Population Growth as the Principle Resource Driver:

Well yeah of course, but it's not as simple as this because the coupling of resource usage to population growth is highly nonlinear. It is precisely for these reasons that future growth scenarios are so hard to accurately predict.

In general, non-linear means that Y α XN where N=1 would represent the special case of linear growth. If X goes to 2x then Y goes to 2Y. But if say N = 1.5, then if X goes to 2X then Y would go to 21.5 or about 2.8. If X is the number of consumers and Y is the consumed product then you can easily experience resource shortage if you assume N=1.



The table below shows some good examples of non-linear scaling over the period 1950--2000:

1950 2000 1950-2000
50-year change
Human population (billions) 2.52 6.06 247%
Registered vehicles (millions) 70 723 1030%
Oil Consumption (million barrels per year) 3,800 27,635 727%
Natural gas consumption (trillion ft3 per year) 6.5 94.5 1454%
Coal consumption (million metric tons per year) 1,400 5,100 364%
Electricity generation capacity (million kilowatts) 154 3,240 2104%
Corn (maize) production (million metric tons per year) 131 594 453%
Wood pulp production (million metric tons per year) 12 171 1425%
Iron production (million metric tons per year) 134 580 433%


If everything scaled linearly then all of the percentages would be equal to 247%. Note the very large scaling involved with electricity generation capacity. For formally this can be expressed as :

Elecricity usage α (pop growth)3.5


Operationally this means that if your double the population you need to supply 23.5 = 11 times more electricity, not just twice as much. Put differently, a doubling of electricity generation requires only about a 20% growth in population. Imagine what kind of world you would live in if all planners assume that all growth is linear!

The following graphical waveforms all show examples of what non-linear consumption looks like and most all of this non-linearity starts to appear, not surprisingly, right after WW II.

And where does it end up in an invisible way:









And pay attention to the first 30 seconds about the move away from our conservation ethic towards wholesale consumption.

Best Proxy for Global Consumption Increases:

The WalMart Express:

The technology of containerization has transformed the manner in which the world does business. On the WalMart express, for instance, there are essentially and infinite number of items. Hence, shipping cost per item is now near zero. This in turn has opened up cheap labor markets/sweat shops. To then in turn handle this much greater volume of goods, container ports around the world have been built and are greatly expanding.

The containers on each WalMart Express are called TEUs (twenty foot equivalent). The figure below shows the non-linear rise in TEU traffic. This is what globalization really looks like and it is this enormous factor of 10 Growth in just 25 years! This is the consequence of global consumption and This is the principle driver of Climate Change



Using TEU traffic as our indicator, one can clearly see that the Global Economic Meltdown is merely a temporary blip on the overall consumption trajectory (your generation should be seriously concerned with this trajectory - maybe I will make a YouTube on why you need to care about this.







In response to this growing demand, Shipping fleets gear up to serve more and more consumers by building larger and larger ships. I wish every class could take a field trip to a container port to grasp the scale of consumption.



Qualitatively, 'Consumption' is not the problem. Its the RATE of Consumption relative to your resource base that is the problem. We are therefore seriously overconsming the plant.


On this issue, everyone should read the 2012 Living Planet Report


To better understand this important figure of our footprint:


This ultimately is our Post WWII consumption legacy and its definitely driving the coming resource shortage. The reader of this document is as unlikely to believe this as the next person. We just don't believe we will run out and in that mindset "sustainability" is just a word not an action item

Sustainabilty = Consume Less and lower the global rate of consumption by doing so. Reintroduce the Sacred. Maybe we really don't give a shit ...