GRANTHAM:
We're Headed For A Disaster Of Biblical Proportions
Henry
Blodget
21
November, 2012
Last
year, legendary investor Jeremy
Grantham of
GMO published a treatise
on exploding commodity prices.
He
also offered a startlingly depressing outlook for the future of
humanity.
Grantham
believes the world has undergone a permanent "paradigm shift"
in which the number of people on Earth has finally and permanently
outstripped the planet's ability to support us.
The
phenomenon of ever-more humans using a finite supply of natural
resources cannot continue forever, Grantham says--and the prices of
metals, hydrocarbons (oil), and food are now beginning to reflect
that.
Grantham
believes that the planet can only sustainably support about 1.5
billion humans, versus the 7 billion on Earth right now (heading to
10-12 billion). For all of history except the last 200 years, the
human population has been controlled via the limits of the food
supply. Grantham thinks that, eventually, the same force will come
into play again.
The
hope of the optimists, of course, is that science will find a
solution to this problem, the way it has for the past 150 years.
Let's
hope so.
In
the meantime, here's a snapshot of Grantham's argument, along with
his key points at the end.
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