Minute Paper 2/5

Today we discussed the limits to growth and how at some point everything that continuously grows (in this case population growth) will either (1) be brought under control by devising solutions to bring this growth down to a sustainable rate so that it evens it’s self out or (2) if our increasing population is not able to come to an equilibrium with the resources that are fueling the growth it could result in a potentially violent fallout. We looked at both potential outcomes through the article “Horse Power to Horsepower” which illustrated how we can come to solutions to avoid disasters caused by population growth and Jared Diamond’s lecture on the collapse of society on Easter Island through the depletion of resources which lead to civil war and cannibalism causing complete devastation of their society. As much as I would love for us to find a way to correct the path to destruction that we seem to be following I can’t help being a bit pessimistic because we seem to be caught in a vicious circle where even when we are able to solve a problem that solution generally leads to another problem such as in the case of our switching from horses to cars.

Mark Alexander