[permaculture-oceania] population challenges - Adelaide as one big community garden?

[jedd]

On Friday 09 June 2006 8:30 pm, Russ Grayson wrote:
 ] Glad this is in theory. The reality is that it won't happen, so we have to
 ] devise ways to live with the predicted 10 billion by 2050. A pitfall of talk

 I'm confused about the causality sequence here -- are you suggesting
 that it won't happen, so we have to find ways of making it not happen,
 or that we'll find ways of making it not happen, so consequently it
 won't happen?

 It there's not enough arable land on the planet, with the current
 population and the projected availability of fossil fuels, to feed
 the current population -- and there won't be enough arable land
 in the projected future scenario of severely limited fossil fuels to
 feed the projected population -- then there's only so many possible
 alternative scenarios, surely?

 ] about how we "have to" shed so many billions of people starts to sound too
 ] much like accepting social Darwinism.

 I'd suggest it starts to sound like good ol' fashioned Darwinian
 theory, rather than any modern take on same.  Limited supply
 ultimately reduces demand, albeit in a circuitous and likely
 unpleasant way.

 The analogy Graham used previously -- that of the opportunistic
 breeding cycles of many Australian marsupials -- will be reflected
 more accurately once there's an almighty crash in population in
 response to an almighty crash in [food] resources.

 ] The consequences of going over some thermal tipping point could be dire. If
 ] warming alters the flow of the Gulf Stream, the UK and northern Europe faces
 ] a very cold future. 

 As I understand it, the gulf stream may revert to its previous path,
 taking it over the northern part of the African continent, and maybe
 with some positive (relatively) effects on the Mediterranean, which
 would put a lot of Europeans in an interesting position -- migration
 into Africa, with all the requisite fun and games that that would
 entail.

 Jedd.