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Re: Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)
> >jw (jwas@ix.netcom.com) wrote:
> >
> posting. Below are statistics... for the planet Earth.
>
> Year Population
> Growth
> rate
>
> 1970 2.07
> 1975 1.76
> 1980 1.71
> 1985 1.68
> 1990 1.58
> 1995 1.41
> 2000 (projected) 1.28
>
The numbers I get (from Britannica Annual World Data Sheets) are even a
little lower (1985-1996) averaged over 2-3 years/
'85- '88: 1.38% growth
'88- '91: 2.16% <-- Note DECADE census info available in this period!
'91- '94: 1.30%
'94- '96: 1.39%
It's important to keep in mind that 1.00 IS NOT ZPG, 0.00 IS. These are
annual percentage growths. At 1.4% gowth today, we add 80 million people
per year. Even as the percentage drops slowly, the absolute growth can
still be increasing--such is the nature of such growth.
As posted earlier, even (what seems like) a modest growth of 1% cannot be
sustained long term (thousands of years) {in 17,000 years there would be
more people than atoms in the Universe!}. We can argue over what the
ultimate 'carrying capacity' of the earth is for humans, but IT IS a finite
number. ZPG must be reached eventually either by
societal/governmental/economic pressures or by starvation/disease/war.
While a stable population causes problems for many current economic
systems, it certainly would be preferable from an environmental point of
view as well as for many societal systems.
Rick Tarara
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