Somebody just posted the map with the theoretical solar collectors (most of which are the size my home state of Wisconsin if not bigger) on reddit.com. I posted a link to this article in the comments (introducing it as “a nice, big turd for the solar punchbowl” ).

I do disagree with, however, your standard, if implied, technique of comparing a society like Mali with that of say the US

The comparison is certainly not meant to understand the dynamics of Mali, but rather, to understand the dynamics at play in the world system as a whole, wherein some countries benefit while others suffer from shifting complexity, and with it, energy and population.

I do disagree with, however, your standard, if implied, technique of comparing a society like Mali with that of say the US. It makes more sense, in my opinion, to compare Mali with Mali on a time-line and correlate total-fertility-rate (TFR) with various socio-economic factors. I think this would reveal that generally speaking, bad times lead to lower TFR, good times lead to higher TFR. I believe this would hold true regardless of the complexity of the given cultural reference group, although the complexity issue might be an important determinant in the baseline TFR for that particular culture. The US had a very high TFR in the 19th century when society was arguably ’simpler’ but there was also a huge ‘petrie dish’ mostly uninhabited in which to expand.

It isn’t.

He bases his calculations on the following assumption:

It basically suggests that the most accurate representation of the total energy embodied in ANY product is the price of that product.

However, his assumption is not reasonable:

World energy consumption: 421 quadrillion BTU (2003 estimate)
World GDP: $45 trillion (2005 estimate)

Thus, we get 421 quadrillion btu / 3413 btu per khw / $45 trillion = 2.74 kwh per dollar — or $0.36/kwh — as a world-wide average, and hence as the reasonable default for a price-based estimate of energy content.

Based on that, his calculations give an EROEI of 3.5:1 for PV, which is still quite worthwhile.

Wait a minute. I didn’t think the gardens actually needed that edge in order to survive, I thought that they just needed it to be more productive.

So would the micro-farms die without their edge, or be less productive?

Less productive. Much less productive. Such that the numbers we’ve been assuming no longer work. If you don’t have edge, you’re talking about conventional farming techniques, and I think we’ve already established how well those work.

Do you have any other evidence from other sources, or any evidence here, to back up the necessity that much of Northern Illinois would be needed to feed Northbrook’s population? I read your citation with Jeff Vail, but his piece is about redundancy and resiliency. I didn’t see anything about it being absolutely essential.

Sure. Read anything about permaculture, and the importance of edge will be emphasized. Then read anything about forest ecology, and you’ll begin to understand how much area it takes for a healthy forest to develop. Some of my favorites are Toby Hemenway’s Gaia’s Garden and Dave Jacke’s Edible Forest Gardens. But overall, this is a really, really basic subject, so you could literally fill a library with citations for this—and they have. If you go read anything on these topics, you should come across ample support very quickly.

The Vail link was generally about redundancy and resiliency, but I was mostly referring to the figures for Jeavons’ biointensive technique, with special attention to his part: “The use of efficient layout, soil growing processes, exploitation of edge (especially between ‘garden’ and ‘forest garden’), and other principles well laid out in the fields of permaculture, Fukuoka method, and bio-intensive gardening show that high yields are possible with relatively low effort and little space.” In other words, without proper edge, all the rest of this is moot. You’re not going to support 10 people off of an acre if that acre isn’t surrounded by forest.

Wait a minute. I didn’t think the gardens actually needed that edge in order to survive, I thought that they just needed it to be more productive.

So would the micro-farms die without their edge, or be less productive?

Do you have any other evidence from other sources, or any evidence here, to back up the necessity that much of Northern Illinois would be needed to feed Northbrook’s population? I read your citation with Jeff Vail, but his piece is about redundancy and resiliency. I didn’t see anything about it being absolutely essential.

Oh, and if you gave every person currently alive 2000 sq ft of living space we could all living a building somewhat smaller than the state of Texas so we’re nowhere near any “limits of growth” based on solar power.

That’s a statistic so common that even my usual answer has become cliche: “Yes, and if we were to only eat what’s directly under our feet, that might even be relevant.”

That kind of naive calculation might work for photosynthetic plants, but for any organism on any trophic level higher than that, you need to factor in ecological footprint. Right now, it takes fields of crops covering over 40% of the earth’s land area to feed the 6.5 billion humans we currently have. You might make that stretch a little farther if you forced everyone to be a vegetarian, but even our current situation—wherein 40% of the planet’s land area is dedicated solely to a single species—is utterly catastrophic. The current mass extinction is, through various means, caused by the pressure this situation exerts on all other life on the planet.

Oh, another point. The birth rate in the top 10 technologically advanced nations in the world is either at or below the theoretical replacement value of 2.1 per couple. it’s the 3rd worlders breeding like rabbits out there. As a country matures technologically (and hence its ability to feed its own people) its birth rate plummets, Malthus be damned.

I’ve written several articles debunking this oft-quoted “fact,” which you should have no trouble finding in our archives, but to rehash it once more, what limits reproduction is complexity. In less complex societies, the marginal cost of a child goes up. In Mali, a child can be economically viable in three or four years; in the United States, even a bachelor degree is sometimes not enough, so let’s put it at a mean of about eighteen years—meaning that the time during which parents must invest in their child is between 4.5 and 6 times longer. Meanwhile, children in Mali are a source of labor; with a simpler society, extended family structures are the norm. Children stay at home and work the fields. In the United States, greater complexity leads to neolocality; when children finally are economically viable, they move out. In other words, children are economic burdens in the First World; to even maintain replacement fertility, pure sentimentality must outweigh economic rationality. In the Third World, however, having lots of children is the one sure ticket to prosperity.

From this, you might conclude, as you do, that we’re on our way to a stabilized society. This is an extremely naive view that neglects any examination whatsoever of the foundations of First World complexity—namely, through means both direct and indirect, the exploitation of the Third World. Our way of life is simply too expensive for us to actually pay for; so we make others pay for it. Externalized costs—externalized to the Third World. In other words, First World levels of complexity are dependent on Third World levels of complexity. So there’s only so far the Third World can develop before that development threatens the complexity of the First World. We could change place, but there cannot be a First World without a Third World; there cannot be rich without poor. These are means by which we shift where we allot our resources and growth, and even put them in different places, but no matter what happens, human population remains a function of food supply, and nothing can change that.

So covering 2% of the earth’s surface with PV cells is very much a threat, because it can’t eliminate the Third World. It might move it around (in fact, it probably will; the World Wars, the Depression, and Europe’s post-colonial legacy are largely the result of the shift from coal to petroleum), but it cannot eliminate this systemic relationship. So long as our energy supply is growing, we are locked into a positive feedback loop of infinite growth that can only end when it hits some limit to growth.

My hope is that it’s something benign like peak oil, because if it isn’t, then it becomes something really frightening, like our extinction. With PV cells, that might not even just be our extinction, but the extinction of all multi-cellular life on the planet.

Fortunately, Roddenberrian plans have always been shallow and naive, and have never taken into account the full cost of the measures they call for. Hence the “unintended consequences” that accompany nearly every major invention that we’ve ever devised (which are often as bad or worse than the problem the invention originally aimed to solve). The potential for PV cells to actually fulfill the nightmarish prophecy that short-sighted “Roddenberries” predict is increasingly unlikely. It seems that life on earth will be OK after all, and humans will have to accept a world of true peace and prosperity, regardless of what doom the “optimists” predict for us.

So I’m very optimistic that the “optimists” are dead wrong on this one.

Oh, and if you gave every person currently alive 2000 sq ft of living space we could all living a building somewhat smaller than the state of Texas so we’re nowhere near any “limits of growth” based on solar power.

Oh, another point. The birth rate in the top 10 technologically advanced nations in the world is either at or below the theoretical replacement value of 2.1 per couple. it’s the 3rd worlders breeding like rabbits out there. As a country matures technologically (and hence its ability to feed its own people) its birth rate plummets, Malthus be damned.

So we’re never going to get to that 400 Billion mark or anywhere near it. Converting 2% or 10% or whatever percentage of the Earth’s surface to energy production isn’t going to doom us; it will probably save us because this will encourage the 34d world to advance more quickly and then reduce its birth rate to something more sustainable.

Put me down as a Roddenbury.