Are Humans Smarter Than Yeast?

Understanding exponential growth as a fundamental driver of global warming, environmental destruction, peak oil and natural gas, water and arable land shortages, social decay, resource wars, etc..

I am looking for people to help me translate this video into other languages.

Commentarians...If you think understanding exponential growth is important, and that this video clip is helpful, I hope you will consider including a link to this clip in your signature line in your commentary on other blogs -- as appropriate.

Update Feb. 2009: This clip is being translated with subtitles here:
http://dotsub.com/view/493537ee-4678-4a4c-9e68-19b9b5dac2d4 , and at overshoot.tv, here:
http://overshoot.tv/node/53 .

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• exponential
• growth
• global
• warming
• peak
• oil
• energy
• water
• resource
• wars

[looni3]

Technology isn't a solution if all it allows you to do is double to size of your lake. In reality technology can do so much more, like kill the lilies.

I would like to know the solution the maker of this video would put forward to combat exponential growth. Forced sterilisation to combat population growth, maybe? All right, we have a problem, what's the solution?

[danchay]

A first step is for a significant fraction of our population to begin to acknowledge and agree that indiscriminate exponential growth is a problem.

I support exponential growth in learning, care, and intellectual integrity. With the whole in mind, I support efforts that seek to grow better in quality while growing down in throughputs. I'd like to see more systems thinking, understanding of feedbacks and lag times, and innovation in inclusive, transparent, and open source government processes.

[insidiousspider]

This is awesome. We really need to wake up as a species and realize that there is an overpopulation problem, and its only going to get worse until a) We all starve to death; b) Governments start forcing people to become sterilized; or, c) We experience a collective epiphany and each and every one of us makes an INDIVIDUAL decision to have two or fewer children. I for one am hoping for (c), so that we will never have to experience (a) and (b).

[MrEnergyCzar]

No we aren't smarter...we will overshoot the carry capacity of our planet despite knowing we already have too many people......

[KillerWhaleSFl]

wow. I was WAY off the dollar bill question lol..

[piggykaiser]

@looni3

50 years ago when this problem was first discussed seriously there were some of us advocating ZPG (2 child family max). Today the only solution is NPG (negative population growth) with 1 child families for 3 or 4 generations. Of course we have to simultaneously reduce our consumption.

Physics tells us that every closed system will come to a steady state. Why not start working for it now.

[jimmybuffetWDWGDAS]

Nature has a way of working things out spend to much time complaining instead of coming up with solutions you lazy lazy fcker.... spend to much time with justification of things like oh I invaded that alien planet to support life who cares the only thing your consionse has a problem with is when you keep them alive and see them develop to be like you .... LIKE YOU

[fgularte]

be more happy please!

[amyntazoe]

awesome yet scary video...

[finlarg]

@Membrane556 You make some good suggestions. How did you arrive at the 3.6 billion figure? I think under a billion would be a better level for our population to stabilize at... but I know it's unrealistic without drastic government intervention or ecological catastrophe, neither of which is appealing.

[Membrane556]

@fluffymcdeath

I suggest Reading a book called the Moot in God's eye.

[Membrane556]

@finlarg

Unfortunately that is true.

I recommend we institute some aggressive family planning and encourage a two child policy as one was too few.

This means teaching about contraception and making it affordable and having government assistance for all for all forms of contraception.

Then work on space colonization and reducing the Earth's population to 3.6 billion.

[Membrane556]

We need to get population under control or the future in the known space novels where the government strictly enforces fertility will happen.

Another thing the governments could decided to introduce a sterility bug maybe something along the lines of a bug that causes auto immune sterility.