Reply #292: At one time you were right, but not now [View All]

[bhikkhu]

The carrying capacity of the planet is less than our population, even with much of the population below the poverty level.

Even if enough farmland were available, there is not enough water to irrigate it, much less provide adequate fresh water to the 2 billion + who lack it. We are pumping aquifers at an unsustainable rate, major rivers go dry before they reach the sea, 25% of agriculture suffers from lack of sufficient water already, and so on.

There is not enough oil in the ground to continue to fuel our current level of consumption for long. This affects agriculture greatly, which relies upon petroleum products for fertilizer as the key ingredient of the "green revolution". Oil fuels the global economy, and its not going in a direction which will ever bring "development" to the "developing" world. The good intentions of the past (whether they were real intentions or not) are currently trumped by geological realities.

Blaming overpopulation on the denial of resources and education to the poor is a bogus argument in the face of climate change and peak oil, and avoids the real issues.