Despre crestere economica, viitorul nostru, si 'cresterea economica negativa'
textul intreg este acesibil la:
http://www.empireclubfoundation.com/details.asp?SpeechID=468&FT=yes
O prezentare la Empire Club of Canada
The Challenge of the 21st Century, Suzuki, Dr. David, Scientist and Broadcaster,
8 Dec 1988,
publicat in: The Empire Club of Canada Speeches 1988-1989, Edited by Byers, Mary R. and Chris Nichols (Toronto, Canada: The Empire Club Foundation, 1989) pp. 154-167
(
)
Now finally, the addiction to growth. As I said, nothing in the universe continues to grow indefinitely. This is called exponential growth. The thing about exponential growth is that whatever is growing, it will double in a certain length of time. At two per cent it will double in 35 years, at three per cent it will double in 23 years, at four per cent in 17 years and so on. So everything has a doubling power.
Now, let me give you an example of an exponentially growing system to show you why it is ludicrous to think that we can continue to have steady exponential growth. I am going to give you a test tube full of food for bacteria. I am going to introduce one bacterial cell into this test tube and that cell is going to go through exponential growth. It is going to double every minute. So, at the beginning there is one cell. In one minute there are two, at two minutes there are four, and at three
minutes there are eight and so on. That's exponential growth. At 60 minutes the test tube is completely full of bacteria and there is no food left. The question is: when is the test tube half empty? The answer is, of course, 59 minutes. At 59 minutes you still have half a test tube of food but you are going to be one minute away from filling it with bacteria. So at 58 minutes, the test tube is 25 per cent full of bacteria, at 57 minutes, 12.5 per cent. At 55 minutes it is only about three per cent full of bacteria.
If at 55 minutes one of the bacteria said:
"Hey guys, I think we have a population problem, I think we're running out of food and space," any sensible bacteria would say: "What the hell are you talking about? 97 per cent of the test tube is food and we have been here 55 minutes." And they would be five minutes away from filling it.
Now let's suppose bacteria are not much different from us; that at 59 minutes, a few of them finally smarten up and say: "I think we've got a problem, we better put every bit of resource into our genetic engineers and all our high tech guys and they have got to get us out of trouble." You know what they do? These hot shot scientists come up in 30 seconds with three new test tubes full of food and nobody in it. So they have now quadrupled the amount of space and food. What have they got? At 60 minutes the first test tube is full of bacteria, 61 minutes the second is full and at 62 minutes all four are full. Quadruple the space but keep exponential growth you buy two extra minutes. Now I can tell you that no amount of science and technology is going to quadruple our space and resources and that we are long past 55 minutes. We have to be thinking not of continued growth, or sustainable growth, or even zero growth, we have to talk about
negative growth.
(
)
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2¢/min or less. __._,_.___
*** sustineti [romania_eu_list] prin 2% din impozitul pe 2005 - detalii la http://www.doilasuta.ro ***
SPONSORED LINKS
| Nh lake region real estate | New hampshire lake region real estate |
Your email settings: Individual Email|Traditional
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe
Change settings via the Web (Yahoo! ID required)
Change settings via email: Switch delivery to Daily Digest | Switch to Fully Featured
Visit Your Group | Yahoo! Groups Terms of Use | Unsubscribe
__,_._,___
