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Some people think there exists a conspiracy that prevents the media from ever mentioning the charged word, “overpopulation.” Conspiracies do exist but, in this case, my impression is that population is such a charged issue simply because it has to do with the fact that we are all humans and discussing about reducing population touches some inner mechanisms of our psyche that we feel uncomfortable about.

But there is more to that: the real problem with overpopulation is that most decision makers lack the concept of “overshoot,” a view that didn’t exist in the study of social systems until Jay Forrester introduced it in the 1960s.If you don’t understand overshoot, at best you can understand that there are limits to population, but you can’t understand that population could exceed the limits and crash down ruinously with the deterioration of the agricultural system that feeds it.

The lack of a the concept of overshoot may well be what leads the concerned and the unconcerned to minimize the problem. Many people seem to think that the “demographic transition,” the reduction in fertility observed in most rich nations of the world, will spread over all humankind and stabilize the world’s population at a sustainable level without any need for governments to intervene to force lower birth rates.

Almost certainly, it is too late for that: we should have started decades ago. But only China implemented a serious policy birth control — for the rest of the world it was a historical failure.

In the discussion, below, Bernard Gilland discusses the problems we will face in the attempt of stabilizing the human population mainly in terms of the degradation of the agricultural system in its dependence on non-sustainable resources.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Frank Kaminski reviews two peak oil documentaries from 2008

August 24, 2018

Frank Kaminski reviews two peak oil documentaries from 2008

BLIND SPOT: Peak Oil and the Coming Global Crisis

A Documentary Directed, Written, Photographed, and Edited by Adolfo Doring–1 hour, 26 minutes

and FUEL

A Documentary Directed and Narrated by Josh Tickell–1 hour, 52 minutes

These two documentaries on the world oil crisis came out in 2008, a time of growing concern over humankind’s energy future. In the decade since then, public interest in the issue has waned, but the relevance of these films hasn’t–they remain valuable, engaging portraits of the quandary we face at the end of the oil age. Blind Spot provides the proverbial 30,000-foot view of our situation, whereas Fuel gives a personal, on-the-ground account of one man’s activist crusade. Both films are far from perfect. One fails to adequately address how we should respond to our crisis, while the other is unrealistically optimistic about the responses it suggests. Still, both are important films, and they’re all the more compelling when viewed together, given their disparate but complementary perspectives.

Blind Spot is uncompromising about the realities we face as we leave the era of cheap, abundant oil behind. A formidable cast of geoscientists, physicists, environmental analysts, inventors and other experts details the essence of our plight. Our modern world, which requires ever-increasing quantities of easily obtainable oil, faces a future of ever-dwindling supply. Because oil is finite and the rate of new oil discoveries has been dropping since the early 1960s, logic and mathematics dictate that its production will eventually reach an all-time high, followed by permanent decline. The numbers indicate that the point of peak production, a phenomenon called “peak oil,” is imminent. And, sadly, alternative energy sources, for all the hype they’ve generated, are powerless to save us. They are nowhere near as energy-dense as oil, and we’ve already waited too long to invest meaningfully in them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The curse of Thomas Malthus

August 4, 2018

The curse of Thomas Malthus

Running through some notes from last year, I came across an article by Dietrich Vollrath published in 2017 that I’d printed out to give it proper consideration. It’s called, “Who are you calling Malthusian?”, and it addresses that interesting futures question of why calling someone “Malthusian” is such an effective form of ad hominem attack that it closes down any possible argument.

Poor old Malthus. He has had a bad reputation ever since he predicted, towards the end of the 18th century, that over-population would lead to famine and then to social collapse. It didn’t turn out like that, largely because we stumbled across a one-off supply of cheap energy, and because of the Industrial Revolution. And, because he turned out to be wrong, that means that if you mention Malthus these days you are instantly labelled as a crank.

So Vollrath does us a service in his long post in two ways. First, he tries to create Malthus’ argument in its original context, and second he goes back to the relationships that sit behind Malthus’ model of the world.

Malthusian relationships

The relationships are simple.

One: living standards are negatively related to the size of population. This is because at time of writing the major factor of production was land, whose supply is largely fixed. Vollrath shares a diagram, originally from Greg Clark’s work, which demonstrates this. Peter Turchin’s model in Secular Cycles effectively has this relationship at its core.

Clark UK population and real wages Malthus

Two: population growth is positively correlated with living standards. As Vollrath notes

“This may be because kids are a normal good, and so fertility rises when people have higher incomes. Or it may be because health is a normal good, so people take better care of themselves (and their kids) when they have higher income.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Ted Nordhaus Is Wrong: We Are Exceeding Earth’s Carrying Capacity

July 26, 2018

Ted Nordhaus Is Wrong: We Are Exceeding Earth’s Carrying Capacity

The co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute has a cheery vision of the future. If only that vision were plausible.

IN HIS ARTICLE, “The Earth’s Carrying Capacity for Human Life is Not Fixed,” Ted Nordhaus, co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based energy and environment think tank, seeks to enlist readers in his optimistic vision of the future. It’s a future in which there are many more people on the planet and each enjoys a high standard of living, while environmental impacts are reduced. It’s a cheery vision.

The core of Nordhaus’ case is that we are now living in a magical society that is immune to the ecological law of gravity.

If only it were plausible.

Nordhaus’s argument hinges on dismissing the longstanding biological concept of “carrying capacity” — the number of organisms an environment can support without becoming degraded. “Applied to ecology, the concept [of carrying capacity] is problematic,” Nordhaus writes, arguing in a nutshell that the planet’s ability to support human civilization can be, one presumes, infinitely tweaked through a combination of social and physical engineering.

Few actual ecologists, however, would agree. Indeed, the concept of carrying capacity is useful in instance after instance — including modeling the population dynamics of nonhuman species, and in gauging the health of virtually any ecosystem, be it ocean, river, prairie, desert, or forest. While exact population numbers are sometimes difficult to predict on the basis of the carrying capacity concept, it is nevertheless clear that, wherever habitat is degraded, creatures suffer and their numbers decline.

The controversy deepens in applying the carrying capacity concept to humans. Nordhaus seems to think we are exceptions to the rules. Still, as archaeologists have affirmed, many past human societies consumed resources or polluted environments to the point of collapse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Making It To The 4th Second

June 4, 2018

Prince Ea

Making It To The 4th Second

A hard-hitting delivery of the predicament humanity faces

Our work here at PeakProsperity.com focuses on raising awareness of the serious challenges facing humanity as we continue to live well beyond our economic, energetic and ecological means.

Through the Three Es framework presented in The Crash Course, we’ve engaged millions of critical thinkers around the world. And we’ve inspired many of them to invest in a more resilient lifestyle, for their sake as well as the planet’s.

But at this point, we’re still only talking to a small minority of the people in the world. And we’re always looking for new channels, new approaches, and new partners that can help get this message out to a wider audience: If humanity wants a future worth inheriting, we need to become agents of regeneration, not destruction.

We especially keep an eye out for effective vehicles that resonante with a younger demographic. The millennials and the generations behind them are the ones who need this information most, as they’re the ones who will experience the full brunt of the Three Es during their lifetimes and on whose shoulders the responsibility of finding solutions will rest.

But as older guys in our forties and fifties, Chris and I realize that we’re probably not the most compelling messengers to this segment. So we’re constantly looking for others who can be.

In that vein, this short video below from Prince Ea recently caught my attention. It delivers a hard-hitting emotional call-to-action for sustainability and resilience using much of the same data we frequently cite here at Peak Prosperity:

If there are people in your life, especially younger ones, whom you think would benefit from watching this video and contemplating the existential question it poses (Will we adapt our behavior in time to make it to the 4th Second?), please share it with them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bill Ryerson — Dealing With The Elephant In The Room: Overpopulation

May 23, 2018

PODCAST

Bill Ryerson — Dealing With The Elephant In The Room: Overpopulation

Strategies for dealing with this massive, third-rail issue

Worldwide, three new humans are born every second. Every day, 225,000 more mouths are added to the global dinner table.

That adds up to 80 million new people per year — the population equivalent of the five largest cities in the world. That’s like a new Shanghai, a new Beijing, a new New Delhi, a new Lagos, and a new Tianjin being added every year.

This growth trajectory is simply not sustainable from a planetary resources standpoint. As the global population continues to grow at an exponential rate, its demand is causing key resources like fresh water aquifers, rainforest canopies, fishing stocks, fertile topsoils, etc to similarly deplete exponentially. These oppositional exponentials, mathematically, can only result in an evitable planetary ‘overshoot’ — which many argue we are already well into.

What can be done? Bill Ryerson, president of the Population Institute, joins us to discuss the work of the Population Media Center in addressing the interconnected issues of the full rights of women and girls, population, and the environment. It’s mission is to empower people to live healthier and more prosperous lives and to stabilize global population at a level at which people can live sustainably with the world’s renewable resources.

Our earlier podcast with Bill focused on the existential dangers of overpopulation (you can listen to it here). This week’s podcast focuses on the strategies that show the most promise for slowing, or perhaps even reversing, world population growth, should we be willing to pursue them:

All of those new people on the planet have needs for food, shelter, housing, and clothing. When you look at their environmental impact, the number of new people is a major driver of lost biodiversity, and it’s a significant factor in climate change.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If you can’t see it, it can kill you. Propaganda, for instance.

April 18, 2018

If you can’t see it, it can kill you. Propaganda, for instance.

If you never took this test before, spend two minutes on it before reading the text below.

The “selective attention” test you see above was developed in 1999 by Christopher Chablis and Daniel Simons. It shows how people have difficulties in perceiving the most obvious things when they are focused on something that engages their attention. Often, it has been seen as just a sort of psychological parlor game, but it has a deep significance.

This selective attention phenomenon may well describe the current world’s situation. Our aging leaders seem to be so fixated on their manhood – and unsure about it – that they try to reassure themselves by firing missiles around. And, in doing that, they neglect everything else. But it is not just a question of aging leaders, the whole Western world shows evident signs of senility at the societal level. Most of us in our daily life are fixated on details of no relevance and miss the important issues that threaten our very existence.

So, we are missing the gorilla which is climate change, as well as other gorillas which go under different names: ecosystem collapse, resource depletion, overpopulation, widespread pollution, and more. Some of these gorillas are recognized and described by the scientific community, but the public and the leaders alike fail to hear the advice they receive.

Even more worrisome is the possibility that there exist gorillas which not even scientists can detect. As an example, we are daily being exposed to a cocktail or toxic metals resulting from industrial activity. We know that each single metal, alone, doesn’t (normally) reach concentrations in our bodies so high to be deemed as dangerous. But we don’t really know what happens when people have several low concentration metals inside their body – which is the case for most of us.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Paul Ehrlich: ‘Collapse of civilisation is a near certainty within decades’

March 24, 2018

Paul Ehrlich: ‘Collapse of civilisation is a near certainty within decades’

Fifty years after the publication of his controversial book The Population Bomb, biologist Paul Ehrlich warns overpopulation and overconsumption are driving us over the edge

The toxification of the planet with synthetic chemicals may be more dangerous to people and wildlife than climate change, says Ehrlich. Photograph: Linh Pham/Getty Images

Ashattering collapse of civilisation is a “near certainty” in the next few decades due to humanity’s continuing destruction of the natural world that sustains all life on Earth, according to biologist Prof Paul Ehrlich.

In May, it will be 50 years since the eminent biologist published his most famous and controversial book, The Population Bomb. But Ehrlich remains as outspoken as ever.

Prof Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The world’s optimum population is less than two billion people – 5.6 billion fewer than on the planet today, he argues, and there is an increasing toxification of the entire planet by synthetic chemicals that may be more dangerous to people and wildlife than climate change.

Ehrlich also says an unprecedented redistribution of wealth is needed to end the over-consumption of resources, but “the rich who now run the global system – that hold the annual ‘world destroyer’ meetings in Davos – are unlikely to let it happen”.

The Population Bomb, written with his wife Anne Ehrlich in 1968, predicted “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death” in the 1970s – a fate that was avoided by the green revolution in intensive agriculture.

Many details and timings of events were wrong, Paul Ehrlich acknowledges today, but he says the book was correct overall.

“Population growth, along with over-consumption per capita, is driving civilisation over the edge: billions of people are now hungry or micronutrient malnourished, and climate disruption is killing people.”

Ehrlich has been at Stanford University since 1959 and is also president of the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere, which works “to reduce the threat of a shattering collapse of civilisation”.

“It is a near certainty in the next few decades, and the risk is increasing continually as long as perpetual growth of the human enterprise remains the goal of economic and political systems,” he says. “As I’ve said many times, ‘perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell’.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Overpopulation is a Problem, but Capitalist Overdevelopment is a Bigger Problem

December 13, 2017

Overpopulation is a Problem, but Capitalist Overdevelopment is a Bigger Problem

Ed. note: This is a response by Richard Smith to Saral Sarkar’s commentary on Richard’s original article Climate Crisis and Managed Deindustrialization: Debating Alternatives published on Resilience.org here.

Saral misreads my statement. He says

“Richard writes, “Capitalism, not population is the main driver of planetary ecological collapse … .”. It sounds like an echo of statements from old-Marxist-socialism. It is not serious. Is Richard telling us that, while we are fighting a long-drawn-out battle against capitalism in order to overcome it, we can allow the population to continuously grow without risking any further destruction of the environment? Should we then think that a world population of ten billion by 2050 would not be any problem?”

By emphasizing population in bold italics he distorts my meaning. What I said was that “Capitalism, not population is the main driver of planetary collapse. . . ” — that is, the MAIN driver, not the ONLY driver. Though I’ve never written about this topic at length, I’ve never claimed that population growth is no problem at all. Saral’s right that some Marxists claim that the whole problem is capitalism, that there is no population problem, that the human population could grow more or less forever. They’re mostly responding to Malthusians who contend that overpopulation is the whole problem, not capitalism. I understand where they’re coming from. But both approaches seem simplistic to me. Of course overpopulation is a problem, a huge problem. Look around. I live in one of the most crowded pieces of real-estate in the world, in the middle of Manhattan. Sometimes the sidewalks are so full I have to walk along on the street to get by the crowds of people. By any rational measure there are just way too many people here.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

There’s No APP for That: Technology and Morality in the Age of Climate Change, Overpopulation, and Biodiversity Loss

October 13, 2017

THERE’S NO APP FOR THAT: TECHNOLOGY AND MORALITY IN THE AGE OF CLIMATE CHANGE, OVERPOPULATION, AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS

It has become something of a mantra within the sustainability movement that innovations in technology will save the world and all of us in it, but we tend to forget that technology played a big part in getting ourselves into this mess in the first place. In a manifesto released back in August, author Richard Heinberg, who is also the Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the US-Based Post Carbon Institute, explains why technology, which is widely heralded as our saviour, is not the secret sauce to solve all our environmental troubles. He joins us to discuss his arguments in the manifesto which is titled, “There’s No App for That: Technology and Morality in the Age of Climate Change, Overpopulation, and Biodiversity Loss.”

Why we must talk about population

October 3, 2017

Why we must talk about population

A Response to David Roberts’ Self-Censorship on Overpopulation

Reading David Roberts’ recent explanation of why he never writes on overpopulation, I felt compelled to reply. While Roberts made a set of superficially convincing arguments, ultimately he’s wrong not to focus directly on the population pressures we’re facing. Not confronting population head-on is like looking out the window of a plane and realizing you’re about to crash but refusing to tell the other passengers about the impending crash. Instead you spend your remaining moments convincing people that it’s “empowering” to wear their seat belts. That it’s a good for their health to put their laptops away and hold their head between their legs. Sure, you’ll convince some—and those you do convince might be better off—but you’ll convince far fewer as the sense of urgency is gone.Reducing the global population is essential in addressing humanity’s impact on the planet—along with reducing overall consumption (affluence) and the use of unsustainable technologies (all variables in the I = PAT equation). And after the missteps of the Sierra Club and some governments, Roberts can be excused for why he feels it may be smarter to simply address the P in the equation indirectly by focusing on women empowerment and providing good access to family planning (and I would add providing comprehensive sexuality education to all children, as Mona Kaidbey and Robert Engelman and discuss in EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet). But that won’t be enough.

Stabilizing population is urgent. The goal should not simply be to nudge along a little less growth so population stabilizes at 9 billion rather than 9.5 or 10 billion. Instead, we need to make a long term plan to get population back to a manageable range.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Earth Overshoot: How Sustainable is Population Growth?

May 5, 2017

Earth Overshoot: How Sustainable is Population Growth?

For decades people have been predicting overpopulation would wipe out energy resources if not the entire planet. Every year the population bomb and peak oil crowd have been proven wrong. But how long can the status quo of generating growth by population explosion last?

Every year the population bomb and peak oil crowd have been proven wrong. But how long can the status quo of generating growth by population explosion last?

Reader Rick Mills at Ahead of the Herd addresses the subject in a guest blog that first appeared on his blog as Earth Overshoot Day.

Earth Overshoot Day

The second half of the 20th century saw the biggest increase in the world’s population in human history. Our population surged because of:

Medical advances lessened the mortality rate in many countries
Massive increases in agricultural productivity caused by the “Green Revolution”

The global death rate has dropped almost continuously since the start of the industrial revolution – personal hygiene, improved methods of sanitation and the development of antibiotics all played a major role.

Green Revolution

The term Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfers that happened between the 1940s and the late 1970s.

The initiatives involved:

Development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains
Expansion of irrigation infrastructure
Modernization of management techniques
Mechanization
Distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers

Tractors with gasoline powered internal combustion engines (versus steam) became the norm in the 1920s after Henry Ford developed his Fordson in 1917 – the first mass-produced tractor. This new technology was available only to relatively affluent farmers and it was not until the 1940s tractor use became widespread.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If Europe had a Sahara Desert, It Would Be a Small Africa. Does the World Really Have an “Overpopulation Problem”?

June 18, 2016

If Europe had a Sahara Desert, It Would Be a Small Africa. Does the World Really Have an “Overpopulation Problem”?

It is already politically charged to deal with such issues as oil depletion and climate change but, at least, these are physical problems that we can examine using the scientific method. But overpopulation? That’s the recipe for an instant politicized or religious quarrel.

The movie “Population Boom” by Werner Boote is a good example of how politicized and emotional the population question can become. It starts almost immediately with a potshot at the Reverend Malthus, accused to “have predicted a catastrophe for 1860” (something that poor Malthus never said.). Then, it goes on for one hour and a half in the attempt to demonstrate that there is no such a thing as an “overpopulation problem.” Rather, the film’s thesis is that the world is seeing a conspiracy by the elites of the rich countries who are trying to stop the people in poor countries from having as many children as they want so that they could become rich, too, and challenge the world dominance of the present elites.

If we accept the idea that all opinions are legitimate, then also this one should be – even though probably a bit too extreme for most of us. The problem is that the way the film tries to demonstrate its thesis oscillates between the boring and the silly; without ever providing a serious argument. Mainly, we see the filmmaker, Mr. Werner Boote, walking around while carrying an umbrella in places where it never seems to rain. In his ramblings, Mr. Boote interviews people who, frankly, don’t seem to have a clue about overpopulation, except for seeing it as an invention of the evil Western Elites.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Simultaneous Elderly Overpopulation, Youth Depopulation & The Impact on Economic Growth

April 25, 2016

Simultaneous Elderly Overpopulation, Youth Depopulation & The Impact on Economic Growth

Strangely, the world is suffering from two seemingly opposite trends…overpopulation and depopulation in concert. The overpopulation is due to the increased longevity of elderly lifespans vs. depopulation of young populations due to collapsing birthrates. The depopulation is among most under 25yr old populations (except Africa) and among many under 45yr old populations.

So, the old are living decades longer than a generation ago but their adult children are having far fewer children. The economics of this is a complete game changer and is unlike any time previously in the history of mankind. None of the models ever accounted for a shrinking young population absent income, savings, or job opportunity vs. massive growth in the old with a vast majority reliant on government programs in their generally underfunded retirements (apart from a minority of retirees who are wildly “overfunded”). There are literally hundreds of reasons for the longer lifespans and lower birthrates…but that’s for another day. This is simply a look at what is and what is likely to be absent a goal-seeked happy ending.

In a short yet economically valid manner, every person is a unit of consumption. The greater the number of people and the greater the purchasing power, the greater the growth in consumption. So, if one wanted to gauge economic growth, (growth in consumption driving economic growth), multiply the annual change in population by purchasing power (wages, savings) per capita. Regarding wage growth, I hold wages flat as from a consumption standpoint, wage growth is basically offset by inflation. Of course, there is another lever beyond this which central banks are feverishly torqueing; substituting the lower interest rates of ZIRP and NIRP to boost consumption from a flagging base of population growth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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