Lecture on Population Growth and Resource Consumption

A lecture everyone needs to see.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&list=PL6A1FD147A45EF50D">Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb3JI8F9LQQ&list=PL6A1FD147A45EF50D">Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFyOw9IgtjY&list=PL6A1FD147A45EF50D">Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQd-VGYX3-E&list=PL6A1FD147A45EF50D">Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHuwgxrTKPo&list=PL6A1FD147A45EF50D">Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU&list=PL6A1FD147A45EF50D">Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyseLQVpJEI&list=PL6A1FD147A45EF50D">Part 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoiiVnQadwE&list=PL6A1FD147A45EF50D">Part 8

The total length is about an hour and 16 minutes, and it is worth watching in full.

The bottom line is that population growth cannot be sustained. The only question is whether we will choose the way in which it will stop, or allow nature to determine the solution.

There are so many people asleep and who don't want to wake up. And what is really sad is that there are SO many adoptable children who will suffer because people want children from their own loins.

how anyone can decide to have a child considering the uncertainty of the world's future. As Jared Diamond explains in "Collapse", when a society destroys its environment, its social structures break down. As in the Easter Island case, this can happen very suddenly and unexpectedly. As the resources dwindle, the society becomes ravaged by war, famine, and cannibalism. I don't want to be around if and when that happens, and I don't want anyone I care about to be around, either.

You're right that most people are unaware of the enormity of the problem. Despite knowing all about exponential growth, I had not thought consciously about most of the points Andrew Bartlett makes in this lecture.

glad my time's half up, pity all the babies people keep squirting out.

I'm turning 50 soon so I'm well over the halfway mark. Some days I wish for more time but most days I pine for how good we had it when I was young. The air was clean. You could go to any stream or river and eat the fish you caught (safely). I've watched it all go to hell over my lifetime. Oh well. Maybe my daughter's generation will fix the Boomers' F-ups.

I put "scarcity" in quotes because there is no scarcity of resources. The Earth can easily support 10 to 20 billion people with a European lifestyle if our current wasteful ways could be ended.

Unfortunately, the very foundation of Capitalism is to artificially create greater demand than there is supply (more profits for the robber barons). Who controls the supply? The same Capitalists that profit off the so-called shortages. It's also in their interest to bribe crooked despots in foreign lands to allow them to outright steal the mineral or oil resources of that area and leave the citizens with nothing but the pollution and ill health because of it.

Ending wasteful practices, energy conservation, increased efficiency in our consumer goods, etc., will enable the same resources to bring all of humanity up to a decent living standard. I believe that every human being deserves to have clean water, clean and nutritious food, a safe and comfortable living space and clean air to breathe, and access to a high quality education.

Renewable energy sources are abundant enough to supply far more than 20 billion people with a European lifestyle.

To go beyond a level where we can eat and be healthy we're limited to a far smaller number. We were already starting to hit food limitations which resulted in the invention of ways to create more food. One crucial invention was the Bosch-Haber cycle. But that's only food. Disease sees to it that we don't overpopulate. But we thwarted that one too.

You seem to believe that increased food production is impossible? Have you heard of hydroponic greenhouses or Vertical Farming? Our current farming methods waste the majority of our fresh water supplies, use over 20% of the fossil fuels consumed in this country, and produce tainted produce (soaked in pesticides and herbicides) that is lacking in the proper nutrients because they have to pick crops while they're still green --then they pump Ethylene gas into the containers so the produce begins to look like it's ripe. That's not food. Are you too young to remember what a tomato is supposed to taste like?

I just don't get your point.

The problem is that human behaviour changes mostly in response to changes in circumstances, not usually in anticipation of them.

"Those things that must be done to avoid calamity will be done only as its consequence..."

This isn't necessarily a drum of doom, though, depending on what "circumstance" cracks first and causes the first shift in behaviour.

If it was rising sea levels we'd be doomed, because by then the damage would be essentially complete.

It won't be climate instability that changers our behaviour, because "that's just weather".
It won't be rising oil prices because "that's all due to speculators gaming the market".
It won't be crop failures, because "the occasional crop failure is a normal event".

But ... if it's a global depression that lasts 5 years or more then we will see serious behaviour changes. Fewer kids being born (like happened in Russia at the fall of the Soviet Union), more conservation (can't afford as much gasoline, heating oil or consumer goods when I don't have a job), more home gardening (food is too damn expensive, the stores are gouging us, let's grow our own), more co-housing (the kids lost their jobs so they're moving back home) and on and on.

We have a terrible ability to shift the blame to some place where we don't have any responsibility to act. But when the circumstances actually change, we can shift on a dime.

Let's hope it's the economy that fails first, before the food or the energy supplies actually begin to decline. If that happens, it will take the pressure off the rest of the ecosystem - less CO2 production, less habitat destruction and water pollution from industrial farming, less pressure on our energy supplies, and a more mindful world.

Win, win, win.

Pollution will solve the problem.

I'd bet it will be nuclear pollution. Bombs or Nukushimas. Take your pick.
But there will be enough rich people who can afford to clean up their polluted food, air and water, so that those humans can survive. The solution, is, as always: become rich. My rich friends have NO environmental problems.

With a population that's two or three times the estimated carrying capacity of planet Earth, we are way past the point of sustainable support. During the population explosion, support for elevated population came from fossil fuel energy, largely in the guise of the "Green Revolution."

Once fossil fuels deplete appreciably, that energy input will be lacking, and the population will adjust in size according to the amount of energy available -- just as populations always do, be they yeasts, rabbits or humans. It's just ecology.

It'll take a while, people will adapt to the "new normal," and a couple of generations later, they'll wonder "what dieoff?" But they'll have half the population we have today.

The experience with post-Soviet Russia was a good preview. Birth rates dipped below mortality rates, and people didn't seem to live quite as long, but life went on without everybody freaking out and bodies stacking up in the streets.

"Scarcity," after all, is relative to our expectations. What counts is "enough," and that can take some time to learn through experience and adaptation. Some people never do learn what "enough" is -- that's part of why we got into this mess!

Birth rates dipped below mortality rates, and people didn't seem to live quite as long, but life went on without everybody freaking out and bodies stacking up in the streets.

This is a great way to put it - we need to start thinking about it without all the adrenaline and fear. Just another day at the die-off...

Its really a shame that the Sierra Club was forced at the point of a (100million) dollar gun, to surrender on illegal immigration, which is now about 10% of the USA's population, and that demographic is the one that keeps growing while most other demographics in European countries are shrinking (largest consumers of water, energy, etc).

Population growth to First World Countries needs to be curtailed ASAP, as when more people enter even the lower middle class, the carbon footprint goes up.

Sadly, both Dems and Repurds are supporting more and moe illegal immigration, which is driving more consumerism, and Dems have a pipedream of getting all those new voters. Problem is, then big business won't have 'cheap labor', so legalizing millions of illegals is most likely a pipedream for dems.

Greed will win the day, but the bad economy will put more and more pressure on illegal immigration as Americans will be taking any jobs they can get within a few years, if the downward economic spiral continues.