“There may be curbs on traditional forms of growth, but there is no limit to human ingenuity.”

Says Forum? Well, we’ve been saying that for a while. It’s a quote from The Economist. Yes, The Economist. I know – I‘m just back into my chair too.

A few weeks ago they had a piece on Malthus, the false prophet. They demolished any number of strawmen. Yes, Malthus was wrong on population growth. When people' lives change - from agragarian to industrial, with the reduction of infant mortality, with greater public health and education, with greater rights for women - then they have fewer children. And, Malthus completely underestimated the scope for productivity gains in agriculture.

But the best environmentalists moved on from Malthus quite some time ago. My opinion: we're going to run out of climate before we run out of oil (though see other entries on peak oil). Some people still think the main environment limit is running out of physical sources. But, that scarcity gets a market price (eventually) because it is more expensive to get the next barrel of oil out of the ground.

A key environmental limit is the ability to absorb out wastes. We're pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than it can assimilate. So, we get global warming. And the ability to absorb wastes will never be priced in markets as they stand. That's why we need a emissions trading, carbon taxes and the rest. Here's the Economist, finally catching up:

"A new form of Malthusian limit has more recently emerged through the need to constrain greenhouse-gas emissions in order to tackle global warming. But this too can be overcome by shifting to a low-carbon economy. As with agriculture, the main difficulty in making the necessary adjustment comes from poor policies, such as governments' reluctance to impose a carbon tax. There may be curbs on traditional forms of growth, but there is no limit to human ingenuity. That is why Malthus remains as wrong today as he was two centuries ago."

Time to start creating the policies, the business models, the investor behaviour, the consumer choices and all the rest which will create a low-carbon economy.