Opinions

... are like a**hole*. Everyone's got one and they all stink. Except mine :)

Take this article about the earth being over-crowded.

The esteemed Professor has the gall to suggest that there is a "utopia" threshold that the Earth can support of about 3 billion people. It would seem that he has failed to consider what technological improvements can do to stretch the resources available to us.

His is a pretty sweeping conclusion. Let's just look at one resource: wood. The next factor to consider is human needs, so let's bring in one need: heat. Now let's take a time period, say, 40,000 years ago. Humans would have lived in caves, with fur cloaks, wooden clubs, and basic firepits to keep warm. They would have collected dry or dead wood, broken branches from trees (as they probably weren't able to cut trees down yet) and just pray they'd find scraps around when they needed them.

In that context, Earth could have probably only supported about a million people before it would eventually run out of dead, dry wood lying around the ground. There were probably some old tribal shamen predicting the end of humanity as he could see fallen wood getting scarce. Then some bright geezer came along and invented an axe...

Fast forward to the 21st century. To fulfill our need for heat, we have oil powered plants, coal powered plants, nuclear powered plants, pulp burning plants, waste burning plants, wind powered plants, solar... etc. Our choice of resources from which to extract heat have multiplied ten fold. We weaned ourselves of reliance on one sole source of heat with technological advances. And now, our tribal shamen today are now worried about other things, like over population. Sheesh.

I'm amazed how most people on the BBC forums are suggesting population control to be the appropriate measure to take. It's a completely ridiculous suggestion. Who should decide who lives and who dies? Who should decide who should breed and who shouldn't? Who should decide what numbers from where to preserve? Should selection be on race, age, sex, nationality, or some other criteria pulled out of someone's hat? Who should that someone be? The mere suggestion of pop. control is SO idiotic it makes my blood boil. Can't stand baseless, groundless, unsupportable, and unconsidered opinions masquerading as an important, factual statement of affairs.