Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Malthusian Catastrophe

Hilarious poster. and No, I do not agree with this mode of environmentalism.

After reading that Sir David Attenborough has (in Otterman's words) "come out and said it: too many people on earth", decided to do a quick search on the topic and came up with a bunch of interesting results:
  • Malthus was a political economist who blamed the decline of living conditions in 19th century England on three elements: The overproduction of young; the inability of resources to keep up with the rising human population; and the irresponsibility of the lower classes. To combat this, Malthus suggested the family size of the lower class ought to be regulated such that poor families do not produce more children than they can support. -UCMP
  • Both Darwin and Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of Natural Selection after reading Malthus. - UCMP
  • World population is projected to rise from today's 6.8 billion to 9.1 billion in 2050. - optimumpopulation.org
  • Assuming the global biocapacity and average footprint remain stable at the 2003 level, then, to become sustainable, the world population needs to contract to a maximum of 5.1 billion. - optimumpopulation.org
  • The world's 200 wealthiest people have as much money as about 40 percent of the global population, and yet 850 million people have to go to bed hungry every night. - Spiegel Online

Pretty scary facts huh. and I do know two Singaporeans who've told me they'd rather adopt than have kids for similar reasons: don't wanna contribute to depleting the planet; 2) don't wanna let another human grow up in this 'sad world'.

it's not all that bad right.. just enjoy life when you've been given it.

Other blogs on the same topic:

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