Tuesday August 29, 2006

Peak Oil and Limits to Growth - Dennis Meadows at ASPO 5

energybulletin.net :

Dennis Meadows is one of the key figures in the environmental movement over the last 50 years, and one of the authors of perhaps the single best known environmental book "Limits to Growth", published in 1972.

The contribution of Limits to Growth was to show that population and industrial growth are inherently exponential, and that exponential growth takes a resource to its limits very quickly. 35 years of data shows that our original study results were correct. Climate has already peaked, global food production will peak in the next 15 years, even with no energy crisis, water is nearing its peak, oil being just one peak of many. In 1972 when the first LTG was published we were below the limits to growth. Now we are well above. We have overshot the Earth's carrying capacity.

World population is increasing exponentially. The gap between rich and poor is widening, in China now 60% of the wealth is controlled by 1% of the population. Our ecological footprint was overshot in the 1970s. We are now at 120% of global capacity, and can't go much higher. Some indicators of overshoot are the deterioration in renewable resources, surface and ground water, forests, fisheries, agricultural land, rising levels of pollution. Also growing demand for capital, resources and labour by military and industry to secure, process and defend resources, and rising levels of personal debt. Insurance company losses are also rising.

The issue is not that you are running out of something, rather that the quality of the resource depletes. One of the reasons it is hard to (see change coming? Change direction quickly?) is long delay and ambiguous signals. Replacing oil with another energy source is one thing, replacing the infrastructure is a whole other area.

(2006-08-29 13:20:33 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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