You can also see this as my comment on the UN Climate Conference.
A short time ago, a friend of mine asked me the following “not seriously-meant question”:
Imagine you have a pond.
And you like water lilies.
Consequently, you will plant water lilies in your pond.
However, you were not aware of the fact that your brand of water lilies will multiply so quickly that, after each year, you will need twice as much space on the water as you needed the year before.
After ten years, your pond is full.
Now here comes the question:
When was half of the pond surface covered?
The answer is easy – one year before the pond was totally full, half of it must have been full of plants, because:
(2 to the power of n) divided by 2 is half of (2 to the power of n).
But if you are not a mathematician and consequently do not instantly apply your high-school mathematics, you will be rather surprised by the result.
Another rule of life is:
If you have some money and invest it as capital, and if you get 7% interest per annum, then your capital will be twice as much as before after approximately ten years.
That is because you can, for example, multiply those 1,000 Euros by 1.07 each year. And 1.07 to the power of 10 borders on 2.
All I want to say is that even a modest increase of only 7 % per unit will cause a doubling within ten units. In other words, we have a power of two from the perspective of the higher unit (i.e. a doubling with every other time unit).
Let us continue.
Programmers like to remember that 2 to the power of 10 equals around 1,000 (it is exactly 1,024).
This is rather exciting, because it means that, a year before, 1,024 were still 512 units. And the year before that 256. And all this regardless of it all having started very slowly. With a unit of one, the value after the first step was (seemingly only) 2, then 4, 8, 16, 32 etc. And suddenly, the speed increases dramatically. After ten steps, you already have 1,000. Mind you, we started very small – with 1.
This is what growth means. No matter if we are talking using up resources such as arable soil and water or the emission of detrimental elements such as carbon dioxide or radio-active material or plastic waste. Sooner or later, the big bang will come. And considering where we are now, it might well mean sooner. Realistically considered, it seems there is no chance for an “undo”.
So if, mathematically, I only consider 7 % growth, for instance with carbon dioxide emission, then this means that the emission will double every decade. If I then think in terms of centuries, for instance from 1901 to 2000 or from 2001 to 2100 (or maybe from 1950 to 2050), then it is pretty clear that, sooner or later, the total collapse will have to come.
Basically, you would imagine that this very simple calculation might give all those growth preachers – with their mantra-like prayer to the fetish growth caused by their human omnipotence mania – pause, wouldn’t you?
On the other hand, these ladies and gentlemen might well know that growth is not at all a solution. Maybe they just publicly evoke the golden calf called “growth” because it helps when you would otherwise have to tell the truth? Against their better knowledge and conscience? Because, after all, you cannot change matters, anyway?
Well, either way, I can well understand that most people – especially the young generation – get more and more fed up with politics and federal systematics.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
I tried to make the calculation as simple as possible.
P.S.1
I took the picture from Wikipedia, along with a piece by Marco Schmidt I own myself. It shows. Nymphaea micrantha in a pond between Tindangou and the border to Benin, Burkina Faso.
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