In this way, we could approximate a Steady State. If we did not have globalization and stopped adding energy supplies, we might continue to have local collapses, as in the 1CE to 800CE or 1000CE period. I am doubtful that most people would consider this an acceptable Steady State, however.ģ. Having no humans at all is by definition a Steady State. To meet these criteria, the population might need to be even lower than 100,000 to 200,000.Ģ. The areas where humans could live would also need to be warm, so our lack of fur would not be a problem. It is not clear that our teeth and internal organs could handle a purely raw-food diet, unless we happened to live in a part of the world where a soft diet (berries, fish and worms) was available. The population of humans under such a scenario would fluctuate upward and downward, perhaps as in Figure 1.īecause of the availability of cooked foods for many years, the bodies of humans have adapted to the improvement in diet. If we went back to the period before the ancestors of humans discovered fire, about 100,000 to 200,000 of us could live in the warm areas of the world, eating raw food, and living much as chimpanzees and baboons do today, based on populations of those primates today. I am not sure there are many good choices:ġ. What Are Humans’ Options for Living in a Steady State Economy? Per capita world energy consumption, calculated by dividing world energy consumption (based on Vaclav Smil estimates from Energy Transitions: History, Requirements and Prospects together with BP Statistical Data for 1965 and subsequent) by population estimates, based on Angus Maddison data. Since 1800, the growth in fossil fuels has helped ramp up both population and standards of living.įigure 7. Also, with a more globalized world, agriculture could be improved through a wider choice of domesticated plants and animals, by introducing species from other parts of the world. They also developed better ocean-going ships that allowed them to make colonies, and spread agriculture further, and demand that these colonies extract resources to support the home country. In more recent times, humans were able to add more energy sources (including peat moss, windmills, and water mills). But assuming that the change was fairly representative, the period 1CE to 800CE or 1 CE to 1000CE was close to a Steady State economy (with lots of collapses), considering the lack of both population growth and GDP growth per capita. He concluded that the per capita GDP was slightly lower at the end of the period (453) than at the beginning of the period (476). Instead, there was a combination of overshoot and collapse type waves of the types seen with other species in different parts of the globe, which together averaged out to relatively flat world population growth.Īngus Maddison analyzed GDP growth in the 1 CE to 1000CE period. So even in the Year 1 CE to Year 800 CE period, there was not a Steady State. Shape of typical Secular Cycle, based on work of Peter Turkin and Sergey Nefedov. The general shape of these collapses was approximately as follows:įigure 6. Wages of the common worker dropped, and it was hard for them to get adequate nourishment. The soil started eroding, or became less fertile, and or salt built up from irrigation. At the same time, the resources started degrading. Populations had found a new resource that allowed them to have more food supply–for example, they cleared land of trees so that it could be farmed or learned to use irrigation.īut over time, population grew and caught up with available resources. When these collapses happened, they generally looked financial in nature, according to the research of Peter Turchin and Surgey Nefedov in Secular Cycles. In this period, there were many local collapses, so growth in one area tended to offset collapse in another area. There was a lull in human world population growth between 1 CE and 800 CE (Figure 5). Even at these early stages, energy use by humans allowed human population to grow at the expense of the population of predator species. Phase Two began about 10,000 years ago when humans turned to agriculture. Biologist and paleontologist Niles Eldridge says that Phase One of the Sixth Mass Extinction began when the first modern humans began to disperse to different parts of the world about 100,000 years ago. ![]() All of these uses allowed ancestors of modern man to spread over a wider area of the globe, while at the same time wiping out many species of animals, as humans spread to new areas. The initial growth of human population occurred with the discovery of how to burn biomass, and how to use it for such purposes as cooking, keeping warm, honing stone tools to a sharper edge, and scaring predator animals away. ![]() Log/log graph of human population growth, with energy sources giving rise to this growth.
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