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Re: Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)
On 8 Dec 1996 17:13:49 GMT, "Rick & Bea Tarara" <rbtarara@sprynet.com>
wrote:
>David Lloyd-Jones <dlj@inforamp.net> wrote in article
>>
>> Our birth rate is dropping. The absolute number of
>> births is dropping. The number of possible mothers in the world will
>> start dropping before 1998. Population is coming under control,
>> thanks to the choices people are making about how to live.
>>
>
>Can we be certain this will continue? The change in U.S. demography,
>especially the ethnic make up, is effecting population growth rates here,
>and the pressures are not downward.
The change in ethnic makeup consists of Carribean and Mexicans who
join the middle class as quickly as they can. Carribean immigrants
already have average incomes high than those of white Protestants, and
Mexicans can be expected to do the same in the second generation.
Roman Catholic populations, e.g. Quebec, Italy, France, Portugal,
etc., typically reach birth rates below replacement as soon as they
hit a middle class level of income.
>> Hunh? If you're talking trillions, Earth is a tourist resort by then.
>> ?But I'll give you Bucky Fuller's old jape about density: if you held
>> a normal cocktail party on all floors of the buildings of Manhattan,
>> you could invite the human race.
>> > Obviously the East River subway would be a little bit crowded when the
>> party broke up...
>
>Land use figures again presented only to refute jw's trillions supportable.
> However, the fact that if for some reason the growth rate drop stalls--say
>at about 1%, then it only takes a few centuries to have really massive
>populations. To me, it is clear that resources (like water and food),
>disease, political and economic realities will intervene to prevent such
>population growth--but others, like jw, seem to decry population
>stabilization.
>
>Of course if the earth's population is not controlled at the 10-12 billion
>level, the only effective way to 'house' these billions is high density
>cities. But such beasts are huge ENERGY sinks.
How do you figger? My impression is that cities have been sources of
energy for most of history; in the current generation the, uh, current
generation has moved to the suburbs. Still you will find that the
wires generally carry the power _from_ cities where it is generated to
everywhere else.
Cities of course import coal, oil, gas, and now uranium and plutonium
-- but they export the thought to pay for them, as well as the energy
generated from them.
Your "sink" idea rather reminds me of the idea that the countryside
supports the cities, which is of course not true. Famines always
happen worst in rural areas; cities can buy food anywhere. It is the
cities which provide the rural areas with the income they need to buy
the necessities -- energy, clothing, manufactured goods. Food? Hell,
anywhere there's sunlight or salt water.
>BTW: Unless the earth's population REALLY stabilizes at zero growth,
>you'll never get enough people OFF the earth (to extraterrestrial colonies)
>to matter. With the yearly growth being nearly 80 million now, the
>technology of space travel (and the energy costs--still the focus of the
>newsgroup I'm reading--Sci.Energy) won't be able to even dent this figure
>for a LONG time.
I don't think anybody who has ever done the math is thinking of that.
The many who will live in space will almost all be born out there.
-dlj.
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