Re: KEYNESIANISM AND ECOLOGY

It's a comforting thought that world population will stabilize, and then
decline, as the demographic transition takes effect, but "demographic
transition" theory is a form of equilibrium theory, and it would be a BIG
mistake to extend the observed pattern in the core to the periphery and/or
the world-system as a whole.  

Right now the world population trend line is straight up toward the
stratosphere, and every aspect of the ecosphere is massively stressed.
(Just consult any of the regular publications of the Worldwatch
Institute.)  We are living through the Sixth Extinction, and this is being
caused, not by a giant asteroid, but by human overpopulation and
capitalist grow-or-die expansion.

The comforting thought of the demographic transition is the water that
gradually (not so gradually in the larger scheme of things) boils the frog
-- it justifies continuing status quo capitalist overproduction and
inequality with the perverse idea that high consumption is the
prerequisite for voluntarily lowered fertility rates.

We may already be over the abyss, like Wily Coyote (U.S. pop culture
reference), but just in case we haven't overshot the ecosystem already, we
better stop rationalizing and get the Red/Green program in high gear...

RH