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Have We Reached Maximum Sustainable Population Size?
Hugh Pickens writes "Pulitzer prize winning writer Thomas Friedman writes that in few years we may be looking back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? 'We're currently caught in two loops,' writes Friedman. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.' According to the Global Footprint Network we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth's resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. 'Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,' says Paul Gilding. 'We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we're not stupid.'"
No.
It's a little early to include the tornadoes as part of a discussion on global climate change. Just like one hot summer doesn't prove it and one cold winter doesn't disprove it (even ignoring the false notion that global climate change != getting warmer everywhere all the time) we'd need to see evidence of increased storm activity for multiple years in close succession before we could draw any conclusions. In general i'm a "believer" in global climate change, but i'm not in favor of using incorrect data to try and prop up the idea.
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He has a 9.6 million dollar, 11,400 square foot home.
Oh and his wife used to own a company developing mall properties, those high square foot, poorly insulated buildings surrounded by heat absorbing asphalt.
See: tragedy of the commons...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter.
I wish I could be as sure. Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed does a nice job of documenting societies that, when faced with the same choice, picked collapse. Granted, they didn't have Jared Diamond's book to read beforehand, but neither did they have our capacity for self-immolation.
The problem with your argument, is that all of the advanced unnecessary accessories are now comparatively cheap, whereas the basic necessities of life are increasing in cost dramatically.
A standard size house block of land 50km away from the nearest cbd here costs approximately $300k-400k AUD (about $330k-440k USD) _without_ even a house on it.
You are looking at closer to a million dollars simply for a typical house.
Food is still relatively inexpensive if you actually make your own. No one in the 60/70's bought large quantites of pre-made food and ate out for 3 meals a day of fast food.
The costs of the land to grow your own food costs far more than the produce you would create. If you mean going to the shopping centre and getting ingredients, fast food can work out cheaper.. that is how expensive normal food is these days. It only makes sense to go normal food shopping if you have 3+ people and buy in bulk to create big meals.
What most people take for granted today as a mediocre lifestyle is beyond what even the wealthy had access to in the 60's and 70's
Depends on what you want from life, financial independence, owning your own home, not having food bills eat most of your income? Something many now cannot achieve which was easily doable back then.
Basically, all the luxuries are now cheap, and all the basic necessities of life are now expensive, nice work there.