The Arithmetic of Growth and Consumption

See if you can figure out the answer to this simple mathematical brain teaser:

It relates to population increases and the idea that exponential growth can often take us by surprise. Ready?

There is one bacteria in a bottle at 11 a.m. and by noon the bottle is full of bacteria, who have been doubling their population every minute. So at 11:01 the population of the bacteria was 2, and at 11:02, it was 4, and at 11:03 it was 8, and so on. If we know the bottle will be full at noon, at what time did the bacteria realize they were going to run out of space?

The answer is 11:59 and 30 seconds or so. That’s because if the bottle is full at noon, it is HALF full at 11:59 because remember, the population doubles every minute. This is the reality of exponential growth. It’s not a linear process.

Exponential growth can take us by surprise.

So how does this story problem relate to human population growth? While the population of many developed countries is either stable or declining, the population of most developing countries such as India or China are growing exponentially. (I hesitate to even use the word “developing” for the simple reason that I don’t necessarily think that become more industrialized is a positive or “upward” development.)

Therefore, even if we in the U.S. make conscious decisions to limit our birthrate, the global population is still expected to increase 50% over what it is today by the year 2050 — to an astounding 9 billion people.

If population growth is exponential, then what time is it now, and when will we realize that we’re running out of space and resources? If you look at the example of the bacteria, you’ll realize that we can go from a borderline situation to outright disaster in a very short amount of time.

During the past 2.000 years, human population has gone from 500 million to today’s 6.5 billion. On a graph, this is a path that starts at the floor and travels upward rapidly at a 90 degree angle up the wall of time. Fortunately, since 1969 population growth is slowing overall, and although is expected to increase over the next few decades, the rate is no longer exponential. Population is expected to level off sometime after 2050.

The question is why? How and why will population rate level off? It is because people in developing countries are going to make conscious decisions to limit how many children they have? Or is it because the depletion of resources and overcrowding will cause disease and starvation?

From 1958-1961 China experienced a famine that resulted in the death of about 16-33 million Chinese. When population density is high, factors such as disease, famine, or natural disasters can have disastrous effects on the population. Thousands, if not millions, can be wiped out by a virus or food shortage.

Think for a minute what that would mean if the avian virus were to mutate and spread across Asia, then other continents. Or if a sunami or earthquake were to hit densely populated areas along the coasts...oh wait, that's already happened.

We can surmise other evolutionary and natural “checks” to a planet stressed by the population of a single species. The fertility rate in humans has dropped significantly since the turn of the 20th century. Difficulty conceiving may not just be a problematic, mysterious annoyance, but a symptom of nature’s way of population control.

The depletion of energy sources such as oil, natural gas and coal due to an ever increasing population and demand will also speed up and therefore affect population growth. When our high-energy consuming lifestyle become unaffordable, how many will have to choose between medicine and food? Heat or dinner? House or gas to get to work? There’s no need to imagine it. It’s happening right now, in the form of the mortgage crisis.

To understand the effects of growth on both population and energy source depletion, particularly oil and coal, watch Dr. Al Bartlett’s excellent presentation, “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy” at http://edison.ncssm.edu/programs/colloquia/bartlett.ram. This is an hour-long streaming video of Dr. Bartlett's famous lecture, which he has delivered variations on this lecture over 1500 times around the world. It is riveting.

He tells us the obvious – that population cannot grow unchecked and we cannot continue to drive and encourage exponential economic growth. Eventually, there will be limits to everything, and those limits can either be self-imposed or nature-imposed. We can choose to live shorter, healthier lives, have less or no children, consume much less—or—nature will do the choosing for us in the form of disease, starvation, lower fertility, climate change and ecological collapse.

Since it’s already way past 11:59 for our planet, I think I’ll have to make my own choices now that I know where things are headed.

How To Raise Eco-Conscious Kids

You know that being “green” has become an official fad when you start seeing t-shirts for 12 year old girls at the department store imprinted with mantras like “Think Green” (on a green shirt) or “Do Something Good Today: Recycle”.

I was at a department store at the mall today, performing a homework assignment for my deep ecology class. We were supposed to go shopping, drool over the merchandise, notice how we feel, then walk away without surrendering to our desires. Unsurprisingly, it was much more difficult to resist the merchandise I was touching and seeing than it was to resist the imagined merchandise I felt apathy toward at home earlier. There’s nothing like walking through a department store to make you feel dumpy, fat, ugly or old. Almost everything you see is meant to make you feel like you’re lacking in some way.

Resistance is almost futile. But for the sake of the assignment, I resisted. I admit, it felt a bit brainwashy.

Anyway, this is when I noticed the t-shirts. They were displayed prominently in the children’s clothing section. “Think Green.” it blared in 150 point type across the flat chest of the manequin. Forget the fact that these shirts represent nothing uniquely sustainable– they’re just thin cotton shirts mass produced in China or Tawain. The idea that a 10 or 12 year old girl would want to advertise her eco-consciousness is saying something.

It’s telling me that her parents are probably making comments and judgments about their own eco-habits. Maybe they talk to their kids about the importance of doing the right thing and living more sustainably. Maybe they’re making snide comments about the Jones’ and how they just bought a bigger SUV or how the Smith’s have so many more garbage cans than recycle bins piled up on their driveway on trash day.

I know, because I talk to my daughter about stuff like this. I tell her the importance of living in harmony with our environment. She knows about recycling and saving energy and reducing pollution. We talk about it all the time. She is young and she is impressionable and she really wants to emulate her parents, so I can see why wearing one of these t-shirts (which I didn’t buy) would make her feel good in some way. Oh sure, it would make me feel good, too.

Maybe talking to our children about the importance of living in an ecologically sustainable way and actually putting some of our values into practice is a very important way of teaching them to be better Earth citizens. Making sustainability “cool” is one way of getting a kid to embrace the idea. But how do you get it to stick so it doesn’t go the way of other adolescent fads like break dancing, Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and feathered bangs?

Also, what about adults? Can going green become MORE than just a fad and actually become part of a person’s value system for the long-term?

The question of how a person makes a psychological shift from feeling detached from what’s happening to the environment to actually wanting to live sustainably and in harmony with it all comes down to one thing: ecopsychology.

Numerous studies have shown that people who care about the environment seem to have one very important thing in common. They identify with nature in some way. Their environment is a significant part of their lives. Perhaps they love to hike and spend time in the mountains every chance they get. Or they lovingly tend to a backyard garden and like to watch birds in their yard. Maybe they take daily walks on a beach to enjoy it’s vastness and to feel peaceful.

People who spend time in nature typically care more about what happens to it.

Ecopsychology studies why we persist in destroying their environment, and what it takes to change the way we think, so the protection and conservation of natural habitat is equal to the preservation of our OWN mental and physical wellbeing.

I know that the single best way to change the way a person perceives the environment and their place in it is to get them out in nature and connecting to some beautiful aspect of the wild. I also know the best way to bring up my child with the right values is to do things like going on walks with her in the woods, or taking her down to the lake with a field guide and watch the ducks make lazy circles in the water. Sure, it helps that I tell her about recycling and the importance of not being too materialistic and consumed by retail fads. Ultimately, though, the one thing that’s going to have long-lasting impact on her developing mind is the time she spent tending a campfire up in the mountains while watching the sun set over a peak, or standing among pack of mule deer, or having a camper jay land on her hand to swipe a piece of bread out of the palm of her hand.

Those are the moments she’ll refer to when someone asks her someday, “What do you care if they cut down that forest to make room for a new mall?” She’ll care, because she’ll know that no tchachke, trinket or t-shirt bought at that mall could ever take the same place in her heart as feeling that wild bird’s tiny feet grip the tips of her fingers in tender and hungry gratitude.