Also I must say using corn as a source of fuel is high on my list of things I want to see done away with.

-G

Exponential population growth really only occurs in third-world countries where having multiple children is a valuable insurance plan. Here in the first-world, many countries are below replacement rates. Hopefully, improving the quality of life in those countries will encourage their citizens to have fewer children that they spend more time developing and educating.

It really seems weird to me how many people, even pretty educated ones, don’t get that exponential growth of the human race going up against very limited resources is a “problem.” About a year ago, as a TA for a freshman/sophomore-level biology lab that looked at population pressures (using a computer modeling system that used non-human animals), I stressed one of the “thought” questions that followed the exercise — What happens to the animals with limited resources when you take aware the predators, and how does this apply to the human situation? Going along with this, how can people prevent resultant “catastrophes”? From what I remember, students realized that bad things would happen (i.e. people would die), but when pressed for a “solution” probably less than half suggested controlling the birth rate… Most of them didn’t mention it at all. It really shocked me. (I think most either said to increase supplies/food, improve medicine, or something along those lines).

For anyone interested, Zero Population Growth is a good organization focused on this problem. And actually, flakeytheleper, the world population is now closer to 7 billion than 6 billion — currently it’s at about 6.7 billion. I know there are many such clocks, but here’s a population clock from the U.S. government census site — what’s sad to me is that if you keep refreshing, about every 5 seconds 20 people are born around the world… I don’t think the world’s growing resources to support 20 new human lives every 5 seconds…