Once in a while, someone with a well-recognized name, comes up with an idea that makes you wonder if he means it or he’s saying it tongue in cheek.
One
such case is the German author Rainer Zitelmann who wrote, “The Fairy Tale of
Finite Resources,” an article that was published on August 8, 2021 in The
National Interest.
It
looks like, in his zeal to trumpet the wonders of Capitalism, which has been his
lifelong interest, Rainer Zitelmann latched on to an issue that did not serve
him well this time. The issue concerns the planet’s resources that often raise
the question: How long before we run out of them? There might have been a good
way to discuss this subject, but Rainer Zitelmann’s way this time was not the
right one.
What
he said basically was that economic growth being the purview of Capitalism, the
companies that produce the goods and services we like to buy, continually develop
and adopt more efficient ways to produce those goods and services. They also
make the goods we buy and use, more efficient when we operate them. And so, under
the subtitle that reads: “Miniaturization and Dematerialization,” Zitelmann gave
an example of that. It goes like this:
“One example of this trend is the smartphone. Just
consider how many devices are contained in your smartphone and how many raw
materials they used to consume. There is a calculator, telephone, video camera,
alarm clock, voice recorder, navigation system, camera, CD player, compass,
answering machine and many more besides”.
Let
me now ask you a pertinent question, dear reader: Did you notice something
curious about these uses? They all have to do with the treatment and movement
of information. The gadgets that allow us to do all these things were made
smaller as we developed technologies based on the solid state that happens to
be much smaller than its predecessor, the vacuum tube. These gadgets also need
much less energy to function. And this translates into a more efficient use of energy
resources … a welcome development.
However,
communication is only one of the two legs that make the Industrial Age the
success that it is. The other leg is transportation. And this is where we
cannot apply miniaturization or dematerialization. That’s because we are
fragile creatures that need space as well as a suitable environment to stay
alive, including when we transport ourselves from one place to another.
To
travel on land, on the sea, under it, in the air or in space, we need the
vehicles that transport us and transport the equipment that sustains us. The
equipment does that by simulating an environment similar to that of the Earth.
We can make the equipment operate efficiently, but we cannot make the vehicles
that house us physically smaller than we are. This is what says there is a
limit as to how much we can grow the economy while relying solely on the
resources of the Earth, which are finite.
That’s
what prompted many a scientist to start developing ways to get their hands on extraterrestrial
resources. Ideas have floated about mining asteroids, even establishing
permanent bases on the Moon and Mars to live there and to exploit their
resources.
And
that’s not all. It’s not because the Earth is giving us the necessities of life
that we cannot reduce in size. They are the vital requirements that have been
with us since our beginnings … certainly since before the Industrial Age. For
example, we require a minimum amount of food. When we moved from being hunter
gatherer to mastering the agri-food business, we developed appliances such as
refrigerators that can be made efficient in their use of energy, but cannot be
reduced in size because they house the large volumes of food, we store inside
them. And these appliances are made of metals and other materials which are
finite on Planet Earth.
And
that’s not all because we need to be protected from the elements of an
environment that can become harsh at times. Nature gave us the skin of animals
to protect us, but when we entered the Industrial Age, we saw the need to
develop entire textile and garment industries that cannot be miniaturized
because we cannot reduce the size of our bodies. That in turn, caused us to
invent the washing machine, an appliance that requires metal and mineral
resources, which are finite on Planet Earth.
And
there is still more. Whereas nature gave us caves to shelter us from the
environment, we were forced to invent the house even before the onset of the
Industrial Age. We started making the houses with mud and straws, but then
progressed to making them with large amounts of steel, cement and other
materials, resources which are finite on Planet Earth.
Perhaps
Rainer Zitelmann is so far ahead of his time, he foresaw the day when
transportation will be done using the technology of communication. That is, he
imagined tele-transport mechanisms that will reduce matter into bits of
information, and reconstitute it somewhere else into the matter that it was.
If this comes to pass, Rainer Zitelmann should not be surprised if one of these days, he’ll hear a voice tell him: This is Scotty, and I’m ready to beam you up, Rainer.