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"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." -- the late eminent economist Kenneth Boulding.

Our economy does not operate in a vacuum. As economist Herman Daly has explained, it is a subset of our environment, and its scale relative to the environment is already far too large for material growth to be able to continue much longer, much less to be sustainable for the very long term, or indefinitely. Here are several examples to support that assertion.

First example: A recent news report in The New York Times said that industrial production in China grew by 16.6 percent in 2006. At that rate industrial production in China would double in slightly over four years. By 2036, only 30 years later, if the same rate were to continue, their industrial production would be a staggering one hundred times larger than in 2006. That is obviously an impossibility, given our earth's limited resources.

The point here is that no material resource, no matter how vast, can possibly withstand more than a very few doublings because astronomical numbers are quickly reached. This simple, and unassailable, truth has yet to be understood and acted upon by almost all main stream economists, as well as by our government officials.

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Second example: This example gives an idea of how large our world economy already is, and how much larger it is projected to become in the very near future. The subject is the projected increase in the number of passenger light-duty vehicles in the period 2004-2030.

Data is from the World Energy Outlook 2006, published by the International Energy Agency, headquartered in Paris, France.

1. Global population is projected to grow from an estimated 6.4 billion in mid-2004 to over 8.1 billion in 2030

2. Per-capita income per annum is projected to increase from $9,253 in 2004 to $17,196 in 2030 (in 2005 dollars).

3. Increasing income per capita is projected to boost global light-duty vehicle ownership from 100 per 1,000 persons today to 170 in 2030.

4. As a consequence of the growth in population times the growth in per capita income, the number of passenger light-duty vehicles is projected to more than double in the period 2005 to 2030 - from 650 million to 1.4 billion!

5 .Projected new vehicle sales are projected to reach almost 100 million per year in 2030.

We doubt that anything remotely approaching the manufacture of 100 million new vehicles per year will ever be realized. If, by some miracle, that should come to pass, we wonder if most of those nearly 100 million new vehicles per year will be hybrid cars equipped with foot pedals in the event that, by that time, all other means of propulsion are in short supply.

Is there a solution to the overwhelming problems created by population growth combined with growth in per capita income? Yes, but the first requirement is to set a goal that is adequate to solve the problems. We at NPG believe that our goal should be to create an economy that will be sustainable for the very long term, with an adequate standard of living for all, in a sound and healthy environment.

We are convinced that such a goal cannot possibly be reached unless we first halt, then eventually reverse, both U.S. and world population growth so that, after an interim period of negative growth, U.S. and world population can be stabilized at a sustainable level.

We consider sustainable levels to be not more than 150 million for the United States, and not more than two billion for the world. Our U.S. population is now over 300 million, projected to reach 500 million or more by mid-century. World population is now 6.6 billion, projected to increase to 9.2 billion by 2050.


Recommended reading .

The End of Fossil Fuels. Part 1. How Long the Twilight?
The End of Fossil Fuels. Part 2. Twilight or Dawn
An Essay on a Sustainable Economy
The Cairo Conference on Population and Development