SIGHTINGS



Overpopulation Called A Myth
http://www.pop.org/students/texas1.html
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. In many cities in the American west where there are as of yet millions of acres of "unsettled" land, urbanization is already straining the limits of the sustaining watersheds; to cite two inevitable examples in two of the most ostensibly spacious states, Albuquerque and Las Vegas. In point of fact, I think to his credit, Governor Jerry Brown, certainly one of the most intelligent and spiritual American leaders, described most accurately what a truly overpopulated world will look like, and it will not be a pretty site either for those who hug trees or for those who love subdivisions with pools and barbecues -- namely, "a denuded ant colony teeming with 10 to 12 billion desperate and hungry souls." Remember, just as there are powerful elites like Ted Turner and Maurice Strong on the scene who would ask us to curtail OUR consumption while THEY take their obscene billions and buy up our farm land in order to return it to nature so that rich people can play on it, there are also powerful elites eager to risk a future of hideous environmental degradation because THEY will be on top of the ant heap, and WE will be the ants supplying their ant heap with 10 to 12 billion consumers.
 
All the best,
 
Andy Basiago BA JD Envt'l C MCRP (Dist) MPhil (Cantab)
 
We are alone around the sun. There is no other planet to escape to in the event of an emergency. --Jacques Cousteau - _____
 
Subject: Re: Overpopulation called myth
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 15:32:09 -0800
From: Jon Roland <jon.roland@constitution.org
 
 
Once again we have the old myth about overpopulation being a myth, because "the entire population of the planet would fit in Texas". I have covered this point before, but I guess new people need to have a few simple things explained.
 
Yes, it is possible to physically "fit" the entire population of the planet, now more than 6 billion, within the territory of Texas. There would be about 3 feet separating each of them if they were spread out.
 
The myth arises because, and this should be emphasized, OVERPOPULATION IS NOT ABOUT NOT HAVING ENOUGH SPACE. Overpopulation is about life support. Life support is about resources, and space is not the critical resource.
 
If you did put the planet's population in Texas, spread evenly, and the wind stopped blowing, the first thing you would notice is that they would start suffocating. Not enough plants in that area to recycle all the CO2 and produce enough O2 to keep 6 billion people alive. But the wind usually does blow enough, so let's move on to the next critical resource.
 
Water. There isn't enough fresh water in Texas to keep all of those 6 billion people alive. They would die of thirst within a few days.
 
Okay, let's suppose you bring enough water to them somehow. How are you going to feed them? Using intensive agriculture, with enough water and fertile soil, it takes at least 4 acres of land to support one human adult.
 
But most of Texas isn't that fertile or well-watered. Out in West Texas it takes more than 400 acres to support one human adult, if he tried to live off the land using agriculture. A cow and her calf can be supported on 100 acres, but they can eat grass, and humans can't.
 
So if you put everyone in Texas, you would still need all the rest of the planet to produce the food to feed them, and who would produce the food, and bring it to Texas, if everyone were in Texas?
 
Doing a little arithmetic, one finds that at 6 billion, and allowing for variations in fertility and water availability, we have already exceeded the carrying capacity of the planet. So how come famine has not already set it?
 
Well, it turns out that food production can exceed the limits of long-term productivity with short-term inputs of energy and resources from sources that are presently nonrenewable.
 
Let's put it another way. 150 years ago, using dry-land agriculture, 99% of the energy contained in a grain of wheat came from the sun, and only about 1% came from artificial inputs, like plowing, planting, irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, harvesting, storage, transport, and processing. In today's agriculture, that ratio is nearly reversed. Only about 2% of the energy in a grain of wheat today comes from the sun. The rest comes from artificial inputs, which ultimately come mainly from fossil fuels, especially oil. If those resources or our ability to extract and deliver them fails, then the dieback will begin.
 
So what about these "biosphere cities" I talk about? Many have read my statements that it is possible to put a million people in a city that would support them indefinitely, and that we could build a million such cities, site them under ground, thereby housing a world population of 1 trillion, and leave the surface to return to a natural wilderness, which people might visit and enjoy for brief periods of time.
 
Yes, it is possible. But the technology to do that hasn't been developed yet. It would require that all materials be totally recycled within the biosphere. That's what "biosphere" means. Even the air. It could be done, using only a little energy, so little that we could get it from the interior of the Earth, which is another reason to site the cities underground, although the main reason is to reduce the costs of maintenance that would otherwise be increased by surface weathering.
 
One of the best reasons for an expedition to Mars is not to get the things we could get by going there, but to develop the closed-system technologies needed to sustain a city full of people here on Earth.
 
Okay, so why don't we start developing these technologies and building these closed-system cities right away? Now that is a good question. And one of the reasons is that they are expensive, and that they require a huge diversion of capital resources away from other pressing demands.
 
It would cost more than a $million per person to build such habitats, and except for a few millionaires, and members of the government, no one can afford that. Most people still have to survive by conventional subsistence agriculture, using methods that are destroying the land and depleting fresh water resources.
 
How many people realize that Americans consume more fresh water than falls on the territory of the United States in all forms of precipitation? So why aren't we already dying of thirst? Well, first, we don't use all of that water for drinking. Most of it is needed for agriculture and industry. Second, we don't get it from recent precipitation, but mine it out of the ground. It comes from wells that are drawing down supplies that fell as rain thousands of years ago, but which are not being replenished as rapidly as we are using them. Eventually the wells will run dry, and that day is coming sooner than most of the powers that be will admit.
 
So we distill sea water, right? Yes, but it takes more energy to deliver the water to where it is needed than to separate it from salt. Most current sources are on high ground, and the water runs downhill. If we had to pump it uphill we would be in trouble.
 
In closing, it needs to be emphasized that the resource problems are solvable as long as we have enough energy, and that energy is not a scarce resource, at some price level. There is enough solar energy to sustain us, if we had a system for collecting it and delivering it to where it is needed, like solar power satellites. But we aren't building solar power satellites, because of opposition from the oil and nuclear power companies.
 
--Jon
 
 
 
From Andrew D. Basiago <AndrewDBasiago@aol.com 3-14-00
 
Dear Bjorn,
 
Thank you so kindly for your spirited rejoinder to this particular imbecilic assertion about overpopulation. My response was written rather slap-dash, without review, and I did not know it was going to be posted on the Web, but that is alright. In any case, if I had known, I would have asked some more specific "salient" questions, such as:
 
-- After we get all six billion people into Texas, who is going to do the mining, the manufacturing, and the farmworking in "the hinterlands" to sustain Texas?
 
-- Where are they going to live, in the air?
 
-- What kind of impact will they have on the lands outside of Texas?
 
-- How are they going to achieve zero or negligible levels of impact on the rest of the global ecosystem, in order to prevent the areas where they have to do these necessary Texas-sustaining functions from becoming "another Texas"?
 
-- How are they going to meet or exceed current levels of agricultural performance in the agricultural lands currently available for production that would see depopulation of their adjacent cities, where all the manpower and resources reside that already use synthetic chemicals to boost crop yields on these lands, many of which are the only ones that possess distinctively nutrient-rich soils laid down after the last Ice Age?
 
-- How would they transport this food from "the world garden," surrounded by inhospitable "wildlands," to Texas, before the food spoils?
 
-- Would not roads have to be built and fossil fuels consumed to transport food from "the hinterlands" to Texas, hence, would not the rest of the world sustaining Texas have to strike a balance between wild, agricultural, and urban lands?
 
-- What "zero emissions" energy would be available to permit this vast production system from despoiling all that is not Texas?
 
As you can see, the fact that these questions (and hundreds more like it that could be formulated) cannot be answered reveals the absurdity of their original assertion.
 
It is premised on the faulty view that a city is just a settlement that can thrive without regard for sustaining the performance of the natural and urban systems upon which it relies, which, is, alternatively, the population-driven despotism of the East, or the "development"-biased ideology of the West.
 
In point of fact, the crisis of the environment and development must account for both biological limitations on the one hand AND the social cost-benefit analysis on the other, not either of these considerations taken in isolation. Social, economic, and environmental sustainability factors are inextricably inter-linked and interdependent, and must all be maintained in a system of productive harmony if survival is to be achieved.
 
In the final analysis, propositions such as this recent Texas example are pernicious nonsense, and are formulated, I fear, to disguise the threat that overpopulation already presents to the sustainability of our civilization.
 
Sincerely,
 
Andrew D. Basiago
 
 
Comment
 
 
From Lance Latham <LANCE_LATHAM@Conseco.com 3-14-00
 
The assertion that the entire population of the world (6 billion people) can fit within the land mass of the state of Texas is flawed for mathematical reasons.
 
If it's given that the land mass of Texas is 262,000 square miles, then one would only multiply this number by 5,280 ft./mi. ONCE (NOT twice, as the article's original author states) to get the equivalent square footage. This is the correct way to perform the calculation because the 262,000 value is ALREADY in square units - no need to 'square' it again to determine square footage.
 
Peforming the calculation CORRECTLY, one finds that the 262,000 square miles of Texas equates to only 1.4 billion square feet (NOT 7.3 trillion square feet, as the original author would have one believe), resulting in an actual square footage allocation per person of less than .25 square feet (NOT 1,217 square feet per person). Assuming that the world's population is made up of typical-sized people across all ages and sexes, I submit that less than one fourth of one square foot per person is NOT enough room in which to house the world's population.
 
It's frightening that basic math plays such a small part in every day logical thought - it IS still taught in elementary schools, isn't it?
 
 
--Lance Latham
 
 
 
Comment
 
I would like to respond to Lance Latham's comments at the foot of the story. He makes some disparaging remarks about the calculation of square footage in the original article and makes a 'correction.'
 
Lo and behold, Mr. Latham appears to be the one who missed out on elementary mathematics. Mr. Latham's formula is: take the square mileage X 5280= square footage. It doesn't.
 
One square mile=27,878,400 square feet (5280 ft X 5280 ft). Multiply 27,878,400 (the square feet in a square mile) by 262,000 square miles and you get the 7.3 trillion or so square feet noted in the original story.
 
The 262,000 square miles represents 262,000 of one (1) unit, a square mile. Mr. Latham incorrectly assumes that the square mileage number already has the square footage calculated. It doesn't.
 
I think it's frightening that Mr. Latham's concept of logic entails this sort of thinking.
 
By the way, I would like to comment on some of the articles seen on Jeff Rense's page. Is this the proper route to do so? Also, if I would like to submit an article is this the place?
 
I would like to compliment you on a fine-looking web page. The artwork is just remarkable.
 
Best regards, Ron Decker decker@wtez.net

 
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