Hi Russell, Many large cities aren't near an ocean (Australia an exception), and it doesn't need to be arid for people to not have enough to drink or grow food with. Relocating hundreds of millions to billions of people to other locations has significant hardships, and the number of places with sufficient excess water, food, shelter and other supplies to accommodate any of them is probably close to zero. I agree and extend: War (worse than) desalination (worse than) decreased population. "Providing food and water security", whilst humane in the short term, contributes to population growth, which magnifies and delays the inevitable disaster. That was the point of Diamond's description of the growth history of these precarious cities. Agree that the education of women is the most effective method of population control. Ever see the movie "Idiocracy" (2006) with Luke Wilson? So funny, so unsettlingly probable. Even getting the first world to consume far far less, and the third world to do things in a way that's much nicer to the environment, it doesn't seem like an adequate solution. We can recycle all the toilet tissue and containers in the world, live hot in the summer and cold in the winter, ban personal vehicles, go strictly vegetarian, and we'd =still= need x Olympic swimming pools of water and y b-double trucks of food per person per lifetime. Please tell us how we can change the minds of right-wing Tea Party members, and the devout believers that "God wants us to multiply and will make it all OK for us if we do"? My generation made a massive whack at it back in the 60s and 70s, and was promptly followed by the Greed is Good generation of the 80s. Kids have an inescapable habit of rebelling against whatever their parents believe in. Good luck. I'm all used up. Carl On 24/04/14 12:18, Russell Coker wrote:
On Wed, 23 Apr 2014 18:01:10 Carl Turney wrote:
Also, Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" cites a large number of major cities throughout the world that have grown up by "mining water" (i.e. drilling wells), and how most of them are now "getting close to the absolute bottom". Then things will get =really= "interesting", as many aren't by the ocean and/or can't afford desalination plants.
How many cities are there that aren't near an ocean and are in arid countries?
As for not affording desalination, populations can migrate and spending our tax money on desalination and other water resources would be a much better use of money than spending it on wars. The supposed aims of most wars (removing despotic governments etc) will be better achieved by providing food and water security.
But the vast majority of people still believe that population growth isn't a bad thing, and extremely few politicians and policy-makers who'll dare to educate them.
Population growth doesn't have to be a problem. Educate women and provide a decent standard of living to everyone and the population isn't going to grow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territor...
Quickly scan the above page and you'll notice the correlation between standard of living and birth rate.
Now if we want to continue to have a small number of mostly white people (US, EU, Australia, etc) hog most of the world's resources and at the same time not have overall population growth then it's probably not a solvable problems.
But if we were to be a little less selfish and use more renewable resources then this shouldn't be a difficult problem to solve.