How About Some Logic?

Population certainly is a fascinating topic to research. The camps are very clearly divided, and the yawning chasm between them seems unbridgeable.

One of the things I hear the most from those who pooh-pooh at the thought that we need to slow down the growth is that there's plenty of room. "We can fit the whole world's population in a space the size of Texas!" "There's TONS of room, we haven't come close to running out of space!"

I get what they are saying. There are lots of open spaces around me where I live. I've lived in jammed big cities, and I've lived in rural areas where you can go a day without seeing a person. Their argument does not hold for me. Let's think about it, let's apply some LOGIC to it....

Let's all imagine a group of people in a high school gymnasium. It is furnished and they have open access to the bathrooms, of course, and they have their meals there and watch TV there and get on their computers, etc. It's pretty much their whole world, they don't need to leave very often. Most everything they need is in there. Their water source is in there and it is plentiful for their needs - showering, flushing, washing clothes etc. There are four of them. They have lots of room, and they pick up after themselves, so it stays pretty clean. They live this way for, say, a month. Then, their numbers double. Suddenly, there are 8 of them. No big deal, it's still a pretty big space. But their numbers are going to double every month. 16 of them aren't so bad, and even at 32, people have room. By 64, it's getting a little crowded. The bathrooms are not as neat as they once were, because many more people are using them. Food is going more quickly. Hot water does not last as long, and it's getting harder to get a good shower in. Their allotted amount of water isn't going as far as it used to, and what there is, is getting a little gross. Not everyone can agree on what to watch on TV, either. There's a lot more trash around and less space to put it. By Month 6, it's 128 people. That's becoming quite crowded, uncomfortable, smelly, *inconvenient.* Imagine the numbers in a year.

Yeah, I based that all the way down to the most simplistic of examples. These people were in a finite system. Then again, so are we. Earth is a finite system, just a really really big one. There cannot be infinite growth in a finite system.

So when people say we have plenty of room, they are not taking into account areas that cannot support human life. They aren't taking into account the extremely tiny amount of fresh potable water available (which gets smaller all the time thanks to all the polluting practice more and more people have.). In fact,m there are SO many things that are not taken into account that it is hard for me to find a logical standpoint with which to debate. I can't debate with logic where logic refuses to exist.

Is it me?

No, I am not an expert here. I'm merely an observer. Sittin' here. Observing.