You will need, in average climate, 20 m2 of thermal solar collectors for power and heat.  Five times that for North Americans.

will let you reduce the size of those solar collectors.

In short, I would try to preserve as much of the natural integrity of the local ecosystem as possible. Plants grown for food and medicine would have to be integrated into the landscape and take advantage of as many ecosystem services as possible -- to reduce labor required for producing food, fiber, and shelter. I would also try to preserve the genetic diversity of what I have. Every bug and plant species would have to be preserved. One never knows what might be useful. But at the same time, I would have to work harder to eliminate exotic organisms -- monocultures of honeysuckle, thistle, buckthorn, et cetera -- and replace them with a variety of native plants.

As far as minerals and fossil fuels are concerned, I would have to use them very sparingly. I certainly wouldn't just discard them or burn them like there was no tomorrow, but would "invest" them in building infrastructure that might protect and sustain my family and my tiny Eden long after such resources are consumed. Though I doubt I would ever just throw away mineral resources... I would have to recycle everything.

Anyway... that's my quick response.

The question is very thought provoking. It would be a good exercise for everyone, from children to corporate executives. It really puts things in perspective.

Forward!

It also occurred to me that I would want to conserve water, but this exposes the dark side of the issue. I would feel compelled to save every drop that lands on my six acres, which would mean absolutely no runoff to feed local streams, wetlands, and lakes. But I guess there would not be any streams, wetlands, or lakes. All of us would have the same amount of water landing on our bit of Earth... no need to share. And I assume there woud be no organisms dependent on large bodies of water. In fact, there would be no natural commons. There would be no specialization. Every person would have to be a jack of all trades. No engineers. No doctors. No trade. This would certainly reduce the very need for resources. I suppose we would all be gardeners and philosophers. I can't decide whether that is a good thing.

Forward!

This is one of the best imaginative exercises that I have read in a long time. It isn't necessarily hopeful, since it is likely that during my lifetime the surface area each person is entitled will be down to under 4 acres.

Special thanks to the folks who have contributed asteroid scale numbers for their own specialties and interests!

Anyone else care to chip in?

More news, good or bad, about the asteroid in small, per-capita numbers would be very welcome.

mt

brilliant job, michael!

this is an amazing way to visualize the issues without getting lost in scale. while obviously there are specifics to be considered in your analogy, i think it's important to remember that it's an analogy and not get too lost in the minutiae. the Earth is only so big. we can only expect so much from it.

personally, as awful as some of my neighbors behave, i'm glad i'm sharing the planet. cooperation will be key to the effective use of our limited resources.

now if only we could get everyone to behave responsibly!

It is hard for me to know quite what to do with this.  The unreal circumstances of the hypothetical situation fill me with horror, and my mind is unable to think of anything but the excellent observation of WiscIdea:
<<
There would be no specialization. Every person would have to be a jack of all trades. No engineers. No doctors. No trade. This would certainly reduce the very need for resources. I suppose we would all be gardeners and philosophers. I can't decide whether that is a good thing.
>>

I cannot imagine doing anything other than to curl up and die.

And that seems to be the point of Saint-Exupery's parable, surely one of the greatest stories of the last century, which is about loneliness, finding friendship, and losing one's heart to another out of love.

The Little Prince was in fact a good conservator of his asteroid.  He had a couple of volcanoes, which can be seen in Oleg Pikhurko's illustration; and he would clean them out regularly, with a kind of feather-duster, "parce qu'avec les volcans, on ne sait jamais" -- with volcanoes, one never knows.  He had a talking Rose, whom he tended carefully, and kept under a glass dome.  But she was cold, and never thanked him, and pretended to be independent.  She would show off her single thorn, and say, "Let the tigers come, with their claws!"  And so, out of loneliness, he leaves.

It is interesting that the Little Prince's experiences on Earth involve companionship with animals.  When he first encounters the narrator, he asks him to draw him a sheep.  Later, there is the remarkable little story of the taming of the fox.  Finally, there is the mysterious understanding with the venomous serpent.

In that connexion, when we consider Jeffrey Sachs's "big question," "whether all of us can fit comfortably on this planet," I hope we acknowledge that "us" refers -- or ought to refer -- to all the Earth's biodiversity, including of course a full complement of human beings, but by no means only them.

We need companionship, friendship, society.  Without those things, there can be no life.  Michael Tobis understands this, as he makes clear toward the end.  I look forward to his village parable.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

Your thought experiment is missing an important component.  Here on planet earth everyone can interact with their neighbor, in your scenario there is no such interaction.   If the asteroids were such that a person could easily go from one to another I would think this would be a better simulation.  

In the case where people can move from one asteroid to another and communicate with each other you could organize raiding parties, and take over and exploit other asteroids.   The strongest and best organized groups would take over many asteroids and have mighty kingdoms capturing all unfortunate asteroids that come near.  Resources from conquered asteroids would be used to enhance the asteroids of the strongest.  

This is more realistic to what happens on planet earth.  I can't think of much interest in maintaining a sustainable asteroid in this case, you would be working away making a very nice asteroid when a raiding party from the asteroid empire of  Gruffendumb arrives throws you out into space takes all the fish from the small ocean, the crops from the land, all the oil, etc.  then casts your asteroid away in the trash.

The reason to think about the analogy is to think about the spatial limits that the world and its present population put upon us.

Obviously it is not a good model either for physics or for behavior. The idea here is to make it palpable how much space we each have to put all of our impacts, visible or otherwise. It's a way to think about the earth's surface and humanity's impact on it.

Please don't think about how you would feel or what the escape velocity would be, any more thna you think about how the Little Prince got his clothes or learned to speak French.

By being alone on the asteroid, you represent the entirety of humanity, not an individual.

When you think about the asteroid, think about what you and the systems that serve you as an individual pull out of the earth, and where you put the detritus. The asteroid will tell you what the world would look like if your behavior was typical.

A similar model, scaled up to the village, will allow us to think about ourselves. How we treat our six billion fellow humans is hard to think about. When we scale it to six thousand neighbors it comes into sharper focus, and will feel less strange. Both scales have something to tell us.

mt

We are over the sustainability limits of our resources now.  No laws or regulations are going to change the fact that we can not sustain the current population without fossil fuels and nuclear power.

So here are our choices:

 Enforce draconian measures to reduce the world population.  Set targets for a population/energy balance in line with fossil fuel and nuclear energy limits.  Then try to keep a stable population in line with sustainable practices.  

 Use fossil fuels until they depleted then let the law of jungle determine who lives and who dies.

The problem is that we won't do choice 1.  So we are stuck with choice 2, hence my story about raiding parties and the ugly future.  We can talk about sustainable practices and everyone sacrificing together to live a simple lifestyle thinking about future generation and sharing with each other and living in harmony with nature.  We can also talk about how the magic fairies will come and give us infinite energy resources.  Both discussions lead to the same end.

That is why your thought experiment is meaningless to me.  It does not address the central issue, which is:  How do we get to a sustainable population and get there before non-renewable energy runs out?  Our asteroids need to bigger.

I think GtoeOne overstates the problem a bit but I agree that those stark statements are at least partially ture. I don't deny that the analogy does not solve the problem GO describes.

The analogy is intended to make the problem more clear to those who don't see it yet.

I am a committed optimist. I think there's a best path out of any situation and I try to find it. Even if GO's sad analysis is completely correct, we will do better in getting out of it if more people understand it.

That understanding is the purpose of the analogy. Anyone who already gets it is welcome to move on.

Thinking about it this way changed the way I myslef look at the situation. For me, the sustainability problem is going to be modeled as "six acres and shrinking" from now on.

On the other hand, the solar numbers somebody posted seem about right, (I checked) which certainly leaves some room for optimism.

mt