>>1353096Desired, by you.
As for the rest, you're accepting that population growth is levelling off and will stabilize at 12 billion. You're not a fan of that number, but if you dont accept it, say so, so I can haul out every major scientific study of the past 20 years.
Anyway, you say that population density is growing exponentially. Population density = population / land area. Unless the earth shrank when I wasn't looking, the denominator is staying constant. The numerator is plateauing. Hence, NOT growing exponentially.
Pollution is not growing exponentially either. It's increasing arithmetically in China, southeast Asia, India, and the rest of the developing world. It's also decreasing, arithmetically, in the developed world. Depending on the pollutant, pollution is rising or falling overall. As developing nations approach western levels of development, they will have sufficient wealth to spend reducing their ecological footprint. This includes forests; in the US, for example, forested land is and has been on the rise for decades ("old growth" is another story, but increasingly that's being preserved as well, again thanks to economic development). Habitat destruction increases (again arithmetically, not exponentially). Fishery conservation via property rights has lead to surpluses in fish; sadly the rest of the world uses the old European model and continues to deplete supplies.
So really the only environmental variable that IS still growing exponentially is the economic resources that allow us to reduce our impact on the environment. Most ecological problems are getting better, the ones getting worse are slowing.
When I use a word like "exponential", I really mean it. Current US GDP growth is 4% annually. That doubles personal wealth every twenty years. For the developing world it's much higher. Whereas population growth isn't anywhere near that fast.
We're adding wealth to solve our problems faster than we're adding people to allegedly cause them.
