Letters to the Editor
Adam Ricketson
Published Letters: 84 Editor's Choice: 43
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Optimistic on the environmental impact
[Read the article: One billion down, 5 and a half to go]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm not too worried about the environmental impact of doubling the number of computers in the world.
First, we are constantly finding ways to provide computer access using fewer resources, and I expect this trend to continue. One promising development is the "Green Shift" task force in England (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6738547.stm), which is developing ways to provide computers to large numbers of people without all of the redundancy of our current computer-use paradigm.
More importantly, these computers will presumably increase the efficiency of the people who use them. I'd rather have a billion people making a living by software design (or whatever) rather than cutting down rain-forests to practice low-yield farming.
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pop con
[Read the article: Microfinance MBAs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm sorry to contribute to an off topic discussion, but the population control thing really gets me.
Conscious and active population control--to the extent that it involves mandates for individual and group reproduction rates--is pure megalomania. It is based on an incredibly simplistic notion of human behavior and economics.
In the places with the most population growth, there is no legal infrastructure to allow the reliable enforcement of limits on reproduction. In those situations, population control is simply another word for genocide.
Likewise, those are the very places where the realities of existence conspire to increase reproduction rates (patriarchy, poverty, and economic instability, to name a few). By targeting those problems, we can reduce population growth in a humane (yet indirect) way.
But at the bottom of the issue, there is no such thing as "overpopulation"--there are just real problems like poverty, pollution, and unsustainable practices. Given enough capital (including stable, fair social institutions and technology) there is no limit on the number of humans who can survive comfortably on this planet.
Unfortunately, we don't have those tools at our disposal at the moment, but we are building them rapidly. We should continue building them as rapidly as possible and dealing directly with the real problems of human existence, rather than pretending that all of these problems can be solved by adjusting a single parameter in the world.
Finally, urban sprawl in American has very little to do with population growth--it mainly arises from the fact that our lifestyle will expand to occupy all available space...regardless of how many people are involved.
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limits
[Read the article: Microfinance MBAs]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well, I clearly shouldn't have said that potential population is unlimited, since as far as I can tell, the universe is limited. I particularly shouldn't have said that the potential population of this plant is unlimited, since the amount of matter on this planet is just a tiny portion of what is available in the universe.
However...
I believe that we are no-where near the limit that would be imposed on us by the resources on this planet, if we had unlimited capital (which we obviously don't).
Just for example, consider that we (the USA) are wasting around 100 billion dollars a year on our social engineering experiment in Iraq, which is greater than the entire GDP of Bangledesh (about 150 million people).
My point is that poverty is not an inevitable side effect of the number of people in the world, even if that number were to double or triple. We could probably eliminate poverty today if we only figured out how to stop waging wars, and we didn't have so many people hoarding all of the natural resources and otherwise preventing others from taking care of themselves and their loved ones. Even if we didn't quite have enough technology or material infrastructure to eliminate poverty immediately, we could surely develop those resources over the next 50 years, regardless of population growth.
To wrap this up, I agree that the reduction of reproduction rates is a valuable strategy that individuals or communities can take to get out of poverty, but I deny that there is any reason to think that it is a necessary part of any strategy that reduces/eliminates poverty.
We have too many options before us, and obsessing over one of them will be counterproductive.
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local eating
[Read the article: Chicken farmers in the sky]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Even better, city folk can get food that was harvested only yesterday!
I'm most skeptical about the amount of power that would be needed to run this (I assume it would need a lot of artificial lighting)...but it seems doable.
This seems like it could be a good project for some rust-belt city that has unused industrial capacity and brownfields.
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Precedent for urban farming
[Read the article: Chicken farmers in the sky]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]There's already some low-tech urban farming in Pittsburgh. See this article: http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A27492
Over in Wilkinsburg, meanwhile, a greenhouse produces heirloom tomatoes and other seedlings, shipping them to hundreds of customers. If you're wondering how you could have missed seeing a greenhouse in one of the region's most urban areas, there's a reason: It's in Mindy Schwartz's basement, down with the hot-water pipes and bicycles.
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The problem of sick chickens
[Read the article: Chicken farmers in the sky]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd figure that a well-cooked chicken would be sterile, so it's infection may not be a big problem to the end consumer. Still, I have an innate feeling that I should not eat the meat of sick animals; I don't know if this is simple squeamishness or a deep-rooted survival instinct (which probably would have developed before humans cooked all their meat).
Anyway, there's another problem with the sale of diseased meat--it isn't sterilized as soon as it should be. A sick/dead animal is probably handled by more than one person before it is placed over the grill. During that time, it's disease could spread to the food-handler or to other livestock. I think we'd all be best off if the diseased animal were incinerated as soon as it was clear that it wouldn't recover.