Scientific Am.—Another Inconvenient Truth: The World's Growing Population Poses a Malthusian Dilemma

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=growing-population-poses-malthusian-dilemma

http://www.scientificamerican.com/department.cfm?id=feature-articles">Features - October 2, 2009

Another Inconvenient Truth: The World's Growing Population Poses a Malthusian Dilemma

Solving climate change, the Sixth Extinction and population growth... at the same time

By David Biello

By 2050, the http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=is-birth-control-the-answer-to-envi-2009-09-23">world will host nine billion people—and that's if population growth slows in much of the developing world. Today, at least one billion people are chronically malnourished or starving. Simply to maintain that sad state of affairs would require the clearing (read: deforestation) of 900 million additional hectares of land, according to Pedro Sanchez, director of the Tropical Agriculture and Rural Environment Program at The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

The bad news beyond the impacts on people, plants and animals of that kind of http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=can-trees-save-us-from-climate-chan-09-04-24">deforestation: There isn't that much land available. At most, we might be able to add 100 million hectares to the 4.3 billion already under cultivation worldwide.

"Agriculture is the main driver of http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=scientists-identify-safe-limits-for-human-impacts">most ecological problems on the planet," said economist Jeffrey Sachs, http://www.scientificamerican.com/author.cfm?id=978">Scientific American columnist and Earth Institute director. "We are literally eating away the other species on the planet."

Sachs made his remarks yesterday at a symposium hosted by the institute on how to improve agriculture to address the mounting challenge of feeding the world while combating climate change and stopping the http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=sixth-extinction-wipes-out-animals-08-10-09">wholesale loss of biodiversity, among other interrelated issues.

…

[orpupilofnature57]

1. Veggies and weed is all we'd need ,oh yea and a little water.

[virgogal]

2. I remember when the ZPG movement was the big thing. Didn't seem to work.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. It has had an effect

The world population is expected to level off around 2050.

But, if (as some believe) our population is already unsustainable, increasing it by ⅓ to ½… well…
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2008/pressrelease.pdf

[jemelanson]

3. Anyone ever heard of birth control.

So all of those persons out there who are so adamant about not making birth control or condom use widely available. Those who think that the use of any birth control is equal in their eyes to abortion. This is where your opinion and your religious convictions are leading us. to world wide hunger, a destruction of the environment. Then where do you plan to live. Oh yes, silly me, I forgot the rapture is coming and so this world wide problem will be left to the unbelievers to handle.

rant over.

[MH1]

5. Yeah but God has it all under control, don't worry

:banghead:

[RC]

6. Are leading us? We are already past that point.

When the oil runs out, there will be mass starvation of several billions of us. What we conciser pests will explode. Rats, mice, deer, bindweed and whatever that weed that is taking over Florida...

After we are gone, the Earth will cleans itself and go on with other experiments.

[Bigmack]

7. Agreed, population growth

IS a VERY SERIOUS problem, but as George Monbiot recently pointed out in an article, that as best I recall, can be found on Alternet, the rich are FAR more costly to the environment, in terms of energy consumption and resource depletion, than are entire villages of the poorest. Ms Bigmack

[Bigmack]

8. Oops, Monbiot can MOST easily be found

at Monbiot.com, and the article noted above was originally published in the Guardian