| GasSavers_RoadWarrior |
08-14-2009 08:03 AM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by theholycow
(Post 139698)
25-30 billion? LOL. We all know how impossible it is to produce food and keep clean air and such for that many people. Besides those issues, though, the more crowded it gets, the more and worse diseases will go around...and the more crazy people will go on shooting sprees...and the more despots will kill thousands of people at a time...etc.
It can't happen. Maybe another 20%, then all those things combined with laws limiting procreation start knocking total population back.
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Food production isn't so much the problem, i heard it worked out that there would still be something like 1 acre of land currently under cultivation or earmarked for agriculture per person, without re-greening deserts, and without high-yield techniques. You can find books with titles such as "How to feed a family on half an acre or less".. and those are relatively low tech methods. At the moment the biofuels people are saying things like "Hey we've got 8.5B acres of cropland we don't need for food, let's grow energy!"
Current problem in feeding people is where they are, the concentration of them in certain areas, and how much money they haven't got.... also ill-informed ideas about growing cash crops or western foodcrops that are totally unsuited to local conditions cause local problems.
Storage, preservation and distribution of food is getting somewhat more efficient, less spoilage and waste.
However, you might be right about diseases and societal problems making the population self limiting at a certain point... but I think the worlds largest cities have been at "critical mass" for such things for years. |