Film: Al Bartlett on "Arithmetic, Population and Energy"

Join us for this informative and often humorous video by Al Bartlett. Free and open to the public.

In this DVD, Colorado University-Boulder Professor Emeritus Al Bartlett gives his celebrated talk, "Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101".

Bartlett, of the University of Colorado at Boulder physics department, has given the lecture over 1,540 times since 1969. The talk warns of the perilous effects of population growth and of growth in rates of consumption of nonrenewable resources.

Bartlett first delivered the lecture in 1969 to explain the arithmetic of steady growth and to alert the public to the consequences of rising human population and of rising rates of consumption of nonrenewable resources. Since his first presentation in 1969, he has given the talk an average of about once every nine days.

Bartlett begins his talk with a striking observation: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." His lecture includes examples of how the steady growth of the human population erodes everything from natural resources to democracy.

During the presentation he describes the steady growth in consumption of finite resources such as fossil fuels. He shows that when such steady growth occurs, these resources are exhausted at an alarming rate.

Bartlett believes people have missed the warning signs of overpopulation, and if humans don't move quickly to solve the problem, nature will. Steady growth won't continue because at some point nature will solve the problem through famine, disease and war, he said.