First, a quote (very long, but very important, which I quote in abbreviation):
“The entry of the world into a new era has led to the fact that it has become extremely crowded and hasty. The most active development took place in large cities such as London, Paris, New York and Chicago ... with half of the increase occurring in the last twenty years of the century. However, as these huge masses of the population (along with the property they owned) moved from one place to another, a problem arose. The primary means of transportation has given rise to a number of side effects known to economists as negative externalities: these include traffic congestion, excessively high insurance rates, and too many road accidents resulting in casualties ... The problem of air pollution with toxic emissions has arisen, threatening both the environment and human health.
Do you think we are talking about cars? Nothing like this. We're talking about horses... At the turn of the 200th century, there were about 17 horses working in New York alone - about one horse for every XNUMX people...
Horse-drawn carts littered the streets, and if a horse broke a leg it was often slaughtered on the spot. This led to further delays. Many horse owners purchased insurance policies that (to protect against fraud) provided for the slaughter of the animal by a third party. This meant that the owner had to wait for the arrival of the police, veterinarian or representative of the ASPCA (American Society against Cruelty to Animals). But even after the death of the animal, the congestion did not stop. “Dead horses were extremely bulky,” writes logistics specialist Eric Morris. “As a result, the janitors often waited for the corpses to decompose, after which they could be easily cut into pieces and taken out.”
The noise of carts and the clatter of hooves annoyed and unnerved people so much that in some cities it was forbidden to ride horses ... It was extremely easy to get under a horse or wagon ... In 1900, 200 New Yorkers died due to accidents involving horses, or one for 17 thousand inhabitants. In 2007, 274 New Yorkers died in car accidents (one in 30). This means that in 1900 a New Yorker was almost twice as likely to die from a horse collision than from a car accident today...
Worst of all was the situation with manure. The average horse produces about ten kilograms of manure per day. 200 thousand horses produce more than two thousand tons of it. Every day, seven days a week… Manure filled the city streets like snowdrifts. During the summer, the stench rose to the skies. When the rainy season came, streams of horse manure flooded the sidewalks and filled the cellars of residential buildings ... The excrement lying on the streets was extremely harmful to health. They provided a breeding ground for billions of flies that spread many deadly diseases. The rats scoured the mounds of manure for undigested oat grains and the remains of other horse food—which, by the way, was becoming more and more expensive due to the increase in the number of horses and the associated demand. Nobody at the time was worried about global warming, but if it did, the horse would become public enemy number one because manure emits methane, an extremely powerful greenhouse gas.
The world seemed to have reached a state where cities could not survive either with or without horses.
And suddenly the problem disappeared. It was not due to government action or divine intervention. The inhabitants of the cities did not organize social movements and did not promote restraint by refusing to use horsepower. The problem was solved by technological innovation… Horses disappeared from the streets thanks to the advent of the electric tram and the automobile. Both of these mechanisms left significantly less debris and worked much more efficiently. Cheaper to buy and easier to drive than a horse, a car has been hailed as an environmental savior. Citizens around the world have finally been able to breathe deeply without holding their fingers over their noses and resume their path of progress.
The story, unfortunately, does not end there. Solutions that saved the world in the XNUMXth century began to pose a danger in the next century: both cars and electric trams have their negative externalities. Carbon monoxide emissions from more than a billion cars and thousands of coal-fired power plants over the course of a century are warming the Earth's atmosphere. Just as the waste products of horses began to threaten civilization in their time, the same thing is happening now due to human activities.
Martin Weizmann, an environmental economist at Harvard University, believes there is a 5 percent chance that global temperatures will rise enough to "destroy the planet Earth as we know it." In some circles, for example, in the media, which often loves to talk about certain apocalyptic scenarios, the fatalistic sentiment goes even further.
This should not surprise us. When the solution to a problem is not right in front of our eyes, we tend to think that the problem has no solution at all. But history has shown us over and over again that such assumptions are wrong.
Humanity ... has a great ability to find technological solutions to seemingly intractable problems, and most likely this will happen in the event of global warming. It's not about how small or how big the problem is. Human ingenuity... is always evolving. Even more encouraging news is that technological solutions often turn out to be much simpler (…cheaper) than catastrophe prophets might imagine.
... Oddly enough, but the price of horse manure has risen again, so much so that the owners of a farm in Massachusetts not so long ago turned to the police with a demand to arrest a neighbor who collected manure on their territory. According to the neighbor, this misunderstanding was caused by the fact that the previous owner of the farm allowed him to do this. However, the new owner disagreed and demanded a $600 fee for the collected manure.
Who turned out to be this neighbor - a manure lover? None other than Martin Weizmann, the economist who made the frightening forecast of global warming.
“Congratulations,” one of his colleagues wrote to Weizmann when the story hit the papers. “Most of the economists I know are crap exporters. And you seem to be the only importer among them.”
Steven D. Levitt and Steven J. Dubner Super Freakonomics (the original spelling and punctuation of the translator has been preserved).
Here is such a hefty pseudepigraph from University of Chicago supereconomist Steven Levitt.
The apocalypse is cancelled. However, like all other options for the "end of the world", from overpopulation and lack of food, and ending with a lack of natural resources or drinking water.
Why religious apocalypses are being canceled is understandable - their dates have already been set so many times that the next cry of "wolves" no longer bothers anyone. During this time, the sky ceased to be a firmament, and the cause of the "big bang" became divine. To discuss this topic, right, is ridiculous and even "a little indecent."
But the popular theories about water shortages (and “water wars”), about global warming (and “oh, horror, horror, most likely everything is in the caves”) are quite interesting to disassemble.
The basic error of all scientific or pseudo-scientific apocalyptic predictions has one grandiose flaw. They are reversed.
There was such a scientist (good and smart) - Thomas Malthus. Based on the data at his disposal from PAST YEARS, he put forward a thesis for FUTURE AGES that since the population is increasing faster than the amount of food created by man, then ... frantic and catastrophe. (This is, in fact, very similar to "", when unknown data is ignored as non-existent.)
Even if Malthus did nothing else in his life (and he did), then we should be grateful to him only for this forecasting error. Clever (without irony) Malthus lived at the very beginning of the industrial revolution. Even before it even started. And he couldn't foresee the advent of tractors, or fertilizer, or pest control, or genetic methods to increase food. Before Malthus, for centuries and millennia, people plowed on horseback and fertilized with manure.
However… scientific progress was (and is) and Malthus' predictions turned out to be erroneous, although their echoes are still popular with the "undereducated part of the population." However, as well as the opinion that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
The funny thing is that all subsequent apocalyptic predictions of scientists, pseudo-scientists and environmentalists make the same mistake. They do not take into account the vector of development of science and technological progress.
It is difficult to blame them for this, because this is their opinion. But it is quite possible to accuse of whipping up hysteria, quite comparable to religious. And tantrums are clearly not to the face of scientists.
Why should educated people who know about the “Malthus mistake”, who have observed the scientific and technological progress of the last hundred years, whip up tantrums. What is the purpose of environmentalists hysteria? What is behind their predictions, except for the issue of obtaining a budget for the next hysteria or "compensation" from the industry?
So. In the 20th century, mineral depletion, climate change, water scarcity were predicted. All these predictions were presented as apocalypses.
Well... as for the minerals, the apocalypse for which was set for 1970... the prediction has not come true. All because of the same "mistake of the past", which was in the calculations of Malthus. First, new deposits were discovered and developed, new mining methods were invented, and energy-saving technologies were invented. And at the moment it is obvious that there are more mineral reserves than a person will need ... because he needs them less and less. Light bulbs are consuming less and less electricity, houses and industry are becoming more energy efficient, alternative ways of obtaining energy (sun, wind, sea, etc.) are actively developing. Waste is sent for recycling.
Actually, this alone would be enough to cancel the climate apocalypse. But so far this has not happened. And this is despite the fact that the climate on Earth has changed many times, depending to a much greater extent on the position of the Earth relative to the Sun, solar activity, ocean currents, the movement of lithospheric plates, and volcanic activity. Human activity, in comparison with these forces, is simply insignificant. Man, of course, affects the environment and in the last two centuries very negatively (however, many deserts in the Middle East also appeared as a result of the negative activities of ancient people). However… this negativity is connected with the source of energy, and it is now changing. And this was mentioned above.
So what would make more sense? To spend money on the tantrums of climatologists and environmentalists, or would it be more useful to build several solar or wind power plants with this money, to subsidize the transition of industry and people from internal combustion engines to electric motors and electric cars? However, then the tantrums "from the environment" will not get money.
Conclusion. They are not interested in the climate at all. They are interested in funding.
Thus, for example, Elon Musk does much more to reduce the harm to nature from human activity than all the ecologists combined and the hysterics who joined them.
The latest fashion apocalypse is water. And it won't happen either. And the reason is exactly the same. Production, becoming cleaner, because it is more profitable, will pollute water less, energy will come from clean sources, treatment facilities will be modernized, water-saving technologies will be developed (because it is profitable), special machines will be installed in dry areas that make drinking water from air, in seaside, etc. areas will be desalination and purification by reverse osmosis, etc. ... and the apocalypse will not happen again.
Conclusion. If you do not hysteria, but think and solve the problem, then there will be enough energy, and water, and food, and land, and in general everything will be enough for everyone. And there will still be. And nature will also become cleaner. In general, "everything will be fine."
To everyone who read to the end - "Thank you very much."
Illustrations: .
PS Dear readers, I ask you to remember that “The style of controversy is more important than the subject of controversy. Objects change, but style creates civilization." (Grigory Pomerants). If I did not respond to your comment, then something is wrong with the style of your polemic.
PS 2. I apologize to everyone who wrote a sensible comment, but I did not answer. If you still want to get an answer and discuss the article, you can write me a private message. I answer them.
PS 3. I won’t even comment on the “singularity of examples” argument as speculative, because in an already large article a few additional examples will not convince critics who rely on the “singularity” argument, just as more examples in the article did not convince them"or do not convince dozens of examples given in the book"”(link - a brief abstract and an electronic version for download), although behind each of these dozens there are hundreds and thousands of examples from the works of famous economists cited in the book.
PS 4. Please discuss Steven Levitt's argument with him personally, and not with the author of the article. Contact details are on the University of Chicago website. He also cites quite a lot of arguments in favor of his point of view in the popular science book "Superfreaconomics".
Source: habr.com
