The Effects of Exponential Growth on Human Activity

In the post-war era, and particularly in the United States, various indicators of human activity were also growing exponentially. But while exponential growth looked to be depleting natural resources at a growing pace, it wasn't clear that those trends alone need cause concern. After all, thanks to the so-called Green Revolution, which had created a new generation of synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, agricultural yields were still rising. The most common pattern is one of overshoot, beyond the cutting capacity of the environment, followed by collapse.

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