Political Crossfire Forums

Pebble · Joined: 12 Nov 2005 Posts: 1143

Quote: they are mostly not hungry.

There are more than 850 million chronically hungry people worldwide according to research by the FAO.

perdidochas · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 15424 Location: Florida

Pebble wrote: Quote: they are mostly not hungry.

There are more than 850 million chronically hungry people worldwide according to research by the FAO.

Well, there are close to 6 billion people on earth. For ease sake, let's assume that 1 billion of them are chronically hungry. That means that MOST PEOPLE ON EARTH ARE NOT CHRONICALLY HUNGRY. In my dictionary, anyway, 1/6 is not "most."

Pebble · Joined: 12 Nov 2005 Posts: 1143

perdidochas wrote: Pebble wrote: Quote: they are mostly not hungry.

There are more than 850 million chronically hungry people worldwide according to research by the FAO.

Well, there are close to 6 billion people on earth. For ease sake, let's assume that 1 billion of them are chronically hungry. That means that MOST PEOPLE ON EARTH ARE NOT CHRONICALLY HUNGRY. In my dictionary, anyway, 1/6 is not "most."

850 million people is absolutely huge regardless of your own opinion that 1/6 should perhaps not matter? Malnutrition is widely recognised as being an extremely important worldwide issue, there are many other diseases and problems which are directly related.

Blinky · Joined: 18 Mar 2006 Posts: 2583

perdidochas wrote: Pebble wrote: Quote: they are mostly not hungry.

There are more than 850 million chronically hungry people worldwide according to research by the FAO.

Well, there are close to 6 billion people on earth. For ease sake, let's assume that 1 billion of them are chronically hungry. That means that MOST PEOPLE ON EARTH ARE NOT CHRONICALLY HUNGRY. In my dictionary, anyway, 1/6 is not "most."

Pebble was merely making the point that there are a hell of a lot of hungry people out there. There are more starving people today than there were people generally not too long ago. This is not progress, and should not be minimized.
There is a finite amount of arable land on Earth and due to prevailing economic systems/interests, not enough is being done to ensure that food production processes advance in accordance with population growth. We are literally producing more mouths than we can feed.

perdidochas · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 15424 Location: Florida

Pebble wrote: perdidochas wrote: Pebble wrote: Quote: they are mostly not hungry.

There are more than 850 million chronically hungry people worldwide according to research by the FAO.

Well, there are close to 6 billion people on earth. For ease sake, let's assume that 1 billion of them are chronically hungry. That means that MOST PEOPLE ON EARTH ARE NOT CHRONICALLY HUNGRY. In my dictionary, anyway, 1/6 is not "most."

850 million people is absolutely huge regardless of your own opinion that 1/6 should perhaps not matter? Malnutrition is widely recognised as being an extremely important worldwide issue, there are many other diseases and problems which are directly related.

I didn't imply that it wasn't a tragedy. My main point that it wasn't "most" people on earth. Those 850 million people aren't hungry due to the failure of the earth and it's resources to feed them. They are hungry due to the cruelty and selfishness of the governments directly in control of them.

perdidochas · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 15424 Location: Florida

Blinky wrote: perdidochas wrote: Pebble wrote: Quote: they are mostly not hungry.

There are more than 850 million chronically hungry people worldwide according to research by the FAO.

Well, there are close to 6 billion people on earth. For ease sake, let's assume that 1 billion of them are chronically hungry. That means that MOST PEOPLE ON EARTH ARE NOT CHRONICALLY HUNGRY. In my dictionary, anyway, 1/6 is not "most."

Pebble was merely making the point that there are a hell of a lot of hungry people out there. There are more starving people today than there were people generally not too long ago. This is not progress, and should not be minimized.
There is a finite amount of arable land on Earth and due to prevailing economic systems/interests, not enough is being done to ensure that food production processes advance in accordance with population growth. We are literally producing more mouths than we can feed.

No, we could easily feed those 850 million chronically hungry people, if their governments weren't siphoning off the food, and using it as a weapon against their own populations.

Blinky · Joined: 18 Mar 2006 Posts: 2583

perdidochas wrote: Blinky wrote: perdidochas wrote: Pebble wrote: Quote: they are mostly not hungry.

There are more than 850 million chronically hungry people worldwide according to research by the FAO.

Well, there are close to 6 billion people on earth. For ease sake, let's assume that 1 billion of them are chronically hungry. That means that MOST PEOPLE ON EARTH ARE NOT CHRONICALLY HUNGRY. In my dictionary, anyway, 1/6 is not "most."

Pebble was merely making the point that there are a hell of a lot of hungry people out there. There are more starving people today than there were people generally not too long ago. This is not progress, and should not be minimized.
There is a finite amount of arable land on Earth and due to prevailing economic systems/interests, not enough is being done to ensure that food production processes advance in accordance with population growth. We are literally producing more mouths than we can feed.

No, we could easily feed those 850 million chronically hungry people, if their governments weren't siphoning off the food, and using it as a weapon against their own populations.

Siphoning off the food to where?

Even if it were true that the current 850 million people could be fed, what about in the future when those 850 million people have children themselves?

perdidochas · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 15424 Location: Florida

The proportion of the world population that is undernourished has gone down since the late 1960s, despite the world population almost doubling (see Table 1 in the FAO report linked). While much work still has to be done, this is a good sign, and there is no indication that this will stop in the near future. Most of the current "crises" in terms of starvation, like Somalia and soon Zimbabwe, were once countries that were EXPORTERS of food. Now, due to the criminal incompetence and corruption of their leaders (or lack thereof), they are countries of starvation. The problem isn't overpopulation. If it were, then the world population would be increasingly more hungry. The facts don't follow the theory that we are running out of food.

FAO--Committe on Food Security

Gatz Nieblas · Joined: 20 Jul 2006 Posts: 99 Location: California

Wolverine wrote: MYTH #7 — The World Is Getting Too Crowded

We've heard protests about this for decades: News articles warn of "the population bomb," and "a tidal wave of humanity," and plead: No more babies.

The world population today is more than 6 billion. It seems like so many people. But who says it's "too many?"

There are lots of problems all over the world caused by too many people

But there's no space problem. Our planet is huge. In fact we could take the entire world population and move everyone to the state of Texas, and the population density there would still be less than that of New York City.

But, you might wonder, won't we run out of resources, like food?

Paul Ehrlich wrote the book "Population Bomb," and warned 65 million Americans would starve in a "Great Die Off" in the 1980s. The 1973 movie "Soylent Green" predicted food riots would erupt in the year 2022 but it doesn't look like that will happen.

According to media mogul and philanthropist Ted Turner, population growth is "a time bomb waiting to happen." If it continues, at the current rate, according to Turner, "Eventually you stand around in a desert with nothing to eat." But that too is a myth. We see the pictures of starving masses in populous places, but the starvation is caused by things like civil war and government corruption that interfere with the distribution of food.

With more people, we also have more smart ideas. Every year we learn how to grow more food on less land. Thanks to improved technology, the United Nations now says the world overproduces food.

About 15,000 babies are born every hour. But they are not a burden, they offer more brains that might cure cancer, more hands to build things, more voices to bring us beautiful music.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=123606

Um... what was your point again?

The overpopulation scare is, indeed, overblown, but the fact of the matter is, the human race does tend to expand consistently, as Thomas Malthus predicted, but the fact of the matter is that each mind born could lead to remedies of disease, could be the next great inventor, the next Bill Gates, the next great philosophe. The more people we have the more wealth we create and the more opportunity for improvement of lifestyle. After all, it takes an individual, just one, to change the world.

The Central Scrutinizer · Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 11:36 am Post subject:

Gatz Nieblas wrote:
The overpopulation scare is, indeed, overblown, but the fact of the matter is, the human race does tend to expand consistently, as Thomas Malthus predicted, but the fact of the matter is that each mind born could lead to remedies of disease, could be the next great inventor, the next Bill Gates, the next great philosophe. The more people we have the more wealth we create and the more opportunity for improvement of lifestyle. After all, it takes an individual, just one, to change the world.

Malthus was right in claiming that the human population expands geometrically, but wrong in saying that the food supply could grow only arithmetically. We are producing quite enough food to feed everyone on earth, especially with the advent of GMO's, although a lot of ingorant, well-fed white people are trying to quash that technological advance, which is a godsend to starving people.