Brad,

One of the interesting “red flags” contained in the traditional theories of growth limits is that they present the physical processes involved “following a theory”, when in fact theories are only persuasive to people, and nature uses a rather different method…

Natural systems are only going to be guided by their own increments of accumulation, and the counter increments those end up triggering. The huge error we keep making is thinking that reducing our use of things being overused is the solution.

We fail to see what happens to the savings we make that way.  In creating savings for one thing we create surpluses for others, that in our economy become the multipliers of growing impacts, that we’re not paying attention to. If interested in a more complete statement of that see “The Efficiency Mistake” or the research.

When the increments of change get progressively larger what you can be as certain of as gravity is “something” will come along to upset that!  Humans very oddly don’t generally think to look for it, that’s all.

It’s not that the growth of good things is bad, but that you need to ask what will bring exploding use of anything to an end.   You do always find there’s great  good in that too.

The real dilemma comes down to promoting human welfare without linking it to human self-restraint.  You just start listing ALL the things that add to the problems, and then struggle with the real dilemma you face.   When you ask “where’s the multiplier” you find it very close to home, in how we generate profit to have savings, to keep the money multiplying.

If we don’t discover how nature links *self-restraint* with *feeding desires* with it, serving our purposes in charitable aid, wealth and development, new technology, alternative energy, improving productivity, holistic living, leisure activity, healthcare, great monuments, artifacts, travel, etc. etc., will be meaningless.   All the social movements seeking positive change, the “counter culture” or “environmentalism” or “human rights” or “occupy movements” are then just so much quite aimless philosophizing, without effect.

So to construct the “counter system” we need to find “counter increments” that reverse the directions of the multipliers, erasing our near total ignorance of how and why the aid, and the money, and the technology, and everything else “good” would be good to stop adding to.  Almost none of the social movement people, that drive the media and the policy world, even talk about these things, though, do they?

I mention our crossing the EROI Line of Sustainability (degrading our resources as we increase our societal costs ).  That’s one inescapable physical boundary to definitely avoid, and it seems we have already begun to cross it.

The subject is a little ‘scientific” in approach.  So I need help is getting the idea out other ways too. The problem is not just population growth, but ALL factors that persistently add to our uses of the earth…