Op-Ed Locust Economics: less ice at Pole, much less sense in Arctic exploration grab

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Terra Daily has an article with a little of the early scientific feedback about the new race to develop the Arctic. We can expect much more on this subject. The predictions are grim, as might be expected. The facts, in my opinion, are worse, because they show that still nobody’s looking at future opportunities, or current capabilities.

The same thinking which has powered the development of massive pollution and global degradation is now hoping to legalize its claims on Arctic resources. That can be done if it is possible to prove that sea floor areas are part of a country’s land mass, and therefore sovereign territory. Might sound a bit obscure, but all the Arctic nations, and Denmark, are busily trying to do just that. Ringwraith’s DJ article explains in detail the sovereignty issues.

Historically, this is like trying to bring back the process of banging two flint stones together after the invention of the match. The uses of the resources are hideously inefficient, the effects are disastrous, and the prices much lower than value added or industrially advanced versions of the commodities. It’s a fossilized trade agenda.

Politically, there is some marginal logic in the belief that “If we don’t own it, someone else might dig it up anyway”. There’s a long litany of countries not developing their own resources and getting shafted very thoroughly other nations. Some couldn’t afford to do it themselves, and some just didn’t get the message. Others have major industries to protect. Russia, for example, has a very large oil and gas industry, one of its few truly valuable exports, apart from Mafia brides, (some coincidence) and wants to ensure its capacity.

Economically it’s a step off a very large cliff, in some ways. The insistence on use of fossil resources as fuels has the potential to lose those resources forever, as well as doing untold damage to the environment and quality of life. All fossil fuels contain materials which can be upgraded industrially to far more valuable, and reusable, forms. Burn them off in car engines and generators, and you lose those resources.

Other than locusts, only humans wipe out the things that keep them alive.

It’s just that locusts don’t spend a lot of time developing rationales for the process.

Excuses for the old methodologies are being exterminated at a healthy rate, too, one of the few good news stories of recent decades. The arguments about “progress” and “development” were viable with the science and technology of 60 years ago. Now, they’re just obsolete concepts, largely disproven even as commercial processes in industries which will do everything as cheap as it possibly can.

Generally speaking, human production methods basically ape natural processes, or synthesize natural products. The joke is that nature out-produces industries on a scale of millions to one. In biotechnology, genetics are creating the ability to produce many diverse materials on the same scale as nature, at a fraction of the cost, using biological processes.

This really is a replay of the agricultural revolution, in many ways. Not so surprising, because the agricultural revolution was based on putting all the food and plant materials where they could be managed efficiently. The new version is creating materials on the same basis, whether they’re medicine, clothing, or food.

Fuel technology has gone well beyond petrol, years ago, and much more efficiently. Nobody actually needs oil as fuel. Even electric cars can now do 90 mph on a few cents’ worth of electricity, and have a range of 100 miles or so, which in petrol costs you can see is a bit of a difference.

The only thing current human activity produces on a scale comparable with nature is waste. Fossil fuels and compounds are the primary contributors to this garbage factory. New technology is in the process of proving how inefficient that production really is. If the idea is to just keep on doing the same old things, the same old results are about all that’s likely to happen.

Waste is a liability. Mass production of liabilities isn’t really the best approach to any form of business or society, as even a locust could explain. Throwing valuable chemical compounds and resources into the fire leaves a lot to be desired in terms of economic logic. It’s not even theoretically necessary, yet we see daily the earnest discussions of strategic policy based on Flintstones-style thinking.

I don’t know; do they have temples or something sacrificing future generations to a petrol pump? If this were anything but oil, it’d be called a fixation, or obsessive behavior, persisting in a harmful practice.

(Classic. I mistyped “petrol pump” and came up with “petrol pimp”. Ah, Sigmund…)

Civilizations have fallen on bad economics, particularly due to unwise trading in relation to the economics and logistics of commodities. If this civilization were to collapse, it might be no great aesthetic loss, but it’d be pretty tough on anyone trying to live in this world.