Population

Albert Bartlett: On message about exponential growth to the end

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Albert Bartlett might have been another obscure physics professor had he not put together a now famous lecture entitled "Arithmetic, Population and Energy"in 1969. The lecture begins with the line: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

Gauging the urban appetite

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The agendas that are set so solemnly for international (or global) food and hunger problems cannot be used at the sub-national or local administrative level, which must analyse its own problems and find practical solutions, All too often, catering sensibly to the food needs of urban populations is ignored by policy makers, while economic ‘development’ (more infrastructure, more financing, more consumption, more personal mobility at the cost of public transport) is welcomed. The provisioning of food and the planning for shortening and localising food supply chains is usually abandoned by public administrators to the ruthless methods of the market

Is America’s fertility decline a real problem?

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Chances are you already have a strong opinion on this subject. There’s a great deal of noise, mostly but not wholly on the American right about the dangers of fertility decline. Jonathan Last’s book _What To Expect When No One is Expecting_ and Ross Douthat’s recent lament about American women’s TFR (total fertility rate – the reason men aren’t mentioned is that men don’t count in fertility calculations) is down to 1.87 children. Both writers predict fairly dire outcomes – economic stagnation a la Japan, a benefits crisis as insufficient new workers arrive. Moreover, for Douthat and other commentators like Rod Dreher, there’s a larger moral and cultural dimension that is absolutely critical…

Can we avoid a collapse?

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"Population Bomb" author & Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich on his Royal Society Paper "Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?" From Tasmania, forest expert Dr. David Bowman: wild fires drive more global warming. Economist John Talberth suing the U.S. Government over risky ocean oil leases in the Arctic. Three interviews from a world of trouble.

Peak Philosophy: The economic contraction narrative needs facts, not theory

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These days, people are maxed out on every level trying to get through life as everything gets more tedious, expensive, and uncertain. The onslaught of “glittering generalities” and opinionated political rhetoric coming from popular media and paid advertising on “both” sides is enough to make many shut off and tune out – their philosophical bandwidth running at full capacity until it is choked off entirely.

The Populations Problem

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The population problem should be considered from the point of view of all populations — populations of both humans and their artifacts (cars, houses, livestock, cell phones, etc.) — in short, populations of all “dissipative structures” engendered, bred, or built by humans.