Written by Frosty Wooldridge, a contributor to Hemisphere to Hemisphere
We might hear the "overpopulation" word bantered around a lot, but what does it mean? Who defines it? Can we identify the long term consequences? Simply put: it means any given species cannot exceed the carrying capacity of the land it inhabits. For example: if you possess an acre of land with one watering hole that's two feet in diameter, the land has a carrying capacity of two horses that can enjoy all the grass they can eat, water they can drink and the rains would wash away the waste to fertilize the soil to grow more grass. It's all in balance.
Once you add 100 horses to the acre of land, the horses will over-eat the land, deplete the water supply and create more waste than can be mitigated. Those horses will kill the food source, overwhelm the watering hole, start fighting for grass and eventually and most if not all will die from starvation. The same principles apply to humans. Whereas the United States enjoy a greater carrying capacity because of water and climate, Australia with the same land mass, features 96 percent desert. Therefore, a much smaller carrying capacity. Both countries already exceed their carrying capacity as to energy and energy keeps the game going.
"Unlimited population growth cannot be sustained; you cannot sustain growth in the rates of consumption of resources. No species can overrun the carrying capacity of a finite land mass." This Law cannot be repealed and is not negotiable. Dr. Albert Bartlett, www.albartlett.org , University of Colorado, USA.
In this continuing series, Dr. Jack Alpert, Stanford University, brings it down to simple terms. He explains what we face in his seven minute video which we have placed above.
"The important part of what Clugston says is that on the road to exhaustion of resources our kids won't have these resources to support their lives," said Alpert. "However, few of today's decision makers (parents) can visualize the difference between the child's future experience and their present experience. "Parents don't realize that their personal experience of life is dependent on the delivery of NNR's. Parents can't visualize what their life would be like without these supporting NNR's. For example, no car, no heat, no electric lights, no running water, no communications, no computer, no grocery store, no hardware store, no general store, no books, and no medicine. So parents don't realize what kind of bad times are in store for their kids. In one sentence, our progeny will experience lots of scarcity and fighting over the remnants of what parents thought was their kid's birth right.
Link: http://bit.ly/w8oSjG
We might hear the "overpopulation" word bantered around a lot, but what does it mean? Who defines it? Can we identify the long term consequences? Simply put: it means any given species cannot exceed the carrying capacity of the land it inhabits. For example: if you possess an acre of land with one watering hole that's two feet in diameter, the land has a carrying capacity of two horses that can enjoy all the grass they can eat, water they can drink and the rains would wash away the waste to fertilize the soil to grow more grass. It's all in balance.
Once you add 100 horses to the acre of land, the horses will over-eat the land, deplete the water supply and create more waste than can be mitigated. Those horses will kill the food source, overwhelm the watering hole, start fighting for grass and eventually and most if not all will die from starvation. The same principles apply to humans. Whereas the United States enjoy a greater carrying capacity because of water and climate, Australia with the same land mass, features 96 percent desert. Therefore, a much smaller carrying capacity. Both countries already exceed their carrying capacity as to energy and energy keeps the game going.
"Unlimited population growth cannot be sustained; you cannot sustain growth in the rates of consumption of resources. No species can overrun the carrying capacity of a finite land mass." This Law cannot be repealed and is not negotiable. Dr. Albert Bartlett, www.albartlett.org , University of Colorado, USA.
In this continuing series, Dr. Jack Alpert, Stanford University, brings it down to simple terms. He explains what we face in his seven minute video which we have placed above.
"The important part of what Clugston says is that on the road to exhaustion of resources our kids won't have these resources to support their lives," said Alpert. "However, few of today's decision makers (parents) can visualize the difference between the child's future experience and their present experience. "Parents don't realize that their personal experience of life is dependent on the delivery of NNR's. Parents can't visualize what their life would be like without these supporting NNR's. For example, no car, no heat, no electric lights, no running water, no communications, no computer, no grocery store, no hardware store, no general store, no books, and no medicine. So parents don't realize what kind of bad times are in store for their kids. In one sentence, our progeny will experience lots of scarcity and fighting over the remnants of what parents thought was their kid's birth right.
Link: http://bit.ly/w8oSjG
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