Here you go Ludwig,

This sort of promo is great isn't it? My bill will be sent to the SPA.

http://www.theage.com.au/comment/fortress-australia-green-washing-the-future-20131021-2vwzy.html

Loudmouth,

Before 1800, the global population was always below 1 billion. Even then, people sometimes overexploited their local environment and collapsed their society. "Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations" by Prof David Montgomery (Soil Science, University of Washington) has numerous case studies. Those people, however, did not have the numbers or the technology to interfere with the great natural cycles that support life on earth. Now we do. See

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

Open version

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/

We now have 7 billion going on 10-11 billion people, on a planet that could sustainably support perhaps 1-2 billion in modest comfort, given today's technology. The UN recently had to raise its medium population projection because fertility rates had not fallen as far as expected, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. We are only getting by because so many of us are living in appalling poverty and because we are in environmental overshoot, using up renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. Even if the fertility rate dropped to replacement level tomorrow, all over the world, we would still be in for billions more people, just due to demographic momentum. Poor people are understandably focused on immediate survival and achieving a decent standard of living, not on the future or protecting their environment.

You might try reading a few issues of Science or Nature, our top science journals, instead of your usual fare, or New Scientist and Scientific American on a more popular level, and you will see that the people with the best understanding of the environmental issues are really alarmed.

What is infantile is harping on as if this were all about racism, instead of considering the real issues.

Hi Divergence,

Not sure where to start. We're not living in the early nineteenth century, by the way. And the proportion of the world's population living in poverty has halved in the last forty years.

Production techniques, technology, plant-breeding, etc., etc., have seen massive improvements in the last couple of hundred years. You may be aware of some of them.

My point was mainly about the effects of universal education for women, and the possibilities of vast increases in food production in Africa if those countries could drastically improve their infrastructure and production techniques.

Imagine if mechanisation could replace those millions of women chipping away with hand-hoes, if irrigation schemes could utilise the massive waterways there, if women didn't have to sit in the dirt pounding away at grinding corn. Yes, there would be - from one point of view - greatly increased unemployment in agriculture, but new fields of work, at higher levels, would open up.

I am confident that Africa can become the power-house, and the food producer of the world, and in this century. In the process, women will be freed up, to force changes in social structure, and to seize new educational opportunities. In so doing, they will move from large-families to small, have their children later, or not at all, and transform their societies. Birth-rates will fall in step.

Population hysteria will wither away accordingly.

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Loudmouth,

Obviously, the Africans could benefit from better management, education for girls, and so on, but I am amazed that you think we can go on interfering with the carbon and nitrogen cycles, overfishing, wiping out species, unsustainably pumping groundwater, dumping garbage in the atmosphere, etc. without any repercussions. Note that the warnings on these things are coming from the mainstream scientific community, not hysterical fringe Greenies.

Growth in productivity of rice, wheat, and maize has plateaued or is leveling off in the most productive countries, probably because we are running up against physiological limits.

http://www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep/fpepch7

Tim Wheeler and Joachim von Braun wrote an article on global food security in the August 2 issue of Science (pp. 508-513).

"However, the big picture is clear. About 2 billion of the global population of over 7 billion are food insecure because they fall short of one or several of FAO's dimensions of food security."

They suggest that this may actually underestimate the problem, due to the definitions that have been used.

India has an child under-nutrition rate of 48%, according to its own government.

http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/aspiring-global-power-suffers-from-chronic-malnutrition

Surely it makes sense to be cautious and wait until the marvelous technologies that you anticipate are actually proven before you proclaim that the population problem is solved. (Where's my flying car? Where's my electric power that was going to be too cheap to meter? Why are people still dying of cancer nearly 50 years after President Nixon declared his "War on Cancer"?}

It is strange that you cling to your Cornucopian faith and ignore the experts that you expect to deliver the miracle technologies. Before you assert that Africa could feed the world, you need to look at the actual numbers. The Global Footprint Network (an international think-tank of scientists, engineers, and economists) has done this, working out production and consumption from the best available figures. Take a look at their latest atlas and see if you are still so optimistic.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/ecological_footprint_atlas_2010

Divergence,

You mention India. Yes, indeed, with half of the villages not even connected by road to the outside world, and a massive back-log in infrastructure development, India is also ripe - if it can get its act together - for massive improvements in production.

If India had a similar infrastructure to Australia's, in electricity production and distribution, in ports, roads, irrigation, schools, rail, etc., etc., who knows what those 1.2 billion people could achieve ?

It really doesn't help your case when you speak of countries and regions which are currently producing at relatively rudimentary levels, since the only way is up. What sort of production outputs would Australia be making if we had the basic, animal- and human-powered technology of rural India and Africa ? Do the maths: there is enormous potential in those parts of the world, encompassing a significant proportion of the world's arable lands.

If you are from NSW, you need to be careful building so many straw men, Divergence :)

Cheers,

Joe
www.firstsources.info

Dear Joe/Loudmouth

India can't develop along the Western model because we are fast approaching resource and energy scarcity. No reason why they shouldn't be as 'successful' if they did have the same resources and energy but unfortunately, they are likely to hit trouble before they get around those issues, though it may not be possible anyway. 170 million people in India are dependent on groundwater for irrigation - groundwater that is rapidly declining and not being replenished. Add to that the problems of melting glaciers on the Tibetan plateau and the Himalayas that will mean the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Indus etc will initially flood but then become seasonal with huge ramifications for food production.