Dr. Kent Moors Side Interview
The Dangers of Exponential Growth
Dr. Kent Moors:
What Chris drew on that napkin represents a dangerous pattern that our society has been built upon.
An exponential growth curve.
Looks harmless on that napkin.
But it’s very troubling when applied to the real world.
When exponential growth creeps into a system…
Doesn’t matter whether it’s an economic system, energy system, or some simple system you may have at your job…
When that exponential growth begins, it’s nice and calm.
It goes unnoticed for a long while, because that system stays small at first.
But what’s happening underneath the radar is that system keeps doubling in size, over and over again, in shorter periods of time, until it hits unsustainable levels.
That’s when chaos breaks out.
With a traditional Pyramid Scheme you usually have some sort of crooked operation that survives off a constant influx of new people investing their money, so that the people on the top of the pyramid get paid.
You need exponential growth in the amount of investors, or else the pyramid scheme collapses when more and more people want their money back.
But our Pyramid Scheme theory suggests something entirely different.
That our way of life has been built upon unstable exponential growth needs.
The problem is, exponential growth patterns don’t give you an early warning sign.
Because the dangers really speed up at the end, when it’s too late to do anything about it.
Chris Martenson:
Now, to maintain our current way of life, the so-called American Dream, we have to rely on the false belief that we can preserve exponential growth forever in three systems, Energy, the Environment, and the Economy.
I call them the 3 Es.
The Economy on the top, with Energy, and the Environment forming the foundation.
An interconnected pyramid.
Looking at that top E – the economy – our GDP is a near perfect exponential growth curve, doubling and doubling repeatedly over the last 80 years.
But something that was experiencing even more dangerous exponential growth is our Total Credit Market debt.
Doubling around every 6 or 7 years since the mid-70s.
Keith Fitz-Gerald:
If our economy would just continue to grow infinitely, we could keep this going for a little while longer.
But we’d also need to continue a pattern of exponential growth in our ability to find and harness more energy…
Grow more food from dwindling amounts of farmland…
Find new water sources from deeper beneath the ground…
Discover and mine a whole array of crucial minerals.
What we are finding out more, with each day that passes, is that all of these things are finite in nature.
But they are absolutely necessary for maintaining our current living standards in a modernizing world with 7 billion people…
Chris Martenson:
Unfortunately, politicians, pundits, and the mainstream media don’t look at the big picture.
They focus on inflation, debt, or unemployment.
Or green energy obsessions versus drill, drill, drill.
Or high food and gas prices.
But they never look at how interconnected everything is.
If they did, they would see that these 3 Es form one big, historic crisis.
Dr. Kent Moors:
To really drive this Pyramid Scheme theory home we just need to have people begin asking themselves some very important questions.
What is the real fallout if the world is caught in the midst of an energy crisis?
Not just oil. Energy across the board.
What if there’s an international run on minerals, water, and food?
What if we can’t continue to grow these areas exponentially for a global economy that’s built on infinite expansion?
And what happens to America, and the entire world, if one piece of this puzzle falls behind, or even worse yet, all of them?
We have some very real issues to address that, for the first time in history, may find their way to American shores.
And I think that’s the story people need to hear.