Given the world food reserves that are decreasing with the present population, the already high tensions over water depletion even in water rich countries such as the USA, and the increasing energy usage and pollution output of an increasingly industrialized third world there really isn't a point. Anyone who can draw a simple graph and a first order linear projection and intersection- AKA straight lines crossing - can tell you it's already a lost cause.

Even if there wasn't a single new human being on the planet, we're headed for a classical mammalian population crash based on resource depletion. It's like in Bio101, look at the pretty deer starving because they mindlessly overpopulate a limited biosphere ecology, etc.

Of course, it won't happen overnight which is why people are so insensible to it. Bureaucracies which do know it, are only motivated by crisis. By simple back of the envelope calculations, series shortages and crises will occur in approximately the next one to two decades. That means anyone starting a family now won't even have time to retire before the sh*t begins hitting the fan. This isn't to suggest hopelessness, only to comment upon the mental insensibility that even intelligent commentators like Dan here lack when faced with the brick wall the species is running straight toward.

Oldman, do you EVER sleep?

Parsley Boy

More seriously, Oldman, your comment reads like something out of a Paul Ehrlich tract. He was making the same kind of predictions for the 1970s back in 1968 that you're making for the 2010s now.

The one thing that can be learned from Ehrlich's lousy prognostications is that "simple back of the envelope calculations" about highly complex phenomena often fail. The universe doesn’t give a hang about simplifications, and will continue on in all its complex absurdity.

Anyway, I would think that anyone who had been around long enough would know that the sh*t is ALWAYS hitting the fan. It’s only a question of whether or not you’re downwind at the time….

Parsley Boy