by Alan Fernald

Created on: March 21, 2007   Last Updated: March 06, 2008

Despite the myths, there are more trees in the world now, than there were 100 years ago, or 200 years, or 500 years.

However, for at least the last 40 years, scientists have been predicting doom and gloom for our planet due to overpopulation. According to one report I read from the 1970s, we were already near our capacity, and we would start to have significant problems raising enough food once we hit 5.7 billion people. Well... we are at 6.5 billion now, and we still have plenty of food.

People want to point to starving children in Africa, and blame their starvation on the poverty caused by overpopulation, however, I dispute this, I blame the starvation on the repressive government filling it's coffers rather than helping to plant more food.

The solution to both the poverty and the environmental degradation caused by humans is to eliminate/remove all tyrants/dictators who maintain their own people in a deathgrip to keep them subservient to the government.

Once the tyranny is removed, the free market itself will come in and force the living conditions of the surrounding area to improve. The free market will obtain and sell the food, whether from local markets, or internationally, but eventually, nearly every country on this world would be able to sustain itself on it's own food production, which would nearly eliminate poverty.

As far as environment degradation, it is a proven fact that developed countries actually release a far lesser amount of environment pollution, than do third-world countries.

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