Economic success is traditionally measured by positive increases in growth.  The  United States economy isn’t any different.   Economists report on the numbers of new jobs, sales of durable goods, auto sales, houses built and sold, and more.  All of these economic signifiers are reported in percentages.   The higher the value of these positive percentages, the better things look.

U.S. economic growth sustainable, rates to rise in third quarter 2015

The Washington-based forecast for 2015 is a “sustainable” economic growth rate of the United States economy between 2.4% and 3% per cent per year.  A rate of 3% means that our economy will double in twenty-four years.   This certainly sounds good, but as Faust would have you know, there is a price tag for everything.

If the phrase “sustainable growth” has always sounded like slick, political double-speak, Physics Professor Albert Bartlett’s lecture will confirm that your reptile brain’s survival response continues to work correctly.

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” – Prof. Albert Bartlett, 1923 – 2013

According to a Wikipedia entry, Professor Albert Allen Bartlett gave the lecture “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy” 1,742 times.

In this lecture Professor Bartlett examines the simple arithmetic of steady growth, continued over modest periods of time, within a finite environment.  The concept is applied to populations as well as to fossil fuel.

“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global,
whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”
– Prof. Albert Bartlett

Populations effect an impact on environments and resources.   Unchecked population growth amplifies these effects.    On a cellular level, unchecked continuous growth(cancer) will destroy the host organism.   The corollary here is that unrestricted influxes of people into any location will effect change upon the environment and resources.

Gaylord Nelson, originator of Earth Day, had this to say about human populations and the environment:

“The link between population growth and environmental degradation is made often in retrospective studies, which is why they aren’t really considered valid, but clearly more people living better lives is the hallmark of progress.  Activists worried about the environment don’t want better lives unless it means fewer lives too.  More people means more cars, trucks and buses, more air pollution, more parking lots and less green spaces.  In their progressive dystopian future, there are more chemicals, more trash and more runoff cascading down super sewers into our streams, lakes and oceans means more damage to California’s biodiversity hot spots.  Plus, more people means more pressure on declining water supplies.“³

Issues regarding energy aside, unchecked growth of any population will degrade the environment and its resources until the colony fails.   One way to understand the impact of population on the environment is through an equation which was developed by ecologists in the 1970s.

“The IPAT equation, though phrased mathematically, is a simple conceptual expression of the factors that create environmental impact. IPAT is an accounting identity stating that environmental impact (I) is the product of three terms: 1) population (P); 2) affluence (A); and 3) technology (T). It is stated I = P x A x T or I=PAT.”²

 

 

 

Resource wars are beginning to flare up:

April  7, 2016