Description: Overpopulation and Urbanization are some of the most-compelling inspirations for our cost-effective Emerald Eco-City SUSTAINAABLE Self-Sufficient Solutions
In only 45 years, Earth's human population has insanely DOUBLED to 7 BILLION people
- Over a million acres of farmland are unsustainably converted to urban sprawl each year
- The price of scarce food is doubling for billions of people living on less than $2 per day
- The full impact of recent population explosion is now showing up in extreme social unrest
... Evil dictators are being murdered by the people that they have failed to provide for
... Their replacements are incapable of resolving the many predictable urbanization problems
Can humanity continue our immoral doubling of population 45 more years? - Absolutely NOT!
- Worldwide exponential birth rate MUST decline, OR Death Rate Must Increase Sharply
- A radical total reinvention of a rational future sustainable urban lifestyle is now long overdue
Earth is undergoing an unprecedented catastrophic tsunami of uncontrolled human inhabitant growth
For the first time in history, in 2008 more than half of our planet's population lived in crowded urban environments. For billions of simple people, the rural environment can no longer sustain the essentials of life. Greedy agriculture corporations, patented genetically-modified seeds, and parasitic Wall Street commodity speculators have stolen the profit motive from family farmers. The need for expensive petroleum to grow food and transport it 1500 miles has become an unbearable burden. Farm bill subsidies reward the wealthy, and penalize small-scale organic farmers.
The huge urban problems we face today are not those that were solved long ago by our parents, grandparents, and founding fathers.
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew." - Abraham Lincoln
"I don't believe there is a challenge anywhere in the world that's more important to people everywhere than finding solutions to the problems of our cities." - Walt Disney 1966
Humanity refuses react appropriately to altogether-obvious unsustainable urbanization trends. We have been warned time and again, and we have ignored all well-documented life-critical warnings.
The United Nations Population Fund predicts that by 2030 (when children born today will only be 18 years old), nearly 5 BILLION PEOPLE WILL BE STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE IN POORLY-PLANNED CONGESTED CITIES. http://www.UNFPA.org/pds/urbanization.htm
Humanity is now on an insane suicidal, one-way, unsustainable urbanization path
There is NO GLOBAL ROADMAP, OR PLAN IN PLACE, TO DEAL WITH THE PREDICTABLE DIRE CONSEQUENCES OF NEAR-FUTURE CROWDED-CITY HUMAN POPULATION "INFESTATION" - Our Creator gave humans an observant brain with the potential for rational thought, and the ability to predict and plan for our future - BUT, we have become irrational non-learning creatures of endless extremely-bad habits. We can see that we are headed for a cliff at high speed, but we ignore the obvious warnings, and step on the gas pedal. HOW STUPID IS THAT?
There is no working example of any city anywhere on earth that should be replicated in the future!
(Not even the ones with "ecocity" in their misleading name.) If a Johnny-come-lately with a poor track record claims "It's the wave of the future" - Be scientifically skeptical - His unenlightened insufficient partial plan may be a deadly suicidal tsunami.
Emerald Eco-City is essentially the ONLY published proposal offering complete experience-based solutions to ALL existing urbanization problems. Far too many highly-paid unenlightened architects, sociologists, and city planners assume that tomorrow should be similar to today's failing cities around the world. They cannot think "outside the box." They refuse to embrace a much-more cost-effective ecocity paradigm. They are about to be rudely confronted with their terrible lack of insight and innovation.
IF human beings continue building more extremely-inefficient filthy cities in the future (to accommodate earth's predictable exponential population explosion), our worldwide infrastructure, and complex, unsustainable, economic systems, must surely collapse (soon).
Will humanity be able to reverse our deadly doomsday urbanization scenario in time?
RADICAL REINVENTION OF OUR WASTEFUL CROWDED CITIES IS LONG OVERDUE
If you try to evaluate Zero Energy Design's Emerald Eco-City proposal, based on its lack of similarity to today's obsolete, flawed, pervasive urban environments, conventional, declining, business-as-usual thinkers will reject most of what we suggest. It would be like trying to evaluate Henry Ford's 1908 Model T automobile, by comparing it to a horse. Future problem solvers MUST adopt radical new paradigms and sustainable, efficient, architectural and social design patterns.
"The thinking that created today's problems is insufficient to solve them." - Albert Einstein
Emerald Eco-City can only be correctly evaluated on the basis of what SHOULD be, not what now exists, (which is already in rapid decline). A growing number of people in one already-overcrowded expensive city is NOT a measure of success. It is a measure of near-term disaster.
We enthusiastically invite your comments and collaborative participation. Your constructive ideas will be posted throughout this website. ZEDmaster@ZeroEnergyDesign.com
How did humans survive before we thoughtlessly doubled Earth's population since 1967?
Before rural electrification and petroleum-powered farm equipment, muscle power (from horses, mules, oxen, and especially humans) was required to feed our society. In 1900, there were only 76 million Americans, mostly living in rural communities. Electricity and gasoline cars were extremely rare.
41% of Americans (roughly 30 million) were farmers little more than a century ago. Today, USA has over 300 million people to feed, and less than 2% (perhaps 4 million, depending on the definition of a “farm”) grow far more food for four-times more Americans PLUS starving people around the world.
90% of farmers have to work at other jobs to make enough money to operate their farms. Only about half-a-million U.S. farms are classified “commercial farms” with over $50,000 of gross annual sales. Where did the 41% farmers of yesteryear go?
and sad burden on their families.
Percent of Urbanized Population By Country
Average Country-Wide Population Density (humans per square kilometer)
Total World Population Explosion 1950-2050
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, International Data Base
Year |
Billions People |
Percent Change |
Population Increase |
Year |
Billions People |
Percent Change |
Population Increase |
Year |
Billions People |
Percent Change |
Population Increase |
The above table shows that the rate of population explosion is slowing somewhat. Birth rate is stabilizing, BUT Death Rate Is Increasing, due to over-exploitation of resources. Earth can NOT support current population at current consumption rates.
The worldwide proportions of urbanization rose dramatically from 13% (220 million) urban sprawl dwellers in 1900, to 29% (732 million) in 1950, to over 50% (3.4 billion) today. The overcrowded urbanization trend is now accelerating worldwide.
Reduction In The Time Required to Double Worldwide Human Population
1910 to 1967 -> 57 years, 1967 to 2012 -> 45 years
If human population doubles again in 45 years, Earth would be infested with 14 BILLION (mostly-starving) people by 2057 – which is TOTALLY INFEASIBLE.
Almost no one believes that our recent population growth rate is even remotely possible in the near future. It absolutely CANNOT BE SUSTAINED. Without a doubt, we MUST have fewer worldwide births, more deaths, or both. No other earthly options are on the distant horizon.
If population were to continue to double every 45 (or fewer) years, in a few hundred years every square meter of all land on Earth would have a person on it. No one could lay down to sleep. 45 years later, there would be TWO people there. There would be no room for life-giving trees, or growing any food at all. In little more than two millennia (the time since year 0), the mass of humans would explode to become greater than the mass of the entire Earth – which is way beyond ABSURD.
OUR FUTURE CANNOT POSSIBLY BE BASED ON ANY POPULATION GROWTH AT ALL
HUMANITY HAS NO CHOICE BUT ZERO POPULATION GROWTH !
If we do not do so voluntarily, Nature must FORCE billions of us to die SOON
We live on a rare, small, blue-green planet with finite non-renewable resources,
exponential compound population growth, and rapid resource depletion
Sadly, it appears that America has made a serious change for the worse:
When economic growth is negative, the foundation of our nation begins to fall apart
As growth increases, our non-renewable resource depletion accelerates
Our insane suicidal polices make either outcome BAD - Lose / Lose
In contrast, Will Rogers wrote: "Live your life so that whenever you lose, you're ahead."
There seems to be NO effective politician, strategic advisor, or greedy corporate CEO who understands Zero-Growth-Rate Sustainability, or the trivial grade-school arithmetic of devastating Compound Population Growth. Their greed is insatiable. Their selfish shortsighted agenda is apparently personal power, with total disregard for posterity. They all place their blind faith in IMPOSSILE Ponzi-scheme endless continual economic growth - which is clearly mathematically infeasible. They are so very convinced in their foolhardy behavior that they place a gigantic immoral generational-theft burden of unpayable debt on our grandchildren. When their criminal organized-crime Ponzi scheme began to crumble in 2008, they increased their deficit-spending behavior that had created the irrational national insanity in the first place.
We have done nothing to punish the criminals, or correct the underlying source of our multiple crises. The worst is yet to come.
Immutable Sustainability Rule #1 – Any strategic plan for our future MUST Include ZERO Human Population Growth Rate.
Earth is already way overpopulated. A billion people are now starving on less than one cup of food a day. A major portion of all humans are trying to live on less than $2 per day, while the price of their scarce basic food is doubling. Even well-education young people cannot find living-wage jobs. There is much work that needs to be done, but obviously no current way to pay our continually-growing population to do it.
"Be fruitful and multiply" without restraint has become an obsolete and immoral suicidal commandment. Voluntary conception control is NOT a sin - It has become a moral imperative for all of the multitudes. There is NO such thing as ANY population growth rate at all that can be considered sustainable – Not Even 1%! If net population grows year-after-year, it will eventually double and redouble catastrophically. Earth can NOT support the people who are already on it. Death rates must increase soon. Ignoring unpleasant scientific facts does not make them go away.
If ANY politician, advisor, consultant, or CEO begins a strategic presentation with an assumption of ongoing growth of 3% (etc.), THEN do not waste your time listening to anything they say thereafter - it cannot possibly be true. They obviously do NOT understand the significant implications of repetitive grade-school multiplication - doubling and redoubling over time. They should be immediately fired or impeached for their fraud, deception, or total incompetence.
We know for absolute certain that NO big-bad-blue-chip company (like General Electric, General Motors, Exxon, or IBM) can possibly sustain a 3% growth rate forever. Anyone who understands basic arithmetic has the ability to calculate precisely why in only a minute. BUT, almost everyone allows their bad leaders to base future strategies on a "conservative" all-American 3% growth rate. They are shortsighted FOOLS with no powers of observation or critical thinking skills.
EVERY effective worthwhile strategic plan MUST acknowledge the steady-state leveling-off point where no more growth is possible. Wall Street always refuses to do this. Insane pervasive parasitic speculators created the 1930's Great Depression, and then non-learning morons repeated it during Great Recession of 2008 that blew a $15 TRILLION hole in the U.S. economy.
In 1956, M.K. Hubbert accurately predicted Peak Oil American petroleum production in 1970. He was ABSOLUTELY ACCURATE, but much-higher-paid continual-growth oil industry "experts" laughed at him. We now know scientifically beyond any shadow of a doubt that the myopic math-challenged majority of American business and political leaders and blind-faith followers were just FLAT WRONG.
IF USA had listened to Hubbert, or learned anything from OPEC in 1973-1979, then al Qaeda would have had zero funding, they would have no reason to get mad at us for steal Arabian oil at paultry prices, and 9/11/2001 could not have happened the way that it did.
In 1990, did anyone's strategic business plan realistically include the collapse of the global economy in 2008?
We are now very-predictably on target for the double dip stock market crash (sometime in 2011-2012?) that will produce the WORST Depression in American history. It will take the entire global economy down with us when the U.S. dollar collapses. Rebuilding could take decades.
No city or national economy can possibly maintain a 3% growth rate forever. Any such assumption is FALSE. Anything based on continual compound growth is a CRIMINAL PONZI SCHEME - just like Bernie Madoff, who was imprisoned for life for his crimes against his own "friends". It WAS "Too good to be true."
Medicare and Social Security (the largest portions of the impossible U.S. budget) and all underfunded private pension plans MUST go bankrupt in the 21st century (or be drastically cut in half again and again). "Quantitative Easing" "Monetization" of $14 Trillion of U.S. national debt MUST force the total collapse of the U.S. dollar in the 21st century. We can NOT simply transfer unpayable debt to our precious unborn grandchildren, and lie to ourselves that future compound growth will make all of the problems we created magically vanish. It is SIMPLY IMPOSSIBLE to violate Immutable Sustainability Rule #1 for very long - DO NOT BE DECEIVED BY LIARS!
Immutable Sustainability Rule #2 – Any strategic plan for the future MUST demand the decline and ultimate elimination of ANY dependency on all non-renewable (or slowly renewable) finite resources - Nothing else is even remotely possible in the future - Ignoring scientific facts does NOT make them go away - Failure to understand basic arithmetic does NOT mean that you know more about the future than scientists have predicted - Inaction is self-imposed suicide.
Fossil fuels and nuclear power are obviously-unsustainable in the 21st century, but even slow-growth renewable trees that take more-than-a-decade to restore, are UNSUSTAINABLE, when we are insanely killing 50,000 to 100,000 acres of trees EVERY DAY. Nature absolutely can NOT permit violation of Rule #1 or #2 for long.
Biased corporations, lobbyists, and corrupted politicians FALSELY claim that resources like coal will supply our American energy needs for centuries. This is a bald-faced LIE, or the words of idiots who do not understand simple multiplication and addition arithmetic.
Half of American electricity still comes from dirty deadly unsustainable coal. It is also used heavily in industrial processes like making steel. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS COST-EFFECTIVE “CLEAN COAL” – even on the remote future horizon, despite endless coal-industry political LIES that contradict science.
If you repeat a big bad lie long enough and loud enough, fools with no critical thinking skills or understanding of arithmetic will eventually believe it.
Evil profiteering polluters falsely say that America has huge coal reserves that “at current consumption rates” will last for hundreds of years. That deceptive phrase is the basis of their obviously-misleading mathematically incorrect statement. We need to do the math ourselves - NOT believe them at face value by blind dumb faith.
Figures don't lie, but big bad lairs can figure and fool almost everyone. Basic TRUTHS: The current price of coal production is increasing. The easy-access coal has already been depleted, and it is becoming much harder to extract what is left. The damage now being done by coal mining to our fragile environment is enormous. Mining has always been deadly dangerous for miners. How many more will we continue to kill? Fossil-fuel air pollution is now killing three-million innocent people a year, and lowering the quality of life for billions. Do profiteers care at all? And to top it all off, every scarce dollar that society spends increasing our addiction to burning anything is a shortsighted waste of capital on the unsustainable.
The real-world mathematical problem is that for 150 years, American coal consumption has always had about a 7% compound growth rate, which DOUBLES CONSUMPTION EVERY TEN YEARS.
In general, inefficient American energy gluttons have doubled ALL energy consumption roughly every ten years.
If we continue to double and redouble coal consumption at the RECENT 7% compound growth rate, we will destroy our environment, and absolutely run completely out of all recoverable coal in America in roughly 40 years or so – NOT the deceptive 500 or 1,000 years that have been falsely claimed by biased liars!
Radically reducing the rate of fossil-fuel consumption, and never building anything that burns it, may extend the life of this finite resource a bit longer.
If $5+ per gallon gasoline bankrupts our transportation system (as predicted very soon), and forces us to use rechargeable all-electric vehicles powered by coal-fired electricity generation, we will surely run out of all of our finite dirty coal reserves in less than one generation! Anyone who disagrees clearly does NOT understand grade-school “times tables” or “goes intos.” Do you?
Things that INCREASE UNSUSTAINABLE human population growth rate: End of war / baby boom, sufficiency / prosperity, immigration, increased longevity, healthy well-balanced nutritious organic food, high-quality low-fat protein, vitamins, antioxidants, omega-3 essential fatty acids, HDL cholesterol, excellent abundant universal health care, healthy exercise / lifestyle, anti-aging / disease-prevention education, pleasant disposition, joy of life, purpose, positive vision of the future, intoxicants / immorality / promiscuity / reduced sexual inhibitions, teaching that contraception is a sin, treating uneducated women as property.
All of the above good-and-bad things are now making our worldwide overpopulation problem WORSE.
Things that REDUCE human population growth rate: War, religious fanaticism, hatred, bigotry, crime / murder, executions, assignations, corruption, famine, floods, drought, climate change, environmental damage, pollution, man-made toxic chemicals, biocides, radioactivity, preservatives, carcinogens, cooking food above 250 degrees F, loss-or-overcrowded human habitat, reduced longevity, starvation, contaminated food / air / water, LDL cholesterol, high blood pressure, negative stress response / lack of coping skills, bad jobs, child abuse, red meat, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, excess calories, insufficient exercise, obesity, oppression, despair, burdensome debt, economic collapse, job loss, homelessness, suicide, euthanasia, rebellion / revolution / riots, deadly disease, microorganisms, poor-or-no health care, greedy profiteers, for-profit health insurance, health-damaging drugs (prescription and illegal), iatrogenic medical-profession errors, self-destructive age-accelerating lifestyle, non-learning stupidity, smoking anything, unsafe transportation / infrastructure, sexual restraint, birth control (voluntary or government enforced), abortion, sterilization, educating women and giving them good income opportunities and fair equal rights.
All of these bad-and-good things REDUCE our worldwide unsustainable overpopulation crisis.
We must also carefully consider the serious significant social consequences
of most of these terrible population-growth-rate reduction options.
There are obviously very-few really-good choices for a compassionate
strategic
future worldwide sustainable lifestyle strategy.
With the world's largest national population, China only allows couples to have one child
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy
The one child receives much-more love, attention, care and training than some do in large families.
Failure to comply with China's one-child mandate can result in fines, government-forced abortion, or sterilization.
Which of the above do YOU choose to do? The right things seem obvious to me.
If we do not voluntarily encourage behaviors that reduce population growth,
Nature WILL! Inaction is both immoral and suicidal for all of humanity.
Please take 80 minutes to watch: Arithmetic, Population and Energy
"The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See" (Parts 1 through 8)
(Note that there are 8 YouTube video segments - about 10 minutes each)
