Reply #270: That 'debunks' bugger all [View All]

[muriel_volestrangler]

It talks about the equivalent of converting southern England to one huge farm (thus wiping out various species), though without actually working out if that would still feed the population of the UK, and says nothing whatsoever about where energy, water, and sustainable input to the soil comes from. Just because someone achieves a good yield on a small patch that gets regular manure on it, you can't then just say "oh, everyone will have a patch that does just as well".

It's just ramblings from someone with a calculator and a few minutes to work out some population densities.

Here's something serious: the WWF ecological footprint calculator.

http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/static/national_footprint

Note that the average UK inhabitant is using 3.1 times the available global land. So, if we halved the population, and became a third more efficient (mainly by stopping using so much energy), we'd just about get there. And decreasing the population (less children per adult, longer generation times) is one of the easiest ways to achieve this. Better sex education (the UK has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe), free contraception, easily available abortion, better educational and career prospects for young women - they'll all help.

The average for the planet has been above the sustainable level since the 1980s - by 2003, using 2.2 hectares per person, when 1.8 hectares were available.

A report: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/living_planet_report.pdf