Transcript Welcome to Ottawa’s First Showing of

PEAK OIL AND THE
FATE OF HUMANITY
Chapter 6 – How Growth Feeds on Growth
Robert Bériault
It’s amazing
how a population
can grow and
before you know
it, it’s out of
control.
Very true. This leads us to the story
of exponential growth…
Every February Canadian financial
institutions clamour for our GST
investment dollars
 They invariably show us how much
money we can have if we start investing
when we’re young
What they teach us is the wonders of
compounding
 Compounding is basically
the ability to earn
interest on the interest
 Mathematically it’s called
exponential growth
Exponential curve
With exponential growth last year’s growth
will make this year’s growth bigger
Année
Capital at start
Interest
Year end
Last year
$10,000
$500
$10,500
This year
$10,500
$525
$11,025
The dollars earned as
interest last year…
…will earn dollars this year
and those dollars will earn
more dollars in the future.
They’ll show us a graph like this one:
After 50 years of
compounding,
your $1000
investment is
now worth
$47,000
All kinds of things grow exponentially,
including population
To illustrate the power of exponential
growth:
…suppose that in 1608,
when Samuel de Champlain
founded Québec City,
he had somehow forgotten $1
in a savings account
earning 5% annually:
Well, if you could prove you were his
only surviving relative, in 2009 you’d
inherit the princely sum of $299,033,351
Populations of living things grow
exponentially too
Global Human Population Growth
The individuals born
last generation will
produce offspring
themselves and so will
their offspring in the
future
The danger of exponential growth
 All living things live in a limited space,
whether it be a test tube in a lab, an
island, a forest, a valley, a planet.
 There will always be an element that will
place a limit on growth.
 Usually the limit to growth will be food,
but it can also be water, air or inability
for the organism to get rid of its own
waste.
The danger of exponential growth
 Most living things live in equilibrium with their
food sources and their predators.
 But if an organism suddenly finds itself in an
environment that has an abundance of food, it
will reproduce until it has used up all the supply,
overshooting the carrying capacity of its space .
The population will then crash.
Let’s take an example
Suppose you’re a biologist
It’s 11 o’clock
You inoculate one bacterium onto a
Petri dish
Remember, there are no predators. So the organism
will reproduce until all the nutrient is used up.
Meet our little
specimen. In this
scenario our little
bacterium divides
every minute
In other words,
the population of the petri dish
will double every minute




Bacteria reproduce by division.
One bacterium divides into two.
Those two divide into four, etc.
Every minute in our example the number doubles.
The little critters are drawn out of scale
for your convenience
And in our example the bacteria will exactly fill
the entire dish in 60 minutes
Checking
the dish
Four bacteria
Dish is full
Nutrient all gone
Here’s a tricky question:
What time will it be when the dish reaches half
full of bacteria?
Bacteria
If you answered 11:59
you’re right on!
Bacteria
Amazingly, at five minutes to twelve:
97% of the space is
vacant!
…if you were a bacterium
in the dish you wouldn’t
have a clue that in
another five divisions you
and your
buddies would run out of
real estate!
If some guy had urged Easter Islanders
to limit their population when three
quarters of the trees were still standing…
…he would have
been called a
Malthusian
doomsayer
- he would have
been ridiculed
…which is what happened to Paul and Anne Erlich in 1968
The Population Bomb, Paul and Anne Erlich
When half the trees were still
standing:
Some elderly Rapa Nui must have
gazed at the valley below from the
top of a mountain
He would have remembered the
landscape of his youth when there
were just a few clearings here and
there
He would have been struck by the
realization that the islanders should
stop destroying their life support
systems
He would have tried to warn his
people that they could not continue
cutting down trees this way.
We can just imagine the cries of the
lumbermen: “Jobs before trees!”
The stone carvers: “Statue building
is the foundation of our civilization”.
The religious leaders: “Rapa Nui
women must produce more babies
to build more statues for the gods”.
The politicians: “We need more
people to stimulate economic
growth and to support our elders”.
When half the
trees were still
standing
What time is it on
Earth…now that we’ve
used up half of the world’s
trees and petroleum?
Will our technological
civilization duplicate the
tragic fate of the Rapa Nui?
What time is
it on Earth…
After a population has exceeded its
carrying capacity:
 It continues to increase until the limiting resource is
depleted.
 Then there is a sudden decline in population through
starvation, disease and fighting.
 If the environment wasn’t irreparably harmed, the
population will start increasing again.
 If irreversible harm was done, the population can either
go extinct or survive at a lower level because the carrying
capacity has been reduced.
Do you think
the Earth has
reached that
point?
There’s no clear answer to that
question.
Ecologists, demographers and other scientists have been studying
this problem. They calculate that we’ve exceeded the Earth’s
carrying capacity by a factor of two to four.
Google some of the big names in this field:
William Rees
William R. Catton Jr.
Paul R. Erlich
Garret J. Hardin
Dennis and Donella Meadows
Kenneth Smail
Mathis Wackernagel
We started overshoot at 2.5 billion in 1950
Carrying
capacity
range
Some experts estimate the carrying capacity of our
industrial society may be as little as half a billion.
Three possible outcomes
Outcome 1
This would have taken
place if we had
stabilized population
when carrying capacity
or the world had been
reached .
This outcome is no
longer possible
Graph from: “Limits to Growth – A 30 Year Update”, Dennis and Donella Meadows
Three possible outcomes
Outcome 2
This outcome would be
possible if we haven’t
irreparably harmed the
biosphere and start
decreasing our population
now.
Once population is stable, we
would switch from a growth
economy to a steady state
economy.
Graph from: “Limits to Growth – A 30 Year Update”, Dennis and Donella Meadows
Books that explain how we might
achieve Outcome 2
 Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save
Civilization by Lester R. Brown
 Limits to Growth: The 30-Year
Update
by Donella H. Meadows, Jorgen
Randers, Dennis L. Meadows
Three possible outcomes
Outcome 3
We do nothing. We are
approaching the top of the
population curve. Once at the
top, our population will crash.
Likely to fall to between 2
billion and half a billion.
If we do not take strong
measures now to stop growth,
Nature will take the decision out
of our hands and do it for us.
Graph from: “Limits to Growth – A 30 Year Update”, Dennis and Donella Meadows
At this point,
let me mention:
 We are adding 75 million people
to the planet every year.
 Eighty additional cities the size
of Ottawa have to be housed,
clothed and fed every year.
 That’s equivalent to 2 1/2
Canadas every year.
The life support pie is shrinking:
The foundation of all
agriculture, the soil,
is diminishing in all
parts of the world
Aquifers are being
pumped dry
Biodiversity is
being
extinguished
Forests are
disappearing
Fisheries are
being
decimated
Rivers are
drying up
A shrinking pie:
Already divided into 6+
billion
and now
being divided into
200,000 more pieces
every day!!!
In the words of Kenneth Boulding,
Anyone who believes
exponential growth can go on
forever in a finite world is either
a madman or an economist
We must seek answers to the
questions:
 Have we done irreparable harm to our
life support systems?
 Are we going to halt population
growth before we reach the same fate
Easter Island did?
 Is there still time?
How in the world did we get ourselves into this
situation? Chapter 7 provides some insight into
the actions that have taken us to the brink of
disaster.
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