Scarcity, Sustainability, and Shell Oil
Regarding my post: Shell Oil Has an Indefensible Position, But At Least (I Believe) It’s Trying, a reader suggests that I check out the book Abundance, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, and summarizes it as follows:
It offers the only real positive vision of the future with the premise that the we (not just the U.S. “we”) will be able within a 10-20 year time frame to provide a sustainable standard of living to every person on the planet.
It discusses how science and technology is capable of exponentially growing today in areas necessary to facilitate the rapid advances necessary to bring this about, and how this “abundance” could solve many of the world’s ills just by the advances in the standard of living for all peoples. Peter has also founded an interesting post graduate institution called Singularity University which I believe you would be most interested in investigating. He states in the book that their students are challenged to develop a process or invention that will affect 1 billion people within 10 years.
While he describes actual things being done today that back up his claims for what his predictions are for the future, the caveat certainly must be whether the political environment will allow the kinds of advances in many parts of the world where those advances would have the most impact.
Thanks very much. I know some people who agree with this guy, though we’re so inured by everything we’ve read our whole lives about economics and scarcity that it’s hard to take the idea seriously. In fact, I recall from my 8th grade “Comparative Economic and Political Systems” class that economics is defined as the study of wealth distribution in an environment of scarcity. Then you have:
• the realities of overpopulation, declining educational standards, religious fundamentalism, and environmental collapse
• things that really are becoming scarce, e.g., potable water
• the greed and selfishness of our consumer culture (i.e., do we really want a world in which everyone’s needs are met?)
Having said this, again, there are some people out there that I deeply admire who agree 100% with Peter. Here’s one: a contributor to my book: Is Renewable Really Doable? I’ll have to read the book.
