Zero Powers wrote:
> >From: Adrian Tymes <wingcat@pacbell.net>
> >I think there may be a solution to this, though. As has been noted, all
> >doomsday predictions assume no enhancement of technology to support
> >increased demand. What if we could make popular the notion that
> >technology will *always* rise to meet the challenge, at least for our
> >most critical needs (which, logically, would have more people working on
> >them to bring technology up to snuff)? If most of the public accepted
> >that we will always find a way to make enough food to feed all our
> >people - even if we sometimes stumble in actually getting the food to
> >the hungriest of mouths, but not in such a way as to make a larger
> >fraction of humanity hungry - then all "can the Earth support X billion
> >humans" questions become moot, no?
>
> This assumes a level of optimism which I don't think we are apt to find in
> the real world.
Find, no. Generate, perhaps? Half a century ago, there weren't that
many people who were worried about whether we could sustain human
population with unchecked growth. (Hitler's spiel about living space
notwithstanding, when one considers that Germany already had room for
its cities to grow.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:06:31 MDT