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Kasz216 on 31 July 2009
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NJ5 said:
Kasz216 said:
NJ5 said:
The food crisis is worrying, but you know what... it's inevitable, so maybe the earlier it happens, the better. As long as it puts a lid on overpopulation which is the real cause of much of the world's problems.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love it if everyone was well fed, but the fact that we humans breed like yeast means a catastrophe is coming anyway, maybe it will be smaller if it comes earlier.

Just maybe.

A few things here.


1) People only "breed like yeast" in developing nations.   The more developed and "smart" a nation is the more people decide to not have children.  If the world were developed this likely wouldn't be an issue.  So really it may be something that isn't needed at all as we move foward.

2) It's not like there isn't enough food... the problem is energy costs, transportation and speculation mostly.  We could be supporting way more people.

1) Is it reasonably possible to get the whole world to a standard where the population is maintained or decreasing, on a reasonable timeframe?

2) Energy costs will be increasing for quite a while no matter what. According to most studies on peak oil, the peak is coming in the next 10 years (though the recession could delay this somewhat...).

It will take a long time to replace oil with other energy sources (see the Hirsch report), I worry about what will happen in the meantime. Food is very energy intensive to produce, and the infrastructure to do it without oil simply doesn't exist.

I'm pretty sure a "benevolent dictator" of the world could solve quite a lot of these problems if he/she had the power to do things in the most efficient and rational way possible, but realistically speaking I think the momentum to go in the wrong direction is (and has been) way too high. Humans in general are too short/medium-term oriented, and the political class which has most of the power even more so.

I believe the 21st century will be an exciting time to live in... just not necessarily in a good way.

 

I agree.

In all honestly I believe the best option is to heavily research alternative fuels... however do little currently to implement them until the research is done and the costs are low enough to implement.

While telling the people "This is needed for these reasons" and tell people you know.  The reasonable fear mongering of stuff that is going to happen.  Like peak oil.

Not something that doesn't have enough research done on it.  With a "consensus" being pushed partly for other means, and partly "just in case."



I mean the truth is... there isn't any great way to measure average global tempeture.  We've finally come up with a halfway decent one using Sattelites but the problem is... we just started getting reliable data in that from like... 1990.

Nowhere near enough time to have reliable data.