1995 Series 1 Number 15 Page 23
Andy Clarke, friend of prominent CACOR member Ken Hammond and member of the Port Charlotte Junta, reviewed what Lester Brown and Hal Kane (Worldwatch and Earth Policy Institute, who together wrote Full House) said about the number of people Earth could support.
The essential element is food, which is determined by land area producing it, yield, and irrigation. Other less important determinants of food supply were briefly mentioned (e.g., salinization).
Andy framed his observations in terms of the Full House responses to various observations made in an article in US News and World Report (Ten Billion for Dinner, Please, September 1994).
He concluded with this observation about the developing world: [P]opulations have expanded…to the point where their demands exceed sustainable yields of local forests, grasslands, croplands, [and] aquifers, and they have begun to consume the resource base itself. Food production and incomes are [being] reduced in a downward spiral, with the risk that death rates will resume their historical high levels, pushing countries from the second stage [of development] back into the first stage. Close to half the world’s people now live in countries where the spectre of social and economic bankruptcy or disintegration threatens a return to stage one will also mean a reduction in population (through famine?) to the former historical levels of primitive societies.
Link to | Population Carrying Capacity.
Andy Clarke was a member of the Port Charlotte Junta, a group of concerned individuals who met regularly with an old and valued member of CACOR, Ken Hammond, during their annual hibernation in Florida, USA. Andy read Full House by Lester Brown and Hal Kane, which he summarized in this article along with a 1994 article, written in light of that book, which appeared in US News and World Report.
For more on Lester Brown, see the link below.
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