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Have We Reached Maximum Sustainable Population Size?
Hugh Pickens writes "Pulitzer prize winning writer Thomas Friedman writes that in few years we may be looking back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? 'We're currently caught in two loops,' writes Friedman. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.' According to the Global Footprint Network we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth's resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. 'Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,' says Paul Gilding. 'We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we're not stupid.'"
The Earth wasn't supposed to be able to support half the current global population.
Then Norman Borlaug came along, and turns out we could support more. Who knows this time around?
"Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in."
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
For those that haven't gotten to read it here is the article by Taibbi I assume you're talking about, and anyone who reads it will be hard pressed to see Friedman as anything BUT an absolute moron.
As for TFA it isn't that we've reached "peak people" it is that the pigs destroy faster than we can create and by HUGE margins! Look at how many things now are "designed for the dump" so some multinational can force you to buy another rather than affordably fixing the one you have. Look at how much wealth is controlled by the top 3% and how much their hoarding tips the scales. These groups have NO problem with poisoning the water table with frakking, with making huge chunks of land uninhabitable with dumped toxins, whatever it takes to get them another 3% profits they are ALL for.
Frankly most of these problems could be solved if we had real laws with real consequences for causing disasters and massive environmental destruction, but instead these scum will just quietly cash out and leave the superfund sites to the rest of humanity to clean up. if we took a dozen of the top polluters and had their CxOs executed on national TV I bet they wouldn't be so quick to fuck everyone else for another percentage of profit, what do you think?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.