Exponentiality

What do we call an exponential?

It is a very simple mathematical function, which you apply without thinking about it every time you calculate the interest composed of your book A…

Example: if each year you earn 10% interest (it would be more realistic for a loan than for a savings book, but finally…), the 1000 euros you had in January will be increased to 1100 at the end of December. Then you let him bring it back again. Your new gain will be 10% out of €1100, and your account will rise in December to: 1100 + 110 = €1210.
Then for the following year: 1210 + 121 = 1331.
After five years, you will be at €1610.51.
After ten years, you will reach €2593.74
After fifteen years, at: €4177.25
After twenty years, at: €6727.50
After fifty years, at: €117390.85
After one hundred years, at: €13 780 612.34…

Wonderful! Winning 13 million without doing anything is even better than at Jean-Pierre Foucault…

If you are not too angry with math, let’s define the exponential by simply saying that a starting value (here 1000€) is multiplied by a certain factor (1.1), then that the new obtained multiplies in turn by the same factor, and so on at each stroke.

It is written more classically: y = a · b^x (where the starting amount was 1000€, b the coefficient 1.1 corresponding to the interest rate of 10%, and expounding x the number of years, obviously being your account at the end of the year). So a very rewarding progression for savers who have the wisdom not to snack their capital.

Only here it is the same kind of progression that brings out a population, when nothing comes to stop the process.

If the world population multiplied each year by 1,012 (as was the case in 2011), it means that at the end of the century (a calculation in hand), the bipede horde that surveys the globe would amount to 7 billion x 1,012 at power 89, or 7 billion times 2.89 = 20.2 billion individuals.

This ideal growth – as much as lethal – will fortunately be tempered by various factors or, more strictly: dramatically limited by famines and other ecological disasters (unless the fertility rate is presumed to fall). So this record figure should not be reached.

This does not change much to our prospects of apocalypse, since the ecological footprint of the 7 billion we are, as soon as everyone has access to progress, will already exceed the planet’s biocapacity by five to ten times!

In reality, exponential growth or not, the question is not there. The rescue of the planet would actually require an immediate reversal of the fatal curve: only a significant population decline can save the souls of future generations…

It is therefore urgent to tighten the belt – including the chastity belt…