I know Carl said he was taking a few days off, but I want to post this anyhow,
lest I forget again. Hopefully he will read it when he comes back. It is a bit
long, but well documented.
And, lest anyone assume he’s being totally positive, he points out that things
are not going so well in the oceans. But, unlike the news of the day, he offers
some possible solutions.
I quoted a piece of this, refering to the return of forests to Eastern Europe
and the former Soviet Union, but I neglected to post the entire article.
It’s a few years old, but very informative, even if you read only part of it.
The Return of Nature
https://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-5/the-return-of-nature
In September 2014, a bear in the Apshawa Preserve, 45 miles northwest of New
York
City in New Jersey, killed Darsh Patel, 22, a senior at Rutgers University,
while
he was hiking with friends. Patel’s death was the first fatal bear attack
recorded
in New Jersey in 150 years. Five friends were hiking when they came across the
bear,
which they photographed and filmed before running in different directions. After
regrouping, they noticed one was missing. State authorities found and euthanized
the bear, which had human remains in its stomach and esophagus, and human blood
and
tissue below its claws.
Five years earlier, the state of New Jersey had restored its bear hunt. In 2010
wildlife
ecologists estimated that 3,400 bears were living in New Jersey. After five
years
of hunting, experts now estimate that the population has fallen to 2,500. During
the six-day 2014 season, hunters killed 267 bears. Protesters have picketed and
petitioned
to stop the annual hunt.
Should the rewilding of New Jersey shock us? I answer “no,” because by about
1970
a great reversal had begun in America’s use of resources. Contrary to the
expectations
of many professors and preachers, America began to spare more resources for the
rest
of nature — first relatively, and then more recently in absolute amounts. A
series
of “decouplings” is occurring, so that our economy no longer advances in tandem
with
exploitation of land, forests, water, and minerals. American use of almost
everything
except information seems to be peaking. This is not because the resources are
exhausted,
but because consumers have changed consumption, and because producers changed
production.
These changes in behavior and technology are today liberating the environment.
1.
Agriculture has always been the greatest destroyer of nature, stripping and
despoiling
it, and reducing acreage left. Then, in about 1940, acreage and yield decoupled
in
the United States. Since then American farmers have quintupled corn while using
the
same or even less land (Figure 1). Corn matters because its production towers
over
other crops, totaling more tons than wheat, soy, rice, and potatoes together.
Figure 1:
Decoupling of US corn production from area farmed. Data source: US Census Bureau
(1975, 2012).
Crucially, rising yields have not required more tons of fertilizer or other
inputs.
The inputs to agriculture have plateaued and then fallen — not just cropland but
nitrogen, phosphates, potash, and even water (Figure 2). A recent meta-analysis
by
Wilhelm Klümper and Matin Qaim of 147 original studies of recent trends in
high-yield
farming for soy, maize, and cotton, funded by the German government and the
European
Union, found a 37 percent decline in chemical pesticide use while crop yields
rose
22 percent. This is the story of precision agriculture, in which we use more
bits,
not more kilowatts or gallons.
Figure 2:
Absolute US consumption of five agricultural inputs. Note: while the x-axis is a
linear scale, the y-axis is logarithmic, so the spacing is proportional to the
logarithm
of the number. Data source: USGS (2013); USDA (2013).
The average yield of American farmers is nowhere near a ceiling. In 2013, David
Hula,
a farmer in Virginia, grew a US and probably world record: 454 bushels of corn
per
acre –– three times the average yield in Iowa. His tractor cab is instrumented
like
the office of a high-speed Wall Street trader. In 2014, Hula’s harvest rose 5
percent
higher to 476 bushels, while Randy Dowdy, who farms near Valdosta, Georgia,
busted
the 500-bushel wall with a yield of 503 bushels per acre and won the National
Corn
Growers Contest.
Now, one can ask if Americans need all that corn. We eat only a small fraction
of
corn creamed or on the cob, or as tortillas or polenta. Most corn becomes beef
or
pork, and increasingly we feed it to cars (Figure 3). An area the size of Iowa
or
Alabama grows corn to fuel vehicles.
Figure 3:
Uses of corn in the United States. Note: includes production of high-fructose
corn
syrup, glucose and dextrose, starch, alcohol for beverages and manufacturing,
seed,
cereals, and other products. Data source: USDA Economic Research Service.
Unlike corn that becomes beef, or soybeans that become chicken, potatoes stay
potatoes,
and they conserve the scarce input of water in Idaho or California’s Kern County
around Bakersfield. Potato growers have also lifted yields, but their markets
are
saturated, so they remove land from production (Figure 4). This sparing of land
—
and water — is a gift for other plants and animals.
Figure 4:
US potato yield, production, and harvested area. Data source: USDA (2013).
Steadily, the conversion of crops, mostly corn, to meat, has also decoupled. The
meat game is also one in which efficiency matters. From humanity’s point of
view,
cattle, pigs, and chickens are machines to make meat. A steer gets about 12
miles
per gallon, a pig 40, and a chicken 60. Statistics for the United States and the
world show that efficient chickens are winning the race to market (Figure 5).
Figure 5: Chicken wins market share in US meat consumption. Data source: USDA.
High grain and cereal yields and efficient meat machines combine to spare land
for
nature. In fact, I have argued that both the United States and the world are at
peak
farmland, not because of exhaustion of arable land, but because farmers are
wildly successful
in producing protein and calories. To prosper, farmers have allowed or forced
Americans
to eat hamburgers and chicken tenders, drink bourbon, and drive with ethanol,
and
they continue to export massive tonnages abroad.
Wasted food is not decoupled from acreage. When we consider the horror of food
waste,
not to mention obesity, we further appreciate that huge amounts of land can be
released
from agriculture with no damage to human diet. Every year 1.3 billion tons of
food
are thrown away globally, according to a 2013 report of the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations. That equates to one-third of the world’s
food
being wasted.
Some food waste results from carelessness, but laws and rules regulating food
distribution
also cause it. Germany, the United Kingdom, and other countries are changing
rules
to reduce food waste. In California, the website Food Cowboy uses mobile
technology
to route surplus food from wholesalers and restaurants to food banks and soup
kitchens
instead of to landfills, and CropMobster tries to spread news about local food
excess
and surplus from any supplier in the food chain and prevent food waste. The 800
million
or so hungry humans worldwide are not hungry because of inadequate production.
If we keep lifting average yields toward the demonstrated levels of David Hula
and
Randy Dowdy, stop feeding corn to cars, restrain our diets lightly, and reduce
waste,
then an area the size of India or of the United States east of the Mississippi
could
be released globally from agriculture over the next 50 years or so (Figure 6).
Figure 6:
Global arable land from 1961-2009 and projections to 2060. In the alternative
scenario,
several favors (rising yields, diet, waste reduction, cessation of using land to
fuel cars) sum to a higher total. Data source: Ausubel, J. H., Wernick, I. K.
and
Waggoner, P. E. (2013), Peak Farmland and the Prospect for Land Sparing.
Population
and Development Review, 38: 221–242.
Rebound is already happening. Abandonment of marginal agricultural lands in the
former
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has released at least 30 million hectares and
possibly
as much as 60 million hectares to return to nature, according to careful studies
by geographer Florian Schierhorn and his colleagues. Thirty million hectares is
the
size of Poland or Italy. The great reversal of land use that I am describing is
not
only a forecast; it is a present reality in Russia and Poland as well as
Pennsylvania
and Michigan.
In America alone the total amount of corn fed to cars grows on an area equal to
Iowa
or Alabama. Think of turning all those lands that are now pasture for cars into
refuges
for wildlife, carbon orchards, and parks. That would represent about twice the
area
of all the US national parks outside Alaska.
2.
Foresters refer to a “forest transition” when a nation goes from losing to
gaining
forested area. In 1830, France recorded the first forest transition. Since then,
while the population of France has doubled, French forests have also doubled. In
other words, forest loss decoupled from population.
Measured by growing stock, the United States enjoyed its forest transition
around
1950, and, measured by area, about 1990. The forest transition began around
1900,
when states such as Connecticut had almost no forest, and now encompasses dozens
of states. The thick green cover of New England, Pennsylvania, and New York
today
would be unrecognizable to Teddy Roosevelt, who knew them as wheat fields,
pastures
mown by sheep, and hillsides denuded by logging.
The forest transition, like peak farmland, involves forces of both supply and
demand.
Foresters manage the supply better through smarter harvesting and replanting.
Simply
shifting from harvesting in cool slow-growing forests to warmer faster-growing
ones
can make a difference. A hectare of cool US forest adds about 3.6 cubic meters
of
wood per year, while a hectare of warm US forest adds 7.4. A shift in the US
harvest
between 1976 and 2001 from cool regions to the warm Southeast decreased logged
area
from 17.8 to 14.7 million hectares, a decrease of 3.1 million hectares, far more
than either the 0.9 million hectares of Yellowstone Park or 1.3 million of
Connecticut.
Forest plantations produce wood more efficiently than unmanaged forests. They
meet
a growing fraction of demand predictably and spare other forests for
biodiversity
and other benefits. The growth in plantations versus natural forests provides
even
greater contrast than the warm versus cool forests. Brazilian eucalyptus
plantations
annually provide 40 cubic meters of timber per hectare, about five times the
production
of a warm natural forest and about 10 times that of a cool northern forest. In
recent
times about one-third of wood production comes from plantations. If that were to
rise to 75 percent, the logged area of natural forests could drop by half. It is
easy to appreciate that if plantations merely grow twice as fast as natural
forests,
harvesting one hectare of plantation spares two hectares of natural forest.
An equally important story unfolds on the demand side. We once used wood to heat
our homes and for almost forgotten uses such as railroad ties. The Iron Horse
was
actually a wooden horse — its rails rested on countless trees that made the ties
and trestles. The trains themselves were wooden carriages. As president of the
Southern
Pacific and Central Pacific railroads in their largest expansion, Leland
Stanford
was probably one of the greatest deforesters in world history. It is not
surprising
that he publicly advocated for conservation of forests because he knew how
railroads
cut them. The US Forest Service originated around 1900 in large part owing to an
expected timber famine caused by expansion of railroads.
Fortunately for nature, the length of the rail system saturated, creosote
preserved
timber longer, and concrete replaced it. Charting the three major uses of wood —
fuel, construction, and paper — shows how wood for fuel and building has lost
importance
since 1960 (Figure 7). World production has also saturated. Paper had been
gliding
upward but, after decades of wrong forecasts of the paperless society, we must
now
credit West Coast tycoons Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos for e-readers and tablets,
which
have caused the market for pulp and paper — the last strong sector of wood
products
— to crumple. Where are the newsstands and stationers of yesteryear? Many paper
products,
such as steno pads and even fanfold computer paper, are artifacts for the
technology
museums. Email has collapsed snail mail. US first-class mail fell a quarter in
just
the five years between 2007 and 2012. As a Rockefeller University employee, I
like
to point out that John D. Rockefeller saved whales by replacing sperm oil with
petroleum.
ARPANET and the innovators of email merit a medal for forest rebound.
Figure 7:
Global forest products consumed per dollar of GDP. Data sources: FAO (2013);
World Bank (2012).
Bottom-up land-sparing forces relating to farms and forests and top-down forces
are
collectively causing
global greening
, the most important ecological trend on Earth today. The biosphere on land is
getting
bigger, year by year, by 2 billion tons or even more. Researchers are finding
the
evidence weekly in places ranging from arid Australia and Africa to moist
Germany
and the northernmost woods. Probably the most obvious reason is the increase of
the
greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In fact, farmers pump carbon
dioxide
into greenhouses to make plants grow better. Carbon dioxide is what many plants
inhale
to feel good. It also enables plants to grow more while using the same or less
water.
Californians Charles David Keeling and Ralph Keeling have kept superfine
measurements
of carbon dioxide since 1958. The increasing amplitude of the seasonal cycle
from
winter, when the biosphere releases carbon dioxide, to the summer, when it
absorbs
the gas, proves there is greater growth on average each year. The increased
carbon
dioxide is a global phenomenon, potentially enlarging the biosphere in many
regions.
In some areas, especially the high latitudes of the Northern hemisphere, the
growing
season has lengthened, attributed to global warming. The longer growing season
is
also causing more plant growth, demonstrated most convincingly in Finland. Some
regions,
including sub-Saharan Africa, report more rain and more growth. Satellite
comparisons
of the biosphere in 1982 and 2011 by Ranga Myneni and his colleagues show little
browning and vast green expanses of greater vegetation.
3.
In addition to peak farmland and peak timber, America may also be experiencing
peak
use of many other resources. Back in the 1970s, it was thought that America’s
growing
appetite might exhaust Earth’s crust of just about every metal and mineral. But
a
surprising thing happened: even as our population kept growing, the intensity of
use of the resources began to fall. For each new dollar in the economy, we used
less
copper and steel than we had used before — not just the relative but also the
absolute
use of nine basic commodities, flat or falling for about 20 years (Figure 8). By
about 1990, Americans even began to use less plastic. America has started to
dematerialize.
Figure 8:
Use of nine basic commodities in the United States from 1900-2010. Note: Uses
five-year
moving average; legend is ordered top-down by value in 2010. Data source: USGS
National
Minerals Information Center (2013).
The reversal in use of some of the materials so surprised me that Iddo Wernick,
Paul
Waggoner, and I undertook a detailed study of the use of 100 commodities in the
United
States from 1900 to 2010. One hundred commodities span just about everything
from
arsenic and asbestos to water and zinc. The soaring use of many resources up to
about
1970 makes it easy to understand why Americans started Earth Day that year. Of
the
100 commodities, we found that 36 have peaked in absolute use, including the
villainous
arsenic and asbestos (Figure 9). Another 53 commodities have peaked relative to
the
size of the economy, though not yet absolutely. Most of them now seem poised to
fall
(Figure 10). They include not only cropland and nitrogen, but even electricity
and
water. Only 11 of the 100 commodities are still growing in both relative and
absolute
use in America. These include chickens, the winning form of meat. Several others
are elemental vitamins, like the gallium and indium used to dope or alloy other
bulk
materials and make them smarter.
Figure 9:
Absolute use of peaked commodities in the United States from 1900-2010. Note:
Uses
five-year moving average; legend is ordered top-down by value in 2010. Data
source:
USGS National Minerals Information Center (2013).
Figure 10:
Absolute use of likely peaking commodities in the United States from 1900–2010.
Note: Uses five-year moving average; legend is ordered top-down by value in
2010.
Data source: USGS National Minerals Information Center (2013).
Much dematerialization does not surprise us, when a single pocket-size
smartphone
replaces an alarm clock, flashlight, and various media players, along with all
the
CDs and DVDs.
But even Californians economizing on water in the midst of a drought may be
surprised
at what has happened to water withdrawals in America since 1970. Expert
projections
made in the 1970s showed rising water use to the year 2000, but what actually
happened
was a leveling off. While America added 80 million people –– the population of
Turkey
–– American water use stayed flat. In fact, US Geological Survey data through
2010
shows that water use has now declined below the level of 1970, while production
of
corn, for example, has tripled (Figure 11). More efficient water use in farming
and
power generation contribute the most to the reduction.
Figure 11: Total US water withdrawals: absolute (ABS) and relative to GDP
(IOU). Data sources:
USGS (2013); Williamson (2014).
Americans have also been doing a good job of decoupling growth and air quality.
We
already see not only decoupling but also absolute falls in pollution. Emissions
of
sulfur dioxide, a classic air pollutant, peaked around 1970 because of a blend
of
factors including better technology and stronger regulation (Figure 12). The arc
of sulfur dioxide forms a classic curve in which pollution grew for a while as
Americans
grew richer but then fell as Americans grew richer still and preferred clean
air.
American emissions of carbon dioxide appear to have peaked around 2007 (Figure
13).
Emissions in 2014 dropped to 1990 levels. It does not take a rocket scientist to
project a falling trajectory.
Figure 12: Decoupling of US economic growth and sulfur dioxide emissions. Note:
the grey environmental
Kuznets curve of sulfur emissions, which peaked in 1970, contrasts with the
black
straight line of growth of GDP. Economic slumps as in 1929 and 1944 reverse
growth
for 5-10 years, but do not affect the longer-term trends for GDP or emissions.
Data
source: EPA. Credit: Waggoner and Ausubel (2009).
Figure 13: Decoupling of US economy and carbon dioxide emissions. Emissions in
2013 were 10%
below 2007. Data sources: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, EPA.
Credit:
Waggoner and Ausubel (2009).
Beyond farms, forests, and materials including water and meat, one must also
consider
human population. Beginning in 2008, the US fertility rate declined for six
years
in a row, falling to 1.86 births per woman in 2013, well below the replacement
level
of 2.1. Immigration will continue to keep the US population growing, but
globally
it appears that Earth is passing peak child. Swedish statistician and physician
Hans
Rosling estimates that the absolute number of humans born reached about 130
million
in 1990 and has stayed around that number since then. With birth rates declining
all over the world, the number of newcomers should soon fall. While momentum and
greater longevity will keep the total population growing, technical progress can
counter the likely number of mouths to feed. A 2 percent annual gain in
efficiency
can dominate a population growth of 1 percent or even less.
4.
If only everything were trending in the right direction; ocean life is getting a
raw deal. Consider the change in the catch of a charter boat out of Key West
between
1958 and 2007 — no more large groupers. Or take a trip to the Tokyo fish market.
Sea life is astonishingly delicious and more varied in markets than ever, owing
to
improved storage and transport. An octopus from Mauritania ends in Japan. Before
the advent of refrigeration, fresh sushi was a delicacy for the emperor of
Japan.
In January 2013, a 489-pound bluefin sold for $1.76 million. We may say that the
democratization of sushi has changed everything for sea life.
Fish biomass in intensively exploited fisheries appears to be about one-tenth
the
level of the fish in those seas a few decades or hundreds of years ago. The
total
population of cod off Cape Cod today probably weighs only about 3 percent of all
the cod in 1815. The average swordfish harpooned off New England dropped in size
from about 500 pounds in 1860 to about 200 pounds in 1930. To survive wild in
the
ocean, an unprotected species needs to enjoy juvenile sex and spawn before
capture.
How does world fish consumption that depletes the oceans compare with the 800
million
tons of animal products that humanity eats? Fish meat is about one-fifth of land
meat. In 2012, about 90 million tons of fish were taken wild from salt and
freshwater
and a fast-growing 66 million tons from fish farms and ranches.
Americans eat relatively little sea life — only about 7 kilograms per person in
a
year. Much of that 7 kilograms, however, is taken from the wild schools of the
sea,
and that fraction of total diet, though small, depletes the oceans. The ancient
sparing
of land animals by farming shows us how to spare the fish in the sea. If we want
to eat sea life, we need to increase the share we farm and decrease the share we
catch.
Fish farming does not require invention. It’s been around for a long time. The
Chinese
have been doing very nicely raising herbivores, such as carp, for centuries.
Following
the Chinese example, one feeds crops grown on land by farmers to herbivorous
fish
in ponds. Much aquaculture of catfish near the Gulf Coast of the United States
and
of carp and tilapia in Southeast Asia and the Philippines takes this form. The
fish
grown in ponds spare fish from the oceans. Like poultry, fish efficiently
convert
protein in feed to protein in meat. And because the fish do not have to stand,
they
convert calories in feed into meat even more efficiently than poultry: let’s say
80 miles per gallon.
All the improvements such as breeding and disease control that have made poultry
production more efficient can be and have been applied to aquaculture, improving
the conversion of feed to meat and sparing wild fish. In most of today’s
ranching
of salmon, for example, the salmon effectively graze the oceans, as the
razorback
hogs of a primitive farmer would graze the oak woods. Such aquaculture consists
of
catching small wild fish, such as menhaden, anchovies, and sardines, or their
oil
to feed to our herds, such as salmon in pens. We change the form of the fish,
adding
economic value, but do not address the fundamental question of the tons of
stocks.
A shift from this ocean ranching and grazing to true farming of parts of the
ocean
can spare others from the present, ongoing depletion. So would persuading salmon
and other carnivores to eat tofu, which should happen very soon.
Cobia, sometimes called kingfish, which are widespread in the Caribbean and
other
warm waters, grow up to two meters long and 80 kilograms favoring a diet of
crab,
squid, and smaller fish. Recently, Aaron Watson and other researchers at the
University
of Maryland Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology turned this
carnivore
into a vegetarian. A mixture of plant-based proteins, fatty acids, and an amino
acid-like
substance found in energy drinks pleased the cobia and also another popular
fish,
gilt-head bream. Conversion of these carnivorous fish to a completely vegetarian
diet breaks the cycle in which fish ranchers plunder the ocean’s small fish to
provide
feed for the big fish.
The same applies to the filter feeders: the oysters, clams, and mussels. With
due
care for effluents, pathogens, and other concerns, this model can multiply sea
meat
many times in tonnage. Eventually we might grow fish in closed silos at high
density,
feeding them proteins made by microorganisms grown on hydrogen, nitrogen, and
carbon.
The fish could be sturgeon filled with caviar. In fact, much caviar now sold in
Moscow
comes from sturgeon farmed in tanks in Northern Italy.
High levels of harvest of wild fishes, and destruction of marine habitat to
capture
them, need not continue. The 40 percent of seafood already raised by aquaculture
signals the potential for reversal. With smart aquaculture, life in the oceans
can
rebound while feeding humanity and restoring nature.
In a world of 7 billion human mouths, aquaculture must largely replace hunting
of
the wild animals for many, maybe all forms of marine life. We are accustomed to
the
reality that even vast America does not produce enough wild ducks or wild
blueberries
to satisfy our appetite.
We depend on the hydrogen produced by the chlorophyll of plants. As my colleague
Cesare Marchetti has pointed out, once you have hydrogen, produced, for example,
by means of nuclear energy, diverse throngs of microorganisms are capable of
cooking
it into the variety of substances in our kitchens. Researchers for decades have
been
producing food conceived for astronauts on the way to Mars by cultivating
hydrogenomonas
on a diet of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and a little oxygen. They make proteins
that
taste like hazelnut.
A person basically consumes around 2,000 calories per day or 100 watts.
California’s
Diablo Canyon nuclear power park operates two 1,100-megawatt electric power
plants
on about 900 acres, or 1.5 square miles. The power of Diablo Canyon, a couple of
gigawatts, is enough to supply food for a few million people, more than 2,000
per
acre, more than 10 times what David Hula and Randy Dowdy achieve with corn.
A single spherical fermenter of 100 yards in diameter could produce the primary
food
for the 30 million inhabitants of the Valley of Mexico. The foods, of course,
would
be formatted before arriving at the consumer. Grimacing gourmets should observe
that
our most sophisticated foods, such as cheese and wine, are the product of
fine-tuned
elaboration by microorganisms of simple feedstocks such as milk and grape juice.
Globally, such a food system would allow humanity to release 90 percent of the
land
and sea now exploited for food. In such places as Petaluma and Eureka, both in
California,
humanity might maintain artisanal farming and fishing to provide supreme
flavorings
for bulk tofu.
5.
In a time of Lyft and Uber, it is valuable to look at petroleum and mobility
too.
Until about 1970, per capita petroleum use in America rose alarmingly. Most
experts
worried about further rises, but Figure 14 shows what actually happened — a
plateau
and then a fall. Partly, vehicles have become more efficient. But partly, travel
in personal vehicles seems to have saturated. America may be at peak car travel.
If you buy an extra car, it is probably for fashion or flexibility. You won’t
spend
more minutes per day driving or drive more miles.
Figure 14: Rise, saturation, and decline of US per capita petroleum
consumption, 1900-2012.
Data source: US Energy Information Administration.
The beginning of a plateau in the population of cars and light trucks on US
roads
suggests we are approaching peak car. The reason may be that drone taxis will
win.
The average personal vehicle motors about an hour per day, while a car shared
like
a Zipcar gets used eight or nine hours per day, and a taxi even more. Driverless
cars could work tirelessly and safely and accomplish the present mileage with
fewer
vehicles. The manufacturers won’t like it, but markets do simply fade away,
whether
for typewriters or newsprint.
Moreover, new forms of transport can enter the game. According to our studies,
the
best bet is on magnetically levitated systems, or maglevs, “trains” with
magnetic
suspension and propulsion. Elon Musk has proposed a variant called the hyperloop
that would speed between Los Angeles and San Francisco at about 1,000 kilometers
per hour, accomplishing the trip in about 35 minutes and thus comfortably
allowing
daily round trips, if the local arrangements are also quick.
The maglev is a vehicle without wings, wheels, and motor, and thus without
combustibles
aboard. Suspended magnetically between two guardrails that resemble an open
stator
of an electric motor, it can be propelled by a magnetic field that runs in front
and drags it.
Hard limits to the possible speed of maglevs do not exist, if the maglev runs in
an evacuated tunnel or surface tube. Evacuated means simulating the low pressure
that an airplane encounters at 30 to 50 thousand feet of altitude or higher.
Tunnels
solve the problem of permanent landscape disturbance, but tubes mounted above
existing
rights of way of roads or rails might prove easier and cheaper to build and
maintain.
Spared a motor and the belly fat called fuel, the maglev could break the “rule
of
the ton,” the weight rule that has burdened mobility. The weight of a horse and
its
gear, a train per passenger, an auto that on average carries little more than
one
passenger, and a jumbo jet at takeoff all average about one ton of vehicle per
passenger.
The maglev could slim to 300 kilograms per passenger, dropping directly and
drastically
the cost of energy transport.
Will maglevs make us sprawl? This is a legitimate fear. In Europe, since 1950,
the
tripling of the average speed of travel has extended personal area tenfold, and
so
Europe begins to resemble Los Angeles. In contrast to the car, maglevs may offer
the alternative of a bimodal or “virtual” city with pedestrian islands and fast
connections
between them. Maglevs can function as national- and continental-scale metros, at
jet speed.
Looking far into the 21st century, we can imagine a system as wondrous to
today’s
innovators as our full realization of cars and paved roads would seem to the
maker
of the Stutz Bearcat. Because the maglev system is a set of magnetic bubbles
moving
under the control of a central computer, what we put inside is immaterial. It
could
be a personal or small collective vehicle, starting as an elevator in a
skyscraper,
becoming a taxi in the maglev network, and again becoming an elevator in another
skyscraper. The entire bazaar could be run as a videogame where shuffling and
rerouting
would lead the vehicle to its destination swiftly, following the model of the
Internet.
In the end, a maglev system is a common carrier or highway, meaning that private
as well as mass vehicles can shoot through it.
6.
While the expectation that 90 percent of exploited nature will be spared may be
far-fetched,
I do think that humanity is moving toward landless agriculture, progressively
using
less land for food, and that we should aim to release for nature an area the
size
of India by 2050. Overall I think the next decades present an enormous
opportunity
for what Stewart Brand and Ryan Phelan call “Revive and Restore.”
People will object that I have spoken little about China and India and Africa. I
respond with a remark from Gertrude Stein, who said in 1930 that America is the
oldest
country in the world because it had been in the 20th century longer than any
other
country. In fact, as early as 1873 America became the world’s largest economy,
and
since then a disproportionate share of the products and habits that diffuse
throughout
the world have come from America, particularly California. My view is that the
patterns
described are not exceptional to the United States and that within a few
decades,
the same patterns, already evident in Europe and Japan, will be evident in many
more
places.
Rebound is not without challenges. Consider the black bear and the college
student,
but also consider the fox. Fox experts now estimate that about 10,000 foxes roam
the city of London, more than the double-decker buses. Foxes ride the London
Underground
for free. The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, became enraged when his cat
appeared
to be mauled by a fox, and perhaps because of the fare-beating too. English
snipers
charge $120 to shoot a fox in your city garden. Meanwhile in rural England,
badgers
are causing an uncivil war between farmers and animal protection groups. Rich
countries
are in the midst of what journalist Jim Sterba has chronicled in a great book
titled
Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards
into
Battlegrounds.
So why do we want nature to rebound? And why do we care about the achievements
of
farmers like David Hula and Randy Dowdy and aquaculturist Aaron Watson and their
counterparts in forestry and water resources? Because the incipient rewilding of
Europe and the United States is thrilling. Salmon have returned to the Seine and
Rhine, lynx to several countries, and wolves to Italy. Reindeer herds have
rebounded
in Scandinavia. In Eastern Europe, bison have multiplied in Poland. The French
film
producer Jacques Perrin, who made the films
Winged Migration
about birds and
Microcosmos about insects, is working on a film about rewilding. The new film,
The Seasons
, scheduled for release later this year, will open millions of eyes to Europe’s
rewilding.
The image of a humpback whale in New York Bight with the Empire State Building
in
the background was the most significant environmental image of 2014. Humpback
whales
and other cetaceans, perhaps even blue whales, are returning in large numbers to
New York Bight. Recall the whale despair of the 1970s and consider that the
Bronx
Zoo has just announced a program together with the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution
to monitor whale numbers and movements in sight of New York City. Many decades
without
hunting, and improved Hudson River water quality, have made a difference.
Whether into the woods or sea, the way is clear, the light is good, and the time
is now. A large, prosperous, innovative humanity, producing and consuming
wisely,
might share the planet with many more companions, as nature rebounds.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Stewart Brand and Ryan Phelan and the Long Now Foundation for the
opportunity
to write this essay, first presented as a Seminar About Long-term Thinking (SALT
talk) January 13, 2015, at the SF JAZZ Center. This work is a collective effort
with
my friends and colleagues Alan Curry, Cesare Marchetti, Perrin Meyer, Paul
Waggoner,
and Iddo Wernick. Thanks to Andrew Marshall for encouraging the work on peak
use.
Thanks to Dale Langford for editorial assistance.
Photo Credit: Artie Raslich / Getty Images
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