PM x Radiolab: Can the economy grow forever?

Summary

Planet Money x Radiolab: Can the Economy Grow Forever? Planet Money with NPR | Released on March 28, 2025

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Introduction

In a collaborative episode between NPR’s Planet Money and Radiolab, hosts Jeff Guo and Latif Nasser delve into a profound and pressing question: Can the economy grow forever? This episode navigates the complex interplay between economic growth, resource consumption, and sustainability, offering listeners a thought-provoking exploration of whether perpetual growth is viable or potentially destructive for our planet.

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The Dilemma of Perpetual Growth

The conversation begins with Latif Nasser recounting a lecture by astrophysicist Sandra Faber, who highlighted the strain that continuous economic growth places on Earth's finite resources. Faber illustrated that with the global GDP growing at approximately 3% annually, we risk depleting Earth's physical resources in mere thousands of years, a stark contrast to the planet's 100-million-year habitability window (01:54).

Notable Quote:

“We’re gonna just devour the physical material level of this planet. We’re gonna eat it up in more like a couple thousand years.” — Sandra Faber (02:00)

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Resource Depletion Scenarios

Jeff Guo and Latif Nasser examine several critical resources to understand the implications of sustained economic growth:

1. Copper: Current consumption rates suggest that at a 3% annual growth rate, Earth's copper reserves could be exhausted in approximately 70 years (06:14). This rapid depletion underscores the vulnerability of essential materials in a growing economy.

2. Sand and Gravel: Despite their abundance, the exact global reserves of sand and gravel remain uncertain. Estimates indicate that at current usage rates, these resources could be depleted within 500 years (08:05). However, the lack of precise data makes this scenario particularly alarming.

3. Lithium: Essential for batteries in electric vehicles and electronics, lithium consumption has surged by 20% annually. With known reserves estimated around 105 million tons, projections indicate that lithium could be exhausted in about 100 years if current trends continue (11:35).

4. Oil: The conversation highlights oil as a paradoxical resource where the issue isn't scarcity but overuse. Despite having approximately 1.6 trillion barrels left, continued high consumption rates could lead to depletion by around 2052 (12:16). Moreover, the environmental consequences of oil consumption present a significant challenge.

Notable Quote:

“I feel like you’re gonna say, like, so soon. Okay. Maybe decades. Yeah. So I started to get a little nervous.” — Latif Nasser (13:39)

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Historical Precedents: The Malthusian Swerve

To contextualize the current crisis, Jeff Guo introduces the concept of the Malthusian Swerve, a term coined to describe humanity's historical ability to avert resource depletion crises through innovation. Drawing parallels to medieval England, Guo narrates how the introduction of the blast furnace transformed iron production. Initially reliant on charcoal, the industry faced deforestation until Abraham Darby’s innovative use of coal rejuvenated iron production, spearheading the Industrial Revolution (14:03).

Notable Quote:

“This is a pattern that comes up. We did this with whales. We stopped using whale oil for lamps and started using kerosene. We did this with rubber. We started making synthetic rubber instead of getting all our rubber from trees.” — Jeff Guo (17:10)

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The Limits and Risks of the Swerve

While the Malthusian Swerve has historically provided solutions, it isn't without risks. Latif Nasser expresses concerns about whether society can continue to innovate in time to prevent resource collapse. He warns that each swerve might only delay the inevitable or lead to new problems, such as environmental degradation from alternative resources like coal (23:14).

Notable Quote:

“We just always use that time to step on the gas to the next thing. And then maybe when we do swerve, then we swerve into something worse.” — Latif Nasser (23:38)

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Revolutionary Swerves: Fracking and Beyond

The discussion shifts to contemporary examples, such as the fracking revolution, which temporarily averted peak oil but exacerbated environmental issues. Guo and Nasser debate whether such swerves truly solve underlying problems or merely postpone them, highlighting the complexity of balancing economic growth with sustainability.

Notable Quote:

“The problem is that we're gonna run out of oil, that we're gonna reach peak oil very soon. And that, well, you just told us… And then... they did find a way to get a little bit more oil out of the ground in the meantime.” — Jeff Guo (25:16)

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The Role of Innovation and Economic Incentives

Jeff Guo emphasizes that economic incentives drive innovation, suggesting that economic growth can foster technological advancements that provide alternatives to depleted resources. However, Latif Nasser counters that the system often prioritizes immediate gains over long-term sustainability, creating a precarious cycle of consumption and innovation.

Notable Quote:

“The more you use, the less you have. The less you have, the higher the price. The higher the price, then all of a sudden new pockets of that resource that would have been too expensive before to get now become unlocked.” — Jeff Guo (28:16)

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Sandra Faber’s Poly Crisis Perspective

Sandra Faber introduces the concept of the Poly Crisis or Metacrisis, describing the simultaneous and interconnected crises facing humanity. She underscores the necessity of redefining wealth and managing growth more maturely to ensure a sustainable future (33:03).

Notable Quote:

“A huge issue for a long term, happy human history in the future is having a more mature picture of wealth, how it should be managed and how growth should be managed.” — Sandra Faber (33:54)

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Conclusion: Seeking Sustainable Growth

The episode concludes with a reflective dialogue on balancing economic growth with environmental stewardship. Jeff Guo remains cautiously optimistic, believing that the economy, driven by innovation and incentives, can navigate these challenges. Latif Nasser, however, urges a more holistic approach, advocating for a system that prioritizes long-term sustainability over short-term gains.

Notable Quote:

“If you can figure out a way to do that, they will give you a Nobel Prize, like on the spot, I guarantee.” — Jeff Guo (36:47)

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Final Thoughts

Planet Money and Radiolab’s exploration offers a comprehensive examination of the sustainability of economic growth. By intertwining historical insights with contemporary challenges, the episode encourages listeners to rethink the dynamics of growth and resource management, highlighting the urgent need for innovative and sustainable solutions to ensure the longevity of both our economy and our planet.

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Notable Contributors:

• Jeff Guo – Host, Planet Money
• Latif Nasser – Host, Radiolab
• Sandra Faber – Astrophysicist

Production Credits:

• Edited and Produced by Pat Walters and Soren Wheeler (Radiolab)
• Produced by Emma Peaslee, Edited by Jess Jiang and Alex Goldmark (Planet Money)
• Fact-Checked by Natalie Middleton

Further Listening: For more in-depth discussions, Planet Money and Radiolab offer episodes on diverse topics, such as the economics of justice and the cultural struggles of working-class men.

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Timestamps:

• Introduction to the Dilemma: 00:01-04:18
• Resource Depletion Examples: 05:26-13:35
• Historical Swerves: 14:03-22:11
• Contemporary Swerves and Risks: 23:14-31:14
• Sandra Faber’s Insights: 33:03-34:27
• Concluding Reflections: 34:42-37:09

Note: Links are placeholders and should direct to the relevant sections if implemented in a digital format.

Transcript

[Jeff Guo]

This is Planet Money from npr. A few weeks ago we got this kind of mind bending question. It was from our friends at Radiolab, which is a show about science and philosophy and, you know, just the sheer joy of curiosity. And in this case they were curious about growth, in particular economic growth. How could it possibly go on forever? And can, can too much growth destroy us? And in trying to answer their big question, we ended up in some pretty heady and unexpected places. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Jeff Guo and today we're doing something a little bit different. We've teamed up with Radiolab and we're going to try to answer one of the biggest questions that often goes unsaid in economics. Here's Latif Nasser from Radiolab to get us started.

[Latif Nasser]

Hey, this is Radiolab, I'm Latif Nasser. What got me thinking about economic growth was not all the stuff that's in the news, the tariffs, the fear of the recession, all that stuff that everybody's talking about. What started it was a lecture I heard a little while back by of all people, an astrophysicist.

[Sandra Faber]

So I'm going to sketch what we know about Earth's history, cosmically speaking.

[Latif Nasser]

Her name is Sandra Faber. She goes by Sandy, brilliant scientist. She co authored the standard model for thinking about how galaxies form. She won a National Medal of Science back in 2011. And she started the lecture by saying we have a pretty happy little planet to live on.

[Sandra Faber]

Earth is a good place to live for, let's say of order 100 million.

[Latif Nasser]

Years at least should be livable for a really, really long time. Okay, except, so now she goes on to say, lessons for us, over the.

[Sandra Faber]

Last century or so, we've been seeing planet wide GDP growing exponentially.

[Latif Nasser]

So what she did is she took the average gross domestic product worldwide and that's a rough measure of economic growth. And that had been growing recently around 3%, which for economists is like a happy little growth number.

[Sandra Faber]

You will recognize 1.033% as the home.

[Latif Nasser]

But Sandra took that 3% and with some quick math she started to just play it out year after year. And in her lecture she's showing this chart where you can see this curve just shooting up.

[Sandra Faber]

We can see this number is completely ridiculous.

[Latif Nasser]

And she was basically like, look at all that growth that's eating up Earth's resources.

[Sandra Faber]

A large number here is bad because it means that we want more of that product.

[Latif Nasser]

And so even though Earth should be good for 100 million years, we're gonna just eat the planet up. We're gonna devour the physical material level of this planet. We're gonna eat it up in more like a couple thousand years.

[Sandra Faber]

And my concern is that we're not talking about this.

[Latif Nasser]

And when I heard that, that was. That was. That was breathtaking and horrifying. And honestly, like, I haven't been able to stop thinking about that number. 3% sounds like a specific thing, but also, it's. It's kind of abstract and mathy. And I wanted help. I wanted help to parse this out. Like, how bad is that really? How bad could that possibly be? And so I turn to someone whose job it is to literally make sense of this exact kind of thing.

[Jeff Guo]

Hello.

[Latif Nasser]

Hi. How you doing? Hi.

[Jeff Guo]

I'm doing well. How are you?

[Latif Nasser]

And we had what I felt like was a kind of a roller coaster of a conversation. So I'm just gonna play it for you right now.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. Okay. So I am Jeff Guo. I'm one of the hosts of the Planet Money podcast at npr.

[Latif Nasser]

Terrific show.

[Jeff Guo]

Thank you. And I guess what do I do? I talk about economics all day. That's.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, my God.

[Jeff Guo]

I guess that's what I do.

[Latif Nasser]

I need you. I need you to help me. It's more than scratch and itch. I need you to help me cure.

[Jeff Guo]

This existential dread that you have now.

[Latif Nasser]

That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay. Well, I mean, I guess where I would start is. And, you know, I would hate to contradict a Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist. It just sounds like, you know, starting out on dangerous territory there.

[Latif Nasser]

I mean, what, she won the National Medal of Science, not the Nobel.

[Jeff Guo]

But she's gonna. She's gonna. It sounds like she's gonna win.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, yeah, sure, fairy.

[Jeff Guo]

Um, but you did ask me to kind of look into what things are we gonna run out of.

[Latif Nasser]

Yes, yes, yes. Oh, my gosh, I'm so excited.

[Jeff Guo]

After the break. Can we cure Latif's existential dread, or did we just make it worse?

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[Jeff Guo]

Okay, Latif, so I looked into your question about growth and stuff that we might run out of, and I found a couple things that we know people are worried about.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, great.

[Jeff Guo]

And I just did some very rough back of the envelope math. Like, this is so totally not precise.

[Latif Nasser]

My favorite kind of math. My favorite kind of math.

[Jeff Guo]

Wavy.

[Latif Nasser]

Great. I love it.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay, so I don't know, what should we start with? Copper.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, that's a big deal.

[Jeff Guo]

Copper's a big deal, right?

[Latif Nasser]

Very big deal.

[Jeff Guo]

So if you look at copper consumption over the past century, since the Industrial revolution, you know, our demand for copper has grown about 3% every year.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

Like, you know, in recent years, it's. We've consumed about 26, 27 million tons a year of copper.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

So if you just, you know, extrapolate that out. If you just assume copper is going to keep growing at 3% every single year. Right.

[Latif Nasser]

Fair. Fair assumption.

[Jeff Guo]

I looked up how much copper people think we have. According to geologists, what we know is out there and could theoretically get to. And that number right now is 5 to 6 billion tons.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

It's not nothing, but we're using it pretty quickly. And if you just assume that. That this number is going to keep growing at 3% a year.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, sure.

[Jeff Guo]

It would take about maybe another 70 years and then no more copper.

[Latif Nasser]

That's it. 70 years.

[Jeff Guo]

70 years. Seven.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, okay, so that sounds terrible.

[Jeff Guo]

It's true. It's true. That's assuming, of course, that, you know, we do keep consuming copper at that.

[Latif Nasser]

Point using copper and kneading copper the same way that we are. Yeah, yeah, sure. T minus 70.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

No copper for anybody.

[Jeff Guo]

No copper.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, okay, so then what. But then. So that's. This seems to point exactly to Sandy Faber's point. Right?

[Jeff Guo]

It's true. It's true. It's true.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Do you want to do another one?

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, that's the end of it. I thought you were going to be like, but there's a giant. There's a copper thing that we're going to. No, there's no but. That's it. It's just like. Yeah, she's right about copper.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay, but. There's a but. There is a but coming up. There's a but. Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. Okay, okay, okay, okay. You want to go through more of them before we get to the butt? Is that the idea?

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. Okay, okay, okay. Okay. Next one. Okay, Next one.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay, so another one I looked into is sand.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. Yeah. Which seems like there should be a ton of that.

[Jeff Guo]

Seems like there should be so much of it.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And you know the reason why we need sand? Right.

[Latif Nasser]

And why do we need sand for concrete Ah.

[Jeff Guo]

So it's actually so important that we don't know how much we're using.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, my God.

[Jeff Guo]

Like, we're using so much. We just. We actually don't know. But, like, ballpark estimates, we're using maybe 50 billion tons of sand and gravel every year.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, that sounds like a lot.

[Jeff Guo]

I don't even know. I can't even visualize that. I don't. It's a lot.

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jeff Guo]

And I couldn't even find how much sand and gravel there is in the world. Like, nobody actually knows.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

This is one of those numbers where it's like, oh, but we're doing, like, back of the envelope math here.

[Latif Nasser]

Right, Right, right.

[Jeff Guo]

So I was like, well, if we don't know how much sand and gravel there is in the world, surely we know how much rock there is in the world. Right?

[Latif Nasser]

Totally. Totally, totally.

[Jeff Guo]

So I looked it up, and according to geologists, the Earth's crust, all of the Earth's crust, contains maybe like 23 quintillion tons of rock and stuff. Okay, okay.

[Latif Nasser]

But. But it does seem like. Like the. The whole point of sand is that it's. It's like teeny tiny. It's this. Like, it would. It would take a lot of energy to turn that rock. It would Sand.

[Jeff Guo]

It would. But assuming that we're able to do that. Right.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay. Assuming that we're going to use sand that. That we're going to use sand and gravel at a rate that grows by 3% every year.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Year after year after year.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

It would take about. You want to guess how long it would take to deplete the entire Earth's crust?

[Latif Nasser]

Wait, so a quintillion, based on the growth rate now, I would imagine this one is gonna be. This one is not on Sandra Faber's side. I'm gonna guess this one is, like, way, way, way far from now. Like, this is gonna be like a million years or something.

[Jeff Guo]

Five to six hundred years.

[Latif Nasser]

That seems so short. Again. That is way shorter for the whole crust.

[Jeff Guo]

I know.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, my God. That's not like, it's long, but it's not that long. Like, that's like. That is nuts.

[Jeff Guo]

All right, I got a couple more.

[Latif Nasser]

It's just making me more and more existentially worried. Okay, but keep my eye on.

[Jeff Guo]

That's how I felt. That's how I felt when I started on this journey. Right. Okay, I got a couple more.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, great. Love it.

[Jeff Guo]

I gotta pull up my spreadsheet. Wanna talk about lithium?

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, great. Good one, good one. And lithium you imagine there are, like, those giant deserts filled with those, like, sand flats or whatever, right?

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. In Bolivia.

[Latif Nasser]

In Bolivia, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so this one will be again, like, I think this one. I feel like there's gonna be a curve ball in here where you're like, no, no, no, we have enough, you know, for millions of years anyway. Okay, keep going.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay, hang on. Let me see. Let me pull up my. Where did my notes go on this? I can't wait when we have to fact check all of this. Okay. Lithium. So we are using about 190, 200,000 tons of lithium every year.

[Latif Nasser]

Right?

[Jeff Guo]

That's kind of.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, so. And that's, like in. That's in phones, electric cars.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. Batteries. Batteries is a big one for lithium. Very important. Lithium consumption, of course, has been exploding. So over the past decade, lithium has been growing. You want to guess how much it's been growing?

[Latif Nasser]

What, like. Like 5% or 10%?

[Jeff Guo]

On average, around 20%.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay. Wow. Okay, wow.

[Jeff Guo]

So we need a lot. And we need a lot more lithium.

[Latif Nasser]

Which is good. Which is good. Which means, like, more electric cars, more. Right. More recyclable batteries and stuff. That's great.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. So geologists think that of all the lithium that we know is out there, there's probably, like, 105 million tons of it, like, out there.

[Latif Nasser]

That sounds a lot less than the sand. You're ti. Like, this doesn't sound. This is gonna get worrying. Okay, keep going.

[Jeff Guo]

Right. And so, you know, if you do this whole, you know, the same math and you just. If you assume. If you just assume, just, you know, for the sake of argument, it's only gonna grow at 3% a year, right?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, sure.

[Jeff Guo]

We'd probably run out of lithium around about March.

[Latif Nasser]

I feel like you're gonna say, like. I feel like you're gonna say, like, so soon. Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

Tomorrow. About. About 100 years.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, 100 years again.

[Jeff Guo]

It's not bad.

[Latif Nasser]

No, it's. It is bad. It's bad, Jeff. It's bad. We. We need that. Like, we're gonna need that later for even better stuff.

[Jeff Guo]

It's true.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, keep going.

[Jeff Guo]

I'll do one more. I'll do one more. Which is. This is a big one. Oil.

[Latif Nasser]

Really scary one. Yeah. But hopefully we're weaning off of this one, so maybe this one is a different. Hopefully, like, it's going in the opposite direction.

[Jeff Guo]

Hopefully. It doesn't seem like it's really happening yet.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, God.

[Jeff Guo]

But.

[Latif Nasser]

But I don't think you have had a single piece of Good news here.

[Jeff Guo]

Just wait for it.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

All right, so if you look at oil, right? How much do we consume every year? About 37 billion barrels of oil as a world. How much is left? Probably 1.6 trillion barrels.

[Latif Nasser]

Really?

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. So it's not.

[Latif Nasser]

That's a lot.

[Jeff Guo]

It's a lot, but it's maybe less. It's less than I thought. So another way to say 1.6 trillion is 1600 billion.

[Latif Nasser]

Right? Right.

[Jeff Guo]

So 37 billion a year. We have about 1600 billion barrels left out there.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, that. When you say it like that, it sounds quite. Quite alarming. Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Not great. So, you know, if you do the math, again, exponential growth, there's.

[Latif Nasser]

We do want to use less of it anyway, right? Yeah. I'm ambivalent about this.

[Jeff Guo]

Trying to.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

About 28 years.

[Latif Nasser]

No way. That is nothing.

[Jeff Guo]

2052 might be the day we run out of oil.

[Latif Nasser]

Wow.

[Jeff Guo]

Maybe. Maybe.

[Latif Nasser]

I was worried about when Sandra Faber said we had thousands of years. And you're like, you are taking me even an order of magnitude less if that.

[Jeff Guo]

Maybe decades. Yeah. So I started to get a little nervous and. And so I thought, well, like, what happened in the past, you know, like when we were overexploiting some resource and it looked like it was gonna run out. And when I looked into it, there's this funny thing that happens. So just for example, let me tell you a story.

[Latif Nasser]

Please.

[Jeff Guo]

It's about medieval England.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

So it's the 1400s. Okay. It's like medieval England, it's the 1400s. And this amazing new technology has just arrived on the shores of ye olde England. And it is this new way of making iron.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

It's called the blast furnace. So just like very briefly, like before the blast furnace, you kind of had these backyard ovens, basically, where you kind of baked the iron ore to make the iron. And they were like super inefficient and really slow and not great.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

But this blast furnace, the scientific innovation was that if you blew air onto the fire, you could get it really hot, and then you could get it so hot that you could just melt the iron. And it was amazing.

[Latif Nasser]

Got it.

[Jeff Guo]

And this, like, revolutionized iron making. So these blast furnaces, they're these huge 20 foot tall stone towers. You would have these giant bellows at the bottom blowing.

[Latif Nasser]

I was just imagining the bellows. I was just imagining the bellows. Okay, cool. Okay. So that's the key innovation here.

[Jeff Guo]

Yes. And medieval England, iron was so precious, so important, you needed it for ploughs and spades Horseshoes, pots, kettles, nails, hammers. Yeah, whatever. And so now you had this technology that you could make these blast furnaces. They could make a ton of iron a day.

[Latif Nasser]

A ton. A literal ton.

[Jeff Guo]

A literal ton. Which is, like, just unprecedented.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

The problem with all of this is what was the fuel that went into this blast furnace? And at the time, it was charcoal.

[Latif Nasser]

Which is. Charcoal is made out of wood. Is that right? No.

[Jeff Guo]

Yes, yes, yes. So. So this was.

[Latif Nasser]

So they're like slurping down forests? Basically.

[Jeff Guo]

Yes, yes. Just picture the English countryside, right? You have these blast furnaces sending up these huge plumes of smoke, and then everyone's just chopping down trees as fast as they can to feed these giant blast furnaces. It's. It's.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And it makes people really concerned. Yeah, like, really concerned. They're like, oh, my God, where are the trees going? But it got so bad that by the late 1500s, you have parliament banning new iron mills from starting up in different places. They're like, we cannot do this. We just cannot deal with this because we.

[Latif Nasser]

We have one tree left. And everyone's about to. We can't. We gotta save the tree.

[Jeff Guo]

We gotta save the trees.

[Latif Nasser]

The tree.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You even have Queen Elizabeth I. Not the second, the first. You have Queen Elizabeth I. She is issuing royal edicts saying, no more charcoal making in my royal forests. Like, we just can't. We can't do this anymore. But then something happened.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay?

[Jeff Guo]

So in 1709, this English guy named Abraham Darby, he figured out how to use a different kind of fuel. So not charcoal. So maybe you want to guess what he figured out.

[Latif Nasser]

Oil, probably. Right.

[Jeff Guo]

Coal. He figured out coal? Yes. He figured out you can use this sort of modified coal to run these blast furnaces. And this changed everything. I'm not exaggerating. The iron industry took off. This led to the Industrial Revolution. We avoided the problem, we avoided the shortage. And it's not an isolated example. This is a pattern that comes up. We did this with whales. When we stopped using whale oil for lamps and started using kerosene. We did this with rubber. We started making synthetic rubber instead of getting all our rubber from trees. It's happened over and over again. Where we have stood at the edge of the cliff where it looked like, oh, crap, if we keep doing what we're doing, we are going to run out of some precious resource.

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jeff Guo]

And then somehow, at the last minute, catastrophe is averted. I mean, this has happened so often. I feel like we should give it a name.

[Latif Nasser]

I Know, I was going to say, do economists have some kind of, like, wonky name for this?

[Jeff Guo]

Not that I could find. So I'm going to take the opportunity to give this a name.

[Latif Nasser]

Jeff. It is yours. Yours is a name.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay. Please. I. I think we should call this the Malthusian swerve.

[Latif Nasser]

Swerve. Malthusian swerve. Okay. And why that?

[Jeff Guo]

Because, remember, do you remember Thomas Malthus?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. And I. If I remember, he. His whole thing was like. You tell me what his whole thing was like.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. So he was this famous English philosopher type. He lived, you know, in the. He grew up in the 1700s, pretty much around the time that coal was taken over England.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Right. So he was seeing a lot of this happen, and he's famous for predicting that humanity's growth would hit a limit, that, you know, populations would grow faster than we could provide food for them. Right. And so the future of humanity was to be limited and trapped by our own lack of resources, and that everybody would just be miserable and sad and poor and hungry forever.

[Latif Nasser]

He does not sound like he would have been fun at parties.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, yeah, he was a real bummer. But maybe what he's more famous for is that none of that happened. The reason that Malthus prophecy didn't come true.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Is due to what I would say is the most important Malthusian swerve of all time.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay.

[Jeff Guo]

And this one is fertilizer.

[Latif Nasser]

Right?

[Jeff Guo]

Right.

[Latif Nasser]

What was like, the green revolution or whatever? Right. Is that right?

[Jeff Guo]

The fertilizer revolution.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

So I don't know if you want to hear the guano story, please.

[Latif Nasser]

I love the guano story. I know the guano story, but I love the guano story, and I want to hear you tell.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay, let's do it together then. Yeah. So, like, the most. So, like. So this is like the 1800. A little bit after Malthus time. In the 1800s, Europeans are starting to realize you can really supercharge food production if you use better fertilizer.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Right. And specifically, there's this one fertilizer that indigenous people in South America were using that was amazing.

[Latif Nasser]

Guano. Guano, which is basically just bird poop.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jeff Guo]

Okay. So basically, you would have all these seabirds, and they would poop on these rocky islands and coastlines along South America, and the poop would just accumulate. So the Europeans. So, like, in the 1800s, the Europeans are importing hundreds and thousands of tons. They're literally fighting war over control of these guano islands. Like, Spain is getting into wars with Peru and Chile. Like, just who gets to seize the poop islands?

[Latif Nasser]

Right.

[Jeff Guo]

But the problem is, we were using guano way faster than the birds could, you know, make the guano.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And then in the 1900s, in the early 1900s, some German chemists figured out a way to basically make synthetic guano. They invented an industrial process to literally pull nitrate, nitrogen. Yeah. That's like the key ingredient in guano.

[Latif Nasser]

Right, right, right.

[Jeff Guo]

Pull it out of the air and make synthetic fertilizer.

[Latif Nasser]

And that is. That is on the order of, like, alchemy discovery. Like, that is like, this thing that. That is super abundant in the air all around us. It is literally the majority of the air, but it was unusable. And then there was a hack where we then figured out how to make it usable. That seems like that's, like, a miraculous technological breakthrough.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, it's a miraculous story. And it is, like, maybe one of the best examples of this thing that I'm going to call the Malthusian swerve.

[Latif Nasser]

Swerve. I like it. I like it. So the swerve is like. It's like. When you say swerve, I'm picturing, like, it's like a car about to collide into a cliff, and then right at the last second, swerves out of the way.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

And Malthus is driving the car, thinking that, of course we're gonna hit the cliff. And then really, it's like the passenger who then just, like. Just like, yanks the steering wheel. It's like, nope, not gonna happen. Right. At the last second, we figured it out.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. And if you look at human history, this is a pattern that happens over and over again.

[Latif Nasser]

I find this somewhat of a relief. It is sort of encouraging. But it also seems like there's so much drama here.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

There might be a time where we can't swerve in time. Like, what. What happens if and when we can't swerve in time? And also, I would argue, sometimes the swerves. Sometimes we swerve right into another cliff. So, for example, this. The. The example you. You talked about, from charcoal to coal, which is great for the trees, except after a while, it's also bad for the trees. Right. Like, it's like global rising temperatures lead to wildfires, lead to trees not able. They once were able to grow. Like, it's like we're.

[Jeff Guo]

It's true, but we've bought ourselves more time.

[Latif Nasser]

Fair.

[Jeff Guo]

Right. We've bought ourselves more time, but then.

[Latif Nasser]

We just always use that time to step on the gas to the next thing. Right? And then maybe when we do swerve, then we swerve into something worse. Something that causes, you know, war, exploitation or, or, or just messes up the planet in a way that you. That is un. Swerve backable from.

[Jeff Guo]

I mean, yes, that is all totally right. It is a mess. But, but, you know, to help us unpack it, I think we should talk about a swerve that we are in the middle of right now.

[Latif Nasser]

Actually. First we're going to swerve to brake, but only for a minute. Then we'll swerve back and step on the gas directly towards a currently oncoming cliff.

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[Jeff Guo]

So we have been talking about a couple historical examples of this, this thing I'm calling the Malthusian swerve, where it looks like society is about to run out of some resource, but at the last minute, some new resource or idea or innovation comes along and saves the day. And when I was looking into this, I was like, okay, is there a more recent example? Is there an example of a Malthusian swerve that happened just in the last couple years? And you know what? There is one oil.

[Latif Nasser]

Oh, we're in the middle of the Malthusian oil.

[Jeff Guo]

We are, yes. Remember, do you remember, like in the 80s and 90s, all of the talk about peak oil?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Do you remember?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and even before that, like, I think in the 70s and stuff like it's like that. We keep, we keep having this conversation over and over again. Peak oil.

[Jeff Guo]

Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You have people, you have geologists, distinguished geologists saying, warning us that, you know, we're going to run out of oil, that we're going to reach peak oil very soon. And that, well, you just told, you.

[Latif Nasser]

Just said it in 52 years or whatever. Like, you just said it the same thing. Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Well, back in the 1990s, they were saying it's gonna happen in the 2000s, they were saying, oh, crap, like we're gonna start running out in the year like 2000 something.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And if you look at oil production. Like. Yeah, it does. Especially in the U.S. yeah, it does kind of start to slow down in the 2000s. A lot of people were wondering about, what are we gonna do? How are we gonna adapt? How are we gonna move away from oil? And if you look at the. You'll see the oil production, it goes, kind of starts to dip in the 2000s, and then it starts to rise again more and more and more. There's a swerve, and that was caused by the fracking revolution.

[Latif Nasser]

But is that a swerve? Like, I mean, if we're. Now we just found another way to get more fossil fuels. Like, is that even really. That feels like a. We swerved and swerved right back in the same direction.

[Jeff Guo]

That is one way to think about it. The way to think about it is like, it's a mini swerve, you know, like, oh, crap, we're running into the cliff. We can't find any alternatives. But we did find a way to get a little bit more oil out of the ground in the meantime.

[Latif Nasser]

But, but, but in a way, running out of oil isn't even necessarily the problem here. The, the problem is the thing it's doing for everything else.

[Jeff Guo]

It's. It's true. The problem with fossil fuels, it's not that we're gonna run out of them. We have too much of them. It's too easy to go and find oil in the ground. It's too easy. We have a problem that's not. It's not a scarcity problem. It's an anti scarcity problem. Right. And then we burn them and then there's these horrible side effects for the environment. And then the world's getting hotter and wildfires are popping up. Like, that's.

[Latif Nasser]

It's a much harder sell, though. It's a much harder sell to tell people, we have too much of this thing. That's gonna hurt you as opposed to, we have not enough of this thing. So take care of it.

[Jeff Guo]

Yes. That is the key thing here, I think, like, you look at how these Malthusian swerves, if we're gonna call it that, how they.

[Latif Nasser]

I love it. I love it. Keep doing it.

[Jeff Guo]

How that. How did they happen? Right? And it was people who were motivated by the terror of. We're gonna crash into this giant problem right. In so many years, and we need.

[Latif Nasser]

To figure out necessity is the mother of invention kind of thing.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

Desperation is the inventor's best friend.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, yeah. Right. And you look at how an economy works, and I'm saying this is the, the ideal way to operate. But an economy works through incentives.

[Latif Nasser]

It's one of those things where the more you use, the less you have. The less you have, the higher the price. The higher the price. Then all of a sudden new pockets of that resource that would have been too expensive before to get now become unlocked.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, exactly. Or also we might try to innovate. Right. Like now there's an incentive to invent something newer, cheaper, better than what we had before. Like, I would bring up the example of like lithium. Right now there is so much money and if you can invent a battery that doesn't need lithium, you will like, I don't know, win the Nobel Prize. Right? Like you will like there is a lot of energy and motivation to solve that problem.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And if we were all just going to be like, well, we just, we don't need that much lithium because we're just going to conserve it and recycle it and we're not going to grow, then what's the point of trying to make anything more efficient or better? There's no incentive.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, but it just, it feels like a, like a trap. Like, and an especially capitalist kind of a trap where the only thing that will inspire us to innovate or to swerve, to use your word, is the immediate danger of the cliff. Like, like, like, like, I mean we're, we're talking about resources and economics, GDP and blah, blah, blah. But really this is all like a head game. It's like all like people's minds work in this very specific way and long term thinking hard for us. And, and it's like we've got this system that leans into a thing that is already a problem with us. And the way we think, it's like we're just gonna use it as long as it's there. And when it starts to almost not be there, we'll figure out something else.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, right. How do we get people to actually do the thing that is in the long term interests of everybody? Do you like, is the solution to have like some intergalactic Queen Elizabeth come down and say, no, no, no, no, guys, you're using way too much oil. You gotta stop. You gotta stop. You gotta put a pause on it. Right. Is it that or is it sort of we're all left to our own devices and some combination of the free market and also government leaders worrying about this thing hash out some kind of, you know, compromise that's kind of what we're stuck in right now.

[Latif Nasser]

But like we're also smart enough to can't we figure out a system where we don't have to just drive into the cliff and swerve at the last minute every time, you know?

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah.

[Latif Nasser]

If this was your car and there was. I mean, this is such a weird analogy. There's only one car and you. Whoever is in the driver's seat, really, it's all of us. But whoever's in the driver's seat keeps driving pedal to the metal, accelerating faster and faster. At cliffs, you would take their keys away, you'd be like, sorry, this. You are not faster fit to drive.

[Jeff Guo]

It's scary.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. I don't know. Why do we keep doing that then? Do you think growth is inevitable? Do you think growth is good after all of this? What is your take on growth in particular?

[Jeff Guo]

I think that growth is. Maybe we should talk about what growth even is. There are always going to be parts of the economy that we point at and we're going to say that's bad growth. We don't want that. But growth is not just us burning a lot of fossil fuels and polluting the planet. Right. Growth can be good. Like growth could be starting a new business, mentoring kids, inventing a new kind of medicine that saves lives. That is also growth. And so for me, I guess it's hard for me to say that growth is bad and maybe it's because I've just been too economics pilled. But when people say the word growth to me, I think of a country like China. You know, China's economy grew so fast that it lifted 800 million people out of poverty.

[Latif Nasser]

Incredible, right?

[Jeff Guo]

It's like hard to say that.

[Latif Nasser]

Impossible seeming.

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah, it's hard to say that's bad.

[Latif Nasser]

That's funny. That was probably the population of the entire Earth in Malchus, right?

[Jeff Guo]

Yeah. And that's amazing. And so I think it's about figuring out specific things that we can do to be smarter about it to make it less harmful. But I don't know.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, I agree with that. Like we all have needs and there are increasingly more of us. But I do think that taking like. I still am sort of struck by the Sandy Faber's like stone cold, like zoom out. There's nothing that's wrong about that logic either. She just has a seemingly a different priority than most economists, which is like she's thinking at a different scale.

[Sandra Faber]

We have been given the gift of cosmic time. We have hundreds of millions of years, if not another billion years. But we have not solved the problem of combining human nature with living in abundance.

[Latif Nasser]

So I should tell You. We actually ended up talking to Sandy Faber.

[Sandra Faber]

My cosmic point of view at this moment is to try to figure out how people will live the best possible life on Earth after cheap energy has passed away.

[Latif Nasser]

And telling her about your Malthusian swerve idea.

[Sandra Faber]

Where is the next swerve? That's, that's the thing. That's the thing specifically with regard to energy. And it sounds like.

[Latif Nasser]

And the thing that she was most concerned about was that energy is just so wrapped up in all these different parts of our lives, basically everything we do, and it has these huge effects on the environment. She says we're actually dealing with a bunch of different cliffs and a bunch of different kinds of cliffs all at the same time.

[Sandra Faber]

Some people call it the poly crisis and some people call it the metacrisis.

[Latif Nasser]

Basically, we're facing a crisis of crises.

[Sandra Faber]

A crisis of crises. Yeah. So every time we think of one of these possible swerves, I'm not saying we shouldn't pursue them, but they leave a large fraction, everyone leaves a gigantic fraction of the problem unsolved. So I would say a huge issue for a long term, happy human history in the future is having a more mature picture of wealth, how it should be managed and how growth should be managed.

[Jeff Guo]

I think Sandy and I were totally in agreement about what we want for the world, for the future. It's just about how we get there. And so can I give you, can I give you my, my, my silly galaxy brain way of thinking about all of this?

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah, please. Please.

[Jeff Guo]

So you're talking about, like, why can't we, this is, you know, the Earth is our home, so why can't we all, you know, get together and take care of it.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

And cooperate and all of that. Right. And if you're just a household of like a couple people, you have a relationship, if you're just a village, you like, know everybody, you, you know, you can help each other out.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah.

[Jeff Guo]

Give each other things, all of that. But yeah, when, when you get bigger and bigger, when you get to the scale of countries and like the world. Right. It's very hard to get people to cooperate. It's very, very hard. Everybody has different opinions. No one's going to agree. Everybody's going to have different motives. And what an economy is, is a way of turning all of that, of organizing us at a global scale into something productive. And obviously, you know, the economy is not perfect. There are all kinds of problems we didn't even have the time to talk about today. But when it comes to dealing with Issues of scarcity, like running out of some resource markets, are a tool that, you know, historically have kind of worked. Even if it's been super messy and dramatic and swervy and may have created way bigger problems down the road. I'm not saying that the economy is the answer. Right. But it does give me a little bit of hope that the economy finds a way. Most of the time, hopefully.

[Latif Nasser]

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. Are we talking about a swerve away from resources or should we really be talking about a swerve away from a certain kind of thinking or a certain kind of economy, or just thinking about growth in general? It's true, you're right that an economy is a way to organize a globe. But like. But maybe we need to be acting more like a household. Cause we only have this one house.

[Jeff Guo]

If you can figure out a way to do that, they will give you a Nobel Prize, like on the spot, I guarantee.

[Latif Nasser]

Okay, well, thank you, Jeff. I don't know if you exactly chased away my existential dread, but I appreciate you sort of holding my hand through it.

[Jeff Guo]

That's all we have in the end. Each other.

[Latif Nasser]

That's right.

[Jeff Guo]

That was my conversation with the ferociously curious and thoughtful Latif Nasser over at Radiolab. We are huge fans of their podcast. They tackle all these big questions and little questions with so much joy and wonder. They just did an episode on other kinds of growth. So, like, can fingertips grow back? Or how do you grow the biggest pumpkin in the world? Though I gotta add, my favorite episode of theirs recently has to do with this weird quirk in the law where you can kind of plead guilty and not guilty at the same time. It's really weird. And it has to do with spoiler. The economics of justice. Anyway, a big thanks to the Radiolab team, Pat Walters and Soren Wheeler, who edited and produced this conversation. Natalie Middleton, who fact checked it. They're running a version of this episode in their feed. Our version was produced by Emma Peaslee and edited by Jess Jiang and Alex Goldmark. And a special thanks to Jennifer Brandel. I'm Jeff Guo. This is npr. Thanks for listening. Are we overlooking the challenges facing men without college degrees? Richard Reeves thinks so.

[Latif Nasser]

There are a lot of guys out there who are actually poorer than their dads.

[Jeff Guo]

Reeves heads the American Institute for Boys and Men.

[Latif Nasser]

Have we updated our view about the role of men as quickly as we've changed the economy around them? And the answer is no.

[Jeff Guo]

That's from a recent Planet Money bonus episode. A look at the economic and cultural struggles of working class men. To hear it and get sponsor free listening, Sign up for NPR. Just go to plus.NPR.org.