Dear Mr Dick Smith,
In Response to your offer of 1 Million Dollars to reduce population -
The Wilberforce Award, and the $1 million prize, will go to a young Australian under 30 who can impress Mr Smith by coming up with alternatives to “our population and consumption growth-obsessed economy”.
Your going about this the wrong way, population reduction is not the answer, every person on this planet has the right to have any size family as they wish. As human beings we need to change lifestyles and resource consumption if we wish to continue increasing our population or to sustain our current population.
Lets take a look at some of the issues the planet is facing if we continue on our current path.
Land Mass
Land mass is not a problem – you could give every person living on the planet (approx 6.7billion people) a home on a 1/4 acre block and it still wouldn’t even fill Australia. So we know land mass is not a problem, the problem is getting people out of the cities that is where all the congestion is.
Will reducing the population solve this problem?
Well…. yes it will ease congestion in the city, but is it the correct answer…NO. What we should be doing is pushing people out of the city into rural areas or at least the outskirts of the City Metro areas. Instead of Governments spending billions of dollars increasing / upgrading cities infrastructure they should be rewarding small business, corporations, Doctors etc to open stores / business / practices outside the cities. This will not only make the rural areas more attractive to potential residents but will also bring more money into the communities and local councils, at the same time easing congestion in the cities.
Resources
Food and Water – Our 2 most important necessities for survival (apart from oxygen) , if we keep relying on shopping centres for these necessities then yes there is going to be a problem unless we cap our population, but as the example I have given above if every body as a 1/4 acre you can grow your own fruit and veg and collect your own rain water you don’t need to go to a shopping centre to survive. Also take in to consideration the food you will be eating will be much more nutritious, no pesticide’s, no growth enhancements, not genetically modified in anyway (unlike what we consume now) .
Oil - This is unfortunately our most import resource (apart from food and water) yet it shouldn’t be. Oil has been used for decades for fuel and power, there has been plenty of alternatives that just get swept under the rug because the oil companies have to big of a hold on this planet and wont allow these alternatives to be released – Just to name a couple:
- The Electric Car: There are a few Hybrids out at the moment yet back in 1931 Nikola Tesla ran a car solely on electricity, It didn’t even need batteries because it ran on wireless electricity (Imagine where the world would be today if this technology was not suppressed by the 3 asses – Morgan, Rockefeller and Ford).
- The Hydrogen Car: There are a few Hydrogen “Fuel Cell” cars in development at the moment, the only problem is fuelling them because service stations are yet to supply hydrogen last time I checked. The secret is we do not need Hydrogen “fuel cells” you can make hydrogen yourself all you need is water, a power source and a conductive metal. The first hydrogen motor was built back in 1807 in Switzerland, and in 1941 during WWII the Nazi’s converted 200 trucks to run on solely on Hydrogen, yet here we are 203 years since the first cleaner and more efficent engine was built and yet we are still using dirty and out dated methods of fuel???? WHY??????????!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????
Power – There are plenty of alternative methods to power; solar is a great one to have on your home it just needs more research put into solar absorption and storing power until then it is not reliable enough to be your only source of power. We still have tidal, hydro and thermo energy. Combinations of these 4 natural power sources will do fine powering any country. But the fact is all of these power sources still need more research into the most efficient methods of abstracting power from them. Have a think of all the billions of dollars (spent around the world) of our money and years put into research on climate change…… and what was the answer to solve all our problems… lets tax the citizens!! that will save the environment.
Now just stop for 1 sec and imagine if all those years and billions of dollars was actually put to good use (instead of scamming the public) and went towards researching the above mentioned technologies and we actually had a natural unlimited source of power??
So Dick, as you can see from my few examples given above a population cap is not the correct answer to solve our planet’s problems. The answer is people and need to change, there needs to be a paradigm shift and we need to take the power away from the greedy, money hungry and corrupt oil tycoons because really the only thing stopping this planet from advancing is greed and money.
Regards,
Wycky
