PAGING HANK JOHNSON;
WORLD IN DANGER OF TIPPING OVER.
PAGING HANK JOHNSON
Posted on 06/08/2011 8:07:50 AM PDT by Borges
You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?
“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”
Gilding cites the work of the Global Footprint Network, an alliance of scientists, which calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates. G.F.N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G.F.N., we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In a way, he was right, but without meaning to. There have been famines, but in nearly every case, the reason has been political, and NOT environmental, or due to a "population bomb." Three examples that have claimed 10s, if not 100s of millions of lives have been the Ukraine, courtesy of Stalin, Ethiopia, courtesy of a government that uses starvation as a weapon against opposition, and North Korea.
Mark
The common denominator here is quite simple: Rule of Law. (especially property rights) Places that don't have it more closely resemble hell on earth than places that don't. Those places with extreme poverty also have high birthrates.
Additionally, rule of law, and property rights will enable commerce to more effectively produce and distribute food and other goods to those who need it. Look at Zimbabwe. It used to be a major exporter of food to all of Africa. Now, under the rule of Mugabe, a communist homicidal maniac, they are starving to death in the streets.
Freedom works! Too bad we can't give it a try everywhere.
Funny timing, but just last week I was wondering how much of the U.S. it would take if we gave every person on earth 1 sq. yard to stand in. The latest population projection I saw was 7 billion later this yr. According to my math, the entire population would fit into Delaware with about 150 sq. miles to spare.
It's Bush's fault. Womyn and minorities will be hardest hit.
I had some friends visit from Germany back in the early 90s. They'd been here before, but only traveled to the cities, and never got around other than airports and cabs.
I was on leave when they visited. They were amazed at all the nothing between my little hometown of Nampa, ID, and Tucson, AZ (where I was stationed). US-93 is a lonely stretch of road. Their jaws dropped at the temperature sign they saw in Phoenix on the way through. They didn't blink at the 111 farenheit, but were very excited about the 44 celsius.
What a dumba$$. The world is not full, it just has way too many Thomas Friedmans (i.e. ignorant libtards).
“the globe is about 99% empty of any concentrations of human life.
The Bureau of Land Management says that the amount of developed land in the US is....wait for it....a whopping 4.3%. Took us 400 years to do that.
Environmentalists, most of whom live in the big cities, hane no idea just how empty the Hearland of the US is. Simply put, there is no one out there.
Your estimate of the world being 99% devoid of human habitation is about right. 85% of the world’s population lives within 100 miles of an ocean and most of the earth in unpopulated.
Ah, time to crunch the numbers again...
149M sq km total land
15M sq km farmland
7000M people (soon)
So by dividing current farmland by population and rounding the result up a bit, each person gets a plot 47x47m for 603 sq ft for living and the rest for farmland. Assuming half the land is rank (unusable) wilderness, that roughs out to an optimistic carrying capacity of 33000M people.
But that’s not taking into account high-efficiency farming or compact housing.
So methinks the alarm has been prematurely sounded. We’re still a ways from 33 billion occupants, and between technology and nature methinks that issue will be...adjusted.
Yeah, you can stack everyone like cordwood into a small space, but presumably the discussion includes each person having enough space to farm and live. We’re talking survival of humanity, not an ultimate mass grave.
Straight division of world land mass by current population gives 5.25 acres per person. Get yours today!
One of my pet peeves is environmentalists who use the Boston-DC corridor, or LA-Sand Diego model as being the situation over the whole globe. It’s a lie.
Panic as policy. Great, Tom. Great.
“when 1. food prices spiked, 2. energy prices soared, 3. world population surged, 4. tornados plowed through cities, 5. floods and droughts set records, 6. populations were displaced and 7. governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: 7. What were we thinking? 8. How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?”
1. Bad weather in key production areas. It’ll change.
2. Mostly a reduction of the value of the dollar. Some effect due the impact of rising living standards in developing countries.
3. Population is growing but will level off in about 20 years.
4. It happens. We have had major cities hit by tornados in the past and will in the future.
5. Droughts and floods - Weather. Just weather. has also impacted food production.
6. Populations are displaced by politics, droughts and floods, volcanos, tsunamis and the occasional asteroid impact. Just normal behavior.
7. What were thinking is that this is pretty normal and it will to will pass, partly because we in the heartland know our history better than the left wing and we are nowhere neared as surprised as the blue masses in the cities who seem to be shocked at every natural thing that occurs.
8. Last and my central point is that Friedman is nothing more than a drama-queen. He needs to get out of the corridor and drive the US. Imagine his shock as he entered Kansas.
...but American must not be. Even if we were filled up, it would be racist to stop or slow down immigration.
Even for the NY Times whose standards in the area are unmatched by any currently operating news paper, this is the dumbest op-ed I have ever seen.
Junior high level at best.
It’s not that there are too many people, it’s just that there’s too many people by the Democrat’s vacation homes.
Those are good numbers; quite enlightening. I sometimes point out to those that complain about overcrowding of the planet that Paris, France appears to be a quite livable city, with 2 million people living on about 40 square miles inside their “beltway”, a limited-access highway that surrounds the metro area. That’s about 50,000 people per square mile. That would indicate that EVERYONE on earth could live comfortably in a SuperCity inside the border of Texas (at what might be an even lower population density), allowing the entire remaining area of the earth to be devoted to farms, parks and wildlife preserves.
Putting all humans 4 to 5 to a house, giving them a front and back yard, a drive way, roads, and areas for commerce, etc., would still fit EVERYONE in the world into Texas and still have room left over.
By alarming people on the supposed "overpopulation" of our planet is just what the anti-progress, pro-abortion animals want.
There is no overpopulation . . . just governments that act like thugs who deny their own citizens basic life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (golly, was that the Declaration of Independence?).
Actually the earth isn’t even HALF full.
Pick up any text book or study on food production and population.
Currently the world has approx 7 Billion people, and the current food production worldwide can support 14 BILLION.
Yes there are areas that have famine ... it is the AREA not the Earth that is the problem. To quote Sam Kinison — “See this, this is sand, NOTHING GROWS IN SAND! YOu people don’t need food, you need U-Hauls. MOVE OUT OF THE DESERT!”
Congratulations on your imminent delivery! I’m getting a feeling we’re going to have #10 early next year. I love seeing people’s eyes bulge out when they count them up! Even appearing in public with my four youngest (9, 7, 5, 2, all boys) seems to scare some folks.
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