Excerpt from Geoff Garver's EcoBlog 29 October 2009
'Most forecasts for the world economy, world energy supply and demand, climate change and the economy and so on assume that economic growth will march on. The Stern report on climate change and the economy said it would “not be unreasonable” to assume the world economy will grow by 2% to 3% this century, based on historical growth. So, what does this growth look like?
... if the economy is going to go from $61 trillion in GWP in 2009 to somewhere between $450 and $1100 trillion in GWP in 2100, what kind of energy and material throughput are we talking about? What kind of ecological footprint, if we are already overconsuming the Earth by 20%? For anyone who thinks runaway banks and credit derivative swaps are the major problem facing the world (and that kind of financial shenaniganism is a HUGE problem, yes), take a close look at these graphs. They tell the story of the real crisis we are facing.'
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