But the amount of land space taken up by cities is actually relatively small compared with the number of people they shelter: satellite image composites show that urban sites cover only 2.8 per cent of the Earth’s land; accordingly the UN estimates that about 3.3 billion people occupy an area less than half the size of Australia. (pdf)
This gainsays conventional environmental wisdom in several ways. Clearly, the best strategy to curb future population growth is to speed up the ‘demographic transition’ in developing countries – and this transition towards women having fewer babies is inextricably linked both with increasing levels of prosperity and with urbanisation. Therefore rising rates of economic growth and the expansion of cities are good news for the environment because they will restrain the future growth in human population. Moreover, although the idea of getting close to the land in small-scale communities has a deep cultural resonance in some schools of environmentalist thought, in reality this is probably the worst thing that anyone can do.
All around the world, rural depopulation is leading to forest regrowth in abandoned areas – from the vast tracts of secondary broadleaf woodland in America’s New England states to tropical forests in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and many other areas. In Costa Rica, abandoned cattle pasture is nurturing a flourishing young forest that in turn now supports a stable population of jaguars and other threatened fauna. A recent scientific paper looking at Latin America lists ‘similar patterns of ecosystem recovery following rural-urban migration’ in Patagonia, northwest Argentina, Ecuador, Mexico, Honduras and the montane deserts and Andean tundra ecosystems of Bolivia, Argentina and Peru. Even in rich countries, proposals for ‘rewilding’ – which I strongly support – only stand a chance of success in areas where rural populations have collapsed and formerly subsidised unproductive farms can be shut down to allow them to revert to nature.
This suggests that rural depopulation should not necessarily be opposed with ‘sustainable development’ schemes aimed at improving rural life to stop people migrating to cities. Equally, instead of encouraging low-tech traditional farming methods it may be preferable to focus on improving high-yield mechanised agriculture on the most fertile farmland to feed the new urban residents, whilst allowing mountainsides and other marginal lands to revert to forest. This is already happening by default in Latin America and elsewhere: in Vietnam, forest area has been increasing since the 1990s after small-scale, unproductive agriculture was made uncompetitive by more intensive, larger-scale farming in the more open market economy.
As always, one should not oversimplify. Cities themselves consume resources, including food, timber, water and energy, harvested over vastly wider areas than the land that they physically occupy, and this greater footprint needs to be considered in any overall assessment to get a true picture. When peasants move to the cities, their land might just as easily be turned over to large-scale cattle ranching or plantations as allowed to revert to forest. Studies have suggested that this is particularly the case in Amazonia, where most deforestation is carried out by ranchers, so population density is less clearly linked with the fate of the forest. Moreover, even after people move out, the recovery of forests cannot always be left to chance – it needs active management and ecologically friendly government policies. Whether secondary forest can help avoid large-scale species extinctions also depends on the extent to which animals and plants accustomed to old-growth forests can successfully recolonise new areas.
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34 Comments
Add CommentA lifetime of observing land "improvement" and preservation efforts, mostly in Florida, has left me with the distinct impression that the best thing man can do for nature, by a wide margin, is to leave it alone. I started a blog to discuss how to develop this idea into a beneficial policy:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://5050by2150.wordpress.com
Well, the "I just ABSOLUTELY need a 5,000 square foot or more Mc Mansion with a huge yard that I, or someone I'll pay, will have to mow/fertilize/apply pesticide & fertilizer to, and then I just ABSOLUTELY have to fill my Mc Mansion with cheap, plastic crap imported from China, but good thing my 6,000lb or more SUV that CAN burn corn ethanol (even though I never use that capability) has a lot of cargo room so I can bring it all home" mentality isn't helping. How come people got by without most of this crap until relatively recently? Most of this "stuff" doesn't really make people happier, so why do they keep thinking they need to buy it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAfter reading, and comprehending, what this article is explaining, I can only disagree with two things:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. Not all of us, "live like kings".
2. If solar, wind, geothermal, and other sustainable energy methods had the same level of tax breaks and subsidies as nuclear and fossil fuels, renewable energy would be the more economically attractive choice for power companies and consumers.
Now why did you go and inject political labels that don't really mean anything in the context of your argument and which could be switched out with ANY OTHER LABEL you could want to put in there? For example, "Unless liberals are willing...Unless right-handed people are willing...Unless dog owners are willing...Unless antidisestablishmentationarists are willing...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou get my point? These political labels are meaningless and it looks like you were trying for a strawman argument, but forgot his clothes & hat, so you just dropped the straw all over the floor!
Also, packing 3 million people on Manhattan is actually GOOD for the environment as it keeps them from spilling over into Long Island or - Gasp - New Jersey as much. If %90 could live in Manhattan-like density, we's only need 2 or 3 New England states, or 1 state of average size to house the U.S. population. Another state (in a warmer part of the country, say Texas) could grow ALL our food. If we were mostly vegetarian, we'd need 1/3 of the land or less. Not saying these are all good ideas, but just look at the scale of things before you pop off accusations.
@Happy Phil, re: Living like Kings...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd argue that, by many standards, your average welfare mom lives better than any Medieval King. Today we have reliable hot and cold climate control, abundant and varied foods, far better healthcare, lower infant mortality, and the ability to travel safely across the continent, or around the world if that is your wish - all of these things are highly valuable, were inaccessible to anyone in the 1300s, and are available (in at least some degree) to most of today's non-homeless western population.
Of course, there will always be Kings. I had recently been promoted at work, making "6 figures" for the first time in my life, and was getting a nice bed-topper installed on my wife's new truck. While I waited for the installation, a pop-star's assistants (plural) popped in with his Ferrari to get the windows tinted, left it and drove off to get a bite to eat. Realization: Lenny Kravitz's personal assistants are free to go get a bite to eat while I sit here and cool my heels waiting for my truck to be serviced. I might afford the Ferrari (if I really wanted it), but I would never be able to afford TWO personal assistants to take it to have the windows tinted. Those are the trappings of Kings that peasants will never have, because regardless of how wealthy we all are, not everyone can afford personal servants.
@priddseren re: GB countryside
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe countryside looks nice to you and me, because it has been transformed over many generations to look nice to us. A pine forest is pleasing to the eye, but is a virtual desert for wildlife. The orange groves and cow pastures of Florida are nice enough, unless you're a Mastodon, or any of the other species that used to live here. (See: http://money.cnn.com/2007/12/13/smbusiness/fossils.fsb/index.htm)
One major point I take away from the article is not that transformation of the land by humans makes the land less attractive to us, (although, in Florida that has been the case far too often), it is more that our transformations of the land are creating a biome that is far less stable than the one we are destroying, with less biodiversity and less resilience to catastrophe. While we might increase productivity of the land, that higher productivity comes at a cost of instability, and potential for disasters like the Great Dust Bowl, and the desertification of the cradle of civilization.
Sorry Phil but nuclear has no subsidies, and fossil fuel subsidies per kwh are a tiny fraction of those wasted on not so renewables.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith green storage your wind/solar bet costs about a buck and half a kwh or $60k per US household be annum bankrupting the nation.
Large scale geothermal is massively polluting with sulfur emissions, causing earthquakes,and dependent on not yet invented technology.
Your car will be powered by Mr Fusion first.
Only nuclear energy can power a low environmental impact civilization.
There are people who LOVE Manhattan. I consider it unlivable. First, it needs more open space. If every block had a block wide green space buffer, maybe. Second, if people are going to pack together densely, there needs to be a rigid code of conduct: you do not intrude on anyone's personal or psychological space, period. You have a right to walk the streets without being hit up for money. You have a right to ride the subway sitting down without having some performer walking through doing a performance. You have a right not to have your stuff taken.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPriddseren: You did not read the article in full did you? Read the bit about the impact of roads on the biosphere (By biosphere I mean all living things, sadly including the Homo sapien)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJames: No body needs the job, religion is doing an excellent job lowering human intelligence, eliminating thinkers in our societies and forcing population growth (Don't be too surprised if birth control is banned in the USA)which will lead to our species extinction. An excellent result.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbsolutely, and along the way trying to breed slower! Strangely a real taboo when an easy why to impact on global population could materialize through better contraception and education! Important part of the world military budgets should be used for these goals as they are much more efficient at avoiding wars that building weapons! In fact contraception should be recognized as a fundamental human right that when possible should not be monopolized within a couple, this person having then the de facto power to decide without the other agreement. Then it's interesting to see that real population control (I think voluntary control is possible) is the only way for the long term, because better agriculture is good but it just adds a few more decades and then what ? Why would the breeding curve start to plummet? Because of course life would be harder! More depression, more chemicals everywhere, much lower sperm count etc. What a wonderful goal, great agriculture projects to end up with a crowed sick world !!! We shall not forget that we have evolved from organisms that imposed them-self on others by many ways, but a single one is exponential : breeding! And suddenly (in term of human evolution) because we have no serious predators the limit are ourself or the planet boundaries and we can be certain that self limiting efficiently would be much more agreeable than hitting the natural limits.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven more practical :
* In the western world many involuntary pregnancies would be avoidable because linked to alcohol, or misinformation about contraception! How many physicians tell their patients that using most vaginal medications can break a condom in less than 5 pelvics moves? How many people know it?
* Poorer countries get their birth rates to plummet down as soon as the women get access to better education! Let's imagine what would have been the results if the budget allocated to the Irak war was used instead for third world humanitarian action with a strong contraception / family planing / education core ? The results would probably be real checkable mass salvation with waves of recognition crossing the evil axis :-)
I guess since you get paid to post this junk, I'll have to keep debunking it, if not to change your mind then to keep others reading these boards from being misinformed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Sorry Phil but nuclear has no subsidies..."
How come nuclear reactors get FREE liability insurance under the Price Anderson Act? Is it because the consequences of a major reactor incident are so horrific that no insurance company in their right mind would want to be responsible? How about the $56B loan guarantees and the production tax credit new nuclear reactors enjoy? What about all the R&D that went towards developing the LWR fuel cycle for the Manhattan Project? What about all the bailouts and buyouts of utilities when all those reactor construction projects went bad in the 70s and 80s? You're blind if you think nuclear power doesn't get any support from the government.
"...fossil fuel subsidies per kwh are a tiny fraction of those wasted on not so renewables."
Okay, let’s go back to 1960 and amortize the subsidies handed to nuclear power over the kWhs generated so far...That would be a lot too. Or how about looking at government subsidies per mainframe computer in the same year? Artificially inflates the number, right? See, if you cherry-pick ANY technology early enough in its history, of course you'll feel smug and superior saying that money was "wasted". So by your logic, we should have stopped supporting the development of nuclear power and computers when these technologies were just getting started because there was NO WAY these technologies would take off, right? Are you even trying to be serious? And even if subsidies to fossil fuels are “tiny” in your judgment, why do we still need them? Why do some in Congress (cough*Republicans*cough) INSIST on protecting fossil fuel subsidies at ALL COSTS all while yelling at the top of their lungs about the deficit?
As with all your other renewable-bashing nonsense, I haven't seen one iota of proof backing up your silly claims as to the cost of renewables. I also see that you've moved on to bashing geothermal energy as well. Maybe your paymasters in the nuclear industry are getting worried that their only REAL advantage, baseload dispatchability, is being threatened by geothermal development, among other things. Well, thanks for giving me a clue as to what scares your industry.
"Only nuclear energy can power a low environmental impact civilization."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsidering that you post this WITHOUT proof, let me bring some real facts to the debate.
Nuclear power has a NEGATIVE learning curve:
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/04/06/207833/does-nuclear-power-have-a-negative-learning-curve/
This means that the more reactores we build, the MORE expensive they become. This only makes sense because the more we learn about nuclear power, the more we have realized how dangerous it can be (with glaring reminders coming every time a reactor melts down like the 3 recent meltdowns at the Fukushima Plant). We see the need for more robust and comprehensive safety systems as we build more plants and acquire more operating data.
Contrast this with the plummeting cost of solar power highlighted in the same article. Since a solar panel doesn't spew radioactive debris all over your house when it fails, it is a much less risky technology. Since it will soon become cheap enough to be used as roofing material and building facades, WHY NOT collect as much free energy coming down from the Sun as we can? Beats having to build expensive and dangerous nuclear reactors (the industry is averaging 1 reactor meltdown every 10 years, so can't argue with history!) or mine for dirty coal.
We tried mass deployment of nuclear power before. It failed miserably. Dozens of reactor construction projects were either abandoned or saw their costs double, triple or more. With the price tag of these reactors running north of $5B apiece, can we really afford that when much more promising technology is already here?
As always, "sault", excellent rebuttal. Keep up the good work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI know "scientific earthling" that no one needs the job of population control, but when you consider the GOP's agenda of population increasing by using religious guilt trips, lies, and scare tactics, don't you think that someone should apply for the position? We really can't expect the Earth to take care of this problem. Doing the start of this Earth tilt cycle 25,800 years ago, 400,000 species went extent and a new 400,000 species came on the scene. We are still discovering some of the new species. So, can we really depend on the Earth to handle the mess we got ourselves in? If we depend on the Earth to handle our problems for us, it is going to be a very violent cold and hot 6,500 years until the Earth gets the species to a manageable level. We need to start now taking better care of the Earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCities should grow like coral reefs, which support different forms of life and also have a life of its own. It is not the people who build cities but cities build humans.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are pretty close to Sault's level in your idiot posts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI do get the impression that most people posting here live in metropolitan areas and foolishly think the whole country (world) is like where they live.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell once again hands down the stupidest commenter on Sciam. Since you seem to be on here 24/7 I assume Big Oil/Coal is paying for your presence. Certainly your stupidity fits with their neanderthal image.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEverything you post I've repeatedly debunked, but nothing gets through your thick head. All this claptrap and one reference from discredited Joe Romm a notorious anti nuclear advocate caught in the big lie about Canadian nuclear costs - a lie you repeat continally no matter how many times it's debunked.
Liability all previously debunked.
Big Oil which kills millions annually and pollutes all over the planet, and wind/solar which kills tens of thousands with it's gas backup emissions are limited to $150M in liability, and it is illegal to sue for air pollution deaths. That same $150M liability holds for 250k dead at a time dam bursts, nuclear bomb sized LNG explosions, and city destroying Bhopal incidents.
The DOE owes the nuclear industry $80B in funds collected so far. Loan guarantees are $8B so far paid for by exorbiant fees.
You stupid halfwit - The manhatten project was for nuclear weapons. Yes investors lost some money but taxpayers no a dime from bailouts and buyout. With overall investor bailouts and buyouts included, the cost of old nukes is still less than 2 cents a kwh.
So far we established there were no subsidies. Your mainframe computer spew is so insane you must be on some kind of drug. Get some help from a rational person who can assemble your scattered thoughts.
Romms report was on negative learning curve was done by a fellow with a diploma in Social Sciences - a typical greenie expert. Innumerable times I posted links showing all 7 Candu's built in the last twenty years were built on time on budget all around the world at $2B/Gw, in 4 years or less. That is not a negative learning curve.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.cnnc.com.cn/tabid/168/Default.aspx
Once again Romm is a documented liar. Once again I've posted innumerable times the actual cost of solar power builds which with green backup and transmission cost over $1.50 a kilowatt. There is no prospect for further decreases in installed cost.
Here's Germany's experience with solar
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,809439,00.html
As I have shown numerous times nukes are the cheapest energy available and the safest. The two meltdowns that have occurred killed nobody and the only long term damage was as predicted limited to the reactors themselves.
"we tried mass deployment of nuclear power before. It failed. Miserably"
That has has to be one the stupidest statements ever made by a commentor on Sciam.
Nuke power is the only zero GHG zero pollution power source in the world, and has saved tens of millions of lives all at cost of less than 4 cents a kwh. There are over 500 working nukes around the world running at costs of less than 4 cents a kwh despite Greenpeace/Big Coal best efforts at political cost escalation. Without nuke power we would have already lost the world from runaway GHG pollutions and billions could already be dead.
$5B a piece works out to less than 4 cents a kwh to a public power operator - the cheapest energy available on the planet
There are no more promising technologies.
Look you'd do use all a favor if you reduced your posts to maybe one on a topic and even there got some help from somebody who retains some grip on reality before posting.
Maybe so, but I am still smarter than you and so is "sault". You have your head so far up the GOP's bu** that the only thing you can see and understand is their kidneys that looks like a nuclear power plant melting down.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReally, so where is that large scale geothermal you keep spewing about. You solved the fracking problem yet, the earthquakes, the air pollution and equipment destroying sulfur emissions, the not yet invented high temperature super critical steam pumps?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCus, until you do you are just another idiot that spews about things he knows nothing about and can't understand.
Yes indeed "population control" one of the indispensable key for a global ecological equilibrium! Of course a very sensitive topic! Just trying to see a few issues of population control :
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA) Non coercive through information, international family planing, women and men birth control (because men often do not have a urge as important as women in term of having children, and they have a special dislike to be forced in).
B) Coercive ? Such a hard topic to talk about, but it should probably be analyzed in details to have a correct view of the possibilities if this matter becomes urgent. But the most ridiculous thing luckily so easy to cure is that non coercive issues are barely discussed on some fear to be mistaken with coercive ones.
C) Some disturbing questions ?
-> If only people who feel concerned about population explosion have less children we end up quickly with a dominant counter culture, and the first efforts are wasted ?
-> Any way to calculate family planning investment in term of ecological results ?
-> If you get the chance to have your one best child through genes selections ? Would that be acceptable ? Would that mean one is enough ? ... By the way unrealistic cost for most people.
-> What about psychological sterilization with an as few children as possible culture ? I mean if the 1st though when thinking about having a greater family are : postpartum depression, permanent washing chores, baby talks to the point of losing your subtle vocabulary, children diseases ... physically and psychologically, teenager drugs, life long feeling of responsibility, rent, divorce, etc.
-> Of course the idea of population control should go hand in hand with ecological lifestyle.
"The two meltdowns that have occurred killed nobody ..." Ok fine, probably many thousand early death through cancer in 10 or 20 years! Plenty of time to get the world attention somewhere else, and by the way you seem to have already forgotten Chernobyl victims.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Without nuke power we would have already lost the world from runaway GHG pollutions and billions could already be dead" I think if we had chosen to avoid nuclear energy worldwide and nuclear weapons as well, we would probably already be capable of global population control and sustainable use of technology. In other words you can assume that subtracting or adding one element would not have any influence on the others, we are in a very dynamic and reactive system.
Anyway, any great power in the wrong hands can only end up catastrophically, so a serious change of the social paradigm is necessary if humankind want to keep along with some sort of kind civilization.
"...Anyway, any great power in the wrong hands can only end up catastrophically, so a serious change of the social paradigm..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYep, how about your financier's of the Green Movement, to the tune of 100's or $billions in funding, more than many nations can afford. Just one example, Ted Turner, whose Turner foundation funds just about EVERY anti-Nuclear ENGO that exists, to the tune of $billions. As an aside, he's one of the richest NG barons in the USA. He also has proclaimed that the Earth's population should be reduced to 250 million or so:
www.aim.org/wls/category/population/
hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/01/09/the-thoughts-of-chairman-ted-turner-global-warming-cheerleader/
So people like that with unlimited wealth, can make bio-weapons, like the recently developed Bird Flu strain that spreads rapidly between humans and has a 65% mortality rate, yep that's safe. Yep, Greenies are an asset to the world, yep, yep. The most dangerous, destructive creatures on this Earth are Greenies. That is the religious Greenie, not a true environmentalist like George Monbiot, James Lovelock or Jim Hansen. And there is no more dangerous weapon available to the terrorist, especially the Greenie Terrorist, than Bio-weapons - more dangerous than Nuclear by a factor of 100X.
"...probably many thousand early death through cancer in 10 or 20 years...already forgotten Chernobyl victims..."
Wrong. Maybe you should take the trouble to learn a bit about Radiation before you spew patently false garbage. Start here:
atomicinsights.com/2012/01/does-radiation-really-cause-cancer-conversation-among-professionals.html
The World Health Organization most Rigorous Report ever done on the Chernobyl Health effects:
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs303/en/index.html
"...The Expert Group concluded that there may be up to 4 000 additional cancer deaths among the three highest exposed groups over their lifetime (240 000 liquidators; 116 000 evacuees and the 270 000 residents of the SCZs). Since more than 120 000 people in these three groups may eventually die of cancer, the additional cancer deaths from radiation exposure correspond to 3-4% above the normal incidence of cancers from all causes..."
That's using the proven false LNT theory of radiation health effects. Deaths are certain to be less than that using proven research showing a minimal threshold for Radiation health effects:
www.physics.ox.ac.uk/nuclearsafety/webpptMay07.pdf
"The distribution networks are not designed to allow tens of thousands of solar panel owners to switch at will between drawing electricity from the grid and feeding power into it."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWOW! Where did they get this whopper? Too bad this happens all the time all around the world wherever people use solar power. This article is a biased hit-piece that's severly lacking in the facts.
"Because there are almost no storage options, the excess energy has to be destroyed at substantial cost."
More BULL-ONEY! Germany makes hundreds of millions of Euros a year selling their excess energy to other countries. That's why those silly graphs that show renewables in Germany are a small contributor ignore electricity exports because it would undermine their argument. They also include oil used in transportation, further diluting the apparent contribution that renewables make in Germany. This is highly disingenuous and anybody trying to bash renewables with this type of information is lumped in the same catagory.
The article is just an anti-solar hit piece that doesn't cite its most crucial sources. All that muttering about subsidies for solar power is never balanced with even a mention of the indirect or direct subsidies that fossil fuels and nuclear power enjoy. Just because it's in Der Spiegl doesn't guarantee its accuracy. The Washington Post in the U.S. has had its share of whoppers:
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/12/09/205107/george-will-again/
How many times do I have to tell you that the costs reported by the Chinese for reactor construction CANNOT be reliable? They subsidize the heck out of everything that is a national priority, they have horrible working conditions / pay for the workers AND they manipulate the heck out of their currency. In addition, you STILL never mention the $5B heavy water plant that CANDU reactors require and the $1.5B cost to produce the heavy water for EACH REACTOR. Are you blind or merely trying to deceive us?
You are delusional if you think we could recreate those fairy-tale costs in a market economy. I guess you HAVE to be a Socialist if you're a big fan of nuclear, though...Not one nuclear industry ANYWHERE has sprung up without MASSIVE government intervention.
What I really want to know is, how do YOU get to mention the veracity of climate change around here without all the deniers jumping all over you like rats to cheese? What's your secret? How come on ANY of these articles, we either get the climate change deniers OR the nuclear fanbois? How come these groups both train their guns on energy efficiency and renewable energy and I have seen exactly ZERO debate amongst them? Sounds a little too convenient and/or organized to pass the sniff test if you know what I mean...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisResponding only to the title question without reading the article, yes, I think humans might be amply able to live in this biosphere with this biosphere without causing further harm. I think we might be starting clean up and we might be reversing depletion rates nowadays.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think it was a National Geographic program which aired here in Australia recently which showed a population of 9 billion would be totally unsustainable, it would only take about 100 years of future growth or population and lack of resources for the population to be wiped out to about five million.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere would be mass starvation in some countries such as Africa, India and the Asian belt as well if my memory is correct the Arabian countries. However, we fair no better in the Western countries, here in Australia half a million I think it was.
But the worst of all would be America again there would starvation our population would collapse back down to around with a population of some six to 800 million at the start you would end up with only a couple of million in the end.
So unless we follow the Chinese and bring laws preventing couples from having more than one child and preventing singles from having any, the human race is doomed by it own stupidity, arrogance and ignorance, and not in 200 to 300 years but 10 to 20 years.
The population reached 7 billion last year, and although “experts” expect the next billion not to occur for another 30 years, they must be dreaming, in only took about 15 to twenty to reach the last billion, at that rate the next billion will be reached within 10 to 15 years. So we really do not have a great deal of time to overcome this religious fervour and blatant ignorance of birth control.
I think it was a National Geographic program which aired here in Australia recently which showed a population of 9 billion would be totally unsustainable, it would only take about 100 years of future growth or population and lack of resources for the population to be wiped out to about five million.
There would be mass starvation in some countries such as Africa, India and the Asian belt as well if my memory is correct the Arabian countries. However, we fair no better in the Western countries, here in Australia half a million I think it was.
But the worst of all would be America again there would starvation our population would collapse back down to around with a population of some six to 800 million at the start you would end up with only a couple of million in the end.
So unless we follow the Chinese and bring laws preventing couples from having more than one child and preventing singles from having any, the human race is doomed by it own stupidity, arrogance and ignorance, and not in 200 to 300 years but 10 to 20 years.
My apologies for the double up, not sure what happened, also for the grammatical errors, always very picky there, I for some reason I let it slip through.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy apologies for the double up, not sure what happened, also for the grammatical errors, always very picky there, I for some reason I let it slip through.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article's conclusion: "Urbanisation is good for sustainability, because it reduces population growth and concentrates the overall human impact on the land in a smaller area. [This] offers a huge opportunity for ecosystem protection and restoration."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo how do we accomplish this? Some powerful techniques to make development more compact and more affordable would include the following:
• Reform of the mortgage interest deduction. (In the USA, it subsidizes sprawl by the affluent.)
• Performance-based parking pricing . (Encourages transit use.)
• Mileage- and congestion-based roadway pricing. (Encourages more compact development.)
• Property tax reform whereby tax rates are reduced on building values and increased on land values. This makes it cheaper to construct, improve and maintain buildings (good for residents and businesses) while also creating an economic imperative to develop high-value sites. (High-value sites tend to be urban infill sites near urban amenities like transit – and these are the places where development makes the most sense.)
For more information, see http://www.justeconomicsllc.com
Seriously, unless CNNMoney has their heads completely buried, their report says most subsidies are for renewables. http://money.cnn.com/2012/03/07/news/economy/energy-subsidies/index.htm?iid=EL#comments
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately tax breaks follow the path of lobbyists so they don't always go to the best chance of success. It seems people just decide to spew stuff which justifies why the stuff they know is right, isn't right.
The opposite of sault's "5,000 square foot or more Mc Mansion" http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this