Bartlett often explained how sustainable growth is a contradiction. His view was based on the fact that a modest percentage growth will equate to huge escalations over relatively short periods of time.
Over time, Bartlett argued, compound growth can yield enormous increases. For example, an investor earning a constant annual 7% return on their investment would find his or her capital doubling within 10 years. But the same exponential power, so advantageous to patient investors, may be potentially calamitous when applied to human population. A population of 10,000 individuals, if it were to grow at a constant rate of 7% per annum, would reach a population size of 10 million after 100 years.
Bartlett regarded the failure to understand exponential growth as "The Greatest Challenge" facing us, & promoted sustainable living; he was an early advocate on overpopulation. He opposed the cornucopian school of thought (advocated by Julian Simon, et.al.), & referred to it as "The New Flat Earth Society".
J.B. Calvert (1999) has proposed that Bartlett's law will result in the exhaustion of oil resources caused by exponential growth of world population (in line with the Malthusian Growth Model).