population explosion scare implodes

[Stan Gorodenski]

There is one problem with the logic in this reasoning that we are
underpopulated. The critic of the article is confounding population
_size_ with age _distribution_. The two are distinctly different things,
although I grant you an aged population will have fewer offspring. What
the critic in the article appears to be proposing is that the solution
to providing services for the aged, a social consideration or
humananistic value, is to _overpopulate_ even more. What nonsense. I
completely agree with Paul that technological advances will resolve the
problem of providing for the aged without encouraging even more
overpopulation. The facts are simple. We cannot have full species
diversity and _natural_ evolution in a human made garden (defined in a
very general sense) because plundering the land for all kinds of human
activity, such as increasing food production as Paul has so kindly
pointed out below, is indeed turning the earth into a kind of 'garden'.
Stan 

Paul Cherubini wrote:
> 
> Ryan wrote:
> 
>  > Before you go on, I apologize but this is not related to leps
> 
> > Yet fertility rates have now fallen below replacement
> > levels in 83 countries. When the higher mortality rates
> > of developing countries are factored in, fertility rates are
> > at or below replacement rates levels in as many as 97
> > countries.
> 
> I also apologize to the list for responding to an off-leps
> topic post, but it is interesting that Dr. Paul & Anne Ehrlich
> continue to sound the alarm bells due a growing world
> population:
> 
> Anne Ehrlich wrote on ecolog-l April 8, 2002:
> 
> "And the US has had no significant agricultural "surpluses"
> for decades, although we are the world's leading exporter of
> foodstuffs.  On a  worldwide basis, the food production system
> is increasingly in trouble while the population is still growing,
> although not as rapidly as it was in the 1960s.  The green
> revolution saved us the first time, but no encore is in sight
> that can match it for boosting production."
> 
> However, crop yield for even the most intensely farmed land
> in the USA (the Midwest) continue to increase:
> 
> SOYBEANS YIELD    CORN FOR GRAIN YIELD
> IN IOWA                         IN IOWA
> BUSCHEL / ACRE      BUSCHEL / ACRE
> 
> 1950     22.0                48.5
> 1951     20.5                43.5
> 
> 1960     25.5                 63.5
> 1961     28.5                75.5
> 
> 1970     32.5                 86.0
> 1971     32.5               102.0
> 
> 1980      38.5               110.0
> 1981      40.0               125.0
> 
> 1990      41.5               126.0
> 1991      40.5               117.0
> 
> 2000     43.5                144.0
> 2001     44.0                146.0
> 
> Paul Cherubini
> 
> 
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