http://news.sky.com/story/1139547/david ... e-families

*Wonders if he has grandkids, and how many*

There will be a time soon when the world cannot sustain the population

I think it's already about there.

With peak oil, peak water very close we are probably far closer than most politicians realise.

Except Chinese politicians.

The problem is that enviromentalists and human rights protesters are often one an the same. Yet they seem oblivious to overpopulation being the biggest factor in environment issues as they don't want to stop people having children.

Agreed, when we haven't already gone beyond the mark.

The Chinese are very rapidly getting greener every day. They dominate the production of solar cells already and they are also installing windmills faster than many other countries. They also have an appalling pollution problem which means that 8-20% of their agricultural land is now toxic with heavy metals so they might not be able to feed their population soon.

They're also building coal-fired power stations and airports faster than anybody else... They dominate the production of solar cells because they have most of the rare earth mines on the planet rather than through any great commitment to renewable energy.

The US are re-opening their rare earth mines. The Chinese are producing loads of electricity generation in general. Though our government are panicking about the lack of future electricity capacity.

That is standard Malthusian rubbish based on the same faulty linear principles as his.

There is plenty of scope to feed, shelter,warm, employ, entertain and educate lots more people than exist today. Peak oil didn't happen, and now shows no sign of being imminent. In fact I thought all the prophets of doom who mongered that myth had gone into hiding. Peak water is even less realistic.

Quite rightly so. All this pandering to ecowarriors with subsidised wind power that doesn't work well.... the need new power station, whether that be coal, gas (which could have carbon capture) or nuclear, we need something to keep the lights on.

Yes and energy efficiency needs to be included in the plans.

Indeed

Oh we're well beyond it.
It's an idea called Earth Overshoot Day, which is the day when we've used up more of the Earth's resources than it can replace in a year. Therefore every day of the year beyond that is a day we're essentially nicking off our kids.
It fell two days earlier this year, than it did last year. It was the 20th of August this year. I imagine next year it'll be around the 18th.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/gfn/page/earth_overshoot_day/

If you were transported to 1900, you guys would all be saying we're doomed, there isn't enough coal, and we can't possibly grow enough food for 2 billion mouths.
Send you back to 1800 and you would say, we're doomed, we can't grow enough food, and we are running out of oak (without which we will have no navy).

Like your confused predecessors', all your predictions about running out of resources are predicated on us also running out of ideas as a species, but the obvious empirical conclusion is that we are doing the opposite, the more of us there are, the more ideas we come up with.

Aside from overfished oceans, all the other resource panics are nonsense. There is an abundance of oil, and an even greater abundance of natural gas. To feed billions of extra mouths, the only improvement required would be for portions (not the whole) of sub-Saharan Africa to attain the levels of productivity currently enjoyed by Brazil (on the grasslands, I am not advocating deforestation - don't annoy with that charge).

There is also plenty of water across most of the planet (2/3 being beneath the stuff remember), the less well wetted sections merely have to decide whether it costs more to move water in or people and industry out. Either is perfectly simple to achieve.