It all begins with simple arithmetic. Carl Sandburg made 2 great points in the beginning lines of his poem by that title, the first being that we are often intimidated by arithmetic, choosing to view it as an abstract domain 'where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head.' And the second, that 'arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how many you had before you lost or won.' This is where arithmetic becomes not just real, but critical as we examine the world in front of us, helping us make decisions based on reality rather than emotion.
Video #1: The last 2 lines of Arithmetic, a funny way to view the fuzzy facts that surround this absolute science
In the middle of his poem, Sandburg dances around a law that provides the title for this blog and the impetus for its creation, the law of exponential growth. As he describes taking a number and doubling it and doubling it again and doubling it a few more times, we laugh and imagine the growth of some benign population, like rabbits or even the number of shoes in our closet. But, what does exponential growth really mean?
In 1978, a mathematician named Albert Bartlett from Boulder, Colorado wrote an essay entitled "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy," where he said that "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." The implications of exponential growth are clear from the illustrations of Video #2, but, if you have the time, I suggest watching Professor Bartlett's discussion in Video #3. Bartlett simplifies the discussion of sustainability by focusing on the facts, the simple arithmetic of exponential growth as it applies to population and energy.
Video #3: "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy"
The nature of population growth is exponential, so how do we align that with energy resources, which are fundamentally finite? We must counter exponential growth with a scalable solution that is exciting enough to engage innovators and inventors and which provides a return on investment that warrants its continued growth. That expandable solution is knowledge; knowledge about energy, its manipulation, its limitation, and its potential.
