The most sacred icon in the religion of the US economic scene is steady growth of the gross national product, enterprises, sales, and profits. Many people believe that such economic growth requires steady population growth. Although physicists address the problems that result from a ballooning population-such as energy shortages, congestion, pollution, and dwindling resources-their solutions are starkly deficient. Often, they fail to recognize that the solutions must involve stopping population growth.
Physicists understand the arithmetic of steady, exponential growth. 1 Yet they ignore its consequences, including the first law of sustainability: “Population growth or growth in the rate of consumption of resources cannot be [indefinitely] sustained.” 2 (See Ben Zuckerman’s letter to the editor, Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 45 7 1992 14 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2809721 July 1992, page 14 .) Sustainability requires solutions that will be effective over time periods much longer than a human lifespan. Indeed, Paul Weisz makes...
