If you are an avid and thorough reader of the Daily, you may have read all the way to the back page last Tuesday. There you would have found a small article about growing intolerance for immigrants in Europe. This intolerance, along with our own issues concerning immigration, New York mosques and minority population growth highlight an issue that may erupt during our lifetimes.

The issue I mention is overpopulation and a scarcity of resources, not just in the United States, but around the globe. I got to meet a very interesting space traveler last year by the name of Richard Garriott. He was one of the first video game developers — where he made his millions — and is also a second-generation astronaut after his father, Owen Garriott.

When Richard Garriott ventured up to the International Space Station, he paid millions of dollars for the privilege, but he was also committed to doing useful research while in orbit. One of the projects he undertook was to photograph parts of the globe that his father had taken pictures of while on Skylab 35 years before. The results of his study and visual observations indicate that humans now use nearly all of the habitable landmass on Earth and are slowly expanding civilization to places previously thought to be uninhabitable.

Do you ever stop to think about the fact that there are 6.7 billion of us all floating on this rock out in the void of space? What happens when our population catches up to the development of better farming technology and we cannot produce enough food to feed the entire population of Earth? What happens when we deplete the fossil fuels that are currently powering our technological energy-powered society?

If we look at the course of history, what normally happens when resources become scarce is that the civilizations that exist will begin to fight over the remaining resources. It is already becoming more costly for populations around the world to exist. As Garriott noted in his talk, it is much more expensive to pump water into the desert to grow food and then truck it back to major cities, but many countries including our own are now doing just that.

According to a 2001 report by the United Nations, it is thought that the world can reasonably hold a population of about 10 billion humans, a population that the U.N. predicts we could reach in a worst-case scenario by 2040. Various sources estimate that the world may also reach a point of peak oil production around 2030, after which oil will be much harder to obtain from difficult-to-reach sources.

While I understand the need to meter immigration into the United States for economic reasons, some folks blow the issue completely out of proportion. Yes, some people may become alarmed that they see Hispanic workers “everywhere” or frightened by Middle Eastern people that they perceive as “terrorists” — for no good reason — but I say let them come! The population density in the United States is quite low by world standards and we have about half of Mexico’s population density right now. People from other countries and cultures are just as hard-working as those who have lived in the United States for generations. Also, weren’t we a nation founded on the principles of minority tolerance by those who were driven out of Europe for their religious practices?

There are bigger population issues that need to be addressed in the decades ahead. We can’t get caught up in silly spats over cultural, national, and religious differences right now. In the grand scheme of things, we should be focusing on how we can better distribute resources among the world’s growing population and looking outward for new landmasses to populate.

Should the human population eventually extend onto or under the oceans? Should we simply build more skyscrapers and figure out how to farm vertically? Should we consider colonizing new planets like Mars for future human expansion? These are all questions that our generation will need to start asking if we don’t want to face dire consequences in the future. What will your answers be?