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Now this one’s a real paradox. If we crank up the world’s economy, does that not increase the cycle of more energy being required and thus generated? (China loves coal), more raw resources being used?, more CO2 put into the atmosphere?, etc., etc.??? Since the amount of resources on the planet is indeed fixed, the day of reconing is just pushed to the right. So, as the population is allowed to explode one more time, in the end we get immense poverty, which is what the UN is trying to avert. Now I find this very very interesting in deed.
By the way, one last point on our protracted debate; the reason animal populations flatline is because of one or two reasons: as their numbers increase, the predator population also increases which brings things back into balance (we will include disease as a preator for simplicity); or if no predators, the habitat eventually can’t sustain them. Humans have only one predator to worry about, that’s other humans. So as I see it, we either end up in some fantastics wars, or we run out of resources (if we are lucky, the earth visits some interesting plagues to head this off). Anyway, most likely the second option will begin to accelerate, which brings about the first. What a fix we are in!
M
M,
I am in agreement over all you say here. We are in deep trouble and most of the paths folks envision as leading forward, only lead to slight variations of the terrible end game that’s coming.
In truth, I believe there is no alternative to controlling and diminishing human population and scaling back our resource use footprint to something that fits within the renewable resources capabilities of the planet.
And while those are valid goals, getting from current behaviors to a place where we’ve implemented those goals will be very difficult – even if we were all on the same page and wanting to implement them.
Nope. It is going to get ugly.