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Modeling the Economy As a Physics Problem
University of Utah physicist Tim Garrett has published a study that approaches the economy and its relation to global warming as a physics problem — and comes to some controversial conclusions: that rising carbon dioxide emissions cannot be stabilized unless the world's economy collapses or society builds the equivalent of one new nuclear power plant each day. The study was panned by economists and was rejected by several journals before its acceptance in the journal Climatic Change. "[Garrett discovered that] Throughout history, a simple physical constant... links global energy use to the world's accumulated economic productivity, adjusted for inflation. So it isn't necessary to consider population growth and standard of living in predicting society's future energy consumption and resulting carbon dioxide emissions. ... 'I'm not an economist, and I am approaching the economy as a physics problem,' Garrett says. 'I end up with a global economic growth model different than they have.' Garrett treats civilization like a 'heat engine' that 'consumes energy and does "work" in the form of economic production, which then spurs it to consume more energy,' he says. That constant is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, 'each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption,' Garrett says. ... Perhaps the most provocative implication of Garrett's theory is that conserving energy doesn't reduce energy use, but spurs economic growth and more energy use."
"Stop" is such a beautiful euphemism for what is essentially death. A lot of death.
We can't stop population growth
It will eventually stop of it's own (or so we hope) but probably not before world population doubles once more
With the current output we don't have enough food to keep everyone alive, and we're FAR short of what everyone would like to eat (never mind the fact that people generally want more than just food) (we did 10 years ago, I know, today, we don't, thank you "anti-co2" biofuels advocates, who managed to seriously increase both co2 AND hunger)
The statement above is ignoring the disconnect between where hunger is and where agricultural production is plentiful, and the energy for transit that requires. This to attract attention to the fact that just having sufficient total food is not enough, you need transit infrastructure, and the energy to run it.
So "stop somewhere" begs the question :
Who gets to die, and who gets to live, and what makes you think the rest of the world will accept that answer without a fight ?
Of course, unless that question is answered satisfactorily for everyone involved (including those asked to die), you're right :
The Heinlein fan in me says this will happen with war and starvation. Its not that hard to imagine, it happens all the time.
Which is probably how this whole evolution thing is supposed to work in the first place. Needless to say, no matter how atheist someone is, he or she will stress the need to intervene.