<p>Of all potential resources, ocean water is perhaps the least consequential to tap into. Considering freshwater sources like the Great Lakes account for ~1% of the planet’s water supply collectively (most of this coming from glacial water), it’s the closest thing we have to a limitless water supply. </p>
<p>Have you ever traveled on a cruise ship? I don’t know if this is true for all of them, but the last ship I traveled on obtained all of its water from the ocean. The drinking water, plumbing, everything came from the ocean. If a cruise ship is capable of supporting several thousand passengers’ water needs for a week with negligible consequences to the environment (when was the last time you heard of a cruise ship damaging an ecosystem because it used up too much ocean water?), imaging the implications of desalinization on a larger scale.</p>
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<p>What’s unnatural about using our ability to create technology to sustain higher populations? </p>
<p>I’m afraid population control has its own set of problems. If it’s voluntary, it won’t be universal. If it’s forced, it will be opposed. It would certainly work if executed properly, but its implementation would be quite difficult.</p>
<p>I would never suggest such a thing. I’d love to say that ocean water desalinization would be the end-all solution to world thirst, but I’m not that naive. While it may not be feasible to extrapolate these methods for 8 billion people, imagine how many it could. One million? Ten million? A billion, even? There is much more water in the ocean than you might think.</p>
<p>Rough figure: assuming a population of 8 billion people, there are roughly 40 billion gallons of water in the ocean per person. Now, I’m not suggesting we use ocean water exclusively, nor am I suggesting we use it on such a massive scale. I merely aim to demonstrate that ocean water is about as limitless as any resource on earth can be.</p>
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<p>Ah, but you see, the processes that gave us computers are entirely natural. At what point does the computer become unnatural? Yes, reliance on technology does have its consequences. No, reliance on technology is not “unnatural”.</p>
<p>We don’t always go to war to kill others. That is rarely our primary goal. Furthermore, wars are often fought for defensive ends. In many situations, if the war weren’t fought, one country would just take over another–like Hitler taking over Austria. </p>
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No. See, for instance, wars against Israel in the Middle East, fought because of the Arab countries’ desire to drive Israel into the sea and ideological hatred of Jews far more than for any economic reasons.</p>
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See above.</p>
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Do you really think that society’s basic structure would change given a new economic system? There will always be evil people, whether they have to worry about being poor or not. The common good does not motivate people; money does. After all “there is no struggle but class struggle.” What makes you think that people are mostly motivated by altruistic desires? That’s utopian idealistic bulls***.</p>
<p>Maybe the higher standard of living in Israel compared to Arab countries is the reason for the ideological hatred? Or maybe it just greatly intensifies what would otherwise be a resolvable disagreement?</p>
<p>The class-struggle theory for war is intriguing. I think it could possibly be applicable to the above situation. The conflict in the middle east is complex though, and I don’t know that much about it.</p>
<p>@Pioneer- There is no such thing as a limitless resource. The planet tends to do a pretty good job of keeping itself in balance. When we use technology to screw with that process, it doesn’t end well. Seriously, name one thing that we as humans have done with technology that hasn’t screwed us up.</p>
<p>Can you say for sure what the impacts will be of displacing billions of gallons of water every month? No, you cannot. So how about instead of messing with something that may (probably will) cause MUCH more harm to future generations, we lower our population to decrease our dependence on these resources? That makes the most sense. That way, we rely on the planet (which, again, does a pretty good job of balancing when left alone) to help us rather than our generally destructive technology. We cannot simply keep building and inventing in order to put a band-aid over a fundamental problem- there are too many of us.</p>
<p>The seed drill? Most of the advances of the agricultural revolution increased efficiency of agricultural output without causing lasting harm.</p>
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<p>The USGS estimates that the US uses > 400 billion gallons of water per day. That would lower the level of the world ocean by 5 micrometers. That’s roughly 0.00000005% of the depth of the ocean. Most of that water is replaced after use.</p>
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<p>Lowering the population (and by extension the future population) doesn’t help the people of future generations whose existence will no longer happen.</p>
<p>Just a thought: Have any of you actually live in developing countries? Or are you basing all of this off of WHO’s sappy commercials and CNN? Not that I don’t think all these ideas are wonderful, but it promotes the idea that people in developing countries are…never mind, I don’t know where I was going with that.</p>
<p>I want to impact the world, by providing a large-scale reform of the education system in America and the world, and by education people in general. But I don’t want to be a teacher.</p>
<p>Of course not. I never said there was. I suppose I should have been more clear: the supply of ocean water available to us is far, far greater than the amount we would need to satisfy the needs of a huge portion of the world’s population. I meant “limitless” in the sense that there is more available than we could possibly need, with plenty left to spare.</p>
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<p>I think you have an unfairly pessimistic perception of technology. Yes, some technologies have undesirable consequences, but on the whole technology’s intent is to improve our quality of life. Advances in medicine, windmills, solar cells, to name a few. There’s more to technology than tearing down rainforests, you know.</p>
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<p>I believe ThisCouldBeHeavn answered this point quite sufficiently. Displacing 400 billion gallons of ocean water would be like plucking a single leaf from a tree in a forest. There is MUCH more water in the world than you seem to think.</p>
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<p>This sounds all right and dandy in theory, but could you imagine the immense difficulty of implementing such a plan? It would have to be heavily enforced, and even then people would oppose it for personal or cultural reasons. Birth control methods would have to be improved and mandated, which would necessitate an external transgression of a woman’s right to her own body. Population control is a huge problem in China already, where unwanted females are orphaned from young ages simply because families prefer male heirs. I don’t think you’ve thought this through very far. </p>
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<p>I lived in Guatemala for four years. My grandparents currently live in Honduras. I’m not just preaching from the pulpit :).</p>
<p>The higher standard of living in Israel is because it is a democracy (and not just in name) whose leaders are far less corrupt than the leaders of many Arab countries, who rake in the wealth as their people starve. The ideological hatred is based on just that–ideology. Most Middle Eastern Muslims hate Jews because the Koran (and Hamas, other propaganda and terrorist groups, etc.) tells them to. Not because they resent Israel’s higher standard of living. If that were the case, why don’t they equally resent all other countries with higher standards of living?</p>
<p>Ok, I agree. But it’s not only that. Even if the Arab officials are pocketing all the money, Israel still has a significantly higher Gross National Product (GDP) per capita than the Arab nations around us. (For example, israel’s is twice as much as Saudi Arabia’s). This gap can’t be all due to differences in government policy. </p>
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<p>I would say it’s almost exclusively because of the various propaganda. Anti-semitism is a trend in the Arab countries; it’s the widespread sentiment. If you told a non-biased person to read the whole Koran, I doubt they would take away “hating jews” as a critical or important message. Though the hatred may be supported or excused by the Arab countries’ ideology, I’m not sure I would call it “ideological hatred”. Because I think the feelings underlying hatred and wars and so on are usually more base. They are things like greed or envy or anger at perceived unfairness.</p>
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<p>Well, the country must have a much higher standard of living for it to be an issue (the difference has to be prominent to invoke resentment). And Israel’s the only country that fits this criteria that is near to the Arab countries. For obvious reasons closer proximity will usually intensify relations.</p>