As FT Alphaville's Claire Jones pointed out in ""The flaws behind Biden’s open-all-hours ports strategy"" one of the key factors in what is happening in supply chains is that people are buying a lot of stuff.
That's on top of the fact that the powers-that-be with their lockdowns seemed to think that you could stop-start manufacturing and transportation like you used to be able to - before power rationing - flip a switch to turn the lights off/on. I would be willing to bet large money that the proponents of lockdowns never met a payroll in their lives and either had no clue as to how things actually get done or, and this gets close to casting aspersions, did know what would happen but went ahead anyway, in the pursuit of some higher goal.
Here's one of the kingpins of the thinking-about-energy biz, Vaclav Smill at Noēma Magazine, February 25, 2021, with a diagnosis similar to that of Ms Jones by way of a totally different problem:
To save the biosphere, curb upstream consumption — not just downstream emissions.
Nathan Gardels, the editor-in-chief of Noema Magazine, recently interviewed Vaclav Smil, the Czech-Canadian scientist and policy analyst, to talk about his new book, “Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made” (2021).
Gardels: Your book is about the transitions from past generations to the modern age in four big categories — population, food, energy and the economy. Would you give us a sense of these shifts?
Smil: The most important thing, because it is at the bottom of everything, is population. Demography is destiny in the long run. Because grand shifts happen very slowly, they are often not seen until after the fact, even though change occurs all the time.
From a hundred or so years ago up to the 1970s, we were worried there would be too many of us. People were warning about zillions of humans overrunning the planet’s resources. But in the end, it’s not about the number of people; it’s about their level of consumption.
Many Western countries now have a declining population. Without immigration, there is no Western country that can replace its population over time. China, because of the one-child policy, is below the level of population growth needed for replacement, and even in India, population growth is leveling off. Some countries, including Japan, Romania and several other countries in Europe, are actually declining in absolute numbers.
In the long run, everything will be determined by population growth. On the face of it, that would be a good thing. But pressure on resources doesn’t follow from lower population growth. On the contrary, the smaller families become as they move up the prosperity chain, the more they consume. Less becomes more.
Gardels: The issue then is not population but what a smaller population consumes?
Smil: Yes. It’s consumption. Imagine if you had only two billion people on the planet, but they all consumed at the average American level. God forbid.
People don’t realize just how large the differences in consumption are. Japan is prosperous by any measurement, indisputably affluent; they live longer than anybody else. At least according to data from a few years ago, they consume less than 150 gigajoules per capita, while Americans are at over 250. China is about 95, India 25, sub-Saharan Africa 10. If even a billion people in sub-Saharan Africa reached American levels of consumption, the planet would be stripped.
Gardels: You talk in your book about “delayed catch-up,” by which economic growth and consumption accelerate even more quickly for countries, like China, who had once been left behind. The core impetus of globalization now comes from China more than the West, especially through its Belt and Road project to revive the Silk Road trading routes and spread higher levels of prosperity across Eurasia and Africa. Can the Earth survive China’s success as it aspires to American levels of consumption?
Smil: Probably not, though China has certainly been trying to reach the American level. Only two generations ago, China was at 35 gigajoules. Now it’s close to 100. And they still plan to go to the European level of 130 or 140 as soon as they can.
The question is, can other countries do what China is doing? The answer is that it is not very likely. Places like India and sub-Saharan Africa are progressing much more slowly.
Gardels: There is talk these days of a decisive shift toward a digital economy in the wake of COVID-19. Might that help some countries leapfrog over the inequalities that previously hampered development to reach some level of prosperity?
Smil: It’s been a shift, but people overestimate its impact.
The fundamental thing really is that civilization rests on stuff like steel, cement, plastics, copper and ammonia for fertilizers. There is no digitalization in that. You’ve got to dig up iron ore, smelt it and then turn it into steel. You’ve got to dig up lots of coal and use copious amounts of energy to turn it into coke.
You can digitize the control process, but not the material force. That remains the same. The idea that somehow digitalization is leading to the dematerialization of the economy is ridiculous. The average American car weighs close to two tons. You need two tons of steel and plastic and glass to make that car. You may have digital doodahs in that car, you may even be watching TV while you are driving the car, but the car is composed of two tons of material.
“Civilization rests on stuff like steel, cement, plastics, copper and ammonia for fertilizers. There is no digitalization in that.”Judging by the sales figures, people in America prefer SUVs and pickup trucks. The Ford F-series pickup trucks have been the best-selling vehicles for over 30 years. It is heavier than it used to be, and more people are buying it. So the amount of materials going into ever more trucks is increasing.
Or think about your cellphone — it weighs less than it did 10 years ago, but now there are billions of them around the world! The total amount of materials going into cellphones has gone up, not down.
People always make a fundamental mistake between relative and absolute dematerialization. What matters is the absolute energy intensity and use of materials.
“Your cellphone weighs less than it did 10 years ago, but now there are billions of them around the world!”....
We posted the whole of Mr. Grantham's Nov. 15 Nature piece for fear it would go behind Nature's paywall.
To date it hasn't. Also to date I haven't come through on my assurance in Nov. 24ths "Jeremy Grantham "On the Road to Zero Growth" as His Co-head of Asset Allocation Does the Full Monty". I promise I'll get to it.
We have almost as many posts on Professor Smil as we do on Mr. Grantham. This is the first time they've been together. I feel very uncomfortable being on the opposite side of Mr. G on just about anything but in this case Smil is right.
And two from Inference Review:
Vaclav Smil Is A Party Pooper: "History and Risk"
Vaclav Smil: "Good Eats"
There are many more, use the 'search blog' box if interested.
