Waiting4oblivion Parliament, lets try again, shall we? Options

[Burnt Sierra]

Right, a few rules before we start this time. No flaming. No intolerance of anybody else's viewpoint. No deciding you don't like the topic, and trying to tell people what they can discuss. This goes for everybody from now on.

Right, now we got the unpleasant bit out of the way, lets begin anew shall we?

p.s. yes Channler, those were the original rules, but seeing as how everyone seemed to forget them last time, I thought I'd make a little pointed reminder.

[Megil Tel-Zeke]

alright, time for some definitions, then a post

Overpopulation- Value judgement reflecting an observation or conviction that a current environment cannot sustain its present population.

Carrying Capacity- The number of organisms an environment can support.
In the case of humans,however, carrying capacity is defined as the number of humans an area can support on a sustained basis given the prevailing technology.

So overpopulation is a relative term. But the term for carrying capacity helps us clear up part of the issue in determining whether the world today is overpopulated.

Everyone knows that populations grow exponentially (,2,4,16,256,etc), but it was once believed that food production grew in a linear fashion (1,2,3,4,5,etc). So a theory was developed by a man named Malthus that stated:

the number of people would increase faster than the food supply. Population would eventually reach a resource limit (overpopulation). Any further increase would result in a population crash, caused by famine, disease, or war.

now this theory was believed as true until 1965 when Ester Boserup created her theory which stated :

Populations increases necessitate for increased input of labor and technology to compensate for reduction in the natural yields

or simply put, the as population increased mankind would develop a new method of agriculture that would yield more crops and thus produce enough food to feed the existing population.

This theory was put into play in 1944 with the launch of the Green revolution. This agricultural movement was started by the U.S. agency for international development to increase yields by using:

1)New crop cultivars
2)irrigation
3)fertilizers
4)pesticides
5)mechanization.

With the ultimte goal of eliminating hunger by improving crop performance.

Needless to say biotechnology was used to produce strains of crops that reacted better to fertilizers (i.e. produced more crops, instead of just creating more leaves) and that could be grown closer together by having a high resistance to pests and disease.

The green revolution was succesful, but it also had sideffects. for example it reduced the variety of crops that we eat, since it focused on creating just high-yielding cultivars. The Big 4 being : wheat, corn, rice, and soybeans.

And perhaps the biggest failure of the green revolution is that it faced huge transportation problems. they had the food to distribute but they could not distribute al the food before it went bad.

I'd say the world is not overpopulated, its jsut that we have not developed a system that can efficiently bypass the political system and deliver the food we have to those who needs it.

[/end rant]