2026/07/28 by Scholtes, Wolfgang · 1 voice
Energy · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Social Sciences · #Global Energy and Sustainability Research #Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution #Environmental, Ecological, and Cultural Studies
paper · doi:10.5281/zenodo.19112860
Version 5 represents a conceptual consolidation and structural refinement of the analytical framework developed in earlier versions of this study. While Version 4 substantially expanded the biophysical core of the analysis by examining the interacting Earth-system processes that constrain planetary regenerative capacity, Version 5 further strengthens the theoretical architecture of the framework by clarifying the historical and systemic origins of these dynamics. The introductory section has been reorganized to articulate the causal chain linking fossil-fuel industrialization, the doctrine of perpetual economic growth, and the resulting destabilization of planetary systems. A new opening section reconstructs the historical escape from classical Malthusian limits through fossil energy, analyzes the expansion of global population and consumption under industrial civilization, and explains how these processes produced a condition of planetary-scale ecological overshoot. Rather than presenting environmental crises as isolated risks, Version 5 situates the destabilization of climate systems, oceans, soils, hydrological systems, and the biosphere within the structural dynamics of a growth-dependent industrial economy operating within a finite planetary system. The modern Malthusian Trap is therefore further refined as a systemic condition emerging from the interaction between the growth imperatives of industrial civilization and the ecological limits of the Earth system, in which the mechanisms that once enabled unprecedented economic expansion increasingly undermine the environmental foundations upon which that expansion depends.