The Story of B
Ammonite fossil, by Liez (H Zell), from Wikimedia Commons.| Do the Math
Last week, I reported the surprising realization that official population projections from the United Nations adhere to a notion of future fertility that appears to be immediately at odds with present real trends. The recent rapid decline in population growth—even pre-COVID—suggests that a population peak prior to 2050 is not outlandish, provided that current drivers continue to apply. Recent declines in fertility rates, together with a flattening age distribution of young folks, combin...| Do the Math
Have I mentioned how important I think Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael is? I reread it recently for the first time in a while, and was again impressed with how many important modernity-challenging ideas are packed into one novel.| Do the Math
This is the twelfth of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. This episode confronts the thorny topic of human supremacy. My intention is not to rile folks up, but some of that may be unavoidable. It’s something we must face to understand modernity.| Do the Math
This is the seventh of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. This episode will try (and probably fail) to convey the degree to which Earth’s biodiversity and ecological health are in peril.| Do the Math
FAOSTAT provides free access to food and agriculture data for over 245 countries and territories and covers all FAO regional groupings from 1961 to the most recent year available.| www.fao.org
United Nations Statistics Divisin - Methodology| unstats.un.org
A post from last year titled The Ride of Our Lives explored the game theory aspect of modernity: those who adopted grain agriculture and new technologies had a competitive advantage over neighbors who didn’t. The “winners” were destined to be those who followed the path that we now call progress.| Do the Math
The 2024 Revision of World Population Prospects is the twenty-eighth edition of official United Nations population estimates and projections that have been prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat. It presents population estimates from 1950 to the present for 237 countries or areas, underpinned by analyses of historical demographic trends. This latest assessment considers the results of 1,910 national population cen...| population.un.org
