"Earth population 'exceeds limits',"

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Earth population 'exceeds limits'

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.

Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability".

Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.

Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.

"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing "wild lands", and in particular water supplies.

Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: "There are probably already too many people on the planet."

GM Foods 'needed'

A National Medal of Science laureate (America's highest science award), the professor of molecular biology believes part of that better land management must include the use of genetically modified foods.

"We have six-and-a-half-billion people on the planet, going rapidly towards seven.

"We're going to need a lot of inventiveness about how we use water and grow crops," she told the BBC.

"We accept exactly the same technology (as GM food) in medicine, and yet in producing food we want to go back to the 19th Century."

Dr Fedoroff, who wrote a book about GM Foods in 2004, believes critics of genetically modified maize, corn and rice are living in bygone times.

"We wouldn't think of going to our doctor and saying 'Treat me the way doctors treated people in the 19th Century', and yet that's what we're demanding in food production."

In a wide ranging interview, Dr Fedoroff was asked if the US accepted its responsibility to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be driving human-induced climate change. "Yes, and going forward, we just have to be more realistic about our contribution and decrease it - and I think you'll see that happening."

And asked if America would sign up to legally binding targets on carbon emissions - something the world's biggest economy has been reluctant to do in the past - the professor was equally clear. "I think we'll have to do that eventually - and the sooner the better."

The full interview with Dr Nina Federoff can be heard on this week's edition of the new One Planet programme on the BBC World Service

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7974995.stm

[Peikko 1,575]

Wow, that's an interesting way to look at the problem.

[Yoink 7]

bubonic plague...AIDS...nuclear war.... coastal flooding...

my money is on human stupidity and mother-nature over human ingenuity

[Ban Hammer 13,333]

buy your ammo now, beat the rush.

[dalegg 143]

Earth population 'exceeds limits'

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government. [/b]

Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability".

Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.

Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.

"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing "wild lands", and in particular water supplies.

Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: "There are probably already too many people on the planet."

Do you know how much the world loves to hear someone from the US (that has no population problem) saying that "we" (meaning you and you over there) need to continue to decrease the growth rate?

[meowmeowmeow 1]

this was also something the UN said a few years back...that 60% of the world's population would need to go bye bye to continue to sustain human life properly....well, I guess that's where global war, disease, hunger, bombs, and all that other bullcrap come into play.

[Nagishkaw 510]

Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.

[Bobby+Umit 161]

Time to terraform Mars/Venus.

[Peikko 1,575]

Here's the thing. If the population of the earth has exceeded its limits, how is the 'solution' GM foods?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Here's the thing. If the population of the earth has exceeded its limits, how is the 'solution' GM foods?

A lot depends on how you define genetically modified foods. For instance, the corn grown today bears little resemblance to the native corn "discovered" centuries ago.

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/rele...e/IIBcorn.shtml

[Peikko 1,575]

No, and some would say that the corn grown today isn't worth ###### either.

However, moving right along - GM as in using for example fish DNA to modify vegetable matter.

But again, that's not the point. How is GM solving the population excess? It might move the goal post a little further but it's not solving the problem now is it?

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

No, and some would say that the corn grown today isn't worth ###### either.

However, moving right along - GM as in using for example fish DNA to modify vegetable matter.

But again, that's not the point. How is GM solving the population excess? It might move the goal post a little further but it's not solving the problem now is it?

Now I understand. Just like stimulus spending.

The issue that is not being discussed in this debate is of more concern, especially to California, where a lot of that food is being grown, and that is fresh water. GM will improve land use, and disease resistance, but yes, there become a point when even that is no longer sustainable. We are already seeing difficulty in providing adequate protein sustenance for much of the world, to the joy of vegans everywhere!

Did that stir some ire?

Edited April 1, 2009 by Mister_Bill

[Peikko 1,575]

Ire?

I like biodiversity - intensive methods of farming necessarily reduce diversity so I don't see that as a sustainable solution. The only real solution is to try to curb man's exponential growth but there lies the problem, how to curb population growth without impacting free will. I don't see a solution but we wouldn't let any other animal rape and pillage the world in this way, we'd cull them and swiftly.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Ire?

I like biodiversity - intensive methods of farming necessarily reduce diversity so I don't see that as a sustainable solution. The only real solution is to try to curb man's exponential growth but there lies the problem, how to curb population growth without impacting free will. I don't see a solution but we wouldn't let any other animal rape and pillage the world in this way, we'd cull them and swiftly.

Not you personally. Some issues just don't like to be publically discussed. For instance, culling, or population control, whatever you call it, may stir some "concern". For instance, one obsevation that has been reported, is the more educated and wealthy a population is, the less likely they are to reproduce. That seems counter productive to improving the species. Where do you draw the line, and start calling it selective breeding? Hilter's campaign for a super race make that a verboten topic post WWII, doesn't it?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

When we have extreme variations on human consumption of natural resources across the globe, any talk of overpopulation seems to be missing the mark.