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> If NRJ/POP becomes stagnant either GDP/NRJ will have to grow rapidly or there won't by any GDP growth - and by extension population growth - anymore. If i'm

> If NRJ/POP becomes stagnant either GDP/NRJ will have to grow rapidly or there won't by any GDP growth - and by extension population growth - anymore. If i'm not mistaken that's a non sequitur. How do you link GDP growth and population growth? Why would an ever growing population even be a goal? > there have always been such paradigm shifts that allowed us to sustain more people with fewer resources No, paradigm shifts have allowed to sustain more people with more resources. Sure resources per people were smaller (eg more efficient processes), but global resource usage has always been growing (apart from recessions and other "bad" events where people actually died from stuff not working). This efficiency / resource usage counter-intuitive correlation is known as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox.

zaroth 7y ago
Resource usage per capita has never been higher, because the goal is not to do the same work with less, the goal is always to achieve more with more (or at least the same). Achieving “the same with less” at a macroeconomic level is actually impossible. Because if you reduce your inputs, you are by definition reducing demand for someone else’s outputs, leading to ultimately less demand for your outputs, i.e. a recession. The “way out” is for the increasing output to be more ecological harvested, less polluting, and more recyclable than before.
BjoernKW 7y ago
> How do you link GDP growth and population growth? GDP growth and population growth are inherently linked: In order to provide sufficient resources for a growing population resource production has to increase, either by more energy input or by more efficient production. If on the other hand population growth suddenly stopped and consumption per capita remained the same the only way for GDP to continue to grow would be to increase output per unit of work (i.e. the GDP/NRJ term from article). > Why would an ever growing population even be a goal? It's not as if someone purposefully sets this as a goal. Population growth given sufficient resources up to a point seems to be a naturally occurring phenomenon. If on the other hand we decide to deliberately constrain the availability of resources this in turn means putting a constraint on population growth as well. Ultimately, this means deciding who gets to live and who doesn't. If for whatever reason population growth stops naturally there's no need to establish growth as a goal for its own sake. However, artificially constraining growth seems inhumane to me. I can't remember the exact quote but somewhere in the epilogue of the first Dune novel Frank Herbert has planetary ecologist Liet Kynes say (or rather write because he's penning guidelines for educating the Fremen) something along the lines of: "Life is its own tool for ever more efficiently making use of the energy available within a system." In my opinion, that's a profound insight.

zaroth 7y ago

Resource usage per capita has never been higher, because the goal is not to do the same work with less, the goal is always to achieve more with more (or at least the same). Achieving “the same with less” at a macroeconomic level is actually impossible. Because if you reduce your inputs, you are by definition reducing demand for someone else’s outputs, leading to ultimately less demand for your outputs, i.e. a recession. The “way out” is for the increasing output to be more ecological harvested, less polluting, and more recyclable than before.

BjoernKW 7y ago

> How do you link GDP growth and population growth? GDP growth and population growth are inherently linked: In order to provide sufficient resources for a growing population resource production has to increase, either by more energy input or by more efficient production. If on the other hand population growth suddenly stopped and consumption per capita remained the same the only way for GDP to continue to grow would be to increase output per unit of work (i.e. the GDP/NRJ term from article). > Why would an ever growing population even be a goal? It's not as if someone purposefully sets this as a goal. Population growth given sufficient resources up to a point seems to be a naturally occurring phenomenon. If on the other hand we decide to deliberately constrain the availability of resources this in turn means putting a constraint on population growth as well. Ultimately, this means deciding who gets to live and who doesn't. If for whatever reason population growth stops naturally there's no need to establish growth as a goal for its own sake. However, artificially constraining growth seems inhumane to me. I can't remember the exact quote but somewhere in the epilogue of the first Dune novel Frank Herbert has planetary ecologist Liet Kynes say (or rather write because he's penning guidelines for educating the Fremen) something along the lines of: "Life is its own tool for ever more efficiently making use of the energy available within a system." In my opinion, that's a profound insight.