Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I agree that there are many ways of staving off the dark fairy tale of an impending Malthusian crisis, of which labour intensification is a key one usefully highlighted by Boserup. But that scarcely refutes the basic Malthusian problems I discussed in my last post of resource pressures creating generalised stress which may be ‘referred’ elsewhere – onto other people, or onto other organisms.
It turns out women around the world are on board with zero population growth! It turns out zero population growth is not all that difficult or expensive to achieve!
In Part 1 of this series, I talked about why cheap fuels act to create economic growth. In this post, we will look at some supporting data showing how this connection works.
Just after Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, called the ebola outbreak "completely out of control," the government of Sierra Leone ordered its citizens to stay indoors for three days.
Alan Weisman answers questions on his new book. Weisman traveled to 21 countries asking politicians, scientists, family planning specialists, doctors, and religious leaders, crucial questions about how we can successfully deal with the size of human population.
Africa as a whole is going to face two major problems in the 21st century: food security and adapting to climate change.
20 years after its oil peak this country is now embroiled in a serious energy crunch. Crude oil production will decline between 3 and 4 % pa while population may grow from 80 million to 100 million by 2030.
Recent work cited in our report shows that the remaining global fossil fuel resources (mainly coal) would produce an enormous 9-13 trillion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. If all of it were burnt without capturing the carbon it would be enough to raise the average global temperature some 18 degree C, may be more. This 9-13 trillion tonnes is large compared with the 0.5 trillion tonnes already produced since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Nearly half of this 0.5 trillion tonnes remains in the atmosphere causing serious problems resulting from a warming of only 0.6 degree C. A recent report by independent consultants shows that there are planned mega fossil fuel projects which would add nearly 2 trillion tonnes of carbon by 2020 . Discharging all of this to the atmosphere would set the world on a path to warming 5 -6 degree C, already the stuff of nightmares. Discharging the additional 7-10 trillion tonnes would be an act of insanity.
"We’ve got to get this economy going again!" Unless your cave lacks wifi, cable or satellite, you’ve heard this once or twice in the last four seconds.
