Re: SC32

http://energyandcapital.com/editorials.php?id=319

Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

As we all know, the warning signals we have received about energy, food, species extinction and global warming are just the most prominent issues. We are also seeing a host of other warnings, from every corner of the globe: wars erupting over water; infectious diseases that spread around the world like wildfire; actual wildfires that burn out of control because the forests are unhealthy; entire ecosystems and coral reefs on the verge of collapse due to pollution and destruction; huge "dead zones" developing in the ocean; the stunningly rapid retreat of the glaciers and the polar ice packs; the hole in the ozone layer; and a nauseating litany of other planetary plagues that we all know all too well.

All this, despite our best efforts to increase our harvests of natural resources. Despite more intensive drilling for oil than ever before, with the best exploration technology ever developed, we are finding fewer prospects, drilling more dry holes, and working harder for less oil every year. Likewise, despite the enormous advances of the Green Revolution and harvests increased by orders of magnitude through the heavy use of modern fertilizers and pesticides (made from natural gas and petroleum), the world will grow less food this year than it eats, for the sixth time in the past seven years. The world's food stocks have shrunk to about 57 days' worth [1] about the same duration as there is in the world's oil reserves.

Now, let's step back from these trees and take a look at the forest. What message do they have in common? It is a dawning realization that, simply put, what we've been doing so far is leading us to ruin, and that we must take a different course. When people with a deep vested interest in the way things are, like Matthew Simmons and the president of Shell, suddenly get religion about energy depletion, we know that a very significant change is happening.

Most prognostications about energy, food supplies, global warming and other related issues use a 50-year window, and within that window they see Big Trouble. Why? Because in 50 years we'll have 9 billion people on the planet, 50% more than we have today. And that is the bottom line. That is the fundamental driving force behind all of these interrelated problems. It's nothing more, and nothing less, than a classic case of ecological overshoot............