hi thanks for having me that’s a tough
act to follow he did a fantastic job
yeah my name is Dean Carlson
I’m from Wiberg farm I wanted to talk to
you today about the impossibility of
infinite exponential growth
why that’s impossible in a finite world
and what that could possibly have to do
with farming
um I guess if you’d ask my friends and
family ten years ago they would have
said I was the least likely person to be
talking to you about this topic I
graduated from the University of Chicago
with a degree in economics like they
said I went to work on Wall Street for
15 years as a bond and derivatives
trader and I had no background
whatsoever in agriculture but I just
became interested in overtime one of the
things that always bothered me in
finance and our economy in general was
the fact that we always had to be
growing I didn’t understand why it
wasn’t good enough for us to reach as a
society that we would be rich enough why
did we continue to have to grow all the
time
and I guess one of the problems with
that or one of the reasons for that is
that we always have this intention to
focus on things in the present rather
than the future you know that probably
comes from our hunter-gatherer brain
that we were incentivized to think about
things now rather than later I’m even in
finance that’s true you learn one of the
first things that you learn is to
discount the value of things in the
future back to a present value and if
you take things that far enough out into
the future they became they become
virtually worthless and it’s this
problem I think that helps or causes us
to miss the implications of exponential
growth so what is exponential growth dr.
Albert Bartlett a professor emeritus at
Colorado State University has said the
greatest shortcoming of the human race
is our inability to understand the
exponential function the exponential
function is simply a constant rate of
growth on a continuously growing base
over a period of time it’d be impossible
to turn on the TV look at a newspaper
without seeing some reference to this
kind of growth we assumed the human
population will continue to grow at one
to two percent a year we expect our
economy to grow at three to four percent
a year without really understanding what
that means so one way to think about or
to gain an implication from that is to
use what’s called the rule of seventy so
if you take seventy divided by
an annual growth rate that I’ll tell you
how long it takes for something to
double in size so if you use human
population growing at 1% only 1% seems
like nothing but it means if you take 70
divided by 1 it would it would double in
70 years if human population grew at 2%
it would double in 35 years and our
economy if it grows it 4 percent it
would dope it would double every 17 and
a half years another interesting fact
about this doubling is that in 10
doublings the size of something is a
thousand times larger than at the
beginning in 20 mm iliyan times larger
so like I said we see this all the time
without really thinking about what it
means
one other interesting note about those
doublings is in each of the doubling
periods the amount of growth is larger
than all of the previous growth combined
so if you think about that if we were
using if the amount of oil we use every
year was increasing by 4% that means it
would double in 17 and a half years that
also means that we would have used more
oil in that 17 and a half years and all
of humanity had used combined so it’s
something that obviously has an impact
on the world that we live in there’s
another interesting example from the sky
dr. Bartlett that I saw and he has some
really if this is an interesting concept
he had some really cool YouTube videos
where you can hear more about this
but it talks about how time speeds up as
you move along this exponential curve so
imagine if you will you have a bottle
that has one bacterium in it bacteria
will divide every minute so that they’ll
double every minute by twelve O’Clock
starts at eleven o’clock by twelve
o’clock the bottle is completely full so
think about if you were living in that
bottle at what point you would start to
get nervous that you’re running out of
room so at what point would the bottle
be half-full
well that’s easy if you work backwards
because since it doubles every minute it
would be 11:59 it’d be half-full
so in that last minute it doubles but
even at 11:55 the bottle is only three
percent full and 97% empty so you can
imagine all the leaders of the bacteria
trying to convince you that there’s no
problem there’s ninety seven percent of
the bottles left there’s 32 times more
space in the bottle but you only have
five minutes left
now imagine that these bacteria because
very ingenious bacteria go out and drill
in the Arctic they start hydraulically
fracturing the ground to discover three
new bottles surely that would buy them a
lot of extra time but in fact it only
buys them an extra two minutes to 1202
so the problem isn’t that they can’t
find enough space it’s the problem is
that they’re growing so all of these
things are true these graphs that you
see a human population are true of
natural resource use so we continue to
use more and more natural resource every
year and the grass of the of their use
looks something like this the most
important ones of those of course are
energy our entire civilization our
entire economies built on using energy
and we know that most of that is fossil
fuels and we know or should know that
that’s a non-renewable source it’s
something that we will run out of we can
all argue about how much of any one
natural resource there is but I haven’t
heard anyone arguing that the size of
the earth is getting bigger so we have
to learn to live within the limits
this is especially true of agriculture
and this is where starts to get into
sustainable farming if you look at the
way that we grow food in this country
it’s incredibly fossil fuel intensive we
use 10 calories of fuel for every
calorie of food we produce that’s
something that we get away with in the
short run but it’s something that future
generations I think will look back and
say why did you waste all of our energy
just to grow your food
so like I said modern agriculture is the
use of land to convert petroleum into
food and that’s the system that we are
in now so what is sustainable farming
sustainable farming simply looks to grow
food in a way on a given piece of land
that can be repeated over and over
because it’s not relying on inputs that
are finite or that are non-renewable
sources so basically that’s a grass
based system grasses are perennial it
doesn’t have to be replanted every year
by grazing animals across it you’re
actually increasing the topsoil if you
look at modern farming total bull arable
farmland in the world is actually
decreasing due to soil erosion from bad
farming practices and even now in the
modern system after decades of increase
of crop yields crop yields are starting
to top out as the plants reach their
biological limits so we’re going to have
to find more renewable ways to grow food
if you think about it in this grass
based system it’s a in a way it’s like
turning solar energy into human calories
we can’t digest cellulose so but cows
can and herbivores can so by using the
system it’s a way of turning solar
energy into human calories and in fact
you’re eating sunshine and it’s
something that’s incredibly renewable
because if you think about it the only
inputs are sunshine and water and those
are renewable sources so it’s with all
of these things in mind that I decided
personally get involved in growing food
this way it’s funny a few years ago I
went to listen to a famous investor Jim
Rogers who co-founded the want some fun
with George Soros speak to a group of
MBAs at Wharton and in response to a
question about career advice he told
them all that they should quit school
and go become farmers and I’m pretty
sure I’m the only one that listened to
it but I know that in the future it’s
going to be important that there are
people that know how to grow food in
this way
so I decided in 2010 to buy this for my
Brooke spent two years doing
construction and getting the animals
ready you can see that we use a
grass-based system all of the animals
are living outside we raise grass-fed
beef we raise our pigs out in the woods
all the chickens are raised on pasture
and we sell the products of the farm
through our store and restaurant
but you can see some pictures of what
that actually looks like
cute animals
so I’ve often wondered why it is that
the
other people don’t see these
implications of exponential growth I
know I’m not the only person in the
world that’s thought of this in fact in
the late 1700s Thomas Malthus wrote a
famous book about how the geometrically
increasing portion of human population
would soon outstrip our ability to feed
ourselves but he had no idea at that
time that we would find a way to turn
fossil fuels into food but as we know
fossil fuels are a limited resource as
well even in the 70s the Club of Rome
wrote an important book called limits to
growth that outlined a lot of these
topics that are talked about today but
those have been largely ignored I have
very little faith in government’s to
make these changes but we as individuals
and communities have the power to make
the changes it doesn’t take a crisis for
us to realize that this is going to be a
problem down the road
and it’s something that I was really
encouraged about to see that you guys
have a sustainability Club and it was
something that you were thinking about
it ready because it’s going to be your
generation that’s going to have to make
that change
like I said I don’t think I don’t see
how governments will be the one to do it
but the ways that you can make a
difference are really easy first of all
every dollar that you spend on your food
is a vote for how the next animal where
the next piece of food is going to be
raised that’s how you make a difference
by choosing to make good choices and
sustainable choices and everything that
you buy so my job is simply to provide
that option for you thanks for having me
[Applause]
act to follow he did a fantastic job
yeah my name is Dean Carlson
I’m from Wiberg farm I wanted to talk to
you today about the impossibility of
infinite exponential growth
why that’s impossible in a finite world
and what that could possibly have to do
with farming
um I guess if you’d ask my friends and
family ten years ago they would have
said I was the least likely person to be
talking to you about this topic I
graduated from the University of Chicago
with a degree in economics like they
said I went to work on Wall Street for
15 years as a bond and derivatives
trader and I had no background
whatsoever in agriculture but I just
became interested in overtime one of the
things that always bothered me in
finance and our economy in general was
the fact that we always had to be
growing I didn’t understand why it
wasn’t good enough for us to reach as a
society that we would be rich enough why
did we continue to have to grow all the
time
and I guess one of the problems with
that or one of the reasons for that is
that we always have this intention to
focus on things in the present rather
than the future you know that probably
comes from our hunter-gatherer brain
that we were incentivized to think about
things now rather than later I’m even in
finance that’s true you learn one of the
first things that you learn is to
discount the value of things in the
future back to a present value and if
you take things that far enough out into
the future they became they become
virtually worthless and it’s this
problem I think that helps or causes us
to miss the implications of exponential
growth so what is exponential growth dr.
Albert Bartlett a professor emeritus at
Colorado State University has said the
greatest shortcoming of the human race
is our inability to understand the
exponential function the exponential
function is simply a constant rate of
growth on a continuously growing base
over a period of time it’d be impossible
to turn on the TV look at a newspaper
without seeing some reference to this
kind of growth we assumed the human
population will continue to grow at one
to two percent a year we expect our
economy to grow at three to four percent
a year without really understanding what
that means so one way to think about or
to gain an implication from that is to
use what’s called the rule of seventy so
if you take seventy divided by
an annual growth rate that I’ll tell you
how long it takes for something to
double in size so if you use human
population growing at 1% only 1% seems
like nothing but it means if you take 70
divided by 1 it would it would double in
70 years if human population grew at 2%
it would double in 35 years and our
economy if it grows it 4 percent it
would dope it would double every 17 and
a half years another interesting fact
about this doubling is that in 10
doublings the size of something is a
thousand times larger than at the
beginning in 20 mm iliyan times larger
so like I said we see this all the time
without really thinking about what it
means
one other interesting note about those
doublings is in each of the doubling
periods the amount of growth is larger
than all of the previous growth combined
so if you think about that if we were
using if the amount of oil we use every
year was increasing by 4% that means it
would double in 17 and a half years that
also means that we would have used more
oil in that 17 and a half years and all
of humanity had used combined so it’s
something that obviously has an impact
on the world that we live in there’s
another interesting example from the sky
dr. Bartlett that I saw and he has some
really if this is an interesting concept
he had some really cool YouTube videos
where you can hear more about this
but it talks about how time speeds up as
you move along this exponential curve so
imagine if you will you have a bottle
that has one bacterium in it bacteria
will divide every minute so that they’ll
double every minute by twelve O’Clock
starts at eleven o’clock by twelve
o’clock the bottle is completely full so
think about if you were living in that
bottle at what point you would start to
get nervous that you’re running out of
room so at what point would the bottle
be half-full
well that’s easy if you work backwards
because since it doubles every minute it
would be 11:59 it’d be half-full
so in that last minute it doubles but
even at 11:55 the bottle is only three
percent full and 97% empty so you can
imagine all the leaders of the bacteria
trying to convince you that there’s no
problem there’s ninety seven percent of
the bottles left there’s 32 times more
space in the bottle but you only have
five minutes left
now imagine that these bacteria because
very ingenious bacteria go out and drill
in the Arctic they start hydraulically
fracturing the ground to discover three
new bottles surely that would buy them a
lot of extra time but in fact it only
buys them an extra two minutes to 1202
so the problem isn’t that they can’t
find enough space it’s the problem is
that they’re growing so all of these
things are true these graphs that you
see a human population are true of
natural resource use so we continue to
use more and more natural resource every
year and the grass of the of their use
looks something like this the most
important ones of those of course are
energy our entire civilization our
entire economies built on using energy
and we know that most of that is fossil
fuels and we know or should know that
that’s a non-renewable source it’s
something that we will run out of we can
all argue about how much of any one
natural resource there is but I haven’t
heard anyone arguing that the size of
the earth is getting bigger so we have
to learn to live within the limits
this is especially true of agriculture
and this is where starts to get into
sustainable farming if you look at the
way that we grow food in this country
it’s incredibly fossil fuel intensive we
use 10 calories of fuel for every
calorie of food we produce that’s
something that we get away with in the
short run but it’s something that future
generations I think will look back and
say why did you waste all of our energy
just to grow your food
so like I said modern agriculture is the
use of land to convert petroleum into
food and that’s the system that we are
in now so what is sustainable farming
sustainable farming simply looks to grow
food in a way on a given piece of land
that can be repeated over and over
because it’s not relying on inputs that
are finite or that are non-renewable
sources so basically that’s a grass
based system grasses are perennial it
doesn’t have to be replanted every year
by grazing animals across it you’re
actually increasing the topsoil if you
look at modern farming total bull arable
farmland in the world is actually
decreasing due to soil erosion from bad
farming practices and even now in the
modern system after decades of increase
of crop yields crop yields are starting
to top out as the plants reach their
biological limits so we’re going to have
to find more renewable ways to grow food
if you think about it in this grass
based system it’s a in a way it’s like
turning solar energy into human calories
we can’t digest cellulose so but cows
can and herbivores can so by using the
system it’s a way of turning solar
energy into human calories and in fact
you’re eating sunshine and it’s
something that’s incredibly renewable
because if you think about it the only
inputs are sunshine and water and those
are renewable sources so it’s with all
of these things in mind that I decided
personally get involved in growing food
this way it’s funny a few years ago I
went to listen to a famous investor Jim
Rogers who co-founded the want some fun
with George Soros speak to a group of
MBAs at Wharton and in response to a
question about career advice he told
them all that they should quit school
and go become farmers and I’m pretty
sure I’m the only one that listened to
it but I know that in the future it’s
going to be important that there are
people that know how to grow food in
this way
so I decided in 2010 to buy this for my
Brooke spent two years doing
construction and getting the animals
ready you can see that we use a
grass-based system all of the animals
are living outside we raise grass-fed
beef we raise our pigs out in the woods
all the chickens are raised on pasture
and we sell the products of the farm
through our store and restaurant
but you can see some pictures of what
that actually looks like
cute animals
so I’ve often wondered why it is that
the
other people don’t see these
implications of exponential growth I
know I’m not the only person in the
world that’s thought of this in fact in
the late 1700s Thomas Malthus wrote a
famous book about how the geometrically
increasing portion of human population
would soon outstrip our ability to feed
ourselves but he had no idea at that
time that we would find a way to turn
fossil fuels into food but as we know
fossil fuels are a limited resource as
well even in the 70s the Club of Rome
wrote an important book called limits to
growth that outlined a lot of these
topics that are talked about today but
those have been largely ignored I have
very little faith in government’s to
make these changes but we as individuals
and communities have the power to make
the changes it doesn’t take a crisis for
us to realize that this is going to be a
problem down the road
and it’s something that I was really
encouraged about to see that you guys
have a sustainability Club and it was
something that you were thinking about
it ready because it’s going to be your
generation that’s going to have to make
that change
like I said I don’t think I don’t see
how governments will be the one to do it
but the ways that you can make a
difference are really easy first of all
every dollar that you spend on your food
is a vote for how the next animal where
the next piece of food is going to be
raised that’s how you make a difference
by choosing to make good choices and
sustainable choices and everything that
you buy so my job is simply to provide
that option for you thanks for having me
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: