization into its constitution. To maintain the popularity of the Party, it had to assure the people that it shared their concerns. But does it? Many like the sound of 'ecological civilization', but do any have even a slight hint of what the words might or should mean? Click on the cover and Look Inside.
COOS BAY (A-P) — Some humans are considering creating and living in an 'ecological civilization'. Humans will live in harmony with the natural world without decreasing biodiversity and allowing new species to develop to fill niches emptied by the Anthropocene mass extinction event.
Living a eudaimonic life in an ecotopia may seem like a thinkable proposal, maybe even doable. But what are the implications? Well, ask the 'ecolate', those whose systems science tells them what an ecological civilization (and its biophysical economy) would be like. Ask them how many Nature lovers will be living in their envisioned world?
To skip all the whys and therefores, their answer is 7 to 50 million. On the planet Earth, some think 7 million people may be able to live in harmony with the natural world without degrading it after Nature (our planetary life-support system) has been restored. Some think, based on evidence and reason, that 10 million can be supported. Two lines of reasoning give 35 million as the maximum number, and one best guess is 42 million and another is 50 million. So to average, maybe 30 million of us can live an ecolate life on Earth as the millennia pass, but only after 99.6 percent of today's teaming billions go somewhere else.
So for every 100 ecolate humans wanting to live in an ecotopia, figure at least 26,000 will oppose their plan. This implies conflict. Since we all just want to get along, here's what we do. Instead of just killing all the ecolate so we can continue to grow the economy in peace, let's agree to a fork in the road.
All of us agree to work together to build one segment of a Dyson sphere, just one using Earth's resources. The one square kilometer segment will be put into orbit around the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. It will provide living space for 150 humans and will maintain itself and provide all the humans on it with all they need. The segment will be run by AI and contain all the technology, including autonomous robot mini-ships, needed to go forth into the solar system and gather resources needed to build a copy of itself in 35 years.
So once the first segment is done, in 35 years there will be two with 300 people living on them. In another 35 years there will be four with 600 people living on them. After 105 years pass, there will be eight with 1,200 people living on the beginnings of a Dyson ring that would grow into a sphere. But in the meantime Earth's population has stopped growing due to the 'demographic transition'. Humanity's total fertility rate is naturally declining. Many find the prospect of degrowing the human population and the economy terrifying.
That there could come to be only 10 billion humans on planet Earth seems unnatural. What can humanity do to save itself? Well, building a Dyson sphere will allow for growth to continue for at least another two thousand years (assuming a 2% growth rate). In 700 years after the first segment is built, there would be 156,057,600 people living in space. Hardly any. But in 805 years there would be 1,248,460,800 people prosperously living on the Dyson sphere.
In 915 years how many? Well, the growth is exponential, and there would be 9,987,686,400 which would be more than the entire human population on Earth that stopped growing at the end of the 21st century. Only incentives had allowed the population to hold steady. To allow the economy to grow at a mere 2 percent, each person had to consume 28 times more stuff which the planet was unable to supply, so 99.6 percent of humans were living on the Dyson sphere supported by solar power and the resources of the solar system out to and including the Oort Cloud.
The only humans left on Earth, per prior agreement, was 30 million ecolate humans who for some reason had agreed to have only 2.1 children per each adult female and to only consume as much per capita as people had once consumed in ancient times. But no matter, as humanity had transitioned to a better world, one of their own making.
And then what? Well, the Dyson sphere keeps on growing at a steady 2 percent growth rate. Human population keeps growing at 2 percent to fill the growing sphere. Each woman had to have 3.22 children on average, but with proper incentives, that was well within the limits of human reproductive biology (humans can average 7 to 8). Women who wanted to have 3 to maybe 4 children had children who tended to want to have 3-4 children, so soon no incentives were needed.
And how many people were living on the Dyson sphere when it was finished? Well, there were 29,452,431,127,404,311,550 people who had to transition in one generation to having 2.1 children per female and they would have to stop growing the economy. Would they be able to?
If they kept growing their population, per capita consumption would have to drop. If everyone consumed half as much, then enough energy, all energy output of Sol, could support maybe 58,904,862,254,808,623,100 people. But they couldn't keep cutting consumption in half and, really, no one would agree to do so once. Those wanting to keep growing their sub-society could keep on growing by consuming other residents of the Dyson sphere and the resources that had supported them.
How long would it take to build the Dyson sphere? About 2,004 years, during which time there would be no scarcity and so no necessary conflict. Let's say all 3e19 humans had learned to live in peace. Each of the 196,349,540,849,362,077 segments providing homes for 150 humans each are peaceful and all transition from having 3.22 children per average female to 2.1 children in one generation. Well almost all. Perhaps three (0.00000000000000001%) fail. They soon overpopulate their segment and keep on expanding by conquering their peace-loving neighbors. Doing so is easy. They keep doing so until about a third of the Dyson sphere has been conquered, and only they and the other two empires remain. Each empire foresees what would happen if one empire conquered the other two. So they settle into perpetual, sustainable war. The surplus population volunteers to go to the front to enthusiastically fight the evil empire, the Great Satan.
And then what? Well, assume every 35 years or so a spore ship containing one Dyson sphere segment with 150 humans in suspended animation had been sent out of the solar system to go to a nearby star. When the Dyson sphere was finished there would be no energy nor materials to keep on sending out spore ships, so only 50 spore ships go forth. Accelerating and then decelerating at a mere 1g, they would get to their star in about 10 years to start constructing a Dyson sphere and sending out 50 spore ships before it was finished.
In about 2,000 years the 50 Dyson spheres would have sent out 2,500 spore ships to build 2,500 Dyson spheres and so on. In about 16,000 years humanity would fill the Milky Way Galaxy having turned all stars, about 100,000,000,000 of them, into infrared emitting Dyson spheres that anyone in any of some two trillion other galaxies could clearly see when the light reached them, filling the universe with wonder.
And of course, in 16,000 years, 50 or more intergalactic spore ships could be sent out to nearby galaxies. In hardly any time at all, as the Cosmos reckons time, humans will fill the universe. Meanwhile, back on Earth, maybe 42 million humans, living like animals, remain. Your choice. Go to the stars? Or sharpen sticks before going hunting or planting corn?
I can only hope that any earthlings, in a thousand years or so, who still walk upright and have fingernails, will wave goodbye and good riddance to the last Anthropocene enthusiast who leaves Earth to become part of the Borg Collective, a sustainable pathology. I will lament that my son became one of them. I will regret not having thought of a way to destroy them before the first segment of the Dyson sphere could be built.
