On June 6, 2019 at 22:58, Hasbeen said...
All of the humans on Earth can fit into Texas. The world isn't over populated. Over 50% of the earth is still covered in dense forest.
Sure, parts of the world are heavily populated, but others areas aren't. If we all had as much space as the average Alaskan, we'd need over 100 Earths to fit everyone.
That's a fake news argument. Just because you can fit everyone into a small area relative to the planet's total surface area doesn't mean the planet isn't overpopulated. If you take how much surface area it takes to support you and all you consume and excrete the equation is quite different.
Nearly every day there's something in the news about how some species is nearing extinction or how someone is trying to save another. The planet is warming up and is now warmer that it ever has been since mankind started keeping records. We're in the beginnings of a mass extinction event. One can argue that CO2 isn't man caused/blah/blah/blah but the bottom line is mankind is having a profound impact on Earth's biosphere. It isn't just global warming. It is everything. Palm oil plantations, developing wetlands, pumping groundwater, farming ever more marginal land, massive mining operations, it goes on and on.
All this has one common base problem. Too many people.
But what if we conserve? Lets say you and your wife/husband use 100 resource units (water, oil, food,metals,whatever) a year. You're concerned about the environment and so you conserve really well and only use 50 (very unlikely you could cut it 50% but we'll let that go). Then you have 2 kids. They each are better than you and only use 15 units each. Your family now uses 80 units. Your kids get married and have 2 kids each, which only use 15 units each. Now 140 units are being consumed (ignoring your kids mates). You and your wife/husband die but your grandkids go on to have 2 kids each. Your family is now using 210 units. No matter what you argue about recycling/we have more resources than people think/etc the numbers overwhelm it all. The bottom line is people consume resources and no matter what we do the only fix is to control our population. Funny thing about mother nature, she'll eventually do it for us.
In the movie Independence Day the President does a mind link with the alien and proclaims they're locusts that will strip the planet. Maybe what he saw was their view of us.
