2008 Woodie Awards
Speaker shares ideas about exponential growth
Environment
Jonathan Bender
Issue date: 10/3/07 Section: News
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Albert Allen Bartlett, physics professor emeritus from the University of Colorado-Boulder, gave a one-hour lecture titled "Sustainability 101: Arithmetic, Population and Energy" to an attendance of approximately 200 students and faculty at 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 21, in Ozark Hall.
The purpose of the lecture was to illustrate how "the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function," Bartlett said.
He used a combination of math, wit and reason to appeal to his audience about the dangers of human population growth. There is no social problem on Earth that can be fixed without a decrease in population, Bartlett said. For our society to begin solving our social problems, policy makers and citizens alike must adopt a fundamental reversal of our popular belief that growth is good, Bartlett said.
The Earth, being spherical, is a body with finite carrying capacity; unchecked perpetual growth is bound to cease, he said. At the current population growth rate, there will come a time in the not too-distant future when there would reside one person to each square meter of terrestrial land, he said.
"Zero population growth will happen, whether we like it or not," Bartlett said.
The equation guiding the anti-growth policy is that a growing capacity's doubling time equals 70 divided by the percent growth per unit of time. The U.S. population in 1900 was approximately 75 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1950, it was about 150 million, and in 2000, the population doubled again to approximately 300 million.
Because our population doubles every 50 years, our percent growth rate is 50 = 70 divided by x percent. So our population growth rate is therefore 1.4 percent. Any growth rate higher then 1.4% means the population will double before 50 years.
If city council decides to fix growth at 5 percent per year, as one Boulder, Colorado councilman wanted to do, the population will double in 14 years.
The purpose of the lecture was to illustrate how "the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function," Bartlett said.
He used a combination of math, wit and reason to appeal to his audience about the dangers of human population growth. There is no social problem on Earth that can be fixed without a decrease in population, Bartlett said. For our society to begin solving our social problems, policy makers and citizens alike must adopt a fundamental reversal of our popular belief that growth is good, Bartlett said.
The Earth, being spherical, is a body with finite carrying capacity; unchecked perpetual growth is bound to cease, he said. At the current population growth rate, there will come a time in the not too-distant future when there would reside one person to each square meter of terrestrial land, he said.
"Zero population growth will happen, whether we like it or not," Bartlett said.
The equation guiding the anti-growth policy is that a growing capacity's doubling time equals 70 divided by the percent growth per unit of time. The U.S. population in 1900 was approximately 75 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1950, it was about 150 million, and in 2000, the population doubled again to approximately 300 million.
Because our population doubles every 50 years, our percent growth rate is 50 = 70 divided by x percent. So our population growth rate is therefore 1.4 percent. Any growth rate higher then 1.4% means the population will double before 50 years.
If city council decides to fix growth at 5 percent per year, as one Boulder, Colorado councilman wanted to do, the population will double in 14 years.
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