2018/06/18 by Brendan Mullan, B. Mullan, Jacob Haqq-Misra +1 · 37 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Energy · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrobiology #Biology #Climate change #Demography #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #Ecology #Economics #Environmental science #Geography #Global Energy and Sustainability Research #Global warming #Natural resource economics #Pace #Population #Population growth #Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life #World population #physics.pop-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.futures.2018.06.009
published in Futures 106, 4-17 (Elsevier BV) · Accepted for publication in Futures, special issue: Detectability of Future Earth; 30 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2018/06/18 · openalex publication_date 2018/06/18 · openalex created_date 2018/06/21 · arxiv updated 2019/02/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Von Hoerner (1975) examined the effects of human population growth and predicted agricultural, environmental, and other problems from observed growth rate trends. Using straightforward calculations, VH75 predicted the "doomsday" years for these scenarios (2020-2050), when we as a species should run out of space or food, or induce catastrophic anthropogenic climate change through thermodynamically unavoidable direct heating of the planet. Now that over four decades have passed, in this paper we update VH75. We perform similar calculations as that work, with improved data and trends in population growth, food production, energy use, and climate change. For many of the impacts noted in VH75 our work amounts to pushing the "doomsday" horizon back to the 2300s-2400s (or much further for population-driven interstellar colonization). This is largely attributable to using worldwide data that exhibit smaller growth rates of population and energy use in the last few decades. While population-related catastrophes appear less likely than in VH75, our continued growth in energy use provides insight into possible future issues. We find that, if historic trends continue, direct heating of the Earth will be a substantial contributor to climate change by about 2260, regardless of the energy source used, coincident with our transition to a Kardashev type-I civilization. We also determine that either an increase of Earth's global mean temperature of 12K will occur or an unreasonably high fraction of the planet will need to be covered by solar collectors by about 2400 to keep pace with our growth in energy use. We further discuss the implications in terms of interstellar expansion, the transition to type II and III civilizations, SETI, and the Fermi Paradox. We conclude that the "sustainability solution" to the Fermi Paradox is a compelling possibility.