Exponential growth is accelerating toward us

One of the keys to understanding why now is different to any time in the past, lies in grasping the significance of exponential growth.

Imagine filling a swimming pool with water with a dropper, yet every new drop doubled in size compared the last one. And let's say it took an hour to fill the pool dropping one drop [doubling in size] every second.

At what time would the pool be half full ...?

At one second before the hour.

At what time would the pool be 1/4 full ...?

At two seconds before the hour.

And lets say we discover another 3 swimming pools as receptacles for more water. That's 300% more space than we ever had before. That's huge. How long would it take to fill those extra three pools ...?

Another two seconds.

It took one hour (360 drops) to fill one pool, but two seconds (2 drops) to fill the next 3 pools.

Our growth, consumption, production, debt are all measured and tied to exponential growth. And the simple fact is that exponential growth is unsustainable, it simply can't continue. No how, no way. And when we look around and say but there's still a half left of the total amount of whatever we've consumed or produced in the past ...

... it's one second before the hour. 

And even if we make incredible discoveries, it gives us a few more seconds -- seriously, is that the plan.

We are not in the early stages of exponential growth, we are in the later stages. The world is getting more complex exponentially. We are consuming non-renewable resources exponentially. We are affecting global warming and climate change exponentially. We are creating debt exponentially.

... and we believe

When we notice the problem we'll figure out a way to solve it ... and we will if we wish to survive, 

... however, we're not noticing the problem.

If we rely on conventional wisdom we'll only notice the problem milliseconds before the hour -- That doesn't leave any time to solve the problem.

I'm not asking now that we solve the problem, right now -- I'm asking that we notice the problem, contemplate it. Let in the significance.