Firstly, I know. I’ve been bad. I’ve neglected this blog, on account of travel and work pressure. I hope to do a redesign and relaunch some time to make it easier to integrate this blog with my columns and Twitter activity.

That time is not now.

On The Daily Maverick, I recently wrote a column about “fracking” in the Karoo. It was, shall we say, explosive. It got hundreds of comments, many of which I tried to do justice with a reply. It took me four days to write the column, and another three — working 16-hour days — to keep up with the debate. Contrary to the allegations, I do not have the resources of Shell behind me. It’s just me.

However, since then, several posts have appeared challenging my views. Although I thought most of the points were mere rehashes of the great debate at The Daily Maverick, I did write a response to one of them. Since the M&G ThoughtLeader site does not permit comments longer than 250 words, and the author’s own blog doesn’t permit comments at all, some people have asked me to post my response elsewhere. So, here it is. It’s probably best to read them side-by-side:

Allow me to respond, point by point.

* I did not confuse the water use for exploration with total usage. I referred to the former because that is what the Havemann report objects to in calling for a total ban on exploration that could lead to hydraulic fracking. I was clear elsewhere that shale gas production regions typically account for 1.5% of local water use. I noted that this was not insignificant, especially in a dry region. I was also clear that I expect Shell to answer the question of where it will get this water, but that such a demand falls well short of banning drilling, now and forever.

* I did not state that we can trust Shell. What I said was that Shell has a motive not to give the public cause for complaints. I expect Shell to be held to its contractual commitments, just like anyone else.

* Regulatory capture can hardly be blamed on the companies that operate in the regulated space. It happens because of ill-conceived regulation, or outright corruption. Nowhere did I defend this.

* The precautionary principle logically contradicts itself, as I repeatedly stated in the comments to my column (which, despite their extraordinarily high number I kept replying to, as a matter of courtesy and responsibility). It is not possible to prove the absence of risk. Even if it were, not doing something because it might cause harm does not take into account the potential harm caused by not doing it. The precautionary principle says that the precautionary principle cannot be applied because we cannot know the risk of applying the precautionary principle. The point is: show a reasonable expectation of future harm, if you want to ban something. Citing lack of evidence for such harm as a cause to ban something would significantly delay or even block progress.

* If Bob says you stole his chocolate, and you say you didn’t, mere evidence that Bob no longer has his chocolate is not proof that you stole it. I’m sure most of us can see why the logic is perfectly fine.

* Vague allegations, without any specific evidence. Show the evidence.

* Noting that problems are not associated with hydraulic fracturing shows dishonesty, in that the objection is to “fracking”. If drilling is the problem, then say so, so we can argue honestly about the same thing. Of course, that risks having to face the fact that drilling is an even more ordinary activity, about which the risks are well-understood.

* The Environmental Protection Agency is not cited. In fact, doing so would be impossible, because all I said about it was that it would produce preliminary results in late 2012. (I did this to contrast Havemann’s rush job, and to suggest that it might be premature to call for a ban on all future exploration for shale gas.)

* I noted their objectives not to expose bias, but to show that their stated goals go well beyond expressing concern about specific risks. Yes, I’m ideologically a free-market advocate. My other opinions derive from this. I make no apologies for that.

* I attach little value to the greenhouse gas implications of shale gas drilling. Never mind that I don’t believe our own impact on climate change is alarming, but drilling for natural gas is hardly new, and the process against which the TKAG objects does nothing to increase the risk.

* On jobs, all I’d point out is that jobs created by market forces are sustainable. Those created by subsidies and handouts are not jobs, but charity for which everyone else pays tax.

Since you stopped using bullets, allow me to note what I placed in my postscript. I entirely support the right of Karoo farmers to make decisions about their own property. That they do not own their mineral rights, so that Shell does not have to negotiate with them and conclude binding contracts with all the guarantees and compensation clauses farmers might require is not the fault of farmers, nor of Shell, and certainly not of their technique for extracting shale gas. It is the fault of the government.

If you want to object to the powerlessness of Karoo farmers, aim your critique at the right target, and complain about the right problem.

Excuse the lack of formatting. I really am rather swamped at present, as interesting and important as this debate is.

I’ve been travelling, so my blog was not updated last week. It was an entertaining week, however. While I was chairing the highly informative ITWeb MobileBiz conference in Midrand, I was ambushed on Twitter by a fellow who took issue with my column on The Daily Maverick.

I thought the column in question was rather sweet and optimistic: Go ahead, have a baby.

This fellow begged to differ, so I wrote a response this week. It is long, and complete with plentiful citations to satisfy the critic. In a way, it is the serious, academic version of the same column: A glass half-full.

When the depth of the country’s electricity crisis became apparent in January this year, I noted with some amazement that Alec “The Bolt” Erwin, the minister in charge of public “enterprises”, told us it wouldn’t harm our economic growth. He seems to believe in the notion that if the collective decrees it, so it shall be. Why he didn’t just exclaim “fiat lux” we’ll never know. Surely, this would solve the perception problems South Africans seem to have in the dark?

I, on the other hand, called him an idiot who learnt nothing in economics lectures. I thought those who don’t believe Africans can run a competent government would claim vindication. I predicted severe inflation, and said that we’d be lucky if GDP stayed in positive territory. We can forget about poverty alleviation and job creation, I wrote elsewhere. Privately, I said, “by this time next year [meaning January 2009] we’ll be in recession”, but I couldn’t find anyone who’d accept even an even-odds bet on it.

Some commenters accused me of being overly negative, and several called me an afro-pessimist. I am pessimistic, yes, but it has nothing to do with people or geography. On the contrary, I have good reason to have faith in the ingenuity and productivity of free people, even in — or especially in — adverse conditions. My pessimism has to do with economics and government.

Maybe I was negative, but lo, just a month later, the first signs of the massive impact on growth in the mining sector became apparent.

Now, four months on, South Africa has double-digit inflation for the first time since our liberation. The central bank has jacked up interest rates by a massive 4.5 percentage points already, and its governor, Tito Mboweni, has just threatened a staggering further hike of two percentage points, which would bring it to 13.5%.

Our economic growth has crashed to not much more than 2% — thanks in part to a staggering 22% decline in the mining sector. The proximate cause? Power cuts, of course.

So now we face that dread curse of inflation that doesn’t buy growth: stagflation. Even the unions now argue that we’re heading for recession.

In response, finance minister Trevor Manuel seems intent on jumping off the same rhetorical cliff as The Bolt. He told parliament not to worry, “The slowdown we are experiencing is of a short-term nature.” He describes the causes of this deepening economic crisis as “short-term turbulences”. There will be growth! Fiat auctus!

Is delusion of competence a contagious condition? Is this what Thabo Mbeki means when he said that cabinet takes “collective responsibility for the decisions taken over 14 years”?

My initial response to Mbeki’s apology was, “Well, off you go then, the lot of you! One takes responsibility by resigning.” I had not considered that all Mbeki meant was that cabinet would get its collective story straight, and collectively play God, because what they say is all that matters. The rest is just racism or neo-colonialism or afro-pessimism or negativity or sensationalism or media hyperbole. Reality is created on command. Truth is what the government declares it to be. Hence its attempts to censor the media and establish its own party-run newspaper.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not writing this to say I told you so (though I did). I’m not gloating that I know more about elementary economics than our minister of public enterprises (though I do). I’m the most modest person I know, after all (though besides that I have few failings).

I’m just wondering who dared disobey the honourable Alec Erwin’s command that growth would not be affected. I want to find the faithless exploiters of our collectivist misery, and expose them to public denunciation. Put them in the pillory and throw stuff at them, counter-revolutionary traitors that they are.

There’s bad news on the platinum front: AngloPlat’s output has fallen by a quarter. But, says Business Report, there’s a silver lining:

Power cuts and flooding cut platinum output by up to 24%

Cape Town — Power cuts and flooding had resulted in refined platinum production falling as much as 24 percent to 428 600 ounces in the quarter to March, compared to the same period last year, Anglo Platinum said yesterday.

But the power shortages at local platinum mines, which dominate global production, has had a silver lining, as platinum prices shot through the $2 000 (R15 172) an ounce barrier earlier this year to reach a record of $2 255 last month.

Wonder if they’d write the same about food producers. “Bread output is down by a third, and milk production is 25% lower. Lucky their prices went through the roof, so company financials won’t suffer too much.”

Maybe it hasn’t occurred to this reporter that the PR spin from AngloPlat, that price increases made up for production losses, is just that: spin. If they had kept production up, the price would still have increased (albeit by a bit less, perhaps), and AngloPlat results would have been significantly better. You want to sell into rising prices, not sit on the sidelines while your competitors do. Without the production losses, investors would have earned more capital appreciation, which they could have re-invested, which would have improved South Africa’s current account balance, and which would have bolstered overall economic growth.

Instead, the jobs and incomes of mineworkers have been put at risk by lower output. Silver lining? That AngloPlat’s numbers are reasonable despite its inability to exploit rising prices? Tell that to unemployed miners when they can’t put food on the table next month. Perhaps the mineworkers can send a press release to Business Report saying that their second quarter calorie-intake was worse than expected, but in the context of higher unemployment levels in the broader economy they didn’t do too badly, and there’s a silver lining: at least they don’t have to risk the mining safety issues Anglo Platinum management has attributed to the power cuts.

In 1979, Jerry Pournelle, a science fiction author famed for his columns in computer magazine, Byte, wrote a non-fiction book, titled A Step Farther Out. The book was a fascinating collection of essays, rich with ideas and ideals. It would probably bear re-reading even three decades on.

Pournelle decried the defunding of space exploration, arguing that the moon had become viewed as a destination, rather than merely a first step of man’s journey into space. Motivated, no doubt, by apocalyptic visions of the population explosion, his argument was that not only was this the first generation that had the resources to expand into space, but it might well be the last. Moreover, the solutions to the world’s energy crisis and resource shortage, lay in space.

I think this is what he had in mind:

My word, Jerry Pournelle turns 75 this year!

Mike Naicker is a white oke, but don’t call him that to his face. He hails from the capital of India, Durban, and has a YouTube riff on South Africa’s electricity crisis:

It’s very funny. But it’s not funny. Here is Bloomberg’s take:

Gold is above $900 an ounce and platinum has never been higher, yet traders are selling the South African rand faster than any other major currency because President Thabo Mbeki can’t keep the lights on.

Rather go to Mike Naicker’s excellent site. It’s less depressing.

It’s unnerving how often one is faced with declarations about the desirability of fewer people on earth, in response to criticisms of environmentalist politicking. Fewer of us, so the reasoning goes, would improve quality of life, and would be good for the environment.

Forgive me for not joining this little death cult. Forty years ago almost to the day, an obscure lapidopterist named Paul Ehrlich generalised Malthusian theories about population growth in butterflies, and published a book which essentially replaced all occurrences of the word “insect” with “human”. The Population Bomb exploded (sorry) upon the world. It made hysterical predictions of exponential population growth that would inevitably lead to catastrophic resource depletion and mass starvation in the 1970s. As if the coming ice age didn’t cause enough stress. Ehrlich’s book advocated radical population control measures. The apocalyptic over-population vision was reinforced by a best-selling book published by the Club of Rome in 1972, entitled The Limits to Growth, in which the collapse of human development and population was predicted as a result of exponential growth in demand for limited resources. The failure of these prophesies of doom hasn’t changed the authors’ minds. They went on to write further books, renewing their end-of-the-world predictions, the most amusing being Beyond the Limits, published in 1993.

Yet resources stubbornly refused to be exhausted. In 1990, Paul Ehrlich mailed economist Julian Simon a cheque for $576.07, as a result of a 1980 futures contract on five metals of Ehrlich’s choosing. Both agreed that market prices were an adequate proxy for scarcity, and since Ehrlich predicted more scarcity, he would have made a profit on the $1 000 futures contract had prices risen. Instead, all declined, by an average of more than 50%, and Ehrlich spectacularly lost his bet.

Likewise, people stubbornly refused to starve en masse. Not only has the proportion of people suffering malnourishment declined to a third of the 1970 level of 35%, but the absolute number is down from over 900 million to 400 million, despite the inconvenient truth that the world’s population doubled over the same period, and despite the fact that this population growth was heavily biased towards to the poor world to boot.

Thanks to the consistent and often spectacular failure of such predictions of developmental disaster, it has become clear that the earth can sustain rather more people than expected. Why is this so? Because population growth isn’t exponential after all. It doesn’t simply grow until resources are depleted, at which point Gaia takes Mathusian revenge and decimates the parasite that is homo sapiens. (This suggests that terms like “parasite”, “virus” and “cancer”, which are habitually used by Gaia’s death cultists to describe you and me and humanity in general, might not be entirely fair either.)

In fact, global human population is likely to stabilise over time. Already, global population growth is slowing, both in relative and absolute terms, and the UNDP estimates that the total population of Earth will reach a plateau of around 11 billion people, ca. 2200. Why is this so? Because as more people get more prosperous, life expectancy increases and mortality rates decline. As a result, people tend to have fewer children, and the children they do have contribute to this prosperity, rather than detract from it.

And why can the earth sustain this? Why have resources become less scarce rather than more scarce? Because Earth is pretty large, for one, and because production isn’t a zero-sum game that simply depletes resources in a one-to-one relationship with population size. What Julian Simon understood is that the price mechanism militates against the uncontrolled exploitation environmentalists fear, because scarcity is priced into our ability to use resources productively. And again, the more prosperous we get, the more we invest in sustainability, the more sophisticated and technically skilled we get at resource management, the more we care about a healthy and productive environment, and the more we value future sustainability over present consumption. And the fewer children we have.

As the rich world amply demonstrates, successful economic development is not the problem, it’s the solution to uncontrolled population growth and unmanaged resource exploitation. There’s no reason why the same would not hold true for the developing world. Opposing their development, on mistaken sustainability grounds, is not only a selfish type of neo-colonialism on the part of the rich world’s environmentalists, but it strikes me as pretty misanthropic.

Yet Gaia’s suicide cultists sound like they would consider a culling spree desirable. They sound like they want to stop the developing world from either developing or growing. Not to say that industrial development is desirable at any cost. That’s clearly not true. But the Gaiists are always willing to sacrifice any industrialisation, development or human activity in favour of environmental protection, no matter how necessary the development is, or how tenuous the environmental danger is. Many of them stand ready to use any means — vandalism, legislative force, high seas piracy, emotional blackmail, outright lies — to achieve their anti-social aims.

Even assuming that one can handle the rather sociopathic notion of reducing the earth’s population by a few billion and leaving the remainder poorer than they are today, such a situation would be unlikely to relieve the pressure on animal populations and environmental resources that really are deserving of protection.

On the contrary. Some of the worst historical environmental damage was caused on a planet peopled by only a fraction of today’s population, at only a fraction of today’s living standards. The evidence simply doesn’t bear out the theory. With fewer people around, well-meaning do-gooders would still be fretting about some messianic mission of “saving” the planet, but ironically, they’d have a harder time doing so.

The environment turns out to be pretty robust. In general (as opposed to localised exceptions) the image of a fragile, super-sensitive system that could be tipped into disaster by the slightest human (as opposed to natural) disturbance, is simply false.

The environment is, of course, very much worth caring about and investing in, even if only for purely selfish reasons of maintaining a productive resource base. One doesn’t, however, achieve this by getting hysterical about human population and its use of natural resources. One doesn’t save, say, the tiger, by discrediting endangered species protection with ill-conceived, politically-motivated and unnecessary listings of emotional-appeal icons such as the polar bear. One doesn’t achieve a better world by activist obstructionism, designed solely to limit the economic development the world, and halt the modern world’s remarkable progress towards longer, healthier and more prosperous lives for all.

And one certainly doesn’t earn the buy-in of other people when you’re telling them that the world would be better off without them.

The other day, I encountered a new mother, who was all apologetic for having contributed to the population. I told her that her kid would either produce more than it would consume, or die. Therefore, it would be a net benefit to the world. How tragic that she couldn’t conceive of her child being anything other than a burden to humanity.

I often say, in connection with issues such as foreign aid, state subsidies, or celebrities stumping for Africa, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Good intentions alone do not justify policy. The consequences of policy are what matters.

This observation cuts both ways, however. This editorial by Gregory Clark, author of Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World, uses the same aphorism, and then, ironically, proceeds to illustrate the point.

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Last week, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial by John Fund about Roşia Montană¹, a small town in Romania, where Western “environmentalists” such as George Soros and Vanessa Redgrave are trying to stoke up opposition to a proposed gold mine. This is a place with 70% unemployment, where the filthy remnants of Soviet-era mining remain a scar on the landscape, and where 80% of the population voted for a mayor who supports the project because it will create 700 new jobs. The mine will also clean up a lot of the damage done in the past, according to its backers.

The editorial contrasts two documentary films. Opposed is Gold Futures, by Hungary’s Tibor Kocsis, partly funded by Soros. In favour is Mine Your Own Business by Irish journalists and filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney. No surprises which side I back. A Google search suggests that Gold Futures hasn’t exactly aired (on America’s PBS) to rave reviews either.

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1. Rosia Montana, if you can’t see funny characters [↩]

Breathless rumours are doing the rounds that the largest diamond ever found is currently stashed in a Johannesburg bank vault, according to an article by Matthew Hill in Mining Weekly, a South African trade publication. Some reports say it’s as big as a soccer ball. Judging by the picture alongside, either the soccer ball is rather smaller than regulation size, or they’re making huge cellphones again.

Granted, if the claimed size of 7,000 carats is accurate, not only would this diamond be twice as large as the famed Cullinan diamond, which was the world’s largest uncut diamond when it was discovered over a century ago, but it would also be more than 150 times the size of the largest green diamond ever found.

The find was reported to the media by Brett Jolly, described as a director of an obscure property developer named Two Point Five Group, which is apparently a shareholder in the unnamed mine where it was discovered. Jolly and his company appear to be just as mysterious as the claimed diamond. Google knows Two Point Five Group only as a company in New York State company licensed by the state’s Department of Labour as an asbestos contractor.

A story on the claim by Natasha Joseph in the Cape Times quotes “an insider” as saying: “No one has heard anything, not even rumours. The general reaction is that if (the diamond has been found), and if (Jolly) is shooting his mouth off the way he is, we would have known about it.”

I propose the name Kryptonite for the stone. What better to name it after than a piece of cut green plastic used in a film about a mysterious superhero?