Steve Salmony asked      HOW DO WE STOP GROWTH?                1/17/2015

Steve that is the wrong question.
ANSWERING IT DOES NOT CHANGE OUR TRAGIC FUTURE.

THE QUESTION THAT SHOULD BE ASKED AND ANSWERED

HOW MANY PEOPLE CAN LIVE ON EARTH WITHOUT
CREATING HUMAN OR ENVIRONMENTAL INJURY?

If we can fine that answer to everyone's satisfaction
we have a target to shoot for -- like abolition and or suffrage.

So below is an engineering answer to this question.

Engineers designed the space station for 6 people.
They knew right up front how much energy, food, air,
water, and maintenance materials would be needed
to keep six people alive and comfortable.

If a supply ship did not make deliveries,
if they punched a whole in the skin and the atmosphere escaped,
if they could not get the solar panels aligned with the sun
the party was over.
The astronauts abandoned the space station or died.

OK it does not take a rocket scientist to make those calculations for earth.
I have made them in three videos.

One has 600 million living like 16th century peasants

One shows how we could support a world population of
50 million at US life styles
on present hydro electric power
after fossil energy runs out and renewable supplies don’t replace them.

One shows 50 million if you want peace and soil protection

50 million is as rock firm as 6.
I challenge you to show that a different number,
greater or less than 50 million
makes more sense then the arguments presented in
SKIL Note 100..

The present population 7.4 billion
or the expected population in 2050 9 - 12 billion
does not change this 50 million person number.
It just scales the required transition, or
the expected injuries for our present path.

Of course there are tech and religious miracles.
However, miracles are not how engineers
designed the space station for 6 or
I designed a human community of 50 million for the earth.

One more thing, since we are going to be out of
fossil and uranium fuel in 2100,
we had better get the population down to 50 million
or 600 million because
if we don’t, most people’s kids in the transition are
going to starve to death, be killed, or eaten.

I have suggested civil control over births,
allowing 500,000 per year total for all of earth.
Some other people have suggested "designed genocide"
to achieve sustainable population numbers.
The default path forward for the human community,
even with most of the meaningless actions proposed today
being successfully implemented
includes, by my calculations,
starvation, and brutal deaths for most.

I think any discussion of stopping the growth of population
or reducing consumption or
flatting inequity or
reorganization of the monetary system
or re-localization of housing, production, or government
without a precursor of population reduction to 50 million by 2100
has long passed its usefulness.

Each of these, successfully implemented,
sans population reduction
amount to too little too late
to avoid 90+% die off by 2100.

Jack Alpert www.skil.org