The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment by Chris Martenson Page A
Authors: Chris Martenson
Tags: United States, General, Economics, Business & Economics, Economic Conditions, Forecasting, Economic forecasting - United States, Economic forecasting, Development, Sustainable Development, Economic Development, Sustainable Development - United States, United States - Economic Conditions - 2009
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amount of energy China has used throughout all of history? The intuitive answer is that the total amount of energy consumed throughout China’s thousands of years of history is far larger than the amount consumed over the past 9 years, but the correct answer is that the most recent doubling is larger than all the prior doublings put together. 8
This is a general truth about doublings, not China in particular, and applies to anything and everything that has gone through a doubling cycle. To make sense of this preposterous claim, let’s use the legend of the mathematician who invented the game of chess for a king. So pleased was the king with this invention that he asked the mathematician to name his reward. The mathematician made a request that seemed modest: to be given a single grain of rice for the first square on the board, two grains for the second square, four grains for the third square, and so on. The king agreed, and foolishly committed to a sum of rice that was approximately 750 times larger than the entire annual worldwide harvest of rice in 2009. That’s what 64 doublings will get you.
Note that the first square had one grain of rice placed upon it, while the next square, the first doubling, got two grains. Here on the very first doubling, we can observe that more rice was placed upon the board than was already on the board; two compared to one. That is, the doubling was larger in size than all of the grains that had come before it. And on the next doubling, when we place four grains upon the board, we see that these four grains of rice are more numerous than the three grains (1 + 2) already upon the board from all the prior doublings. And at the next doubling we place eight grains on the board, which is a larger total than the seven that are already upon it (1 + 2 + 4). And so on. In every doubling, we’ll find that the most recent doubling is larger in size than all of the prior doublings put together. That’s one of the less intuitive but more important features of doublings. Each doubling is larger than all the ones that came before put together .
So if your town administrators are targeting, say, 5 percent growth, what they’re really saying is that in 14 years time they want to have more than twice as much of everything in the town than it currently has. More than twice as many people, sewage treatment plants, schools, congestion, electrical and water demand, and everything else that a town needs. Not a few more, but more than twice as many .
Your Exponential World
The reason we took this departure into discussing exponential growth and doubling times is that you happen to be completely surrounded by examples of exponential growth. And your future, like it or not, will be heavily shaped by their presence.
As you read the rest of this book, it will be helpful to continue to recall these three concepts related to exponential growth and doublings:
1. Speeding up . Time really gets compressed toward the end of the exponential phase of growth.
2. Turning the corner . This is a very real and extremely important event in systems with limits.
3. More than double . Each doubling equals more than all of the prior ones combined.
This information is going to be especially critical when we talk about the idea that our economy, our money system, and all of our associated institutions are fundamentally predicated on exponential growth. As we’ll see, it’s not just any type of growth that our money system requires, but exponential growth.
Up until recently, that has been a fine and workable model, but once we introduce the idea of resource limits into our collective story of growth (in other words, once we know just how big is the stadium in which we’re all sitting), we quickly discover some serious flaws in our current narrative. It turns out that the economy does not exist in a vacuum, and it does not have the power to create reality. The economy is really just a
This is a general truth about doublings, not China in particular, and applies to anything and everything that has gone through a doubling cycle. To make sense of this preposterous claim, let’s use the legend of the mathematician who invented the game of chess for a king. So pleased was the king with this invention that he asked the mathematician to name his reward. The mathematician made a request that seemed modest: to be given a single grain of rice for the first square on the board, two grains for the second square, four grains for the third square, and so on. The king agreed, and foolishly committed to a sum of rice that was approximately 750 times larger than the entire annual worldwide harvest of rice in 2009. That’s what 64 doublings will get you.
Note that the first square had one grain of rice placed upon it, while the next square, the first doubling, got two grains. Here on the very first doubling, we can observe that more rice was placed upon the board than was already on the board; two compared to one. That is, the doubling was larger in size than all of the grains that had come before it. And on the next doubling, when we place four grains upon the board, we see that these four grains of rice are more numerous than the three grains (1 + 2) already upon the board from all the prior doublings. And at the next doubling we place eight grains on the board, which is a larger total than the seven that are already upon it (1 + 2 + 4). And so on. In every doubling, we’ll find that the most recent doubling is larger in size than all of the prior doublings put together. That’s one of the less intuitive but more important features of doublings. Each doubling is larger than all the ones that came before put together .
So if your town administrators are targeting, say, 5 percent growth, what they’re really saying is that in 14 years time they want to have more than twice as much of everything in the town than it currently has. More than twice as many people, sewage treatment plants, schools, congestion, electrical and water demand, and everything else that a town needs. Not a few more, but more than twice as many .
Your Exponential World
The reason we took this departure into discussing exponential growth and doubling times is that you happen to be completely surrounded by examples of exponential growth. And your future, like it or not, will be heavily shaped by their presence.
As you read the rest of this book, it will be helpful to continue to recall these three concepts related to exponential growth and doublings:
1. Speeding up . Time really gets compressed toward the end of the exponential phase of growth.
2. Turning the corner . This is a very real and extremely important event in systems with limits.
3. More than double . Each doubling equals more than all of the prior ones combined.
This information is going to be especially critical when we talk about the idea that our economy, our money system, and all of our associated institutions are fundamentally predicated on exponential growth. As we’ll see, it’s not just any type of growth that our money system requires, but exponential growth.
Up until recently, that has been a fine and workable model, but once we introduce the idea of resource limits into our collective story of growth (in other words, once we know just how big is the stadium in which we’re all sitting), we quickly discover some serious flaws in our current narrative. It turns out that the economy does not exist in a vacuum, and it does not have the power to create reality. The economy is really just a
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