Overpopulation

[SebC]

Originally Posted by GreenLantern

In the film, they indicated that the reason the Bush family bought up all of this land in Paraguay was because under neath it was one of the largest aquifers in the world. At the time, nobody could seem to figure it out and everyone looked at it from a political stand point.

Bush = Quantum?

[LChoy]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

I call BS on this. Water is the ultimate renewable resource. All you have to do is throw energy at polluted water and you can distill perfectly clean water. You can also make water out of hydrogen and oxygen, and we have lots of that.

Energy remains the more important of the two resources because its scarcer. If I have abundant energy, I can easily make clean water. If I have a lot of clean water, well, I have a lot of water.

Furthermore, if I have abundant energy, I can trade it at a premium for your puddle of water, or I can use that energy and take it by force as needed. I can also use energy to move water over great distances, so that I can get my water from anywhere, and deliver it anywhere. Energy trumps this debate hands down.

Originally Posted by octothorp

Yeah, I'm not too worried about water supply; desalination technologies are improving rapidly, to the point where a couple wind turbines can power a decent-sized desalination plant that can supply water to a small city.
The difficulty (and potential environmental impact) is disposing of the brine from the desalination.

Water scarcity is a real emerging issue and combating it is not as easy as you make it out to be. We are not talking about just drinking water, but water used in industy and irrigation as well.
In Alberta, the risk of drought is increasing every year. It's one of the main reason why we can't build a nuclear power plant here, as we don't have the water to spare to operate one

Here are 2 sites that delves into the topic in much greater detail

http://www.who.int/features/factfile.../en/index.html
http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/ar...canadian-water

[pepper24]

The Rich are getting fatter, the poor are getting skinnier.

[Sidney Crosby's Hat]

Nobody pointing out the irony of Diane Francis writing an article on the benefits of not having kids?

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Lchoy

Water scarcity is a real emerging issue and combating it is not as easy as you make it out to be. We are not talking about just drinking water, but water used in industy and irrigation as well.
In Alberta, the risk of drought is increasing every year. It's one of the main reason why we can't build a nuclear power plant here, as we don't have the water to spare to operate one

Here are 2 sites that delves into the topic in much greater detail

http://www.who.int/features/factfile.../en/index.html
http://www.innovationcanada.ca/en/ar...canadian-water

Combating water scarcity is pretty easy. You collect and store it, or you process it as you need it (eg. desalination of ocean water)

Take a look at the Smallwood Reservoir (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallwood_Reservoir). Second largest water reservoir in the world. It's a lot of water. It's only 6500 square kilometers; we have a lot of land, and conveniently, most rivers in Canada actually flow north, into less densely populated areas where we can construct huge reservoirs.

Unless you think that Canada will become a desert, devoid of all forms of runoff water, there is enormous untapped potential to provide fresh water just in terms of our ability to create enormous reservoirs in unpopulated Northern Canada.

And please don't tell me reservoirs are terrible things...I can think of worse places to vacation than the Smallwood:

[worth]

The only "western" nation that is growing internally is the US.

Their birth rate is 2.1 I believe. In order to have a growing domestic population, a married couple need to have on average more then 2 kids, essentially to replace their parents.

Canada, UK, Australia, NZ, all of Europe, Japan etc etc all have declining domestic birth rates. Canada's is around 1.6 I believe.

What countries have huge birth rates? Developing nations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_birth_rate

So the argument is that reduction of western civilization population will better effect the environment because we each have a bigger footprint that those living in a developing nation.

But to me, it is absolutely sickening to me to read and listen to people talk about things such as:

Children are bad for the planet

UK population must fall to 30m

This to me is absolutely ludicrous.

A huge downside of the almost "religious like" green movement has be the conveyance that humanity is a disease and does not belong on this planet. I recall reading an article a while back about people committing suicide to reduce humanities "carbon footprint". Absolutely disgusting.

I will vehemently defend the right to life and the right to reproduce in this free country, and for people to make their own decisions that is right for their family. The day when the UN or the government sets specific limits on children, or even thinks about reducing population through other means is the day we have lost the very thing that makes us human in the first place.

[Joborule]

Originally Posted by SebC

Bush = Quantum?

Glad to see I wasn't the only one thinking this.