Current practices may not be optimal, but that's not a major factor. We don't bang our heads on tables now to come up with a solution to the downtown horse carriage overcrowding problem, do we?

Having more people around does not only add labour, it also adds ideas, markets to test products, and incentives to improve current technology, among other things.

The limit is human ingenuity, not resources. We have an infinite source of energy shining over our heads for example. The only limitation is how we're able to harness it. Everything derives from that.

This is something totally disregarded by a lot of people who seem to be in the "Hate Humans First" choir. Problems are opportunities to the human spirit. We advance by overcoming obstacles, not by retreating because of fear or shame.

Absolutely!

It seems that more and more policies try to inflict self-hate and puritanism upon modern man...

Every pleasure (fatty food, tobacco, alcool) and every technological advance made in the 20th century (oil, cars, airplanes, the internet) is seen as 'harmful' for the environment, immoral and threatening for our future.

When in fact these technological prowesses are THE reason why we are even having this discussion in the first place.

It is true, very little credit is given to human inventiveness, creativity and even basic common sense.

It seems that we have to be told, on every topic imaginable, how to best behave for our own good and the ever-present 'greater' or 'social' good.

Baerdric--my point with all the oil stuff wasn't that farming in China was swell. China has gone from a totalitarian state with no understanding of economics, to one with some understanding. My point was just that you can feed an awful lot of people on a lot less oil, and that absent oil, population might not drop as much as a lot of people think (or even sometimes, hope?)[I] I have no personal desire to return to the drudgery of the past, but it remains as an option. The only way I'm going back to the fourteenth century is at the point of a rifle. A lot of people seem to want to go back to paleolithic times, not just in diet but in occupation. Most seem to want to bring their shotguns, though. I wanted to do that, too--when I was twelve.
I wasn't saying that the US was using too much oil. I've personally enjoyed the results of all that oil use too much, to do so would be hypocritical. Ungrateful, even. I don't think our using oil is wasteful--I think leaving it in the ground would be.
Actually, my post was in response to Wyvrn's contention that America was anywhere close to being past a population that could sustain itself--trying to show that even with 1900 energy use (and I guess technology) America could still be self sufficient. The idea of having to return to that is, of course, ridiculous, but I think does show that all that peak oil junk probably won't be the end of our civilization.

Yes, I see that now, sorry.

I guess I am a little touchy about China, since I have seen the horror in the eyes of my friends. However I have to tell you that the Chinese have never been ignorant of economic principals, except the uneducated masses. The rulers are quite astute and use economic forces as a tool to hold power over their countrymen and sway nations around the world.

Any seeming ignorance is a guise (another historic and cultural treasure of China).

No problem. What I know about China I learned from cartoons and cartoon equivalents (The Toronto Star, The National Post...)

If you had said, "Resources are limited, human ingenuity is not," then I might have agreed with you. The problem remains that starving people can't eat ingenuity.



I don't think so. Care to name some of these people?

You think people are starving because there is too little food that can potentially be produced worldwide?

No, I think that people are starving because there is too little food in their bellies. Human ingenuity has obviously failed to get those people fed, through actual food shortage or political irregularities.

Billions of people have had thousands of years to work on the problem of famine. All we have to show for all this ingenuity is more food for more people. It's like we're in the food version of a nuclear arms race. The more food we grow, the more people we have, and with people STILL starving, the only ingenuity we have shown is to grow more food.

Oddly the opposite seems to be true, those counties where food is plentiful have a lower population growth rate in general than those countries where growing food seems to be a problem.

This sounds like Taube's demonstration of the causality arrow in the energy equation of obesity.

I understand the cry, "Why haven't we fed the hungry people of the world." but I also understand that the answer isn't to force other people to do it by government decree. That's slavery.

It's like trying to make the fat person lose weight by forcing the thin person to exercise.

So you agree then that the problem is not a lack of resources but a lack innovation.

I think it's fairly obvious that we're not using whatever resources we have at our disposal nearly as efficiently as we could be. And there are plenty of resources we don't even use because we have no idea how, such as minerals from the moon or asteroids and heat from the earth's core. The solution should be equally obvious : fostering innovation to use these resources efficiently. What is not a solution though is imposing limits on population and economic growth because we fear we'll come short on energy and food. That is the best way of ensuring we'll never become efficient and just starve forever.

True. This is a "problem" we must grow though, not run away from.

Although I do believe there is a limit on how much time we have to accomplish the next major step in our progression. At some point we will no longer have the energy left to create new technologies. If we do not either harness the atom or colonize outer space for our needs fairly soon (500 years or so) we may find ourselves at a point where there will be no choice but to let billions starve until a paleolithic goal is reached, from which we will never again rise.

Oil is and should be our stepladder. But we're arguing about whether to kick it to pieces or make a bed out of it. We should be climbing it.

That is beautiful man. /

As far as "overpopulation", would you rather live in Japan or Namibia? Japan is jampacked with people, yet has one of the highest standards of living on the face of the planet. I just wish people weren't looked at as liabilities.

Wouldn't finite resources, used more efficiently, get depleted as quickly as before since more and more people would be using them? After all, the entire species wants a taste of first world living.