America the Overfull

POSTED BY: Siri
UPDATED: Wednesday, February 14, 2007 23:42
VIEWED: 4728
PAGE 1 of 1

SIRI

Sunday, December 31, 2006 6:18 PM

My nephew sent me this Op Ed piece on the latest news of America's population explosion and his take on some of the ramifications. Perhaps we should move ahead on the space exploration and terra forming vis a vis Firefly scenarios. Wonder if the Alliance is keeping up?

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"Don't make faces."

Siri

STINKINGROSE

Sunday, December 31, 2006 6:39 PM

There was some federal peeking into the concept of terraforming Mars during the 1st Bush administration, or maybe late Regan era.
Not sure how far they got.
For fiction on the topic try the Red Mars/Blue Mars/Green Mars trilogy.
Just think of the opportunity for suburban sprawl!!

HORNSLONGTX

Wednesday, January 3, 2007 9:52 PM

America is not overpopulated. Nor will we be anytime soon. In fact the current birth rate can only barely maintain growth. If you need furhter proof please go to Wyoming, Montana, Nebraka, Kansas, or Texas. Plenty of room.

LAUGHINGMUSE

Thursday, January 4, 2007 5:15 AM

However, if you spread out the people living in New York, San Francisco, Atlanta, Saint Louis, and other major metro areas who live stacked one atop each other in apartments, you'd quickly fill all those "empty" spaces. My relatives are Kansas farmers; but in the past five years, much of that farmland has been developed into housing. The farmers couldn't afford to keep farming any more, so they sold the land to developers - who raced each other to throw up suburbs and tract housing that would not have looked out of place in Poltergeist or ET (ie, very similar to those neighborhoods).

Then there's the land needed to grow food...people can't live directly on the same land that's being used for agriculture or pasturage.

Land is finite. Just because it's not in active use by humans as living space doesn't mean that it isn't performing a function for human quality of life.

---------------------------------
Mankind makes tools; we use them to augment our hands, arms and legs.
The computer augments the brain and this makes it very unpopular with totalitarians. - Charles J.C. Lyall

MALBADINLATIN

Wednesday, February 14, 2007 11:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by stinkingrose:
There was some federal peeking into the concept of terraforming Mars during the 1st Bush administration, or maybe late Regan era.
Not sure how far they got.

I saw something recent on terraforming Mars on PBS. It appears 1/2 of the credible scientists think it will work and the other 1/2 don't. Go figure...I think that not all scientists at the time thought the first moon shot was possible. And nobody thought the Wright Brothers had a chance, it was positively ungodly. If they've got people willing to try, we should let them. I'd be the first to volunteer as a civilian outer rim dirt farmer!

"You can believe your eyes...or you can believe me." -Groucho Marx