Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rphroy!caen!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!uxa.cso.uiuc.edu!vamg6792 From: vamg6792@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Vincent A Mazzarella) Newsgroups: sci.bio Subject: Re: Human Population Growth/Decline Message-ID: <1991Apr4.153035.13052@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> Date: 4 Apr 91 15:30:35 GMT References: <21376@crg5.UUCP> <1991Mar20.125112.2920@desire.wright.edu> <21418@crg5.UUCP> <3146@beguine.UUCP> <1991Mar29.112327.3031@desire.wright.edu> <21472@crg5.UUCP> Sender: usenet@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News) Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 80 szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) writes: >This is incredibly simplistic, since the _rate_ of population growth >has been cut nearly in half in just the last 20 years, and continues >to fall at a rate that is itself accelerating. The people who >have the most $$$ to lose/gain (and $$$ to spend studying) world >population growth, the World Bank, show world population "leveling off" >at less than 10 billion people. Yeah, right. Malthus also envisioned the world population levelling off. > In other words, _today's_ rate of food >supply is more than enough to feed future populations, even with no >technology advance. Of course, tech advance is not slowing; the >green revolution continues, and genetic engineering for massive productivity >gains is just around the corner. The hoped-for day of ending world >starvation may soon arrive, if it hasn't already. You've got to be kidding. World starvation almost ended ? What planet are you from? Take a junket travelling -- it will do you some good. On PBS recently there was an excellent program on the "Green Revolution" and its shortcomings. Besides the shaky foundations of reliance on pesticides, the green revolution also has brought about a restriction in the number of species used in the food supply. Only a handful of species of grains, for example, make up virutally all of the grain supply in the US. This makes the crops susceptible to a singular disaster or pest, as the program pointed out happened to half the corn (?) crop in 1974. By cultivating the few species that "green revolution" farmers are comfortable with at the expense of indiginous species, species loss occurs rapidly. This makes the world food supply more fragile, not more robust. In addition, the species that are developed for the US grain belt are hardly suitable for more than a short period in other situations. Dry soils, irregularly irrigated lands, and other problems make crop selection a region-by-region problem. The "green revolution" does not, in its present incarnation, have the breadth to address these issues. > For a 100% end to >starvation, however, local distribution, not global food supply, is the >limiting factor. This is quite true. >The World Bank's time-line is limited by their loan horizon, of course: >they have not yet started projecting what happens after the "leveling off". >I will certainly agree that overpopulation has been a problem, and >continues to be so in some pockets of the world. However, increasingly >underpopulation is becoming a problem -- in Japan, where there is a >severe shortage of young workers, in Hungary, where population is rapidly >decreasing (by over 1%/year), in Amazonian tribes that are being given birth >control and driven off their lands at the same time, and increasingly >across most of the developed world, where retirement funds are coming >under severe pressure as a first symptom. We should not let overpopulation >problems, severe as they have been and still are, keep us from seeing the >problems of underpopulation that are starting to occur. We pretty much >know how to lick overpopulation; underpopulation is a difficult problem with >which we have not yet come to grips. I think that the world is underpopulated by clones of me. But that doesn't mean there aren't too many other people in the world. The small-minded, parochial view that one segment of society is more worthwhile than another segment leads to all the racial, sexist, age-discriminatory, etc. problems of our society. It also contributes to the overpopulation problem as a whole. Another problem of underpopulation we have is of the animals of this planet. And there is no question that the disappearance of non-human life on this planet is directly related to the overpopulation of human life. The disappearance of the great apes, rhino, elephant, and other species daily is the direct result of overpopulation of humans. Many species can co-exist, but not with an attitude that the world is under- populated. The facts are otherwise. >-- >Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com >"If you want oil, drill lots of wells" -- J. Paul Getty "If you want lots of pollution, burn the oil."