Hmm, I am not sure about that. I am under impression that the highest population growth in today's world occurs at countries that can barely feed their own population (and thus experience periodic famines).
Then what do you propose that these people are made of? Stones? It is not as though the entire population of these countries are starving, all at once. It is small segments of the population, usually when there is drought or crop failure, usually due to poor farming technique. Of course, your other problem is that you're looking at rate.
Take one of your "hard to feed" nations such as Sudan, for example. They are growing at a rate of about 3 percent. With a population of roughly 42,000,000 (IIRC), that is about 1.25 million new mouths added to the rolls per annum. Just a one percent growth rate in the United States (which around where we hover) would add 3 milliom per annum. In China, at a paltry 0.5 percent (0.58% actual), they're still adding 7.5 million per annum. Pakistan, at 169 million souls, is adding almost 3.5 million per annum. Even France is adding 650,000 people per annum, at current rates. But this is all beside the point. The food being produced in the countries that have it, is making its way to the third world where it fuels further growth.
The massive surplus of food in developed countries is mostly consumed by first-world citizens, who no longer breed like rabbits.
This is true, but enough is sent abroad to fuel growth elsewhere. Of course, growth, even in the "first world" is still too high. At just 1 percent growth, per annum, the United States will have 400 million people in just 29 years. In just 52 years, we will have 500 million. In just 70 years, that number will top 600 million. In just 86 years, it will be 700 million. By the end of the century, we'd be well on our way to 800 million, having added 33 million in just 14 years.
It will have taken 29 years to add 100 million souls to reach 400 million total. Toward the end of the century, it will have taken just 16 years. Do you honestly think that, even what you consider to be low growth, to be sustainable? The numbers are even more frightening when you look at China. It is expected to slow, but even by 2050, it is expected to hover around 1/2 percent.
Here is a simple question, for you, that will help you understand.
Inside of a cup, you place a bacteria whose population will double every minute. The time, when you put the bacteria in there, was 11:00. The cup will be filled by 12:00. You had to use a microscope to make sure that you actually got it in there, it was that small. At what time is that cup half-way full?
You're certainly right that such surpluses are bad thing - for the economy (how much money are we wasting on agricultural subsidies? In the EU, it's 40-50% of its budget...) and for the environment. If we adopted sensible policies in agriculture, we could abandon at least 1/3 of the cultivated land (perhaps even more) and restore it to its original condition (forests and meadows). Of course that would probably destroy the traditional rural way of life in many regions, but in exchange for that we'd have healthier environment to live in (not to mention that the expansion of forests would consume some of the CO2 we're releasing to the atmosphere).
I don't think that we have to abandon the "rural way of life" moreso that what we have to do is revolutionize it. Turn our totalitarian farming system into organic farms that produce a wide variety of goods. Forget crop rotation, mix your crops among the various fields. This also goes a long way to take care of pests. Co-exist with the world around you.
Not necessarily. A subsistence farmer who scratches a living by burning swathes of rainforest in order to farm the land for few years before moving on is on average pretty destructive.
And I can assure you that in most cases, this farming is doing this either to produce a crop that he sells abroad, to wealthy westerners, or because the good farmland is already taken up for that purpose. In either case, the farmer is destructive, but you're never going to convince me that he does as much damage as the average citizen in the western world. Our consumption fuels the destruction of habit all over the world.
Of course the poor countries can't go the same way we did, because Western-style industrialization is impossible to sustain if the whole world was to do it. So we need to help them skip the most destructive and polluting phases and move directly to the "cleaner" type of industrialized economy.
Granted, but they are not going to willingly accept this as long as we're still living the same way that we are, today. Its a pipe dream to think so. We have to set the example and we have the leading minds and technology to figure out this new way of life.
I don't think so, at least not as far as the future is concerned. With a sensible economic system (yeah, I mean the evil called 'welfare state') in which human development is of the highest priority, even 'poor' people could enjoy a pretty good standard of living without the need of excessive damage being made to the environment. Of course this assumption is based on my belief that technology can actually help us improve the efficiency of our industry and remove the need to employ people in menial tasks.
We've been trying to come up with such a system for at least a hundred years. The only thing that such attempts have ever turned up was to make EVERYONE poor, with a smaller elite still at the top. The foundational economic system that we've been using for thousands of years, has to change.
True. Which why the Western way of life needs to change profoundly. Hence what I said about leading by example.
Then, we do, in fact, agree on something!
I don't underestimate it - I am actually pretty sceptical about our future. Collapse is on the horizon, it will take roughly 50 years to get to it, if we don't change our ways.
Another thing that we agree on.
Not just America. Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia and other developed parts of the world need to present a new model, a new way of life based on the things we discussed in this thread.
We cannot very well control what they do. We can only try to change their minds through leadership, at home. It WILL certainly take a worldwide effort, but it has to start somewhere. I am an American, so for me, it has to start, at home.
), but "they don't know enough metaphysics" surely isn't one of them!
