This is essentially the product of my not having enough to do at work. Humor me. We've obviously got a problem with dwindling natural resources and whatnot. Assuming it was possible, how much slower would we consume those resources if we engineered an entire race of tiny humans? How much money would we save annually if everyone on earth was two feet tall? Any sociobioecomathematicians out there? ;)

How would this save our natrual resources? We still would need fossil fuels to get from point A to point B.

We could make smaller vehicles for transportation. Thus they would be lighter and use less fuel. Also our homes and other buildings would be smaller making it take less resources to build and heat them etc.

We'd be small enough to be eaten by common predators, and would thus need no fossil fuels at all! Honestly though, since the agricultural production capability of the land would remain the same, you'd like see a population increase to use up the same rough amount of resources. So less energy to move Tiny Tim from point A to B, but four times as many little Timmys running around.

But you'd have other problems. Wind would be a lot more of an issue since a 150 lb 6' tall man would now weigh 50 lbs, a 100 lb 5' tall person would weigh about 40 lbs. The children of this race would simply get blown around the street since they didn't weigh enough to hold them down.

Dogs and other animals would consistantly be larger than Humans and be quite the predator. Even some hawks and birds would now be added to the predator column.

Apples and other fruits that grow on trees will require additional resources to gather and harvest.

If some women never did shrink, you'd never get laid (http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/dvd-title-f/freaks-dvd/1014044/)

I'll try to think of some more throughout the day.

Ah, the fish bowl theory ... good call Malse should have thought of that.

well if they were engineered to be small people well of course the men would engineer it so that they are called tripod. :P

There's always the danger of man feeling the need to compensate for his...small size...as well. I'd think just to stick it to the fates we'd use twice as many resources.

So what if everything on the planet scaled down with humans. Birds the size of skeeters and shit like that? big dogs the size of kittens..kittens the size of small rats. I would weigh 48lbs at 2.5 ft! Hawt!

You are a goober Roliel. :)

:devil

Whether you believe God created us or Darwin had it right, there's a reason we're the size we are.

You all forget that there *is* already a short human population. Pygmees(sp). And they live pretty well in their wild environnement, mastering it like we do since we walk on our back legs.

To plagiate Malse, or Agent Smith, even if all human population were "small", we would fill all the empty space available anyway, it's our nature. So it wouldn't cut that much on the energy bill. :)


Edit :
Whether you believe God created us...
Reminds me a good "french" joke about that :
"When God created man, He said :
-Man is equal.
There will be white men, there will be black men,
there will be handsome men, there will be ugly men,
there will be tall men, there will be small men,
and all will be equal. But it won't be easy.
And futhermore, there will be black, ugly and small men,
and for them it will be very tough!!"