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How can we sustain infinite growth on a finite planet?
Human population growth is a serious problem that is growing by ridiculous geometric progression. Everyday approximately 200,000 people die, and in contrast 450,000 are born. That is a staggering 250,000 new mouths to feed everyday! We cannot support infinite growth on a finite planet! We're running out of land. Thousands of square miles of rain forest are gutted every year for palm plantations to produce palm oil so that masses can be sustained. Fresh water supplies are in limited quantities. Polution and contamination abound. Why do people ignore the realities of where we're headed? It frightens the crap outta me. It appears as though the discovery of oil is when things really took off. Oil ultimately led to the internal combustion engine so that huge amounts of land could be cultivated. Pesticides and fertilizers were also made possible via oil to enhance production yields. As well as affecting the pharmeceutical industry to produce vaccines. It's not natures way.
Check out this human population growth chart: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/images/Popn_Graph2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/themes/keytheme1.htm&h=324&w=524&sz=49&tbnid=YSJSr0mYU4gonM:&tbnh=77&tbnw=124&zoom=1&usg=__kIp3FdU9ydMckYq62HCWmiEmqXc=&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2nk9UOvmL8vsigKdhIGwDg&ved=0CCUQ9QEwAQ&dur=655
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edward long 100+
That is exponential growth. So for "infinite growth" as you say, I think the Earth would be covered at some point and the Mathusian Limit would kick-in. Infinite growth cannot be sustained without infinite growth in the ability of the planet to support life.
John Moonstroller 20+
I tried raking them up and piling them on shore but it was a loosing battle. I tried feeding them to my rabbits and that worked ok but I'd need thousands of rabbits. It all happened so fast. Once navigation was stopped, we realized we had a serious problem.
The key thought here is there was a natural limit or a tipping point (unable to navigate the waterways) when it became obvious to us there was a real problem that we could not control. The tipping point was also the point of no return and we were forced to use unprecedented measures (poison the water and kill the plants) to control the situation.
Some vital systems we need to support modern life are:Transportation, energy production, food supply, clean water air and soil.
If either of these stop working the others automatically fall offline as a result in a cascading effect and we are suddenly at the tipping point.
With only a 3 week supply of food (nationally) in three weeks everyone will start killing each other for food.
That is when the die off starts.
Because there are not enough troops, police, etc to handle the situation, Just like in Hurricane Katrina, they will leave their posts and go to their families. It will continue until the population reaches a point that it can sustain itself. There will be an enormous amount of dead bodies and the subsequent sickness that will follow, killing even more.
There is no such thing as infinite growth in nature.
When it's my families life our yours, there is no such thing as friendship.
When the foods gone, money is worthless; the new rich will be those with food who can protect it.
We got ride of the Water hyacinths by poisoning the water. It was the only thing that worked in the short term.
edward long 100+
John Moonstroller 20+
W. Ying 10+
pursuing invalid happiness is wrong.
edward long 100+
1) Developing countries are growing faster than others, probably due to increased food production via non-sustainable petroleum based fertilizers. That trend will change and mass starvation will ensue.
2) Birth rates (134 M/yr) will probably remain steady while death rates (56M/yr) are increasing (see #1).
3) The rate of population growth is slowing (see #2). Some predict this trend will continue until growth becomes negative.
4) As with #1 above, the "problem" is regional. 52% of Earth's people live in China, India, and Africa.
I think Malthuse was right, even though his predictions were inaccurate. The planet is our pantry. If it is destroyed, or neglected, we starve. It is not a population problem, it's a management problem.--Edward
John Moonstroller 20+
Rick Ryan 10+
What the environmental groups should do is rename their proposals to, "Save Our Own Butts". The planet won't care if we all go extinct because we messed up the environment to the point we could longer survive in it. The planet will recover and press on without us.
K C
Mitch SMith 50+
I'd agree that it's a management problem.
But the solutions cannot be heuristic. They must be systemic.
We normally view management as an hierachial function - command and control.
But command and control operates only within the definitions of the hierarchy.
To exceed the failing system, one must change the system.
This is the new management paradigm - it oprates by design, not command.
And what is designed is not heuristic rulesets, it is systemic flows that organise themselves with no need of control.
And this new paradigm does not require any special wealth or prestige - it is bottom-up by nature. Anyone at all can design a systemic construct and simply let it loose by way of demonstration. If the systemic design is correct, it will self-multiply and subsume ambient systems.
The bottom-up systemic solution is not threatened with burnout - it relies on exponential growth - not for the purpose of growth, but for the purpose of saturation.
In hierachial systems, exponential growth ultimately destroys the system, in open-systemic constructs, the exponent ceases as an operating factor upon saturation - because it is the post-saturation environment that is the goal.
Just how to do this is our challenge right now. The design incorporates all the factors that sustain humans - and acknowledge the environmental factors that contribute to cyclic renewal. The construct must have the capacity to absorb, dissipate and re-cycle the elements that are currently experiencing burnout.
The study of "memes" is important in this work - it must be married-up with computational theory in order to identify the materials of which the design is built.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/stephen_wolfram_computing_a_theory_of_everything.html
W. Ying 10+
It is a problem to be happy validly or invalidly!