Episode 3: Food: There's lots of it

Family planning

Those programs are in place to inform the uninformed about AIDS.

Inform people about aids?

AIDS is not the only STD (sexually transmitted disease) known to man. There are actually quite a number of these and many of them are just as dangerous.
While these programs do in fact inform people about AIDs, they do not help in stopping the spread of it or other STDs.
Oral contraceptives just prevent women from having babies and increases their risk for cancer and other terrible side effects. (one of the three german scientists who invented oral contraceptives admitted it and several studies can be found on this subject. Look it up) Anyway, these women, though unable to conceive, may still engage in sexual activity and may still transmit STDs.
Condoms on the other hand merely prevent genital contact. But the genitals are only one part of the lower body. There are still other parts of the lower body that can spread an STD (for those STDs that are transmitted through contact) like the hips, thighs, and areas near the groin/crotch/whatever you wanna call it.

Food: there's lots of it...

I wonder if the argument that the use of modern agriculture methods, whether in Africa or elsewhere, could be the solution to hunger takes into consideration the energy cost of modern agriculture methods and how unsustainable it may be should an energy crisis become a reality.

I also wonder what would the ramifications be of destroying Africa's natural ecosystem by converting all its land into agricultural farmland.

Think about it.

Food: there's lots of it...

I'd agree that the energy required to grow all the food, as well as power all of the world's devices, could be too much for the world to supply. Maybe that should be the subject of the next video: How to provide energy for the world. It may be another solvable problem, or it might be another big dilemma. However, the whole "ramifications of destroying Africa's natural ecosystem" is somewhat missing the point. What the video is trying to say is that the whole world could be fed by that amount of farming area. It's not saying that we should grow our food exclusively on the African savannah. If that area were to be spread out across the whole wide world, along with the living area mentioned in the first video (about the size of Texas), there would still be plenty of space for the world's natural ecosystems to thrive.

Energy isn't as big a problem as everyone thinks

The energy problem isn't that we are short on ways of producing it; it's that the obvious next step—towards a higher energy density—is unjustifiably associated in everyone's minds with the most terrible weapon we've ever produced.

By moving towards nuclear power, a lot of the issues of limited resources can be delayed for potentially "hundreds of thousands of years," according to Kirk Sorensen.
(http://bit.ly/aYwQMC)

HT3R reactor project in Texas, which is a joint project between the University of Texas system and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, offers potential solutions to a large number of problems, including an industrial-scale test of the creation of synthetic hydrocarbon fuels. According to their website: "Additionally, the excess high-temperature process heat from these reactors is sufficient to economically create hydrogen from water, synthetic hydrocarbon fuels from coal and long-chain hydrocarbons, plus desalinate brackish water."
(http://www.utpb.edu/research-grants/ht3r/)

According to Dr. Carlo Rubbia af CERN, one ton of Thorium (the fuel for the HT3R project above), "produces as much energy as 200 tonnes of uranium, or 3,500,000 tonnes of coal."
(http://bit.ly/aYwQMC again)

Again from Kirk Sorensen, "About 100 grams, or 8 tablespoons, of thorium could provide the energy used by an American during his or her lifetime."

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#Possible_benefits