Creative Commons License
Creative Commons License
Tag Archives: population
What Would it Take to Get to a Steady State Economy?
Humans live in equilibrium with other species in a finite world. In such a world, there is never really a Steady State. Instead, there is a constant ebb and flow. For a while, one species may be dominant in an … Continue reading
Posted in Financial Implications
Tagged collapse, GDP, population, steady state, steady state economy
441 Comments
The Long-Term Tie Between Energy Supply, Population, and the Economy
The tie between energy supply, population, and the economy goes back to the hunter-gatherer period. Hunter-gatherers managed to multiply their population at least 4-fold, and perhaps by as much as 25-fold, by using energy techniques which allowed them to expand … Continue reading
Posted in Alternatives to Oil, Book draft, Food issues, Introductory Post
Tagged coal, deforestation, economy, electricity, energy supply, erosion, GDP, hunter-gatherer, Hydroelectric, oil, peat, petroleum, population, soil fertility, top soil
158 Comments
An Energy/GDP Forecast to 2050
We talk about the possibility of reducing fossil fuel use by 80% by 2050 and ramping up renewables at the same time, to help prevent climate change. If we did this, what would such a change mean for GDP, based … Continue reading
Posted in Financial Implications
Tagged climate change, forecast, fossil fuels, GDP, population
111 Comments
Human population overshoot–what went wrong?
There are seven billion people on earth now. I originally thought that the primary reason for the recent human population explosion was that fossil fuels enabled a larger food supply and better medicine, and thus a higher population. While the … Continue reading
Posted in Planning for the Future
Tagged Craig Dilworth, ecology, overshoot, population, territoriality.
153 Comments
Should We Take United Nations’ Projections Seriously?
This is a guest post by Dr. Gary Peters, author of Population Geography. The United Nations warned recently that the global consumption of natural resources could almost triple to 140 billion tons a year by 2050 unless nations take drastic … Continue reading
