Albert Bartlett is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder who is an internationally-known and widely-published expert on the economics of sustainability and growth. He is the author of The Essential Exponential and of http://www.albartlett.org/.
Topics discussed:
- The dynamics of population growth and overpopulation
- The necessity of addressing population in environmental policies
- Boulder, Colorado’s tax to buy open lands to take them out of development
- Sustainable growth as an oxymoron
- Political motives for increased growth
- Urban growth always outstrips revenues and promotes debt.
- Immigration as a cause of population growth
- Political motives for increasing immigration
- You cannot sustain a country by importing labor.
- Population growth dilutes democratic representation.
- Population growth undermines freedom of action.
- The necessity of making free family planning world-wide
- The energy crisis requires addressing population growth.
- Modern technology does not disprove Malthusianism.
- Peak oil
- The limits of alternative energies
- The necessity of global solutions to environmental and population issues
- Urban planning defines problem solving as removing impediments to growth which leads to new problems.
- Bartlett’s “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy“