From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Greens vs. Property Rights
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<JMC.93Jan4212425@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> <1idj2cINNmbv@smurf.sti.com>
Date: 5 Jan 93 20:38:30

Alaric Tekiahyn includes:

In article <JMC.93Jan4212425@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>, jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
] Why does Mr. Ausman thinks the world could not sustain 6 billion
] people at the U.S. standard?  This is merely a fashionable idea
] of the literary culture.  There is no resource limitation that
] prevents even 30 billion from living at the U.S. standard.  Beyond
] that, it might be hard.


Sorry to be so blunt, but:  Bullshit.

For starters:
Where do you plan to house 30 billion people?
Where do you plan to grow all the food necessary to feed 30 billion
 people, at current U.S. standards, without clear-cutting every last
 forest in the world?  (And then what are you going to do about CO2
 build-up, after you cut down all the forests?)
What do you plan to do about all the pollution generated by 30 billion
 people living the way the average American citizen does?
What are you going to do after you exhaust all the fossil fuels on the
 planet (which will probably be in about 5 years, if you try to maintain
 current American living standards for 30 billion people)?

1. If the U.S. had its population increased by six, the country as a whole
would be less crowded than New Jersey is today.

2. That there is land was the conclusion of the old N.A.S. study.
It assumes highest level conventional productivity but no new technology.

3. If you cut down the forests but don't burn the wood, you do not
contribute to the CO2 in the atmosphere.  One way of removing CO2
from the atmosphere is to cut down forests and dump the wood in
swamps in a reducing atmosphere.  If you then plant new forests,
you get a net reduction of CO2.

4. Mr. Tekiahyn does not recall correctly when he says the U.S. uses
58 percent of the world's resources.  It is much less.  For example,
here is a small table for 1988, data taken from the Statistical
Abstract of the United States.

Mineral		U.S. product	World production
Coal 1988	950 mil. tons	5,231	(China is the biggest producer)
					U.S. is a net exporter of coal

Cement		76.9 mil tons	1,213	we imported 17.5 mil. tons

Iron ore	56.6 mil. tons	  902	we imported 19.9 mil. tons
					exported 5.2 mil. tons
					we also import steel and
					steel products

Aluminum	6.066 mil tons	17.608

There's lots more information where that came from.

In order to get the energy required by all these people, we would
have to use nuclear breeder reactors.  In this case, very low
grade uranium ores, e.g. granite, would last the earth for hundreds
of millions of years.

I don't advocate 30 billion people, but the world could support them.
To reach an American standard of living, people in poor countries
must change the way they do things.  It is their problem.  Some
poor countries have solved it; others haven't.

When Mr. Tehiahyn says "bullshit", all he means is that it disagrees
with the journalists he reads.  But that is just fashion.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.