Economic growth like a cancer?

[Rebel CNC]

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It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both

Our economic system is unsustainable by its very nature. The only response to climate chaos and peak oil is major social change


There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. A cap on this and a quota on the other won't do it. Tinker at the edges as we may, we cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.

Never mind - I'm sure we'll muddle through somehow.

[Pax]

Never mind - I'm sure we'll muddle through somehow.

You should really get that study published.

[cyberianpan]

economics has moved on somewhat from malthusian principals!

Funny. One often hears that, [color=red]but Malthusian limits have not been disproven [/color] in any way. It is more, as Munion points out, that limiting resources change. Currently, oil is a limiting resource in certain ways, but if we develop fusion power, that limit will disappear - indeed, even the current development of electrical engines can replace much of what oil currently does for us.

Nor has the precautionary principle nor the FSM

population, if unchecked, increases at a geometric rate , whereas the food-supply grows at an arithmetic rate

What is clear is that the only limits per se might be in thermodynamics (say entropy). Nobody has ever made a quantiative link from physical entropy to economics so Malthus was at best hypothesising. Since Malthus's time we have industrial farming where say 4 farmers (+ say 11 indirects) could readily support 100 people.

Yes there are some possible limits on Terra ultimated related to Sol (total energy received per year) but we've not yet encountered them, and also with say nucclear fission we can avoid them.

100 of a total 1,000 people as easily as 1,000,000 of a total 10,000,000,000 could suffer a famine.

What matters is the internal dynamics of the say 1,000 people: how do they co-operate/bargain/care for each other ?

1,000 people would be pretty personal and we'd likely let no one die of hunger. 6,000,000,000 is a pretty anonymous figure so we don't care if a few million die.

Thus if you really want to solve the problem you would tackle networking. Now 1 person can "know" about 150 say. On average we could assume that 90% of people would "care" if a person they knew was dying of hunger and indeed would aid them. Indeed if a "friend of a friend" was hungry perhaps 80% would help them. However if all 150 of friends are dying of hunger then I really can't help them . Indeed considering my above industrial agriculture analogy I'd be lucky to be able to help even 5 of my friends (depending).

So the trick is to avoid "local clusters" , particularly those in under developed countries. So if we all were conscientious: we'd get to really know 2 or 3 say African pen pals. Or perhaps get our children to...

The network math on above would have to be worked out to validate minimum numbers etc.

??


cYp
(who is gone crazy having been in meeetings since 8am having gone to bed at 4am and whose whole week has been like this)