[The starry background is to remind us that this spaceship Earth has no emergency exit.]

back last   ecostory 50/2011   next demise D E F     home 7,000,000,000 people on 31 October 2011 500,000,000 survivors by 2050? Eco-illiterate demographers talk of 10 billion! For our demographers and other visionary but ecologically illiterate "leaders" our world is getter bigger and bigger. Any resource problems are simple "challenges", which we will certainly master with Hope-Optimism-Technology. For HOT people there are no real problems. More people? Eight billion? Nine billion? Ten Billion? 2011, 2030, 2050, the 21st century? A problem? Why? We draw our graphs and projections into the future, as simple as that. We will produce more with less, on a growing planet. Technology and Genetically Modified Organisms will produce ever higher food crops. We'll invent new ways to meet growing demands by more and more people. After all: the earth is growing! Humanity will be singing and dancing on a planet that is just there for them... However... In the real world we're facing scarcities of all kinds: food, water, minerals, space, a normal climate. Demographers never heard of overshoot and increasing resource depletion rates because of population growth and economic expansion. They know nothing of peak oil and the imminent Post Peak Oil Downslope. They don't know of the Ceteris Paribus condition for serious science. The below graph is an update of the "Limits to Growth" projection from 1972: It doesn't look funny at all! Yet our People in Power continue their growth policies. Places like Male and the Maledives will be the first to disappear, not because of rising sea levels but for lack of food and all. Join TheGreatChange discussion group. Die Agrarminister an der "Grünen Woche in Berlin, Januar 2011 Oil Decline Rate And Population The Problem Is Simple: Too Many People, Too Much Stuff []

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