“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.” — Kenneth Boulding, author of “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth”
One global power, the United States, and two regional powers, China and Russia, are making up plans — and adding to their armies — for future use that will have none of the political dogma that was a part of the past 100 years. The Middle East is a proving ground for crude oil, an essential energy source for the modern world regardless of what the Greens preach. The real test for survival will come as the world population continues to grow. Fresh water is already a growing global concern; and without plentiful water, food stocks will draw down.
It all comes down to numbers. What would you think if I made you this offer?
Come and work for me as a special consultant. I will write you a 30-day contract for you to work for me, and I will pay you one penny on your first day. Each day thereafter, I will double your salary. On Day 2 I will pay you 2 cents, and on Day 3 I will pay you 4 cents.
If you understand exponential growth (growth by a constant fraction of the growing quantity during a constant time period), you will expect such a contract to be fortuitous by its expiration. But even I was shocked at the numbers.
As your employer, the doubling and then the redoubling of your salary would be only $5.12 on the 10th day. By the 15th day, I would have to pay $164. But by the 20th day, the exponential growth of your salary would cost me $5,243. Finally, by the 30th and last day of our contract, I would owe you a check for $5,368,709 for eight hours of work.
Of course, long before the 30th day, our contract would be void. I’ve never had anything close to $5 million, and no banker would extend me such credit (especially if I made crazy deals like the one above). Somewhere around the 20th day, our agreement would hit critical mass — a point from which I could not fulfill my obligation.
The Earth’s population is also growing exponentially. While it is not doubling every day, it is doubling every 40 years. As this growth multiplies upon itself, the finite resources of the Earth are stretched so far that the last war fought by humankind will be over the same things the first war was fought over: water, shelter and food.
When my great-grandfather was born in 1851, there were roughly a billion people on the planet, double Earth’s population in 1500. That type of growth rate — a doubling every 350 years — was consistent with the rate of increase to humankind from the dawn of agriculture to beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
In a way my great-grandfather’s generation was the first of the baby boomers, for his was the first generation to be the leading wave of the first human population explosion.
When my grandfather Amil was born in 1881, the global population totaled 1.5 billion people. Between his birth and his father’s birth 30 years before, the world had added half-again as many souls.
When my father was only 13, in 1925, Earth’s population was 2 billion. By 1976, when I was in high school, it had doubled to 4 billion. The current population is more than 7 billion. By 2050, the world population is predicted to stand at 9.5 billion.
Last summer, Real Clear World put these numbers in context:
That’s 35 percent more than today’s 7 billion — the equivalent of adding a new Africa and China to the world in just over a single generation. And the demand for added resources will actually rise more than 35 percent, because the 4 billion people presently surviving on the equivalent of $5 a day or less won’t be content to live at subsistence level for the rest of their lives. Lifting them up will take more — much more — of everything, as the average person living in the industrialized world today consumes or uses 40,000 pounds each year of metals, from aluminum to zinc, and more than 70 elements in between.
I have spoken with agronomists who say that in order to support population increases, the word will have to quadruple its agriculture production and increase its energy output by a factor of eight.
Some 160 years after the Industrial Revolution commenced, man is drinking dry the Earth’s wellspring. The end result could be the collapse of civilization and loss of civil liberties.
Global populations could be so greatly reduced that the nation state may find an excuse to use sweeping powers. Society could eventually revert to the breakdown that prevailed during the Dark Ages, where fundamentalist religions and local despots dominated human existence.
Yours in good times and bad,
–John Myers
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