Perpetually growing energy (at a finite growth rate) on a finite planet is simply not possible, even physically.
Perpetually growing GDP is another matter, since money is something of a fiction. But if you actually anticipate that the rest of the world will eventually catch up to where the west will be after another fifty years of growth, you get something like fifty times the current environmental impact. Or if you want to break even on total environmental impact, you have to reduce the impact per dollar by a factor of fifty. That's just to keep the rate of damage to the environment fixed. http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2009/05/cruel-hoax-growth-and-equity-cannot-be.html mt -- 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
