[OT] Saving the planet is quiet work.

[hong]

Why on earth am I still able to post to this thread?


Hong "Piratecat is dead, long live Piratecat" Ooi

 

[RSKennan]

There doesn't seem to be any vitriole flying, hong. I urge piratecat to keep this open.... I'm composing a measured response to the most recent question...

 

[Umbran]

Hm.

in 1970, Borlaug was estimated to have saved the lives of 1 billion people, primarily for reversing food shortages in India and Pakistan in the 1960s.

One billion corpses in 10 years. That's 100 million per year. While it may be worse, proportionately, the black plague had nothing on this. The worldwide effects would thus have been worse.

If somehow folks think that it would have been better for these people to starve, I suggest they stop and think a bit. The ramifications of death on this scale are not limited to simple reduction of world population.

 

[RSKennan]

They certainly have been historically exaggerated but I would like to see some numbers of available water supplies versus sustainable growth. I AM genuinely curious about your point of view visive regarding water which I see as the root of many problems in the mid-term future.

<snip>
You pose a pretty impossible problem here, one that I don't see having any solution. Have you read about what is happening in Pakistan and the Indus river? About the desertification problems in China? Africa? What are the root causes of those problems?

There is a relationship between sustainability and people's standard of living. Those who 'have' are very often not willing to share with those who don't. I just don't see that changing any time soon.

I'd like to post some more thoughts but figured I should get this in before things get locked down...

later,
Ysgarran.

There's always desalination, water purification, and other processes by which water is produced as a byproduct. The method of oil production in

http://www.msnbc.com/news/320915.asp?cp1=1this thread, and as a byproduct of fuel-cells, which are around the corner. Yes, I'm very optimistic about the future. but I really think that 50 years from now I'll be proven a realist. Even without some mass change of heart on the part of land owners, I beleive that we will find a way to survive, and that the future is bright, unless we let a few people hijack it.

As for what's going on in the Indus river valley, glacial water seems to be one solution. water reclaimation from the air could easily be another. Air conditioning produces wates water, that could easily be collected in cisterns, and purified.

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thought. -paraphrased from a misquote of Voltaire

http://lists.isb.sdnpk.org/pipermail/eco-list-old/1999-July/002211.html

 

[d20Dwarf]

RSK,

I'm sure we're cross-posting, so you may answer some of this already.

As far as the numbers go about world overpopulation in relation to available land and resources go, you are likely not off base. But, the problem occurs when you look at populations within various smaller pieces of land...nations primarily. The totality of the world's resources are not available in any given place, and a community must be able to provide a basic level of resources to sustain itself or it is not viable. In other words, we cannot ship water from the Edwards Aquifer (San Antonio) to any country in Nyambe....err, Africa. Nor can shipping food 8,000 miles be a permanent solution.

And again, one of the main problems is these countries' failure to make the leap into fully industrialized countries, for a variety of reasons, none of which I would call racist. They are taking advantage of modern technology without making the societal commitment to live as industrialized peoples. In many cases, overpopulation and disease are preventing this...in others, the blame falls on dictators and intra-culture racial wars (Tutsi vs. Hutu, etc.) that focus their attention elsewhere.

Billions and billions of dollars (I say dollars for a reason) flow to these nations each year, but the funds are primarily misapplied or simply a stop-gap against the growing AIDS populations. In many African countries the adult AIDS population comprises 20-25% of the total population! This may be a self-corrective problem in 10 years or so, or it may only continue to spread.

In any case, overpopulation of certain regions is a huge drain on the world economy and is a big problem for those within it. Simply saying that there's enough food and land for everyone doesn't help those in need. It reminds me of the old Sam Kinison bit, "MOVE TO WHERE THE FOOD IS!" Although I'm sure you didn't mean it that way.

 

[Rel]

The people arguing for some sort of population control clearly just lack ambition.

We just need a Ringworld.

Duh.

 

[Shard O'Glase]

Soviet guy only mildly impressed with. Yeah, you can say he saved the world. But he wan't making adecision on what to eat for dinner that night. He was making a decision to launch nukes. So taking aminute or two because something doesn't seem right, doesn't seem that heroic it just seem to be not moronic on a absurd scale.

Dude who invented the new and improved wheat. That's more heroic in my eyes. I'm not woried about overpopulation, 1 I'm a technocrat, 2 well I have more reasons but hey lets not get too political.

 

[RSKennan]

You're right D20 Dwarf; I didn't mean that we could practically ship resources from places where they are abundant to places where they are scarce as a permanent measure. I was merely saying that greed, nationalism, and and economic barriers are the prime reasons for most of the problems attributed to overpopulation. I agree with almost every point you made; since the issue for you it seems is human nature.

Greenhouses and bioengineered foods allow for food production nearly anywhere in the world. Additionally, the production of pharmaceuticals is about to get a lot easier.

The previously mentioned methods of water creation and reclaimation would solve the other problems of keeping everyone alive on a daily basis. Everything beyond this is gravy. Solve the starvation and disease problem and industrialization becomes that much easier.

But who's to say that if there were only 1 billion people there would be "enough resources" for everyone? I think that there would still be people starving and dying from curable disease no matter how few or how many people we have. Unfortunately, history has never shown us differrently. We can't expect human nature to change overnight, but if more people worked towards this goal, we could move towards eradicating the inequality of resource allocation.

 

[Henry]

But he wan't making adecision on what to eat for dinner that night. He was making a decision to launch nukes. So taking aminute or two because something doesn't seem right, doesn't seem that heroic it just seem to be not moronic on a absurd scale.

In the Gentleman's defense, I'm pretty sure he wasn't put there because he had the Russian high score in Space Invaders. Despite his decommission, they put the right man in that position at the right time. I don't know what Soviet practice was back then, but I wouldn't want to put someone in that position who was prone to kneejerk reaction, or mental instability.

Conversely, a friend of mine told me about a relative of his who was placed by the U.S. government in a similar position stateside - and his stories SCARED me.

 

[Liminal Syzygy]

He was making a decision to launch nukes. So taking aminute or two because something doesn't seem right, doesn't seem that heroic it just seem to be not moronic on a absurd scale.

Actually he wasn't making a decision to launch nukes or not, but rather on whether to pass the information onto his superiors or not that he had detected a launch (which he suspected would cause them to launch). After having respect for the hierarchy of command drilled into your head for decades, I think sitting on the info because you are afraid of potential consequences is a very brave thing to do. A LOT of people would be tempted to just pass it along "Hey, not my decision, I'm just telling the high command what the computer is saying."