"And Gulliver Returns" Book 1 Reversing Overpopulation--The Planet's Doomsday Threat
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“People have been proposing maximum population for the Earth for 250 years. The first one that I know of was Anthony Leeuwenhoek, the father of the microscope, who thought the earth could hold 13 1/2 billion people. That was in 1679. Since that time a number of people have guessed from a half a billion to a trillion people could inhabit of our planet. Some of these have merely been guesses based on the landmass of the earth. More recently guesses have been made based on the potential amount of arable land, the amount of water available, and the living standard that those people might enjoy.
”I saw an interesting estimation of how many people the world could hold depending on their economic level. If we lived at the level of the average Indian, the world might be able to support 18 1/2 billion people. If we live at the level of Ethiopia, we could support half that many. If we lived at the level of South Korea we could support a little over 4 billion people. If we lived at the level of Canada we could support about
1.9 billion. And if we all lived at the level of the United States we could support just
under 1 1/2 billion people.(34) I don’t know how true it is, but the point is that not
everyone can live at an advanced economic level if we have more people than the natural
resources can support.
“Of course if we only allotted one square foot per person of all land in the world, including the non-arable land, we could fit in 160 quadrillion people, that’s 160 followed by fifteen zeros.
WHERE IS THE MONEY FOR REDUCING OVERPOPULATION?
“A study from the London School of Economics concluded that if the money spent for climate change was spent for condoms we would save five times as much money as that spent on low carbon emission technology. The study was based on the numbers of women who want family planning but are not using it for one reason or
another. So money made available to those who want contraception was considered to be
able to reduce the births by 72% among the 200 million women who wanted
contraception. If this were done half a billion fewer babies would be born by 2050, so the
population in that year would only be about 8.6 billion.
“It further laid out the relative costs for this program. To reduce a ton of carbon
dioxide would cost $7 using condoms, $24 using wind power, $51 using solar power, about $70 using coal plants with carbon capture, $92 for hybrid vehicles and $131 for electric vehicles.
THE CARBON FOOTPRINT OF EVERY NEW BABY
“Researchers Murtaugh and Schlax, of Oregon State University, found that for each child a woman has in the U.S. it adds 9,441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to her ‘carbon legacy.’ This is equivalent to the emissions from burning 972,160 gallons of gasoline.(35) Consequently a country that is concerned with planetary survival might well think of limiting births.
“A problem is that it is usually the predominantly white countries that are telling
the predominantly darker skinned countries, where the birthrates are quite high, to reduce
their birthrates. This is often seen as genocide. But we have to realize that the carbon
footprint of a child born in El Salvador or Bangladesh is much less than that of one born in the US or Western Europe. But then we could also look at the expected happiness of a child born in a Third World country versus a child born in a developed country.
BUSINESS INTERESTS AND THE PROPAGANDA OF SKEPTICISM
“Pro-business media outlets, like the Wall Street Journal or the Rupert Murdoch
media, naturally take a pro-business rather than a pro-planet position. They usually say that technology will save us. But there is a huge cost to that technology that will give us pollution free energy, desalinated salt water, and new arable land from mountains and deserts. And they never mention how all this increased technology will increase the number of jobs available for all the people, when robots and computers will be doing so much of the work. And of course they never mention what a maximum or optimal planetary population would be.
“There is always the clash between the individual self-centered desires, often
influenced by tradition and religion, and the society desires--society meaning the world society, the national society, the business society, and so forth. We will never be able to satisfy everyone. The major questions are whether we should be concerned about the
annihilation of the people on the planet or the decreasing comfort level of its inhabitants. Many societies are concerned with the cost of supporting their citizens economically, politically, and into their old age. At this point in time there is not enough money in any society to do all these things.
“Should parents be responsible for all of the costs of the children that they bring into the world? This might include their carbon footprint, their health and medical bills, their education expenses, and even their retirement costs? We might see some of these
ideas in a society when we visit the United Colonies on our trip. The have instituted some
requirements for parents to pay for their children.
CONFRONTING SKEPTICS ON FOOD SHORTAGES
”Let’s move on. The skeptics who don’t believe there are food shortages for our rapidly growing population usually point to an idea that there is plenty of food but it’s a transportation problem to deliver it. They may point to the Green Revolution and to genetically modified seeds that can increase production and reduce pestilence. But it’s not that simple. Arable land is decreasing, the amount of land per person is decreasing,
and the amount of water available is decreasing, the cost of gasoline is increasing for
those who use machines in their farming. This all results in increased costs for food.
“Since 1960 global food production has increased 25% while world population doubled. African food production decreased 10% while its population increased by 40% in spite of the wars and genocide.
“Rising food prices result from several factors. Increasingly, the rich people don’t merely rely on staples such as wheat and corn, they want beef, tomatoes, and wine. The beef is usually fed corn. Some corn is used in biofuels. I’ve heard that a quarter of all grain crops find their way into the gas tank. Meanwhile, the poor African living on
fifty cents to $2 a day can’t buy staples. The increasing cost of water for irrigation, the
increased costs of supplies such as fertilizers and pesticides, and the increased cost of oil
all contribute to the eventual cost of food.”(35a)
”About half the world’s land is now grazed by cattle and sheep, but over a third of
the grain produced in the world is fed to livestock. In the US, of its 312 million tons of grain produced in a year, 135 million tons are fed to livestock. This would be enough to feed 400 million vegetarians. But you can understand that with our self-centered values and our tastes for beef, lamb and chicken-- our grains go to animals, not Africans.
”Twenty years ago, in a two-year period, the prices for wheat, rice and corn
tripled. I’m glad that I had money invested in corn futures. I made a bundle. It was only with the great recession of 2009 that food prices reduced temporarily. In the past, price surges were caused by unusual heat waves or a lack of rain, but those temporary
occurrences are now being replaced by long-term factors such as global warming, aquifer
reductions, reduced arable land, the increased cost of fertilizer and fuel to run the farm
equipment, and of course the major problem is that there are more mouths to feed,
increasing by many millions each year.”
”With the sea level rising, river deltas like the Mekong and Nile can be permanently under seawater. A rise of 1 to 2 meters is devastating to local farming. The Mekong Delta produces half of the rice in Vietnam, and Vietnam is the world’s second largest rice exporter. A one meter rise in sea level would cover half of the rice growing area in Bangladesh, a country of 140 million people with the world’s most dense po
pulation.
“The wheat and rice harvests of China and India would be directly affected.
China is the world's leading wheat producer. India is second. The U.S. is only third. With rice, China and India totally dominate the world harvest. The projected melting of the Himalayan glaciers poses the most massive threat to food security the world has ever faced.
“At the end of the last century the number of hungry people in world was reducing. It leveled out at about 825 million. Ten years into this century it had already topped a billion. When we look at previous civilizations such as the Sumerians and the
Mayans we see that it was food shortages that destroyed them. Will food shortages
destroy all or part of today’s world society?
“In the 1960s most countries were self-sufficient in food. Today only a few are. Canada and the US are usually among the few food exporters. The Green Revolution increased grain production, which more than doubled. But the Green Revolution put a strain on the ecology by increasing soil erosion, polluting groundwater and surface water with pesticides, which has caused some health problems. Eight percent less land is now being used for grain production. In Africa per capita grain production has gone down about 1% a year.
Yet with the population doubling in order to feed the world and increase the level of nutrition for the malnourished it is estimated that we need a tripling of agricultural production. But nearly all of the world’s arable land that has the potential for agriculture is already in use. The remaining land is too steep, too cold, too wet or too dry for agricultural use. What increase there has been in arable land has been because of deforestation.
“Soil erosion by wind and water is a major problem in terms of increasing agricultural production. It takes about 500 years to replace one inch of topsoil. So topsoil is being lost more than 100 times faster than it is being formed. Worldwide, soil erosion over the last 40 years has caused farmers to abandon over 430 million hectares, over a billion acres. Much of this is the result of building on arable land.
“In spite of the fact that arable land is disappearing, the use of effective fertilizers and genetically enhanced seeds have increased the average yield per hectare so that food production has not reduced as much as might be expected from the loss of arable land. But this increase in production cannot be expected to make up for the loss of land, and by 2050 we expect very severe problems in terms of food production for the world’s population.”
WHAT CAN WE DO?