(9:30 PM) | Brad:

The Politics of the Exponential Function {A Blatant & Shameless Cross-Post}

All right, let’s look now at what happens when we have this kind of steady growth in a finite environment.

Bacteria grow by doubling. One bacterium divides to become two, the two divide to become 4, the 4 become 8, 16 and so on. Suppose we had bacteria that doubled in number this way every minute. Suppose we put one of these bacteria into an empty bottle at 11:00 in the morning, and then observe that the bottle is full at 12:00 noon. There's our case of just ordinary steady growth: it has a doubling time of one minute, it’s in the finite environment of one bottle.

I want to ask you three questions. Number one: at what time was the bottle half full? Well, would you believe 11:59, one minute before 12:00? Because they double in number every minute.

And the second question: if you were an average bacterium in that bottle, at what time would you first realise you were running of space? Well, let’s just look at the last minutes in the bottle. At 12:00 noon, it’s full; one minute before, it’s half full; 2 minutes before, it’s a quarter full; then an 1?8th; then a 1?16th. Let me ask you, at 5 minutes before 12:00, when the bottle is only 3% full and is 97% open space just yearning for development, how many of you would realise there’s a problem?

Now, in the ongoing controversy over growth in Boulder, someone wrote to the newspaper some years ago and said “Look, there’s no problem with population growth in Boulder, because,” the writer said, “we have fifteen times as much open space as we've already used.” So let me ask you, what time was it in Boulder when the open space was fifteen times the amount of space we’d already used? The answer is, it was four minutes before 12:00 in Boulder Valley. Well, suppose that at 2 minutes before 12:00, some of the bacteria realise they’re running out of space, so they launch a great search for new bottles. They search offshore on the outer continental shelf and in the overthrust belt and in the Arctic, and they find three new bottles. Now that’s an incredible discovery, that’s three times the total amount of resource they ever knew about before. They now have four bottles, before their discovery, there was only one. Now surely this will give them a sustainable society, won’t it?

You know what the third question is: how long can the growth continue as a result of this magnificent discovery? Well, look at the score: at 12:00 noon, one bottle is filled, there are three to go; 12:01, two bottles are filled, there are two to go; and at 12:02, all four are filled and that’s the end of the line.

Thus Bartlett lays out the logic of exponential arithmetic to explain what is wrong with with seemingly innocuous notion that we must always be growing in order to be productive. His analysis of the problem is about as good as you're going to find. Introductory, funny, engaging, and downright chilling when he applies this soberly to our consumptive appetite for energy. In short, his mathematical gaze is to the point: not only is our energy consumption unsustainable (we all know that, right?), but the tipping point is actually right upon us, almost certainly within twenty years. The behooves us to ask, he warns: what will your world look like after the demise of cheap energy?

His only major misstep, in my opinion, is his overriding focus on overpopulation. I don't know. Maybe I'm going to ridiculed for this, but I think this is a potentially very dangerous red herring. Certainly as it is traditionally argued -- and even as Bartlett does here. There is, of course, the mathematical and geographical problem of overpopulation, which will surely lead to a catastrophe. A finite area, such as a city, a state, a nation, or a globe, cannot sustain unending growth. I do not argue that. What Bartlett does, however, and what I find most people do who talk about overpopulation (esp. in the global sense), be they conservative or liberal, is speak fully in the abstract about the problem w/ no real vision of a true solution. What is the typical solution? Namely, education -- be it the conservative vision of abstinence, or the liberal vision of unbridled birth control (or, if they're more "radical," reversing patriarchal hierarchies). Maybe tax cuts for people who stop having kids after one or two. Few, of course, will argue for a mandated systemization of abortion. Even fewer will apply a dark vision that genocide, war, and famine will do our job for us, so perhaps we should leave places like Africa to their own devices.

The problem with this perspective, near as I can tell, is that it assumes a certain equality that simply isn't there. It assumes that we are all individually complicit in such a global problem as overpopulation, in equal measure. Of course, that this perspective results in the Third World getting the stink eye is quite natural, as their populations are exploding far beyond that of the First World, and as such they're clearly not doing their part in this worldwide effort to be smart with Mother Earth. This, though, seems a little convenient.

What is so pernicious about this logic is that the very problem damned by the First World, we who search for the solution overpopulation frantically, is, in fact, caused by the steady march of First World growth. The very thing that now defines the First World! In spite of his absolutely vital critique of this growth, even Bartlett ignores the fact that this philosophy of growth is engrained in the very functioning of the First World. I.e., growth is built into the system in such a way that reality no longer matters -- otherwise, would the fact that advanced western economies are built on debt and credit, the buying and selling of debt unbacked by tangible resources, make sense? There is, I would argue, absolutely no means of reforming capitalism with a little humanitarianism here, and and some compassion there. The incremental progress that late-capitalism was to bring, at this point, is running up perilously close to the end of the cheap and ample resources that brought the First World to its present heights in the first place.

The deficiency of Bartlett's math is that it doesn't seem able to show the socio-economic reality that where there is constant growth, there is also an inevitable decline, in the form of those who do not own the land that produces the goods that churn the wheel of progress. These, rather, are given a different criteria by which to judge their success, versus that of the rest of the world -- their standard of living is judged by comparing it to those who are just as poor or poorer, in such a way that we can justify paying them what amounts to scraps in terms of a First World criteria, because 'it's more than they'd normally get, so they really should be happy.'

And then we have the First World solution to the overpopulation of the very places that it effectively renders, and arguably keeps, poor. (Okay, yes, I realize that China is getting richer; as is, say, India. And while one could argue that this is not likely filtering down to the lowest levels of either society, I would argue that the effects of this growth is built on an ecological and energy-depleting timebomb that extends to the budding middle class of these countries a new kind of poverty, namely, a uniquely modern myopic vision of reality that threatens the very livelihoods that have moved them beyond the slums, and inevitably their lives even to the budding middle-class of these countries. So goes the metaphorical cocktease taking place in emergent economies: the extraordinarily hot virgin (capital) with an inexplicable and incurable venereal disease.) This, despite the fact that where there is poverty, there is typically a population increase -- be it in Africa, or be it in Everwhere Ghetto, USA; as poverty decreases, so does the birth rate -- be it in western Europe or Everywhere Suburb, USA. Where there is poverty, education falls, women's rights decrease, and contraception is less available. We know that social conditions have a tremendous impact on population growth, and yet it is officially a non-starter when one questions the relationship of late-capitalism (which, I say again, is fundamentally indistinguishable from the inexcusably ignorant -- willfully ignorant -- object of Bartlett's dead-on critique). Instead, we mistake the symptom for the disease.

That Bartlett shrinks away from this, to something so abstract as warning us about overpopulation, when the the real problem itself is staring him, us, you & me, square in the face, is telling. It is telling of the disconnect between what we actually know and what we believe to be true.

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