Bird Flu

[hohto]

The world isn't overpopulated. There is plenty of food and medicine, it just never reaches the places it's needed the most.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We don't need a flu to decrease the world's population. We need everyone to work together to solve the problems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Already we have to chop forests to get farming land. Don't know an English name for it, but it's really popular in Africa to burn down the forests to get a good farming land. This would be ok if they let the forest to recover for say 15-25 years. Now they are pretty much forced to burn it every year (and burn more areas) to get a place where to farm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The world population has increased dramatically past few centuries. Here's some statistic:

 

 

 

1 billion in 1804

 

 

 

2 billion in 1927

 

 

 

3 billion in 1960

 

 

 

4 billion in 1974

 

 

 

5 billion in 1987

 

 

 

6 billion in 1999

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look how fast it has grown. Now it has slightly slowed down, but it's still growing really fast. It won't take long to reach 7 billion people. When too many people try to share too small land, there will be a natural disaster. This already happened at the Easter Islands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You're saying there's enough food and medicines for everyone? If every American and European started to eat half less than they are doing now and donating the half to Africa, there's still be tens of millions people without enough food. Medicines are even harder. Now it seems that even the great and powerful USA doesn't have enough medicines when they really are needed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Call me a racist or whatever you want, but at least I'm not going to give a single penny when the Red Cross or some other organisation collects money to help hungry Africans. Why? Because for me it's the same thing as trying to kill Mother Gaia.

[Eng]

You're saying there's enough food and medicines for everyone? If every American and European started to eat half less than they are doing now and donating the half to Africa, there's still be tens of millions people without enough food. Medicines are even harder. Now it seems that even the great and powerful USA doesn't have enough medicines when they really are needed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You arrogant *hole

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

your right about if every European and American ate half of their yearly ammount and donated the rest to Africa, there would still be hundreds of thousands, maybe millions still dieing. But your thinking about the whole situation the wrong way. Dont think of the Africans (People) that are still dieing think of the millions of Men, Children and Women that are living because you have made a small sacrafice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I guess people like us and every other person using these forums are the lucky ones we were born/live into/in a country with wealth and power. What gets me going is the millions of children in African countries that cook for their families, clean and walk 15 miles a day to school and back. There parents, brothers and sisters are all dieing from AIDS and HIV, and they are so young they dont have a clue whats going on!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So when the Red Cross or any other Organisation comes to your home and tell them to clear off...I hope you dont believe in GOD because in my eyes you'll burn in hell!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry if my views are a bit strong but this is how i feel.

[xyrec]

Already we have to chop forests to get farming land. Don't know an English name for it, but it's really popular in Africa to burn down the forests to get a good farming land. This would be ok if they let the forest to recover for say 15-25 years. Now they are pretty much forced to burn it every year (and burn more areas) to get a place where to farm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No, we don't have to do that, the people there just don't know how to farm. They arn't needing more farm land in addition to what they're already using. What happens is the farm land dries up, becomes infertile, and they have to find a new place to farm so they burn down forest to get a new spot. Ages ago, they figured out that certain crops take things from the soil, and other crops put things back into the soil. To take care of this issue, they do something called crop rotation. In the US, if you drive past a farm during any of the warm months of the year, you will always see something growing. They grow soybeans early in the year, corn in the summer, and wheat in the fall, if I'm not mistaken. Because they don't usually do these things, farm land in places like Africa and South America just withers after maybe a couple of farming seasons. Also, in Africa, they suffer from a lot of drought which some scientists say is the direct result of the effects that our(the industrialized nations of the world) pollution has on their atmosphere, meaning that we should feel obligated to help them. If they could implement a massive system for irrigation, pumping water from the ocean and seperating out the salt and other things so that it can be used to water crops, and if someone would teach them proper farming methods, they could grow a lot more food and at least come close to feeding all their people. Only that takes a lot of money, which most countries arn't willing to cough up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a reason that only 2% of the population in the US grows, raises, or catches the food that the other 98% eats. Not to mention, there are vast tracks of land all over the US that arn't even being used. If it was all utilized, they could easily produce twice as much food yearly as they do now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh and we're also to the point in scientific advancement where we can genetically engineer plants to grow more produce, and survive better in tougher environments. The only problem is that they can't be certain what effect there genetically engineered plants might have on the things that eat them, or on the environments they're introduced to. However, science just keeps advancing more and more, so it's only a matter of time before we have a fool proof way of making plants that are perfect for farming in any conditions so that we can feed the whole world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The world population has increased dramatically past few centuries. Here's some statistic:

 

 

 

1 billion in 1804

 

 

 

2 billion in 1927

 

 

 

3 billion in 1960

 

 

 

4 billion in 1974

 

 

 

5 billion in 1987

 

 

 

6 billion in 1999

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look how fast it has grown. Now it has slightly slowed down, but it's still growing really fast. It won't take long to reach 7 billion people. When too many people try to share too small land, there will be a natural disaster. This already happened at the Easter Islands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For some reason you seem to think that the increase in population matters. It doesn't matter how big the population gets, as long as it doesn't exceed the Earth's capability to support them, and it hasn't. Easter Island isn't a very good example because not only is it a tiny island, it had a huge population for a totally isolated, itty bitty island. The planet earth isn't even close to that overpopulated in comparison to the amount of usable land that exists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You're saying there's enough food and medicines for everyone? If every American and European started to eat half less than they are doing now and donating the half to Africa, there's still be tens of millions people without enough food. Medicines are even harder. Now it seems that even the great and powerful USA doesn't have enough medicines when they really are needed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who said anything about eating less? What they need to do is grow more and waste less. When I was working in a grocery store, they threw away untold tons of food. From a single store. There are thousands of grocery stores in the US alone. One day I witnessed them puncturing holes in the bottom of milk jugs and letting the milk pour down into a floor drain. They probably threw away 50 or 60 gallons of milk just because it was past the sell by date. That was just the dairy department, at that one time of the day. They throw food away in all departments at all times of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Medicine is no different. They simply need to make more of it. It isn't that hard to make things like anti-biotics, vaccines and other simple pills that we've had for years, that could make huge differences in the lives of poor people round the world. The US could easily have provided enough medication for the entire world, possibly for years, with the money it has thrown at Iraq.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Call me a racist or whatever you want, but at least I'm not going to give a single penny when the Red Cross or some other organisation collects money to help hungry Africans. Why? Because for me it's the same thing as trying to kill Mother Gaia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's really sick. The countries that are doing the most damage to our planet arn't the poor ones like some of those in Africa. It's the big industrialized countries that are doing most of the raping of the planet so giving money to help people in places like that has nothing to do with killing the planet. Even if it was kiling the planet, how do you sleep at night. Those people are suffering agonies that I'm willing to bet you've never known. If you had ever known what it feels like to be starving to death or dieing of a painful disease like parasite infection or a horrible fever, you probably wouldn't be so callous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Besides, humans don't have to destroy the planet. We could just as easily take care of the planet and survive, but to do that we'd have to change pretty much our whole way of doing things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If there's anyone else who doesn't want to make stupid comments like a major flu being Earth's way of cleansing itself of our presence, please feel free to comment on the original topic.

[BlueLancer]

"USA can't support poor countries with medicine" is a lie. Vaccinations for the most common causes of death in poor countries cost $0.40 each to produce. To prevent the 700 million or so people that could die because of malaria, etc. in the next decade or so, a total of $280 million dollars would need to be forked out for vaccinations. Sorry, but if the USA can spend $101 billion on useless crap like traveling to the moon, I'm sure it also could save the world for less than a percent of that price. How many people were saved because people walked on moon? Did mankind 'advance' in any way because of it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And yes, it's very much a matter of money being channeled to the right places instead of living space running out. Why is most of China still poor even though the country is industrialising at a great pace? Simple: The people living in the farms are too numerous, they can't afford to live in a city. Once more and more companies open, they will get jobs, get wealthier, even if it's a mechanical job they need to operate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's really the same issue as it's with America. A long time ago most americans were farmers, now 100+ years later they're the minority. This will eventually happen in other poor countries, very likely during our lifetime, and the economies of african, middle eastern and asian countries will be very powerful and they will be able to support their own people. Until then, they need help.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hohto, I think it's sick to say you or I can decide "Who can live and who can't". There's no such thing as a "useless life" as you say, I can't believe I heard that from such a respected tip.it/scapeboard person like you. Those children that are born in poor countries are worth just as much as your child if you ever have any.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's not their fault they were born in a poor place and definitely we can't judge them. We should be happy we were born into western countries and we have a great power of capital (by donating money) to save human lives. If you make $5k a month and donate just 1% of that every month (or the government makes it mandatory), that's still nothing to you and your lifestyle wont decrease. Instead, you will feed tens of people.

[Eng]

You never know one of these worthless african/asia lifes could one day find a cure for cancer. everybody on the planet deserves a chance to achieve there best. Some people just need help to get going.

[hohto]

No, we don't have to do that, the people there just don't know how to farm. They arn't needing more farm land in addition to what they're already using. What happens is the farm land dries up, becomes infertile, and they have to find a new place to farm so they burn down forest to get a new spot. Ages ago, they figured out that certain crops take things from the soil, and other crops put things back into the soil. To take care of this issue, they do something called crop rotation. In the US, if you drive past a farm during any of the warm months of the year, you will always see something growing. They grow soybeans early in the year, corn in the summer, and wheat in the fall, if I'm not mistaken. Because they don't usually do these things, farm land in places like Africa and South America just withers after maybe a couple of farming seasons. Also, in Africa, they suffer from a lot of drought which some scientists say is the direct result of the effects that our(the industrialized nations of the world) pollution has on their atmosphere, meaning that we should feel obligated to help them. If they could implement a massive system for irrigation, pumping water from the ocean and seperating out the salt and other things so that it can be used to water crops, and if someone would teach them proper farming methods, they could grow a lot more food and at least come close to feeding all their people. Only that takes a lot of money, which most countries arn't willing to cough up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh and we're also to the point in scientific advancement where we can genetically engineer plants to grow more produce, and survive better in tougher environments. The only problem is that they can't be certain what effect there genetically engineered plants might have on the things that eat them, or on the environments they're introduced to. However, science just keeps advancing more and more, so it's only a matter of time before we have a fool proof way of making plants that are perfect for farming in any conditions so that we can feed the whole world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So you're saying that if the Africans knew how to farm, there would be no lack of food? First of all, it's not only that. There's far too dry at many places (look at Sahel's area for example) to farm. It's not because they don't know, it's because they can't. It's not just a coincidence that almost all the countries where people are lacking food are near the ecuator.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That seawater scenario sounds an unbelievable thing. First of all it would cost a dirty amount of money (if it's even possible to build one) to build it. So much money that you could buy what like 10 biggest industries in this world and still you would never run out of money. Also what would it cause to the seas?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On 60-70s there was this so called green revolution (don't know exact English term for it) which basically gave more time for Asia. These new special seeds gave like 3 times more food than basic ones, but still they aren't used in Africa. Why? Because it's impossible to use them there! First of all their technology isn't good enough and second, they don't have places to farm or not even enough water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I understand your point on the industrial country part. However it doesn't change the fact that before Europeans there was basically nothing to be proud of. Technically they were total zeros. No big inventions, really primitive tools, not even a written language. If we had left them all alone, they'd probably still use rocks to light a fire, women would get their 5th child at the age of 16 and aids would be something that someone has once heard of but no1 really knows what is is. And by the way, I don't think I own a single penny to African countries because of those times. We (finns) didn't go to African to get ourselves some lands where to get resources.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For some reason you seem to think that the increase in population matters. It doesn't matter how big the population gets, as long as it doesn't exceed the Earth's capability to support them, and it hasn't. Easter Island isn't a very good example because not only is it a tiny island, it had a huge population for a totally isolated, itty bitty island. The planet earth isn't even close to that overpopulated in comparison to the amount of usable land that exists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First of all it matters a lot. We have only limited resources and we can't just get more and more land to farm, water for our plants, food for our animals. We know product more food than a century ago, but our population has grown more than that. Eventually our population will meet the limit and then people start to die. Look at Malthus' theory for example.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Easter Islands can be seen as a warning. There was too much people for the resources. Same thing is in Africa, there isn't enough resources to feed everyone. If there was, we wouldn't need to send them food aid.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You're saying there's enough food and medicines for everyone? If every American and European started to eat half less than they are doing now and donating the half to Africa, there's still be tens of millions people without enough food. Medicines are even harder. Now it seems that even the great and powerful USA doesn't have enough medicines when they really are needed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who said anything about eating less? What they need to do is grow more and waste less. When I was working in a grocery store, they threw away untold tons of food. From a single store. There are thousands of grocery stores in the US alone. One day I witnessed them puncturing holes in the bottom of milk jugs and letting the milk pour down into a floor drain. They probably threw away 50 or 60 gallons of milk just because it was past the sell by date. That was just the dairy department, at that one time of the day. They throw food away in all departments at all times of the day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know about your place, but at least here we reuse our unneeded food. We have composts here where we throw food we don't eat. That compost is used to product more food. That's not a waste if you ask me. I don't understand that milk part. Milk doesn't "survive" long, so we can't just take the unneeded milk to foreign countries. Should we just milk our cows less? By the way, many Africans can't even drink cow milk. A genetic mutation has made it possible for human (I'm now talking about whole rage, not just white people) to stand it. At Africa that mutation is pretty rare. At summer I was working with the arrangements of Helsinki Cup (one of the biggest junior soccer tournaments in the whole word) and from a Gambian team there was only a handful of players who could drink milk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Medicine is no different. They simply need to make more of it. It isn't that hard to make things like anti-biotics, vaccines and other simple pills that we've had for years, that could make huge differences in the lives of poor people round the world. The US could easily have provided enough medication for the entire world, possibly for years, with the money it has thrown at Iraq.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Again... Are you really so naive that you think we can just product more and more medicines forever? We can't just call a lab and tell them to product 6 billion injections. It takes a lot of time to make medicines. There was an article at Helsingin Sanomat (biggest Finnish newspaper) that if we ordered enough medicines for every finn (bird flu injections btw), it would take 3 months to make them (at the USA), the possibility that they didn't work was high (one slight mutation to the bactery and the medicines is useless) and it would cost a lot. There's 5,2million finns atm. If we tried to get medicines to everyone in this world, it would take years to product them and they'd probably be useless because of a slight mutation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some more simple medicines would be pretty easy to product, but what would they help in a long run? Just cause more overpopulation. We need to work for the food&water problem first. I agree with the Iraq part, it was totally unneeded. Not only because of economic reasons, but it has probably caused more deaths and sorrow than Saddam could have caused.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's really sick. The countries that are doing the most damage to our planet arn't the poor ones like some of those in Africa. It's the big industrialized countries that are doing most of the raping of the planet so giving money to help people in places like that has nothing to do with killing the planet. Even if it was kiling the planet, how do you sleep at night. Those people are suffering agonies that I'm willing to bet you've never known. If you had ever known what it feels like to be starving to death or dieing of a painful disease like parasite infection or a horrible fever, you probably wouldn't be so callous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Besides, humans don't have to destroy the planet. We could just as easily take care of the planet and survive, but to do that we'd have to change pretty much our whole way of doing things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If there's anyone else who doesn't want to make stupid comments like a major flu being Earth's way of cleansing itself of our presence, please feel free to comment on the original topic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, it's the industrial countries that poison Mother Gaia. I agree with that but I see the overpopulation as a real threat. I don't support China's or USA's enviromental policy, but I don't either support overpopulation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Call me a sick freak or whatever you want, but at least I don't feel sorry for those people. Why should I be sorry? It just helps the earth to survive. I don't believe that we are all equal to each other. I see us as just another animal specie. In nature animals aren't equal, the ones that aren't strong enough will die.