From: Stein A. Stromme (stromme@mi.uib.no)
Date: Wed Nov 12 2003 - 05:33:06 EST
| The big problem is the population. The world simply can't continue
| to support more and more of us, but I doubt that sex and babies are
| going to go out of style anytime soon. Ultimately, regardless of
| what we do, we will be like the Reindeer below. Don't know when,
| because technology can put off the day of reckoning but it will
| happen:
It seems to be a general trend that with a sufficiently high standard
of living comes a lower reproduction rate. There are many reasons for
this (but it does make us different from reindeer). Hence, somewhat
paradoxically, the road to a stable sustainable world population might
go through a higher standard of living, probably including a higher
consumption of food and energy. _If_ the world's resources would
allow for this, population growth might flatten out eventually, at say
15 billion or so.
SA
-- Stein Arild Str¯mme +47 55584825, +47 95801887 Universitetet i Bergen Fax: +47 55589672 Matematisk institutt www.mi.uib.no/stromme/ Johs Brunsg 12, N-5008 BERGEN stromme@mi.uib.no
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