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- fasda, on 07/08/2009, -1/+34how about telling people to wear condom and try to not get 8 billion people
- novenator, on 07/09/2009, -3/+15We knew that overpopulation was a grave concern back in the 1970s. 30 years later, after all the dire warnings were ignored, this situation is finally catching up to us. Population control is an important issue that could very well save the planet and our species. Education, womens rights, and birth control are some of the keys to getting the population of our species back under control.
- fasda, on 07/09/2009, -2/+13You know that Utopian societies like star trek aren't possible right? In Star Trek all the protagonists have only good intentions and major character flaws are all but absent creating something like a caricature of a real person. Stalin said it best one death is a tragedy a million is a statistic. Really think about this did the Chinese government stop their people's starving because the distributed the wealth well? no they did it by using their authoritarian powers to put a strangle hold on their population growth and appealed to the farmers desire to make more money.
- funklor, on 07/10/2009, -0/+9Star Trek also relies on magical devices called replicators to make the whole thing work. Magic isn't real.
- EnergyGeekCa, on 07/08/2009, -0/+7Sad thing is too many people are starving today... and the future looks like more will too.
- bluebirdgm, on 07/10/2009, -0/+7Some guy named Swift has a modest proposal regarding this problem...
- lurkerOslo, on 07/10/2009, -0/+7Good history lesson but I fail to see the rethinking in this article.
Thinking that continualy growth is possible is one of mankind's greatest sins. When ANY population reach critical mass external factors will dampen the growth.
Also, where is the holistic thinking?
As every inch of the planet's fertile soil already is exploited, humans seek new famland by cutting down forrests and draining marshlands. The results are climate changes to the worse for all.
The article also handles fertilizers and irrigation like it is a good thing. Fact is that fertilizer is a major pollutant. And freshwater is about to become one of the worlds most Valuable substance.
So all this conclude;
there are too many humans on this planet! - suprememilo, on 07/10/2009, -2/+8There is enough arable land on the planet to easily feed all 6.5 billion people on an American's diet, we just need the technology to use it and to distribute the food accordingly.
If we all became Vegans the Earth could probably support 60 billion people.
Lets try to keep it under 8 billion so I can eat meat. - Dynamoo, on 07/10/2009, -1/+6Soylent Green
- Enterres, on 07/08/2009, -7/+13Are there any Star Trek fans online? Like in the show; more tech isn't the answer, it's in socialism. Way too much food gets thrown out every day in any given capitalist city.
The vast majority of people don't do any real work anyways; just services. Haven't we as a species moved beyond letting children starve?
Imagine. - ronindigg, on 07/10/2009, -0/+5Take that, vegetarians..!
- poidh, on 07/10/2009, -1/+6Allahs, Popes and the like don't like condoms plus condom use = less future believers. Plus, how is Islam ever going to conquer the world if it doesn't have significant numbers?
- Suricou, on 07/10/2009, -0/+5Production is at a historic high.
But so is demand.
Production cannot grow forever. Demand will keep growing until either regulation or mass-starvation curbs it. - Suricou, on 07/10/2009, -2/+7Typical of a free-market fundamentalist. Has it occured to you that sometimes production can't magically grow to meet any demand, because the natural resources are limited? There is only so much farmable land, and of what there is much could be put to far more profitable use than food production.
- Suricou, on 07/10/2009, -0/+4America and most of Europe arn't much of a problem - what you claim is true, but it's counteracted by the effect of gender equality and longer education. People are putting of childbearing until a much later age than used to be the case, thanks to the availability of contraception. They have population growth, but only barely above replacement. The developing world, however... that's the problem. They still have the culture where women are expected to start churning out babies as soon as they are old enough to marry, where they are strongly discouraged from having a career, and where massive families are seen as a source of pride. But now they also have modern medicine and more dependable food than used to be the case. So their populations are just shooting up.
- inactive, on 07/10/2009, -3/+7Industrious farmers and entrepreneurs are the main reason behind the Amazon and other forests' destruction, causing in part global climate change which is making it much harder to raise crops in many of the most desperate areas.
- warnipples, on 07/10/2009, -0/+4People are starving because of bad government.
- RazielX, on 07/10/2009, -0/+3This is why we need to start investing heavily in aerospace engineering. Ultimately, the planet will not be able to sustain all of us, regardless of what we do. The best direction is to go up (meaning away from the Earth).
- inactive, on 07/10/2009, -1/+4It will take cultural change both in America and abroad to stem the population explosion. I mean, we have shows that glorify loonies who have eighteen kids ("and counting!"), not to mention the epidemic of teenage pregnancies in this country. According to the CDC, one-third of U.S. girls get pregnant before the age of 20... ugh
- endisnighe, on 07/10/2009, -1/+4Population control coming to a WAR near you. NWO has plans for this problem, population cap of 500 million.
- BIOHazard87, on 07/10/2009, -2/+5The solution is to not help the Africans reproduce new AIDS babies causing massive starvation.
- Suricou, on 07/10/2009, -0/+3It would have caught up long ago if not for a period of rapid advances in agricultural technology.
- manicleek, on 07/10/2009, -1/+3I ***** like a rapid beast
30 seconds flat and back to the TV - vault, on 07/10/2009, -0/+2GMO could feed them. It may not be safe, but we could test it on people who were gonna starve anyway so then we'll know. If they all die, then that reduces the number of starving people.
- shig, on 07/10/2009, -0/+2We live in a time of scarcity, and not the time of free energy and instant replication.
- poidh, on 07/10/2009, -1/+3Fusion weapons do, as they need the fision stage to fire up the fusion stage. Plus, many fusion weapons are fision-fusion-fision devices, which are very, very dirty (in terms of fallout).
Neutron weapons are pretty good at killing lots of people without long term fallout. - Suricou, on 07/10/2009, -1/+3I am confident that, with some management improvements, eight billion people can be fed.
What happens when it's ten, or fifteen, or twenty? Feeding eight billion is only delaying the inevitable. - inactive, on 07/10/2009, -1/+3Dear Pope,
Thank you so much for your misguided, uneducated, ignorant, intolerant, self-righteous, psychotic and all out arrogant concern!
Signed,
-an African baby dying of malnourishment and dehydration... - XZanatos, on 07/10/2009, -0/+29 months+ just to grow 5 to 10 lbs of product. Way too fricking long time. His proposal wouldn't work.
- RickCarstens, on 07/10/2009, -0/+2this is a sad situation... but we must have to take some initiatives to make the things better for the coming world
- inactive, on 07/13/2009, -0/+1You can't just think out food production. The free markets will determine how it goes. Meaning people who can pay for food will get food, and those who can't won't.
- yocouchdigga, on 07/10/2009, -1/+2she's not ugly but I don't understand the obsession either...
you're kind of a dick, btw. - Gareth321, on 07/10/2009, -1/+2Which is why we should be rethinking eugenics. Quite honestly, if one can't support a child, one shouldn't have the right to reproduce.
- AROERS, on 07/10/2009, -1/+2BS..... Watch the doc.... "world according to Monsanto" , ruining sustainable farming ..... Bottled water companies are wasting and poisoning the water supply.... Cap and Trade will help insure you won't have the money to do anything about it......
- Foochan, on 07/10/2009, -2/+3If that's the case, would you care to explain why a field of soybean will fix 4 times the carbon that a same sized area of rainforest will fix?
You, personally, have industrious farmers to thank for the fact that you are alive today. - cfuse, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1It won't matter - we are long overdue for a plague. It will take care of the problem faster and more efficiently than any human endeavour could.
- shig, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1"they displace us and diminish our societal rights and freedoms"
"maybe it should be a good idea if we start restricting the breeding rights (of) people"
A preemptive strike, or blatant contradiction? I can't tell... - inactive, on 07/10/2009, -3/+4***** the RIAA!!
- fasda, on 07/11/2009, -0/+1@Enterres
I don't think you quite understand people. For example I think its easy to see that only a real psycho would electrocute a puppy without coercion and yet when an experiment did exactly that only 6 out of 26 subjects didn't electrocute the puppy. If people only need the things you listed to be good like in star trek practically no middle class white guy should have really committed a crime or done anything unspeakable in like the last 50 years. That is clearly not the case. People have infinite wants are there is not an infinite amount of wealth. As long as that is true conflict will ensue and that's also assuming that people behave rationally which we don't. Irrational people will fight at the drop of a hat no matter what their economic status is over things like jealousy.
oh and Iasuntzu it's not because of religion or some new order or Illuminati it's because we are primates and we look out for ourselves first and then the people or causes we immediately care about and everyone could die for all we care. - shig, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1"There is only so much farmable land, and of what there is much could be put to far more profitable use than food production."
Isn't this the crux of the argument; Who puts the land to use? Free-marketeers say the owner or the homesteader should put the land to use according to their individual desires as long as it doesn't impose on anyone's liberty, and any other consideration (GDP, profit, demand, third-parties) be damned. The land redistributionists say the redistributionists know the best use, therefore they get to decide who puts the land to use, the will of the owner or homesteader be damned.
"Has it occured to you that sometimes production can't magically grow to meet any demand, because the natural resources are limited?"
Scarcity exists, and they are well aware of it's implications. Even if there were no material scarcity of natural resources there would still be scarcity of time to put them to use. - warnipples, on 07/10/2009, -3/+4Incredible the ***** mental gymnastics you will go through to tie everything back to the evils of capitalism, and global warming.
People have always starved on earth.
Bad government is ALWAYS the reason. - sndream, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1Asia slowed down its population growth rate significantly which mean a lot less new mouth to feed. I don't think this is purely coincident
- lurkerOslo, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1wait, what? I don't want to kill anyone. Or...,err, OK maybe just a few 'key figures' :-)
It is a little extreme, don't you think, to imply that I must take my own life for building up an argument with the conclusion "there are too many humans on this planet!" . Altough I'm truly convinced by the former fact. - NoDrama, on 10/13/2009, -0/+1We need both, obviously, but water is the more fundamental resource. Farming practices in Europe and North America that aren't tied to rain are leading to serious impacts on both the quality and quantity of available fresh water according to most studies.
Over 2 billion people do not have adequate water to handle basic sanitation needs - and now, local governments in some places turn to PRIVATE, multi-national corporations to provide water rather than familiar municipal systems.
How long until what comes out of your tap is as expensive as bottled water? http://henoticworld.blogspot.com/2009/10/helping-l ... How's YOUR consumption?
Do you know how much water it takes to get a single pound of beef into your kitchen? Do you know that it takes 4 times more water to make a cup of coffee than a cup of tea? http://zennie2005.blogspot.com/2009/10/tom-hayes-w ... - inactive, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1How about if America produces more than half the worlds' food supply and sends billions and billions of dollars worth of it to every poor country in the world, and then they all turn around and hate us. Wait, that already happens every year.
- inactive, on 07/10/2009, -1/+2but thats not because we eat a lot of corn, its because we have saturated corn fructose (concentrated sugar) in everything we eat now...
- durruticolumn, on 09/18/2009, -0/+1
Indoor agriculture is the way to go. Year round production, much less water use, and it requires considerably less pesticides.
http://www.thanetearth.com/
Make them vertical, and you can put them very close to cities and require even less resources for transportation
http://www.verticalfarm.com/
If the world's population all lived in cities the density of Chicago, that means that 6 billion people can fit on less than 4% of the world's land mass. The density of Paris? Less than 2%. - shig, on 07/10/2009, -0/+1"there are too many humans on this planet!"
If you were truly convinced by your own arguments then shouldn't you end the human life you have every right to destroy, namely, your own? Are you a member of some death cult that lives merely to convince others to kill themselves, or what? - Nedd8, on 07/10/2009, -0/+0How many people starved in socialist Russia in the 1930's and socialist China in the 1960's. Hint: Tens of millions
- Mike17102, on 07/10/2009, -1/+1You first *****.
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