Re: The real world

["Jay Hanson" <j@qmail.com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: Roberto Verzola <rverzola@phil.gn.apc.org>

>When I wrote that, the context was clearly in terms of recycling the
>metals which we've already dug out of the ground, and your conclusion
>that they are gone. The metals are not gone, because matter cannot be
>destroyed. They are all around us, waiting to be recycled. It is true
>less energy will be available; it simply means we will have to be more
>patient, because recycling will take longer.

In the real world, the process of recycling follows the same scenario
as mining the original metals:  the highest-quality and
easiest-to-get-at resources are mined first. Thereafter,
poorer-and-poorer quality and harder-to-get-at resources are mined at
higher-and-higher energy costs.

Physics incorporated thermodynamics - moved from "production" to
"circulation" - over 100 years ago. But modern economic texts such as
McConnell & Brue, 1999, and Samuelson & Nordhouse, 1998 still do not
discuss thermodynamics or entropy!

"An answer might lie in the fact that economics is no more than a
mechanistic belief (though defended with fanatical vigour) that by
exchanging goods for money, countries can make themselves better off.
It is true that by buying from another country we can avoid resource
depletion and environmental degradation here, but that degradation is
transferred to the supplying country. If the country that sells us
those goods buys its materials from us, it avoids its own resource
depletion and environmental destruction and transfers the impact back
to us. So while we are all at it (and use each other's best economic
advantage), we cannot avoid environmental damage by trading with each
other and thus get perpetual environmental benefits like perpetual
motion. Indeed, if that worked, we could achieve absolute
environmental integrity by just selling our products to another
country and then buying them back. That proposition is clearly absurd.
We shall see that globally no environmental advantage can be gained
from international trade and much environmental capital is lost while
amenity assets are destroyed in the process.

"Unfortunately there is a physical law, the entropy law, that will not
permit perpetual motion to take place, and a technical law, the Carnot
limit of maximum efficiency, that will not allow any material and
energy to be used without generating some waste. That means it is
impossible to convert energy and material 100% into useful product.
Technical processes in the real world cannot exceed a theoretical
efficiency of around 60%, while most production processes take place
with efficiencies of between 25% and 0%. The latter being all modes of
transport, which are a total loss in terms of physics. Transport adds
nothing to the actual value of a product. Only in economic valuation,
something may have a higher value in one place than another, but the
product itself can only deteriorate in the process.

"Thus, no economic process is possible without some degradation of the
planet." [ pp. 59-60, TOES Proceedings 1995, Gerhard Weissmann.]

Jay