I am very proud of our UT Austin geoscience students and will let them speak to you directly.- TWP Scott Baker is a senior majoring in petroleum engineering at UT Austin. He has worked two internships for Devon Energy and will work for them as a full-time reservoir engineer upon graduation. In a New York Times op-ed article, Erle C. Ellis, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, states that overpopulation is not the problem we tend to believe it is. Ellis’ main argument is that the technology will always be ahead of the population growth. In other words, new technology always has and always will be the solution we need to live in a society with exponential population growth. There is one fundamental error with this reasoning. Ellis acknowledges that “populations must have their limits and must ultimately reach a balance with their environments.” I agree with this statement. However, I believe that the same argument is valid for technology itself....
In this blog, I continue to write about the environment, ecology, energy, complexity, and humans. Of particular interest to me are human self-delusions and mad stampedes to nowhere.