Saturday, January 24, 2009

the big plan

Is there a big plan? Let me get this straight. People are living longer than they used to. The "carrying capacity" of the planet is somewhere in the neighborhood of 1-2 Billion people, depending on how many are vegetarians and pet owners, etc. When I was born we had about 3 B and now we have around 6.5 B. The UN estimates that population will level off around 10 B in the next 50 years ish. By 2100 CO2 levels will be around 700 (360 today?) and by about 1000 we all die from SO2 poisioning. So what's the plan exactly? Are more people going to have early deaths? Are we going to have negative interest rates, negative discount rates, success defined as having less? Will we have new ways of being happy while people are dropping like flies all around us? Hello?