At 19:14 05/07/2011, Mike Spencer wrote:
Keith wrote:
> It could be argued that, in 1750, the world population was already
> over-populated.
I think that might well be true.
> At that time, every possible square metre of the earth's surface
> that could be practically cultivated by manual and/or animal labour
> was already exploited for food production.
Er, um, that isn't even true today. Much of western America was being
"exploited for food production" but not for cultivation. It was
another century before the native population was cavalierly extirpated
and the plains, prairies and other native lands were exploited, first
for grazing and then for cultivation. I'm sure you'll hear from Ray
on this.
Very true. Thank you for reminding me of this. I was thinking mainly
of the vast bulk of the world population in Eurasia and Africa. In my
piece I was telescoping time and space a great deal in order to
present the bones of the case. It's now essentially the same in North America.
I, myself, own a few acres of presently uncultivated land that is
cultivatable by hand or animals -- our gardens are less than 1/4 acre
-- as do several of my friends. Of course, thse acres couldn't be
"practically" cultivated with a giant tractor and a 30-foot wide gang
plough but they supported two families in 1900.
I'm not so sure of your opening premise, either, that modern medicine
is the single factor creating the population explosion beginning in
the 1st half of the 18th c.. John Snow didn't remove the Broad
St. pump handle until 1854 and decades ensued before the medical
establishment accepted the significance of his success.
Once again, true enough and, once again, in linking medical science
to the industrial revolution I was simplifying a great deal in order
to make the point.
I'm inclined
to agree that global over-population, compounded by the ravenous
resource consumption of (so-called western) industrial consumer
society,[1] will all too soon lead to disaster and chaos. But I think
your piece needs t go back to re-write for fact-checking and more
detailed clarification.
To put the case in more detailed balance I would have needed to write
something several times longer. The essential point I wanted to get
across is that, despite all the good intentions and programmes by way
of aid by many worthy people and governments in the West since, since
roughly after WWII, the world population is now finally up against
the first very real constraint which, in one way or another, we had
been able to sidle out of to some extent.
What I also didn't mention in my piece for space reasons is that what
makes the matter a great deal worse in the last couple of decades is
that hundreds of millions of Chinese and Indians are now insisting on
more protein in their diets so they're more enjoyable and nutritious
than their former mainly simple carbohydrate diets. The leverage
effect of this is that, for every one of these people going up-market
in their diet, several other poor people somewhere in the world will
be totally deprived.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2011/07/
_______________________________________________
Futurework mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
