34 replies to this topic

[Render]

Ugh, oh no. It appears that putting some articles in there that have no meaning to me either was a mistake. Because that's the first thing you go after.
I just added them to the post, after i wrote everything else to avoid a follow up post as "oh yeah, says who" ... i don't care about the article, it;s just to prove a point that nobody knows how much earth can sustain so the term "overpopulation" is a fallacy in itself. Just like you guys can write overpopulation is superimportant there are other guys out there (as the articles prove) that write the opposite. Because overpopulation is vague and non-existent.

If I could i'd remove the articles, but I can't edit that post anymore. So do me the favor of ignoring it and don't assume those articles were the basis for the rest of my post. Which of course they weren't.

What you mention about technology not offering the solution to everything. I do believe science holds the answer, because it is already changing things as we speak, maybe it's going too gradually for ppl to notice but it's in effect. It's a multi faceted problem and from all fronts it's coming together. Economically, financially, socially, etc. Perhaps too slowly for some, but still. That's the whole struggle of cost and benefits you are reffering to.
Ppl just like to use terms like "crisis", "doom", "no solution". In the end there always is a solution because the perseverance of humanity can not and should not be underestimated.

Maybe of interest : http://www.mancheste...e-can-help.html

Edited by Render, 05 December 2012 - 05:14 PM.

[Br Cornelius]

Let me site to examples of what happens when you apply highly efficient solutions to the problem of large populations;

1- Irelands west coast once supported 8million people who were almost exclusively dependent on the potato (a wonder crop) for sustenance. That crop failed over a number of particularly bad few seasons and the population crashed with net emigration and about 1million starving to death. The outcome could have been different if the dominant attitude in Britain wasn't one of free-market neoliberalism and an innate streak of anti catholic racism. The powers that be decided to let matters play out in a natural way. The population crashed to less than 1/2 million and has never recovered since.
2- Rwanda was one of the most densely populated and productive agricultural nations in the world relying on a few staples to feed an ever growing population. Innate racial tensions made the pressures of population explode in a genocide of unimaginable ferocity - but fundamentally it was a resource and food crisis which was at play. Again the world chose not to intervene in any meaningful way.

What do these two micro examples have to tell us about the current situation;
1- Ideology and inertia generally overtake the situation and result in the worst possible outcome manifesting
2- dependence on a few highly productive crops (about 8 staples for the world) makes you highly vulnerable to external factors such as weather and disease.  
3- rarely do external agents intervene in these situations - and in the case of the world global civilization - we are all we have got to fall back on.
4- large populations can crash dramatically in a few years

The solutions to these problems are;
1- reduce population to manageable levels with large surplus capacity in resources and food especially
2- diversify crops on a local level to build robustness into the overall system
3- change the diet of the world such that meat comprises at most 10% of all food consumed
4- change the economic system to discourage the reliance on cash crops
5- decarbonize food production ( and face the inevitable consequence of reduced overall productivity)
6- reduce supply chains such that the majority of food is supplied from a 100 mile radius of its point of use

The problem is that for each and every one of these solutions we are in fact going in completely the opposite direction. We are building a system which has got failure guaranteed at its very foundations. I am not and cannot be optimistic with circumstances as they are.

You see i have thought about this and know what solutions can address the problem - the issue is that none of them will be applied in the window of opportunity in which we have to implement them.


Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 05 December 2012 - 05:52 PM.

[darkmoonlady]

Here is an FYI Hispanics in North America were here long before the English so if you are bothered by Hispanics they if you will "population seniority". I used to live in California and heard plenty of anti Hispanic anti immigration talk which always bothered me. White people practiced effective occupation of the California territory to steal it away from Hispanics, gold rush, westward manifest destiny and all? That there is a population of Hispanics that live in the US (legally or otherwise) you can call a balancing of what we did to them.

[Br Cornelius]

PS - Don't use references unless you read and understand them first - otherwise they have a tendency to not support your argument.

Br Cornelius

[Render]

Br Cornelius, on 05 December 2012 - 05:53 PM, said:

PS - Don't use references unless you read and understand them first - otherwise they have a tendency to not support your argument.

Br Cornelius

PS - Don't respond to the part of the post that wasn't meant for you. I clearly quoted another poster.
And learn to read a full post to understand that the rest of my post-argument had nothing to do with those silly articles, used to prove a superficial point that overpopulation is a vague term void of any meaning.

Oh, and don't try to lecture me again.

And in a lot of your examples you leave out a whole lot of different things science is working on. You're just proving my point that we are all gradually evolving towards a solution. And as with every evolution, there are bumps in the road, and try outs, and eventually the temporarily most suited solution comes forward.
For example, you keep talking about crops but fail to take into account that maybe in a few decades we wont have any use or need for crops anymore. Labs can take over food production for example.
Anyway, you have your pessimist view, i'll stick to my positivist view.

[Br Cornelius]

Techno optimists make me laugh - you've got such a shinny track record to build your hopes on.

Food grown exclusively in vats - Solylant Green anyone



PS - I am an environmental scientist and see very clearly the cost benefit analysis of new technologies.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 05 December 2012 - 06:41 PM.

[Professor Buzzkill]

Br Cornelius, on 05 December 2012 - 06:37 PM, said:

PS - I am an environmental scientist and see very clearly the cost benefit analysis of new technologies.

Br Cornelius

Wouldn't a cheap and easy way of reducing global population be to stop sending aid to disaster/famine hit areas? Or would this be an unethical way to cull the population?

Or do we need to draw straws?

[Br Cornelius]

Professor Buzzkill, on 05 December 2012 - 06:52 PM, said:

Wouldn't a cheap and easy way of reducing global population be to stop sending aid to disaster/famine hit areas? Or would this be an unethical way to cull the population?

Or do we need to draw straws?

Education and contraception seem to be the best ethical tools we have. I am not willing to speculate about unethical methods.
Redistribution of the global wealth such that people are not so dependent on large families would probably help. Universal wealthfare was the real kicker for large families in the UK so it has something of a track record of producing results.

It requires us to accept that people in the third world deserve a humane standard of living before we can hope to address the growth of population in the developing world. This is the message of the UN - but they seem to be rather unpopular in some quarters.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 05 December 2012 - 07:02 PM.

[Bella-Angelique]

darkmoonlady, on 05 December 2012 - 05:49 PM, said:

Here is an FYI Hispanics in North America were here long before the English so if you are bothered by Hispanics they if you will "population seniority". I used to live in California and heard plenty of anti Hispanic anti immigration talk which always bothered me. White people practiced effective occupation of the California territory to steal it away from Hispanics, gold rush, westward manifest destiny and all? That there is a population of Hispanics that live in the US (legally or otherwise) you can call a balancing of what we did to them.

I really hate these beliefs in ethnic inheritance. If you truly want to go by the first European language spoken in the Western Hemisphere as to who has rights to ownership, then the Scandinavians beat both the English and Spanish speakers. Then if you want to go by whose DNA contains the most Native American blood, neither white Americas or white Mexicans would even be in the running for that one.

Neither history or language or DNA gives someone the right to steal what belongs to another under international law today, something I hope that Israel realizes soon.

[Professor Buzzkill]

Br Cornelius, on 05 December 2012 - 07:01 PM, said:

Education and contraception seem to be the best ethical tools we have. I am not willing to speculate about unethical methods.
Redistribution of the global wealth such that people are not so dependent on large families would probably help. Universal wealthfare was the real kicker for large families in the UK so it has something of a track record of producing results.

It requires us to accept that people in the third world deserve a humane standard of living before we can hope to address the growth of population in the developing world. This is the message of the UN - but they seem to be rather unpopular in some quarters.

Br Cornelius

Even with education you will not manage to get the population to decline. Governments in places with negative population growth ship in immigrant to stop their economy going into decline because there is no sustainable way to reduce population (i.e. people get old and need treatment/pension etc, hence they need to tax people to pay for their aging population).  

If you are concerned about overpopulation (which i am not, at least for a few years) education would, at best, be a very long term "solution" requiring years of savings to pay for the aging global population.

Edited by Professor Buzzkill, 05 December 2012 - 07:26 PM.

[Br Cornelius]

Professor Buzzkill, on 05 December 2012 - 07:25 PM, said:

Even with education you will not manage to get the population to decline. Governments in places with negative population growth ship in immigrant to stop their economy going into decline because there is no sustainable way to reduce population (i.e. people get old and need treatment/pension etc, hence they need to tax people to pay for their aging population).  

If you are concerned about overpopulation (which i am not, at least for a few years) education would, at best, be a very long term "solution" requiring years of savings to pay for the aging global population.

Education shows dividends in relatively short time scales.

I find it incredible that we need to import cheap labour when a man can barely get a job after the age of 40, even though he would desperately like to do so. It seems to me its the economic system which is at fault which relies on virtual slave labour to sustain corporate profits. The threat of pulling out to a cheaper production zone is dangled in front of our faces to keep us all compliant.

When a person is redundant to society at the half way point in his life - there is something fundamentally wrong with the world. We have allowed a tiny number of white middle class men to define what society should look like and we are all suffering because it just doesn't match the reality of real people living real lives. If we don't re-examine the fundamentals we will never be in a position to get the bigger picture right.

Br Cornelius

Edited by Br Cornelius, 05 December 2012 - 09:42 PM.

[Render]

Br Cornelius, on 05 December 2012 - 06:37 PM, said:

PS - I am an environmental scientist and see very clearly the cost benefit analysis of new technologies.

Br Cornelius

You see it from your perspective alone, which is obviously very limited.

You're not the only one in the world that thinks about the impact of technologies etc.
The reason why many technologies make the cut is exactly because the benefits outway the costs.

Anyway, as i said..go on being a pessimist about it. I'll stick to my positivist view.

[Myles]

I'd like to see many changes that I think would help with the overpopulation of the USA.

Free vasectomies.  
Letting certain people in jail have a reduced sentence if they agree to a vasectomy (maybe 1 year off a 10 year term).   This would also help limit the kids who are raised in crappy families.

[Bella-Angelique]

For now,
If the goal is to reduce population then the model to use is what has happened in Brazil.

[Orcseeker]

Render, on 05 December 2012 - 11:30 AM, said:

I don't know how much Earth can support, no one does. Which in itself destroys the argument of "overpopulation".
We aren't even close to our limit of providing food for everyone (http://makewealthhis...d-10-billion/   http://grist.org/pop...t-wont-be-easy/)
How about you and everyone else looks at the current situation and starts to think how we can adjust it to the inevitable. Like many scientists are already doing. Look at lab-foods, building higher skyscrapers, building towers for agriculture, etc...
It's a dead end statement to say "with fewer ppl things would be easier to fix". Because there aren't fewer ppl and there will only be more ppl. Of course it's easier to get to a solution with fewer ppl, that's why we have representatives in politics because it's not possible in these times to get everyones opinions, DUH.


Necessitiy is the mother of all creation. That's why science is a constantly evolving thing. That's why you hear more about the electric car again, that's why lab and gmo foods are coming up more in the news.
If ppl lack the vision to see how distribution of goods and food etc should be adjusted to the world population, then of course you get conservaties with no imagination that say "oh , its the fault of overpopulation".
That's like the goverment allowing houses and apartments to be build without garages and then blaming the ppl if they park their cars in illegal places. It's not the population their fault, they're there. that's not gonna change. It's how you deal with it that's the issue.
Or it's like saying if a family doesn't have enough money to make ends meet, they should just kill their children because logically they would have more money left. That's not how the world works of course, the children are there so you have to work around it. Extrapolate that to the world and you have reality.

When you say build taller skyscrapers.
Is it desirable to have denser populations?

I believe we have up to 70% of the worlds population living in cities with the other 30% living in rural areas. Now, with an increased density of population, the likelihood of a supervirus increases. It's natures knee jerk reaction to too many people in one place.

In Africs, we have people having babies when they can't even support what they already have. Some countries out there almost have 50% of the population under 18 years of age. Oh and these days representatives don't really represent as much as they used to.

Do you further think it is desireable to have huge populations?

We are already stretched for resources in some areas and now 3rd world countries have been getting a but richer while having huge populations the consumption of resources has increased exponentially.

Of course I agree with making choices to build around the problem as ive been advocating that through many of my posts. Proclaiming education and such to communities and the like.