John McCain is a realist – he has the foresight to look ahead at the nine billion souls who will soon populate this planet, and what they will need. They will need energy in quantities undreamt of, and the only way to solve that dilemma is an “All of the Above” approach. We need every energy source working if we would not have the planet plunged into poverty, misery, filth and despair. The first step on that path is making energy cheaper and more abundant in America so that we may continue to feed the world.
In this video you see Senator McCain call on Congress to come back and work on the energy problem.
How about just bearing less children?
Whose procreation would you limit Chen?
Getting serious a minute: the one surefire way to reduce population growth is to use more energy. High energy societies become wealthy and educated, where energy is used in abundance birth rates fall.
Well, I didn’t mean to suggest that it was realistic, just maybe that it would ultimately be the only real solution. At some point the population becomes unsustainable no matter what you do.
That point is far far in the future. There isn’t just one earth. We live in a solar system with 8 planets, three “planetoids”, 169 moons, and several million comets and asteroids. There are resources and energy aplenty for a long long time. Population will self regulate well before that if we make energy abundant. The planet will be cleaner to boot.
Well, don’t forget about food and water.
With energy food and water are not problems Chen. WIth abundant energy desalinization is easy, with abundant power the energy-intensive proposition of growing, transporting, and storing food isn’t an issue. See these articles:
http://noblesseoblige.org/wordpress/?cat=111
Well, I happen to think that its a bit more complex than that (and believe that a Malthusian trap is still a reality, expecially if the world population approaches 10 billion within my lifetime), but I’m impressed with your work on the issue, and will let it go for now.
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopinfo.html
SAY
UNCLE,
R
The “we are doomed” mindset can be a self fulfilling prophecy, but only if we let the Nihilists run things. There are dense dense dense populations supporting themselves quite nicely but energy is key to the success.
Saving the planet means taking care of the sewage of 9 billion people, not just feeding them and employing them. That’s going to take many petawatthours.