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The Myth of Growth
- University of Vermont Press
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22 2 THE MYTH OF GROWTH Limits and Sustainability “Exponential growth does not continue forever. Growth of population and industrialization will stop. If man does not take conscious action to limit population and capital investment, the forces inherent in the natural and social system will rise high enough to limit growth.The question is only a matter of when and how growth will cease, not whether it will cease.” —Jay Forrester1 Carrying Capacity and Limits to Growth On May 11, 1943,American forces stormed Attu—the island that anchors the western end of Alaska’s Aleutian archipelago. At the time Attu was held by more than 2,400 Japanese troops. The next eighteen days witnessed one of the toughest battles in the Pacific Campaign of World War II. By May 29 only twenty-eight Japanese soldiers remained alive.The cost in American casualties was heavy as well, with seventy-one men being killed or injured for every 100 Japanese . Only the battle for Iwo Jima resulted in proportionally higher losses for the Americans.2 By August 24, 1943, the Japanese had been forced out of all the Aleutian Islands, but as part of the war department’s plans against future Japanese activity in the region the U.S. Coast Limits and Sustainability 23 Guard put a LORAN (long-range aid to navigation) station on St. Matthew Island to the north of the Aleutians. St. Matthew —an isolated island in the middle of the Bering Sea— was manned by a contingent of nineteen men.As a means to supply fresh meat to the operators of the station, the Coast Guard introduced twenty-nine reindeer to the island in August 1944.With the surrender of the Japanese the following year, the St. Matthew station was closed; the reindeer herd was forgotten. Twelve years later, U.S. Fish and Wildlife biologist David Klein was sent out to St.Matthew to see what had become of the reindeer.With the help of associates, he inventoried the entire 130-square-mile island and counted 1,350 healthy animals —a forty-seven fold increase in the size of the herd in little more than a decade.3The reindeer’s dramatic population growth was the result of two things: good habitat in the form of dense stands of reindeer lichen—a staple for this species— and a lack of any predators. Klein’s next visit to the island occurred in 1963.Although the population growth rate had slowed during this interval, Klein now counted 6,000 animals. This time the reindeer were noticeably malnourished, having lost an average of 40 percent of their body weight since his last visit; their forage in reindeer lichen was dramatically degraded.4 The following winter was harsh, even by regional standards, but Klein wasn’t able to return until the summer of 1966. That summer he found that the reindeer population had suffered a precipitous decline. Skeletal remains were everywhere, and his inventory found only forty-two remaining animals—all females with the exception of one deformed male.5 By this point the herd was no longer able to reproduce, and the entire reindeer population became extinct sometime in the 1980s.The [34.226.141.207] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:54 GMT) THE MYTH OF GROWTH 24 St. Matthew’s reindeer herd is a potent example of what can happen to a population that exceeds its carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is an ecological concept that is defined as the maximal population size that an ecosystem can support without being degraded in some fashion. Once a population of organisms overshoots its carrying capacity, the ecosystem that supports the population becomes impaired, which in turn has negative consequences for the population that has grown too large.What results is a precipitous population decline .The St. Matthew herd is an unusual example since it is very rare for even a dramatic population die-off brought on by overshoot to result in extinction.The catastrophic reduction of the reindeer’s food supply, caused by overgrazing, resulted in the degradation of the population’s ecosystem.With so many animals entering the winter of 1964 in a malnourished condition, only a handful were able to survive. In this way the limited forage generated negative feedback within the ecosystem, and negative feedback led to the eventual demise of the reindeer. Every population of organisms in every ecosystem on this planet has a carrying capacity. If they exceed it, their system will be degraded, creating negative feedback...