Sunday 14 September 2008

Neo-Malthusians on the Roll Again

A few years of increasing commodity prices and again the Neo-Malthusian Crowd is coming out of it's caves and preaching ecological doomsday. The other day I found a a new website on the topic: Approaching the Limits: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/ which obviously is in good faith and based on facts and logical reasoning tries to show that the End is at Hand .

I have posted below comment on the website:

" I respectfully and completely disagree with your views.

However, the best way of getting to be wiser is to seek out contrary views instead of preaching for the choir.

Basically, I like your number crunching approach. I more or less use the same numbers. What amazes me is that the same data can lead to complete opposite conclusions. I see a world with great potential for growth, you see a need for a world where we all live in small self sustaining villages.

I basically think your reasoning is biased and faulty, and I believe I can factually and logically refute all your points, and would be happy to discuss with you later on.

Let me give you one example.

I live in Denmark where renewable energy already supplies 15% af the total energy consumption. The plans are to increase that to 30% in 2025. The Danish Society of Civil Engineers has already shown how we can achieve a 60% reduction of CO2 in 2030.

The opposition has proposed zero-emission of CO2 in 2030. So this is "Realpolitik".

Anyway, the only reason for not doing this quicker is financial as a quick transition would destroy valuable infrastructure and be very expensive as renewable energy is still (a lot) more expensive than fossile fuels.

Furthermore, Denmark has one of the highest Energy Intensities (GNP/Energy Units) in the world.

There is no reason to believe that the rest of the world could not do the same.

So why this depressingly alarmist approach?"