Quote:The problem with debating Malthus is you're debating a moot point. Even assuming the food supply to be infinite (which it's not, regardless of technological advances), the human population is around two full orders of magnitude greater than what the Earth has resources to support, at the least.For what period of time? Obviously, the earth is supporting us now, or else we'd be starving to death. And we're not going to die of starvation in the next few decades. Maybe things will look different in a hundred years, but we are not in immediate danger of mass death through starvation - largely thanks to Mr. Borlaug and colleagues.
Quote:Natural resources are by definition finite. Pretty soon, perhaps even before any of us die of old age, we're going to hit a point where we need to dig/drill/cut some raw material or other, and there won't be anything there to harvest.Earth's a big place, and we're rapidly coming to a point where it no longer restricts us. How long before we can harness solar energy from space? Before we can mine asteroids? Before we can live on Mars? These things are not right around the corner, but it's hardly inevitable that we're simply going to exhaust our resources and die off (well, it is, but that could be a billion year phenomenon, rather than "before any of us die of old age".) I'm not a polyanna about scarcity and technology, but things are not *that* dire.
Quote:That's not even to mention the fact that humans generate more pollution in any given year than nature can come close to compensating for.I'm very concerned about AGW and other climate change phenomena, but it is unlikely to extinguish our species, especially if we get off our butts and do something about it.
Quote:Wiping out the vast majority of the population by whatever means may not be a very palatable option, but in the long term it's the only effective one.Um... how about slowly stabilizing the birth rate to something below the rate of replacement, and slowly shrinking the population down to a manageable level while simultaneously increasing our efficiency and recovery of spent resources? Because it's looking very much like that is the future in store for us... unless something catastrophic happens that prevents the development necessary to reduce the birth rate - like massive starvation. Starvation is not a solution, unless the extinction of human civilization can be said to solve anything.
-Jester