One of the dirty little secrets of the progressive agenda is population reduction in order to "save" the planet.

The "green" movement or as I like to call it "more green in pockets of the leftist elite" has pushed the poorest nations on the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe..

"The inconvenient truth is that the total human population must stop growing and then decrease, if we are to have any chance in the long run of preserving our environment, having a decent level of living in a resource-depleted world, and avoiding an uncontrolled collapse of population like that experienced by some past civilizations."

http://maryland.sierraclub.org/newsletter/archives/2008/03/a_003.asp

I added this in case anyone wants to dispute my comments..



Rush to Use Crops as Fuel Raises Food Prices and Hunger Fears

Each year, an ever larger portion of the world’s crops — cassava and corn, sugar and palm oil — is being diverted for biofuels as developed countries pass laws mandating greater use of nonfossil fuels and as emerging powerhouses like China seek new sources of energy to keep their cars and industries running. Cassava is a relatively new entrant in the biofuel stream.

But with food prices rising sharply in recent months, many experts are calling on countries to scale back their headlong rush into green fuel development, arguing that the combination of ambitious biofuel targets and mediocre harvests of some crucial crops is contributing to high prices, hunger and political instability.

This year, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that its index of food prices was the highest in its more than 20 years of existence. Prices rose 15 percent from October to January alone, potentially “throwing an additional 44 million people in low- and middle-income countries into poverty,” the World Bank said.

Soaring food prices have caused riots or contributed to political turmoil in a host of poor countries in recent months, including Algeria, Egypt and Bangladesh, where palm oil, a common biofuel ingredient, provides crucial nutrition to a desperately poor populace. During the second half of 2010, the price of corn rose steeply — 73 percent in the United States — an increase that the United Nations World Food Program attributed in part to the greater use of American corn for bioethanol.

In the United States, Congress has mandated that biofuel use must reach 36 billion gallons annually by 2022. The European Union stipulates that 10 percent of transportation fuel must come from renewable sources like biofuel or wind power by 2020. Countries like China, India, Indonesia and Thailand have adopted biofuel targets as well.

To be sure, many factors help drive up the price of food, including bad weather that ruins crop yields and high oil prices that make transportation costly. Last year, for example, unusually severe weather destroyed wheat harvests in Russia, Australia and China, and an infestation of the mealy bug reduced Thailand’s cassava output.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/07/science/earth/07cassava.html?_r=1&src=twr

Wouldn't the anti green-say leave the food supply alone and save it for the peeps...to save the cost of rising food prices by not cutting into our already suffering food supply vs population and demand.

However which is worse higher gas prices or higher food prices....or higher gas prices, can we just build better greenhouses anyways for the food supply...it seems like we can easily grow plenty of needed food (corn-etc) in the right bio-dome setting where weather can be easily monitored.

Look at what science is doing, we can clone humans, no problem, what is the big deal with a few food products. There is a reason why we as a nation choose to deplete the resources of the other countries. it all boils down to POWER. What purpose is supply without demand. There would be no money in it for anyone. There are ways around it if someone actually cared about anyone or anything other than themselves and their money.

Don't forget what we are doing to the oceans. A lot of those expanding populations depend upon fish for their diet staple.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0515_030515_fishdecline.html

Im well aware of that, I taught marine biology for 6 years....have you ever seen the great garbage patch in hawaii? there is two sides to arguing this point, because everyone is in protest against whaling but yet we are worried about starving people. . .people need to also be flexible in their diets. . . nothing is being monitored the way it should be.

Im well aware of that, I taught marine biology for 6 years....have you ever seen the great garbage patch in hawaii? there is two sides to arguing this point, because everyone is in protest against whaling but yet we are worried about starving people. . .people need to also be flexible in their diets. . . nothing is being monitored the way it should be.

Drug addicts and welfare recipients should have their tubes tied, problem solved, you're welcome.

This is why i made this comment earlier, of course this would only help us, not all the other countries....Why arent there more forces when it comes to reproducing though, in china where babies are being abandoned left and right, ethiopia and africa, whew....all those starving children...i mean really people should be donating their medical services to vasectomies and hysterectomies that would solve a lot of world problems right there.

lol, and they make dogs and cats get neutered and spaded...that is solving the problem...

I read a SciFi novel many years ago by Robert Heinlein. In it, to have a child you had to get a license.
To be a citizen you had to earn it by joining the military or other such service.

Seemed like a better system.

I am confused as to the green vs anti-green point of this thread.

Sustainable corn production supports advanced biofuel feedstocks

Agricultural Research, August 2010 Top of Form
Researchers have found a cost-effective, energy-efficient, and environmentally sustainable method to use corn stover for generating an energy-rich oil called "bio-oil" and for making biochar to enrich soils and sequester carbon. The team used fast pyrolysis to transform corn stover and cobs into bio-oil and biochar. They found that the bio-oil captured 70 percent of the total energy input, and the energy density of the bio-oil was 5 to 16 times that of the feedstock. This suggests it could be more cost effective to produce bio-oil through a distributed network of small pyrolyzers and then transport the crude bio-oil to central refining plants to make "green gasoline" or "green diesel," rather than transporting bulky stover to a large centralized cellulosic ethanol plant. About 18 percent of the feedstock was also converted into biochar, which contains most of the mineral nutrients in the corn residues. Amending soils with this biochar would return those nutrients to the soil, reduce leaching of other nutrients, help build soil organic matter, and sequester carbon.

Charles Mullen, USDA-ARS Crop Conversion Science and Engineering Research Unit, Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania; (215) 836-6916, charles.mullen@ars.usda.gov.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2010 U.S. Government Printing Office.
Source Citation:
Mullen, Charles. "Sustainable corn production supports advanced biofuel feedstocks." Agricultural Research 58.7 (2010): 31. Gale Science In Context. Web. 7 Apr. 2011.

Document URL

http://ic.galegroup.com.proxy2.ulib.iupui.edu/ic/scic/AcademicJournalsDetailsPage/AcademicJournalsDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=Journals&action=e&windowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CA237533013&mode=view&userGroupName=iulib_iupui&jsid=7c565dd27c3cc4f5507b8e6de45bf665

Gale Document Number: GALE|A237533013

Title: Biofuels Done Right: Land Efficient Animal Feeds Enable Large Environmental and Energy Benefits
Personal Author: Dale, Bruce E.; Bals, Bryan D.; Kim, Seungdo
Journal Name: Environmental Science & Technology
Source: Environmental Science & Technology v. 44 no. 22 (November 15 2010) p. 8385-9
Publication Year: 2010

Abstract:
There is an intense ongoing debate regarding the potential scale of biofuel production without creating adverse effects on food supply. We explore the possibility of three land-efficient technologies for producing food (actually animal feed), including leaf protein concentrates, pretreated forages, and double crops to increase the total amount of plant biomass available for biofuels. Using less than 30% of total U.S. cropland, pasture, and range, 400 billion liters of ethanol can be produced annually without decreasing domestic food production or agricultural exports. This approach also reduces U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 670 Tg CO2-equivalent per year, or over 10% of total U.S. annual emissions, while increasing soil fertility and promoting biodiversity. Thus we can replace a large fraction of U.S. petroleum consumption without indirect land use change. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Subject(s): Biomass energy; Biotechnology
Physical Description: Bibliographic footnotes; Diagram; Graph; Table
ISSN: 0013-936X
DOI: 10.1021/es101864b
Database: Applied Science & Technology, General Science