Albert Allen Bartlett (born 1923 in Shanghai)[1] is an emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. As of July 2001[update] Professor Bartlett had lectured over 1,600 times since September, 1969 on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy.[2][3] Bartlett regards sustainable growth as a contradiction, since modest annual percentage population increases will inevitably equate to huge exponential growth over sustained periods of time. He therefore regards human overpopulation as "The Greatest Challenge" facing humanity.
Contents |
Bartlett joined the faculty of the University of Colorado in Boulder in September 1950. He has a B.A. degree in physics from Colgate University (1944), and M.A. (1948) and Ph.D. (1951) degrees in physics from Harvard University. In 1978 he was national president of the American Association of Physics Teachers. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1969 and 1970 he served two terms as the elected Chair of the four-campus Faculty Council of the University of Colorado.
Professor Bartlett often explains how sustainable growth is a contradiction. His view is based on the fact that a modest percentage growth can equate to huge escalations over relatively short periods of time.[4]
Bartlett argues that, over time, compound growth can yield enormous increases. For example, an investor earning a constant annual 7% return on their investment would find their capital doubling within 10 years. But the same exponential power, so advantageous to patient investors, may be potentially calamitous when applied to human population. A population of 10,000 individuals, if it were to grow at a constant rate of 7% per annum, would reach a population size of 10 million after 100 years.[5]
Bartlett regards overpopulation as "The Greatest Challenge" facing humanity, and promotes sustainable living. He opposes the cornucopian school of thought (as advocated by people such as Julian Lincoln Simon), and refers to it as "The New Flat Earth Society"[6]
J. B. Calvert (1999) has proposed that Bartlett's law [7] will result in the exhaustion of petrochemical resources due to the exponential growth of the world population in line with the Malthusian Growth Model).
Bartlett has made two notable statements relating to sustainability:
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
and his Great Challenge:
"Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?"
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||