Re: Overpopulation a Hoax

On 20 Nov 2003 13:25:13 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dez Akin) wrote:

> Fred Elbel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
> > On 19 Nov 2003 12:56:48 -0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dez Akin) wrote:

> > You are welcome to you opinion, Dez.  A billion people would mean that
> > every city would be four times as large.  We would have four times as
> > much sprawl, congestion, pollution.  Four times as much demand for
> > dwindling supplies of petroleum (we've used half), four times the
> > demand for coastal fish, old growth forest, grain, water, and four
> > times the pressure on remaining open space.

> All of these have resource substitution mechanisms, and we're not
> feeling any pressure on any of these. 

You are saying that old growth forest can be replace with what -
quick-growth harvestable lumber?  That dead coastal fisheries can be
replaced with what - increased cattle ranching?

Unfortunately, you are thinking in terms of economic substitution.

There is no ecological substitution principle.



> The US isn't even close to crowded.

Sure it is.  We're depleting not only our own resources, but the
resources of the commons (oceanic fisheries) and the resources of
other countries (petroleum and rainforests).  Our ecological footprint
extends way beyond the borders of our own country.



> > I didn't know that.  I though we we were half out of petroleum, that
> > people are starving in Africa, that Bangladesh was overpopulated to
> > the point of forcing people into coastal flood plains, that aquifers
> > are being depleted, and that the U.S. is drawing down not only its
> > resources, but the resources of other countries as well.
> 
> Most of these are political problems. We may be 'half out' of
> petroleum, but we've barely touched coal, which can be liquefied for
> fuels, and we have millions of years of nuclear fuel. 

Then there is really no reason to stop at a billion people, is there?
We could redouble U.S. population to 2, 3, 4 billion.  



> Aquifier
> depletion isn't a really a problem even if it was as dire as proposed
> by 'ecologists'; Resource substitution kicks in as well as more
> investment in resource management infrastructure including but not
> limited to desalination facilities, water treatment plants, piping
> facilties, etcetera. But water is cheap and will be for a long long
> time.

So in order to irrigate the midwest, we need to biuld nukes to power
desalinization facilities to pump water up from the Gulf of Mexico.

Or: we could stabilize our population at sustainable levels.


 
> The real resource shortage is educated human capital and currently the
> US is the best for producing that.

I'm not so sure.  California has to build an entire new *school* every
day, just to handle population growth from legal immigration and
illegal migration.  California is already going bankrupt from this
burden.

Colleges are becoming more expensive and the real wages of
middle-income America are declining dramatically.  Colleges are
increasingly marketing to foreign students as a source of revenue.

It is becoming harder and harder to educate Americans today.  I doubt
that increasing America's population will help produce a
proportionately larger number of higher-educated Americans.



> Also with the inevitable rise in power of India and China, baring a
> war or another 'cultural revolution' The US's curent standing of
> master of the world will fall to that of Britain unless we maintain
> demographic parity with the other 2 large countries.

I would find that humorous if you were not serious about it.  You are
saying that we need to overpopulate the United States so that we can
complete with India and China, who are already incredibly
overpopulated.

Have you been to India where millions will never sleep inside and use
an indoor toilet?  To China, where poverty is the norm?  

The only reason they compete with the U.S. is that their workers are
paid a fraction of what similar workers in the U.S. would earn.

But don't worry.  We can achieve parity with them.  We already are, by
displacing jobs overseas, eliminating the middle class, and increasing
our population predominantly by taking in the poorest from Mexico.
Pretty soon, we'll have a stratified two-tiered society consisting of
elites and the poor. 

Fred Elbel