The Everlasting Population Problem

It's good to see some people trying to work together to fix this nuisance of a climate problem. Something that needs to be considered is what "constants" we assume will continue as normal all the way to 2050. Growth of course is paramount but if you think of the cuts in comparison to population growth the real nature of the cuts is astounding.

Each American would emit 3 tonnes of greenhouse gases in 2050, down from 24 in 1990, if President Barack Obama achieves his goal of an 80 percent cut in national emissions from 1990 and the population rises to 400 million by 2050.

This is quite a reversal in sustainability. Dmitry Orlov loves to point out that the world can sustain 300 million people who earn $1/year or 300,000 who make $100,000/year. Think about the lifestyle that we will live if we have 400 million living at 80% of the carbon footprint of people in 1990! Think back to 1990. The population was a shade under 250 million. Cars, lot smaller and fewer, non-existent personal portable technology. (The Gameboy just came out in 1989). Think to 2009 terms where nearly everyone has a car, cellphones, ipods, computers, fancy audio/visual setups, etc.

I can think of two things: either we are going to inherit alien technology from Area 51 to make all these things run on farts or really all the world leaders know we are going to be at carbon footprint level of A.D. 200 due to a combo of peak oil/peak soil/peak water/peak fish/climate change.