Overpopulation and Resources
The Petri dish:
Dr. Bruce Lipton demonstrated with a Petri Dish using biomass and a single bacteria replicate while consuming the biomass. That bacteria could consume the biomass and reproduce by duplicating and have ample resources up until it reached 99% biomass was consumed, and still appeared to have enough food, at which stage it starved off and died.
Why Isn't Overpopulation Covered by Mainstream Media?
- Left-wing sources would be criticized for being racists
(Anti China and India for instance). - Right-wing sources would be criticized for being anti-religion
(go forth and multiply is arguably a mistranslation)
Food:
- The USA is a net exporter of food and can sustain up to 400 Million people. We have 320 million today.
- The central Plains Aquifer is nearly 70% drained. That kills our food belt
- Meat: We would need 4 Earths to produce enough meat if everyone ate as much as the USA
Water:
- Oceans: Overfishing and the decline of sea life
- Freshwater: fish species have declined by 76 percent in less than 50 years
- Great Barrier Reef – dye off – Crown of Thorns growth out of control because of farmland fertilizer run of
Wild Life:
- Monarch butterflies are now on the endangered list…their population dropped 99.9% in 40 Years because of herbicides (trying to feed too many people!)
Pollution:
- Micro-plastics are now everywhere on the planet
- You may be eating a credit card of micro-plastic every week
Deforestation (and overgrazing):
- Australia Deforested – 500 years ago, Australia was fully forested. The British naval empire deforested Australia to build its naval fleet of 646 ships….and it took about 6000 trees to build EACH wooden war ship
- Australia is facing environmental collapse – Pollution, mining, invasive species, and habitat loss are all contributing to an imminent environmental breakdown. Per the Guardian, nearly half the country is now used for livestock grazing, while logging and farming threaten much of the rest. Urban development has intensified in recent years, thus increasing pollution, waste, and stress on unstable water systems
- Amazon Rain Forest is being depleted to make room for animal agriculture (see references to how this in unsustainable elsewhere on this page.
- Arizona forests – Arizona was a forest 400 years ago
- Tucson Forest – Mt Lemon has a US Forestry plaque stating all the trees on the mountain top, were once on the valley floor just 100 years ago.
- “Steamboats of the Colorado River” book details the size of the Colorado and the “many rivers” in Arizona that are gone today. Many of which had salmon the length of a mans outstretched arms, and horses could not swim across without kicking their heals against them.
- Southern Arizona Oak Tree Forest: Copper Queen Mine in Southern Arizona has a 15′ diameter oak tree holding up the mine shaft that i personally have touched. It was cut down, along with all the other oak trees in southern Arizona, to help smelt the copper from the Bizbee and other mines like Jerome AZ etc. Pictures in Bizbee show it as a desert, after the deforestation already took place, as evident of the trees holding up the mines. All the “Oak Shrubs” in southern Arizona are the remaining roots of former Oak tree forest. Without enough rainfall (ended by cutting down the natural rain cycle when deforested), the roots can’t recapture their formal tree glory.
- Baja California Forest: Mexicans will tell you, that the gringos cut down all the trees along Baja in order to power the steam boats running to the colonies, before railroads had been constructed.
- Great Britain was once 100% forested, but In the middle of the sixteenth century Britain began to run out of wood (Building British royal fleet). By 1700 it had converted almost completely to coal.
- Greenland lost 95% of of its forests because of the arrival on humans. It used to be 40% covered, now 2%.
- Greece once had trees. It seems the expansion of Rome into an international empire was a key factor in the deforestation of large parts of the Mediterranean.
- The middle East- During the Crusades of the eleventh century through the thirteenth century, extensive pine forests stretched between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and some parts of Lebanon had cedar-dominated forests into the nineteenth century.
- Few people know that pine and cedar forests once carpeted wide sections of the region, and that the area teemed with large wildlife.
Strained Resources:
- The 26,000 year old Pando tree (Aspen Tree forest) is dying due to over grazing by animal husbandry /cattle.
- France running out of mustard (ok funny, but still makes a valid point
- Charcoal need is devastating jungles as much as
Hope:
Food Protein is created from thin air using only electricity
Permaculture can and has rebuilt the dryest of deserts into green forests.
The Claim:
Beavers Destroy the Environment!
Remember the cartoons about how beavers ruined steams by blocking the water flow? Or the idea that beaver pelts can be hunted to near extinction because beavers weren’t that important?
New York city alone had nearly 6 million beavers before urbanization. Now, New York is using Beavers to restore the environment.
Beavers Improve Environment:
Beavers increase the water table, and increase habits for fish and other wild live. There are many countries around the world realizing this, and turning deserts bank into lush riparian zones.
The Claim:
Wolves are a threat and dangerous!
It turns out, that 90% of wolves’ diet is rodents. Very seldom do they eat large animals.
Reality Check:
Yellowstone Park was almost a desert without wolves:
Yosemite Park was nearly destroyed because they killed off the wolves. No wolves, too many Moose. Too many moose, all stream vegetation overgrazed. No vegetation, no materials for beavers. no beavers, no streams (they run off). The end result is desertification.
The Claim:
Overpopulation isn’t real,
you can fit everyone on the planet in a 50 square mile space.
Only 3% of water is suitable for human consumption. Most of which is used for animal agriculture. If people become vegetarians, we would have 14 times more food
The Reality:
The average person needs 1.08 hectares of land a year for food production
8 Billion people on Earth by 2022
8 Billion X 1.08 = 8,640,000,000 (8.6 Billion) Hectares Needed
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Earth has 196.9 million square miles of total land mass
38% is farmable, or 7,486,000 square miles
259 Hectares in a Square Mile
7,486,000 X 259 Hectares = 1,931,388,000 Farmable hectares
8.6B Hectares needed, 1.9 B Hectares Available (or FOUR PLANETS)
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Note: This is If EVERYONE on the planet ate as much meat as Americans. Most don’t come close, but the numbers then come out to 2 planets needed.
