50 replies to this topic

[Frank Merton]

Overpopulation is yesterday's falling sky; today's is global warming (which, by the way, seems to be a more real threat).

I have no idea what the carrying capacity of the earth might be, and I think it would be foolish for us to carry out the experiment.  Nevertheless, with a much larger population, people today live much better lives than in the past.  Population growth is decreasing, both in countries with stiff population control policies like China and in countries where family planning is encouraged but without legal bounds, like Vietnam.  As living standards improve the cost of children proportionate to their work value increases and population growth slows.

It must be kept in mind that in the end the people is the only real asset a country has.  The rest is just monetary fantasy.  A healthy, educated population (such as Japan) does well without all the resources -- indeed, without much land.  The superpowers of the last part of this century will probably be India and China, simply because they have the most people.

[Br Cornelius]

Frank Merton, on 26 January 2013 - 08:22 AM, said:

Overpopulation is yesterday's falling sky; today's is global warming (which, by the way, seems to be a more real threat).

I have no idea what the carrying capacity of the earth might be, and I think it would be foolish for us to carry out the experiment.  Nevertheless, with a much larger population, people today live much better lives than in the past.  Population growth is decreasing, both in countries with stiff population control policies like China and in countries where family planning is encouraged but without legal bounds, like Vietnam.  As living standards improve the cost of children proportionate to their work value increases and population growth slows.

It must be kept in mind that in the end the people is the only real asset a country has.  The rest is just monetary fantasy.  A healthy, educated population (such as Japan) does well without all the resources -- indeed, without much land.  The superpowers of the last part of this century will probably be India and China, simply because they have the most people.

The evidence that we are living beyond our means is in the form of ecological indices. The ones that really matter are rates of species decline and extinctions. These are very high with many species showing declines of well over 40%. That mostly happened in the period when population grew from 3 to 7 billion. If we were living within the carrying capacity of the planet this would not be happening.
It is arguable that if we changed our behaviour the carrying capacity could be much higher, but we are not significantly changing our behaviour and so the decline in biodiversity looks locked into our modern lifestyle.

This is the situation with 7 billion - add another 2-3billion will wipe out a significant number more species. Eventually we remove keystone species and something really bad happens to the whole system in a totally unpredictable way. The ecosystem will recover when the population pressure reduces but that means that most of us will probably not be around to see it.

Br Cornelius

[Zeta Reticulum]

The current version of intelligent beings on this planet although being beautiful and creative, is in reality a grand failure.
It will eventually become extinct, and in eons to come, the earth will hold host to a new intelligent being, which may or may not be better in many ways to that which we are.

[Hilander]

With the aquifers getting low it won't be that long before this planet won't support the population we have now.  There won't be enough food and I think its a crime that some religions won't endorse birth control.

[Render]

About That Overpopulation Problem

Research suggests we may actually face a declining world population in the coming years.

http://www.slate.com..._exploding.html

Overpopulation is a myth and hyped by the media as the new doomsday event.
The world evolved constantly. If there would be more ppl science and all the rest will evolve with it..it wont "suddenly hit us". Otherwise the same reasoning could've been used by ppl in the past about now, and we're doing better as a population than ever before, in the grand scheme of things.

[Doug1o29]

Render, on 01 February 2013 - 08:59 AM, said:

Research suggests we may actually face a declining world population in the coming years.

True.  As far as it goes.

But the problem is that population is increasing in the meantime and will continue to do so for another 40 years or so, by which time it will be approaching ten billion.  We are already above carrying capacity, so a crash is coming, one way or the other.  We get our choice:  land easy, or land hard.  But either way...

The easy way is population (birth) control.  The hard way is starvation or environmental collapse.  And we get to choose.
Doug