In 1,500 lectures during the last five decades, Professor Emeritus Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado at Â鶹¹ÙÍø physics department has warned of the perilous effects of population growth. On Nov. 15, he'll continue spreading the word.
Bartlett's classic "Arithmetic, Population and Energy" lecture, part of the monthly Saturday Physics Series, will begin at 2 p.m. in Duane Physics room G1B20 on the CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø campus. It will be the 1,501st time he's given the talk.
He 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 nonrenewable resource consumption rates. He usually begins the talk with an ominous observation: "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
Bartlett cites the first law of sustainability, which states that population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption cannot be sustained. "The world is full of well-meaning people who work diligently on topics of sustainability without ever getting down to telling people this most obvious and fundamental fact about sustainability," he said.
His lecture includes examples of how the steady growth of the human population erodes everything from natural resources to democracy. Since he moved to Â鶹¹ÙÍø in 1950, Bartlett said, the city's population has grown by a factor of five but the city council still consists of nine representatives. "Because of this population growth, democracy in Â鶹¹ÙÍø is a fifth of what it was in 1950," he said.
During the presentation he describes the steady growth in consumption of finite resources like fossil fuels. He shows that when such steady growth occurs, these resources are exhausted at an alarming rate.
Bartlett believes humans have missed the warning signs of overpopulation, and if humans don't 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.
Now in his 54th year as a faculty member in the physics department, Bartlett has given his talk throughout the United States and Canada. Since his first presentation in 1969, he has given the talk an average of roughly every nine days.
The Saturday Physics Series is sponsored by an outreach grant from the Division of Continuing Education at CU-Â鶹¹ÙÍø. For more information about the series call (303) 492-6952.