Re:Europe's record heat wave moves toward Greenland
by loup-vaillant on Friday July 26, 2019 @05:57PM
(#20538704)
> We've got tons of resources for energy (more than ever in history).
Europe is already past its peak, and it already has some effects on its economy. (GPD is roughly proportional to the energy we spend: less energy, less stuff.) Unless we have some technological breakthrough, available energy will go down, and the economy will soon follow.
Malthus was wrong only because we found fossil fuels, allowing our crop yields to follow the exponential growth of the population (the growth used to be linear). If we're not careful, we could very well face a Malthusian collapse.Hmm.
> I'm really not seeing a reason to panic.
Certainly. Panicking only makes things worse. And the "time to panic" is precisely the time when we must not panic.
Europe is already past its peak, and it already has some effects on its economy. (GPD is roughly proportional to the energy we spend: less energy, less stuff.) Unless we have some technological breakthrough, available energy will go down, and the economy will soon follow.
Malthus was wrong only because we found fossil fuels, allowing our crop yields to follow the exponential growth of the population (the growth used to be linear). If we're not careful, we could very well face a Malthusian collapse.Hmm.
> I'm really not seeing a reason to panic.
Certainly. Panicking only makes things worse. And the "time to panic" is precisely the time when we must not panic.