Hi Quantum,
I think you're being a little optimistic in your calculations. There's currently somewhat more than half an acre of arable land per person on this planet. I know from experience that I could live with very minimal comfort on that much land, presuming it was accompanied by comparable shares of wooded and stony land from which I might extract other resources I need. I do agree, therefore, that there's no reason we couldn't manage things much better at present, were it not for our greed and self-interest, of course.
When we look forward forty years though, to the time Lovelock anticipates, I think, things do not look as promising. The population is expected to have almost doubled by then, and our rapidly depleting hydrocarbon resources, on which the technologies that allow me to be optimistic about a half acre of land depend, may well be practically exhausted by that time, and will certainly have become prohibitively expensive for most purposes. It's not at all clear to me that ten billion can survive on this planet without much oil in anything but the most abject squalor. In that case they will die in their billions. You need only consider the origins of the Great Famine in Ireland to see how that must proceed.
There is hope. I’m not saying the world can’t support, say, ten billion people reasonably well. I am, however, quite sure we will need technological breakthroughs if that is to happen, presuming we even try. I do hope your optimism doesn’t depend on people’s greed and self-interest diminishing as the world’s population grows. The idea of everyone becoming vegan does seem to me to depend on just such a development.
On an unrelated matter, one shouldn't call it a cull, unless one really believes in Gaia as a person. What the Nazis did was a cull; what Lovelock insists will happen is environmental collapse, à la Easter Island, though, apparently, not so complete. |
