Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
The Population Bomb: How We Survived I
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How we survived it ? As in past tense ?
Completely ridiculous !
The population is growing better than ever ! The Indians are are still reproducing like mice and with medicine improving and the use of contraceptives not improving the rate of growth can only grow. In China population growth is back up after the removal of the strict reproductive limitations they used to have in communist times (real communist times). Only starvation, AIDS and constant wars are keeping Africa from a huge population explosion (and still look at Nigeria and it's capital !).
Only the most developed countries have their population growth rates under control. In fact in many of them the population is stagnating or even decreasing, while the populations of Africa and Asia keep increasing. In the long term it looks like many old cultures in European countries and other parts of the world may dissapear under the endless tide of Africans and Asians. Now don't get me wrong, I'm against quasi-faschist anti-immigration policies people like Sarkozy and the Republicans in America are promoting, and I'm definitely not a racist, but in the long term the white race may be endangered, along with the native cultures of well developed countries, unless all the poor underdeveloped countries of the world become developed (unlikely) and / or institute strict reproductive control (unlikely).
And as for
"sustainable development" ? Absolutely ridiculous !
There is no such thing as sustainable development, that's just a political propaganda tool to keep the people happy and the capitalists earning money ! How can you indefinitely develop on a finite-sized planet ? Increasing technology can decrease the necessary surface for feeding the population (per person) for example but it can't decrease the living space people need.
Not even the current population is sustainable in the long term ! Look at the population numbers of other wide-spread large mammals in the wild !The real sustainable population this planet can support biologically is maybe 100 million or less, so in it's rational longterm interests the goal of mankind should be to reduce the global population to under 100 million (with strict population control) and keep it there, and then invent a completely new model of economy (to replace today's capitalist model) that functions and thrives in an indefinitely stagnating enviroment (today's capitalism needs constant growth to survive, just like the Roman empire needed to expand to survive, until it died that is).
Then humanity could survive on this planet for a long time to come, until the reserves of unrenewable resources (and most inorganic minerals people use are unrenewable) were all spent (in maybe many thousands of years).
The only way the for "sustainable growth" of both the population and the economy to continue undefinitely is to expand to other planets, and the technology for that may not come soon enough as this planet is already bursting with people and their pollution...
This book should have been called :
"The population bomb - how we won't survive it, at least easily"