Michael Tobis wrote:
> Prioritization is surely a good thing, but I am coming at this from
> another angle.
>
> There will soon enough be 10G people, of whom perhaps 0.4G will be American.
>
> If we take sustainability to mean no drawdown of remaining species
> population in the wild, no significant extraction of fossil fuels or
> groundwater, no net large scale changes in composition of atmosphere
> and ocean, can the average American standard of living as of today
> become the global average?
>
> My intuition says no, it has too much impact, but I am trying to find
> somebody who has done the calculation in earnest, or, failing that,
> sources for the right numbers.
I don't think this is a well-posed question in the first place. No
fossil fuel extraction but American standard of living already
presupposes lots of changes to an as-yet purely hypothetical future. If
we can solve the energy problem (eg via technology), then maybe we can
solve food and water problems similarly. If we cannot, then there is no
truly sustainable solution.
So there you have the mathematician's answer - precisely correct and
utterly useless :-) But more reasonably, of course we are miles off any
semblance of sustainability by your measure, and will remain so
indefinitely. Maybe this means your definition is too strict to be
useful, although of course you can choose any definition you want...
BTW 10 billion people seems unlikely, but I suppose 9 is more than enough.
James
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
