Related papers: How persistent is civilization growth?
For those concerned with the long-term value of their accounts, it can be a challenge to plan in the present for inflation-adjusted economic growth over coming decades. Here, I argue that there exists an economic constant that carries…
This article derives prognostic expressions for the evolution of globally aggregated economic wealth, productivity, inflation, technological change, innovation and growth. The approach is to treat civilization as an open, non-equilibrium…
Climate change has become intertwined with the global economy. Here, we describe the importance of inertia to continued growth in energy consumption. Drawing from thermodynamic arguments, and using 38 years of available statistics between…
Global Climate Models (GCMs) provide forecasts of future climate warming using a wide variety of highly sophisticated anthropogenic CO2 emissions models as input, each based on the evolution of four emissions "drivers": population p,…
Long-range climate forecasts use integrated assessment models to link the global economy to greenhouse gas emissions. This paper evaluates an alternative economic framework outlined in part 1 of this study (Garrett, 2014) that approaches…
We analyze the growth rates of atmospheric carbon dioxide and human population, by comparing the relative merits of two benchmark models, the exponential law and the finite-time-singular (FTS) power law. The later results from positive…
In a prior study, I introduced a simple economic growth model designed to be consistent with general thermodynamic laws. Unlike traditional economic models, civilization is viewed only as a well-mixed global whole with no distinction made…
Growth of the world population and the world economic growth were hyperbolic in the past 2,000,000 years. Recently, from around 1950, they started to be diverted to slower trajectories but they are still close to the historical hyperbolic…
Growth rate of the world Growth Domestic Product (GDP) is analysed to determine possible pathways of the future economic growth. The analysis is based on using the latest data of the World Bank and it reveals that the growth rate between…
In this paper we afford a quantitative analysis of the sustainability of current world population growth in relation to the parallel deforestation process adopting a statistical point of view. We consider a simplified model based on a…
Civilization produces knowledge, which acts as the driving force of its development. A macro-model of civilization that accounts for the effect of knowledge production on population, energy consumption and environmental conditions is…
The contradiction between physical and economical sciences concerning the growth of the production/consumption mechanism is analyzed. It is then shown that if one wishes to keep the security level stable or to enhance it in a growing…
Civilization cannot sustain an exponential growth for long time even when neglecting numerous laws of physics! In this paper, we examine what are fundamental obstacles to long term survival of a civilization and its possibility to colonize…
Once carbon emission neutrality and other sustainability goals have been achieved, a widespread assumption is that economic growth at current rates can be sustained beyond the 21st century. However, even if we achieve these goals, this…
Biological populations are subject to two types of noise: demographic stochasticity due to fluctuations in the reproductive success of individuals, and environmental variations that affect coherently the relative fitness of entire…
We consider the effect of non-constant parameters on the human-forest interaction logistic model coupled with human technological growth introduced in "Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis"[1]. In…
The analysis of the demographic transition of the past century and a half, using both empirical data and mathematical models, has rendered a wealth of well-established facts, including the dramatic increases in life expectancy. Despite…
We seek to model the coupled evolution of a planet and a civilization through the era when energy harvesting by the civilization drives the planet into new and adverse climate states. In this way we ask if triggering "anthropocenes" of the…
Growth in the global human population this century will have momentous consequences for societies and the environment. Population growth has come with higher aggregate human welfare, but also climate change and biodiversity loss. Based on…
It is still common wisdom amongst economists, politicians and lay people that economic growth is a necessity of our social systems, at least to avoid distributional conflicts. This paper challenges such belief moving from a purely physical…