the other side of the coin:
Overpopulation Called A Myth
pop.org
From Betsy Warnock
From NewsHawk© Inc. <hawknews@saber.net>
3-14-00
The whole world's population could fit in the state of Texas...Amazing as it may seem, the entire population of the world can be housed in the U.S. state of Texas -- and very comfortably indeed, with each person enjoying a living far in excess of that now available to all but the most wealthy.
Consider these facts: The land area of Texas is some 262,000 square miles* and current UN estimates of the world's population (for 12 October 1999) are about 6 billion.** By converting square miles to square feet -- remember to multiply by 5,280 feet per mile twice -- and dividing by the world's population, one readily finds that there are more than 1,217 square feet per capita.
A family of 5 would thus occupy more than 6,085 square feet of living space. Even in Texas, that's a mansion.
These numbers apply to just one-story, ranch house-type dwellings. With a housing mix of multi-story buildings, including town houses, apartment buildings and high rises, appreciably greater living space could be provided. Such an arrangement would allow ample land for yards and all the necessary streets and roads.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world would be completely empty, available for all of mankind's agricultural, manufacturing, educational, and recreational activities!
*The World Almanac, 1999 **UNPD "World Population Prospects," 1998 UN Revision
Comments
Subject: Re: Overpopulation called myth Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 19:28:17 EST From: AndrewDBasiago@aol.com
Dear Betsy,
I appreciate the fact that this analysis is sincere, and I think that we have to be on guard about the possibility that political and economic elites will use overpopulation as a warrant for genocide or to rationalize economic inequality, but there is a fatal flaw to this analysis that I simply must address. It is entirely an ORTHOGRAPHIC analysis. In other words, it relies only on an analysis of the amount of land available for human settlement to frame its estimation of the compatability between the Earth's human population and the environment of Texas as a place suitable for human settlement.
Sadly, many other factors must be considered to ascertain whether a given human population is "sustainable" within its delimited geographic area. Prominent among these are the limits of the sustaining watershed to provide clean, safe drinking water and the limits of the sustaining agricultural lands to provide sufficient food to sustain the number of human beings living there. In many countries of the world, these limits are already being reached. For example, early in the next century, China and Japan will have to begin importing food from California, because the Chinese and Japanese are building human settlements on the lands where they now grow there food. Meanwhile, our so-called "development" community is planning to urbanize the entire Central Valley of California, from Sacramento in the north to Bakersfield in the south, where that food will have to be grown, thereby jeoaprdizing 40% of the fruit and nut crop and 25% of the table vegetables produced in America.
So you see, such forecasts cannot be based merely on the amount of acreage avaiable for "settlement." They must also be based on the natural and artificial systems that "sustain" urban settlements. (cont)
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