Population growth, natural resources and exponential function
By , Local CorrespondentSun, Jun 21 2009 at 12:38 AM EST
These videos I found on YouTube tie together a lot of environmental conservation concepts with exponential function. The professor in the videos, Dr. Albert Bartlett, discusses the nature of doubling time and how population growth and the diminishing of finite resources seems to almost sneak up on us. After watching it, I wonder, is choosing not to have children the ultimate act of conservation? I mean, we can recycle, and even tell our children to recycle, reduce and reuse, but I don't think that will be enough in the long term. Simply using enough food and water to survive is a tremendous use of resources. Nature will eventually catch up with us, this professor says, and we will soon be forced to choose between having a zero percent growth rate (voluntarily stop having children), or witness a worldwide rate of death (by the natural causes Dr. Bartlett lists) that is higher than the birth rate, until Mother Nature gets us back to that zero percent growth rate. It's a little bit terrifying to imagine. Watch for yourself:
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