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Question of the Month

How Can We Eradicate Poverty Whilst Avoiding Environmental Destruction?

The following answers to this timely and vital question each win a random book.

Global poverty is a manifestation of the imbalance between the ‘carrying capacity’ of a region and its population. The environmental catastrophe which looms and for which the current plans for carbon emission reduction are manifestly either inadequate or impossible is the result of exactly the same cause. Spaceship Earth obviously has a maximum capacity to support life at a tolerable standard. If that is exceeded, the environment and the life it supports both suffer. Plotting the increase in population against time on a graph shows an exponential curve, very similar to the growth of the population of a virus.

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