I constantly attempt to create analogies that represent our system of ever expanding economic growth and the impossibility of continuing the same. Growth is not the answer; it’s the problem.

I have been a guest speaker on Frosty Wooldridge’s national radio program, Connecting The Dots, and relate well to the expression “carrying capacity,” that Frosty often uses to address the pressing issue of overpopulation.

My experience with the term “carrying capacity,” is that of western ranches. Having owned and sold ranches in Western Colorado for many years, the first question that a perspective buyer will ask is, “What’s the carrying capacity.”

In the instance of a ranch, “carrying capacity,” refers to the number of cattle that the resources of the ranch will support on a year around basis.

Say that number was 200 head of mother cows and their offspring. That means the feed, water, landmass, and handling facilities will support these numbers as a contained unit.

Now say that we add 50 mother cows to the mix without expanding our holdings. What would happen? You may think that 50 cows and calves would starve, but that isn’t true. All of the cows and calves would starve as would the ranch owners!

Here’s why. As the cattle eat the feed, they will do so as a unit, each satisfying their necessary intake of hay or grass. In our example, we added 50 cows or 25% more than the carrying capacity. Therefore all of the cattle will eat their fill for 75% of the year or 9 months.

During these 9 months, everything would appear to be going fine and the cattle would be fat and healthy. However, come the 10^th month, feed wouldn’t slowly diminish; it would be totally absent, having consumed 100% of carrying capacity in the first 9 months. The cattle would now all be without feed and all would starve. The rancher, now with 250 dead cows and calves, would also be ruined.

So why as humans can we not see the very real fact that we are grooming ourselves for the same fate? We have finite (limited) resources, but continue to expand infinitely (greater numbers each year). I promise you that it is no different than the above example of the cows.

The U.S. grows our population exponentially each year with legal, and ignored illegal, immigration as a means of maintaining our consumption based economy, but our land and resources remain the same size. It won’t work.

As an example of the pending resource depletion, we now find ourselves having to import 75% of our oil from foreign nations (the U.S. hit peak oil in 1970) and we borrow some $3 Billion per day from the Chinese, Japanese, East Indians, Arab nations, and others, to keep our false economy alive.

We import some $700 Billion more in products than we export. As a reminder, a billion seconds ago was 1975!

As the remainder of the developing world consumes resources at ever greater rates, the U.S. position will continue to weaken. Americans represent approximately 4.8% of world population and consume some 25% of global fuel and 30% of world materials.

The other 94.2% of the folks on earth now want their fair share and often, their sovereign owned, natural resources. Do the math, if China alone consumed at the same rate as Americans, there would be no resources left on earth for any other country.

The cornerstone of the U.S. economy is growth. More people, more consumption, more imported goods, is the premise under which we operate.

After digesting the above information; how long do you think our economic growth model will work going forward? Scary huh?

We must move to a more sustainable economic model. Growth is not the answer, it remains the problem.