What a delightful post, Aime.

>>...you seem to be one of the multitude of zombies who get around with their head in the sand. And please don't take that personally.<<

First, may I congratulate you on some very fresh imagery.

The vision of multitudes of zombies, all with their heads in the sand, is a new one for me. I do wonder however how they actually "get around" in that position. I'm sure a competent film director could work that out, but the actual horror element that zombies are intended to engender would, I suspect, be somewhat lacking.

And no, of course I don't take it personally. The very idea.

>>An imminent professor or similar said just recently that there is now two births in the world for every one death and to "do the math!"<<

An "imminent professor", eh?

Well, that's the sort of professor I like. One that is just about to happen.

>>Only a fool could believe that this scenario can go on forever.<<

Absolutely agree.

Every imminent professor understands that exponential growth, if it continues, will eventually fill the entire world with zombies. Even ones with their heads above ground.

But it won't, will it? Growth is already slowing down, even as we speak. And any severe lack of food would slow it down even further, wouldn't it? There's a kind of self-regulating thing that goes on - as I pointed out, the growth of the human population has kept pace with food production for thousands of years.

There's a kind of synergy going on, if you get my drift, between the food and the people. More people, more food. Think about it for a moment, there are fewer starving people in our world of seven billion, than there were when there were only six billion of us. And there weren't exactly piles of uneaten foody substances littered around the place, just waiting for the next billion to appear. Go figure, as they say in all the tackiest movies.

No, Chicken Little, the sky is not about to fall.

And please, don't take that personally.

The article provides insight into one issue associated with cities and their inhabitants - the provision of food. Another issue, relates to the operation and maintenance of the vast amount of infrastructure. Natural forces, such as friction, wind and rain, ensures that all these systems age. The population has to have air, food, water and shelter. The infrastructure has to have materials, electricity and fuels, so long as they are available! A population will survive (outside cities)on the natural income of air, water and some food. The cities will not because the natural capital,including much more than the fossil fuels, is irreversibly running out.

coorangreeny - I go to the US constantly, and drive between a lot of cities because as an "alien" I get tired of the constant random searches at airports, once they discover you are an alien that is.

So I see the work, I see the roads, and I know government folks who all had shovel ready road and bridge plans, as part of their normal course of work, ready to go should they be needed.

So the GFC hit, they were asked what they had ready to go, shovel ready, they got out the plans, selected the top priority ones and got on with it ..

Where on earth do your friends live? The Ozarks, West Virginia?

It is certainly not the hellhole in the US that you seem to think it is, their road system makes us look prehistoric.

Yes they have awesome traffic and peak hour on the DC Beltway is terrible, but then again there's 300 million of them, we struggle to cope with a fraction of that. Mind you they don't convert usable roads to bike tracks, they have reasonable speed limits and don't have revenue cameras everywhere.

Look at Melbourne or Sydney, one accident now on a main road, and it's city gridlock for hours.

But, we do have Julia Gillard Memorial School halls, no idea why, no idea where the money went but there you go.

Amicus Says
“Oh yes, and they have infrastructure, roads bridges .. and when the GFC hit, they started work on all the roads and bridges that needed upgrading or rebuilding ..”

Why then are some States in the US actually ripping up bitumen from roads because they cannot afford to repair them anymore?

From: Brian McGavin, writer and analyst.


Below I give some interesting and generally unreported facts that give important background on many of the failing states regularly in the news. For example, Somalia, Haiti, Iraq, Palestinian Territory and Afghanistan. It also includes Pakistan and Iran.

Despite the near daily news coverage of these countries, critical, underlying issues are almost never mentioned by journalists reporting endless symptoms and predicaments. These issues add a great deal of insight into the key development challenges facing the countries concerned and by implication the policies of countries like the US, UK and Canada, where billions are being spent in aid and military interventions to try and stabilise failing states.

The aim is to give journalists more balance and context to reports. A simple one or two-sentence addition of data gives a far better understanding of the significance of demographics to a country’s geo-political profile, its aid dependency and social and economic future.
(See table below*)

Through 2011 we have seen almost daily coverage of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ and armed conflict. While some underlying factors of high youth unemployment, rising food prices, water shortages and fears of growing Islamic fundamentalism are mentioned, the media has decidedly not focused on the troubling demographic realities the Middle East and other crisis-ridden countries face. Good news coverage is not just about immediate events, but fundamental causal symptoms. Here are some examples.

1) Egypt. Hardly any mention has been made of the large and rapidly growing population of Egypt, its extremely small arable land area of just 3 per cent, food imports of 40 per cent and the total dependence now on food imports and aid to sustain the population.

Egypt’s population almost quadrupled in just 60 years, from 21 million in 1950 to 81 million in 2010 and at its current 1.8 per cent annual increase in population, the population could hit 150 million before 2050, unless the birth rate declines. (UNPD data). Consider the potential for endless and costly food aid and the rapidly growing numbers of unemployed and disaffected young people attracted to violence and extremism.

cont
2) Afghanistan. On December 23, 2009, UK Channel 4 TV news ran a 20-minute lead on selling children and kidnapping people in Afghanistan. The father selling two of his children was portrayed as a ‘victim’ of poverty in being unable to feed or care for his family. The size of his family was not mentioned – but he had a lot of children.

The reporter asked what would happen to the child and was told it was an opportunity for a better education, but no more was asked about the child’s fate. Various ‘experts’ including Joe Klein of the New York Times and the CEO of Oxfam UK were asked for their view. Corruption, poverty and criminality were discussed, but what was not mentioned was the country’s demographic trajectory that would add a great deal of context to the discussion.

The UK Guardian newspaper on 14/9/10 ran a four-page spread on progress in Afghanistan towards meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015. The prognosis was gloomy, but in all this verbiage, there was just one minor mention of a 'rising population in Afghanistan' as one of several environmental factors that may see the country not being able to produce enough food to feed its people. In fact, several interesting factors were mentioned in the article, but does any of this important information get covered in the almost daily news reports of more coalition troops being flown home in coffins?
Among the largely unreported gems was that remaining forests were being chopped down for firewood; water shortages and contamination was growing, with thousands of hungry people fleeing the countryside to cities - particularly Kabul, which at 5m people is now the fastest growing capital city in the world. It is also one of the only capital cities without a proper sewage system. Yet Coalition forces have spent years and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money in the country without these issues being reported in mainstream media.