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113 comments on The Energy Scene in India

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NC on April 10, 2008 - 9:53am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

No disputing your numbers but you are confusing quantity with quality.

The goal of humans should not be to determine the maximum population the earth can sustain. The goal should be to maximize the quality of life of each individual. Yes, that will require more energy consumption per person, just as historically the human species invests more energy per offspring than other species via one child at a time, not a litter of 10.

The human species needs to come to grips that we can't sustain an ever expanding population and still retain the essence of what makes us human. The key is to think multi generational into the future, not fixate only on the current generation.

Much better to have fully activated humans at low population for centuries than an enormous population barely surviving that dies off in a few generations. The first case actually allows for more total humans to inhabit the Earth, they just do it over many, many generations rather than all at once just before the resources run out.

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Kiashu on April 10, 2008 - 12:44pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The goal of humans should not be to determine the maximum population the earth can sustain. The goal should be to maximize the quality of life of each individual.

I agree.

And it turns out that if you reduce the quantity of people, you don't increase the quality of life; life was not better in the rubble of Europe, even if 30 million people had died. Whereas if you increase the quality of life - give relative prosperity and education to women - then they decrease the quantity of people themselves without any compulsion or genocide.

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FiniteQuantity on April 10, 2008 - 3:20pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

And it turns out that if you reduce the quantity of people, you don't increase the quality of life; life was not better in the rubble of Europe, even if 30 million people had died. Whereas if you increase the quality of life - give relative prosperity and education to women - then they decrease the quantity of people themselves without any compulsion or genocide.

You are using the aftermath of World War II to "prove" that less people is not better? Why don't you throw in the plagues of the Middle Ages while you are at it? If you really want to help your hypothesis, compare conditions before and after Noah's flood. Also, throw in Nagasaki and Hiroshima before and after a nuclear bomb was dropped on them - everyone would have to agree conditions were worse after the population declined...

If we only had 200 million people in this country - as we did in 1970 - think about how affordable housing would still be. Think about how much less oil, water, natural gas, coal, aluminum, phosphorus, etc. we would need. Think about how much better traffic would be. Think about how less congested our airports would be. Think about how much worse all of that will be when we make it to 450 million.

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HARM on April 10, 2008 - 6:13pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Why don't you throw in the plagues of the Middle Ages while you are at it?

Intersting aside: The Black Plague actually *did* drastically improve the quality of life for the serfs who survived it. They found themselves with an abundance of land and material resources and their (now scarce) labor highly in demand. As a result, the following decades were very prosperous for the serf class. It took a couple generations for the landed gentry to steal it all back.

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113 comments on The Energy Scene in India

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