The problem with you is that you're not listening (=reading).
Go to your nearest bookstore, buy Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond, read it, and then come back. The book has cured many people with attitudes similar to yours. You can cross-check his references if you want to be hardcore.
The "problem" is that I'm not going to do your "job" for you. Why don't you post the relevant information instead of telling me how I need to go read
Collapse? Hard, I know. You see, I don't need to go borrow the book, for it doesn't address anything I've written out thus far or answer any of the questions I asked you. Not a one. I ask you to prove your assertion; you tell me to read a book. Hmmm... Really?
No, but it means you need to learn what fallacy is.
I'm thinking you do. Your entire "argument" is based on the fact that something bad happened in the past so we should takes steps to make sure it doesn't happen again, even if there is no reason to believe it will happen again nor any report from any international agency which states that there is cause for concern over it happening again. Do you not understand that? As it is, you are FEARMONGERING, basing any and all claims on events which happened hundreds of years ago to civilizations vastly different than ours, rather than on current events and current reports.
If you drop few bacteria into a petri dish with a finite amount of nutrients, they're gonna multiply exponentially until they consume them all - then the colony dies out. I am sure that if the bacteria were intelligent, they'd have all reasons to be optimistic even as they would approach the rim of the dish - after all, they've been consuming as much as they pleased as far as they can remember and it was never a problem, so screw all the doomsayer bacteria scaring others that there is a danger looming on the horizon
.
If I've said it once, I've said it twice if not thrice: Human populations do not grow exponentially nor do they grow indefinitely. The more developed a country becomes, the lower fertility rates become. Even in developing countries, fertility rates are declining. Now, please, ignore this fact
again and continue to spout off nonsense about exponential and unfettered growth some more.
Past human populations, especially the isolated ones, are both an example and a cautionary tale to us. Easter Islanders or ancient Maya were isolated populations, like the bacteria in a petri dish. They collapsed, because they were living beyond their means. Easter Islanders caused a massive deforestation of their island leading to soil erosion and a rapid drop in agricultural production and a lack of wood for fishing boat. In the resulting collapse of their society, more than 90% of the population died out before the first Europeans even came to that island.
Oh, jeez. We're neither the Maya nor the inhabitants of Easter Island. What's so hard to understand about this?
In the case of Maya, it was overpopulation combined with deforestation of highland regions aggravated by climate change what caused one of the biggest pre-modern collapse of otherwise advanced society.
I don't know anything about the Maya but, then again, I don't really care about the Maya, because no one (Aside from you) really cares what happened to the Maya, as we're discussing society, today, in the 21st century.
Diamond uses many other examples, including modern-day ones, identifies common factors and in the end, he applies them on the modern world. He explains concepts like the carrying capacity and the human impact on the environment.
I'm wondering whether or how irrelevant continually mentioning Diamond is, since he-- Nor you-- Can provide any hard evidence to back your claims. As it stands, you're just all "Oh, look what Diamond said!" and I'm like, "Yeah, and...?", waiting for you to produce something which actually backs your claim and isn't just conjecture based on past proceedings.
So, after you read it, we can talk again. I am sure that your smug ignorant attitude will be gone by then.
I have no reason to need it and nope, it won't be going anywhere
UN etc. are political organization with a political agenda. UN won't say "Yes, overpopulation is a massive problem and the Third world countries need to take DRASTIC steps to stop the population explosion", because it would be eaten alive by all the Third world countries representatives.
Doesn't the U.N. sanction programs which are aimed at "controlling" population growth? What would they have to lose by stating as such, seeing as how they already promote such programs?
Twice of the current population would be catastrophic and 3-4 times as much is just a plain fantasy based on your ignorant view that agricultural production can be sustained despite a massive deforestation and degradation of soils.
I'm conviced you don't bother to read/click on any of the links I give you. Without chopping down any more forests/rain forests, worldwide we can raise our food output to the point where we can feed at least double the population, and even three to four times that amount, assuming that each government embraces advances in technology. I wrote this out before, but it was ignored, so let's try this again.
In an ecotechnology-oriented approach, sustainable agriculture resembles the current system of "integrated" Western European agriculture, but one in which the emerging shortcomings are minimized. Maximum production per unit of land implies a high level of inputs resulting in a high level of outputs. A contrasting, environment-oriented approach holds that this production technology cannot be continued in the long run, because pollution and pest problems will continue to build up on farms and in the environment. Sustainable agricultural production systems should avoid use of nitrogen fertilizers and biocides (fertilizer minerals are irreplaceable) and should recycle nutrients at the local level. Under this system, maximum yields per hectare will be only one-third as high...
...At a global level, four times more food can be produced than required using environment-oriented agriculture and nine times more using ecotechnology-oriented agriculture. When ecotechnology-oriented agriculture is practiced in the reference demand scenario, all regions can provide all of the food necessary. However, using environment-oriented agriculture, some regions in Asia cannot produce enough food to meet their needs or can produce barely enough, even with maximum utilization of natural resources...
...In all cases, three times more land is required for environment-oriented agricultural production systems than for ecotechnology-oriented systems. Consequently, the choice of the production technique has a major effect on global land use. Depending on the diet selected, Europe can grow an adequate food supply on 30-50 percent of its suitable land, North America on 20 percent of its land, and South America and Oceania on even smaller fractions.
Link
Sure, such an approach would be costly, but it would cause food production to skyrocket while mitigating negative effects on the environment.
I've done that twice already.
No, you haven't. I'm still waiting for you to provide the sources.
Yes, it will. Rwanda certainly went to hell when overpopulation reached unbearable levels. Diamond dedicated a whole chapter to that genocide to document how overpopulation in Sub-Saharan Africa leads to ethnic tensions and eventually also genocidal conflicts.
Rwanda "went to hell" once they gained independence and different groups began fighting for power, which set off years of military rule, violence and later genocide. Nothing to do with overpopulation.
You're contradicting yourself. If a country went from self-sustainable agricultural production to famine-like situation, and at the same time the population of the country doubled or tripled, there is certainly a pattern only a blind person could ignore. That overpopulation causes all sorts of problems is nearly a truism:
You seem to be ignoring the fact that when the government nationalized the agriculture industry, productivity went way done. You're engaging in faulty cause and effect here. It's akin to arguing that the sun rises every morning because the rooster crows.
1) Rapidly rising population creates all sorts of problems - the economy needs to grow rapidly in order to provide jobs and education to an ever growing number of people. In most Sub-Saharan African countries, the population has grown faster than the economy, which logically resulted in lower overall living standard and widespread poverty. Poverty in turn makes it rather hard to have a country that's well-managed and has a competent government, as poor populations are not usually known for being liberal democracy-friendly.
I have to quote Julian L. Simon here.
"The world's problem is not too many people, but lack of political and economic freedom. Powerful evidence comes from pairs of countries that had the same culture and history and much the same standard of living when they split apart after World War II -- East and West Germany, North and South Korea, Taiwan and China. In each case the centrally planned communist country began with less population "pressure", as measured by density per square kilometer, than did the market-directed economy. And the communist and non-communist countries also started with much the same birth rates. But the market-directed economies performed much better economically than the centrally-planned economies. This powerful demonstration cuts the ground from under population growth as a likely explanation of poor economic performance."
Link
Look at the world's countries ranked by
population density and you'll see no correlation between population and famine and poverty. Next, look at the world's countried ranked by
government corruption and you will notice that the countries with the least corrupt governments have virtually no famine and relatively few persons living in poverty as when compared to those countries with relatively corrupt governments. The point? Population doesn't cause problems; the government's mismanagement of resources causes problem. Very nearly all our "problems" could be resolved if governments were made accountable for their citizen's welfare and embraced technology.
But, alas, most of the population mythists would rather curb population growth then actually addressing the problem.
2) You can't increase the agricultural output forever, that's another fallacy. It makes much more sense to stabilize the population; it's rapid growth is the source of the problem. What people like you propose is a senseless race between agricultural output and rapidly growing number of people who need to be fed. The problem with this is that one day you simply can't increase the agricultural output anymore and this whole fallacious concept falls apart. And in any case, life is not just about food, and Africa has many other problems which are tied to overpopulation - lack of clean fresh water, tragic public health situation, decaying infrastructure, lack of investments, lack of stable political environment that would allow them to fix their problems. The more people are there, the poorer they get and the lesser chance there is to find a way out of this vicious circle.
Do you not read? One doesn't need to increase food output forever. As a country becomes more developed, population growth approaches zero. There is no "race".
And, as stated above, not a single one of those problems is attributable to "overpopulation", but rather an inept government incapable (Or unwilling) to provide for it's populace.
3) The land area of Africa doesn't matter, as most of its soils are not suitable for the kind of agriculture that exists in Europe or the US. At the same time, the rapid deforestation of Africa leads to a degradation of the remaining soils and droughts. Diamond explains this in detail.
Yeah... You don't read. Copied and pasted AGAIN for your viewing pleasure:
Current and potential arable land use in Africa. Out of the total land area in Africa, only a fraction is used for arable land. Using soil, land cover and climatic characteristics a FAO study has estimated the potential land area for rainfed crops, excluding built up areas and forests – neither of which would be available for agriculture. According to the study, the potential – if realised – would mean an increase ranging from 150 – 700% percent per region, with a total potential for the whole of Africa in 300 million hectares. Note that the actual arable land in 2003 is higher than the potential in a few countries, like Egypt, due to irrigation.
Emphasis mine.
Linked to a massive salination and other forms of destruction of arable land - this happens when you try to rapidly increase agricultural production in unsuitable areas.
It's linked to the fact that India's agricultural systems are outdated, about half of their farmlands aren't irrigated and the ones that are irrigated are poorly irrigated while the infrastructure is crumbling away as they're so old. Did you not read the link I gave you?
Extensive irrigation in Indian climate often causes build up of salts in the soil.
*snip picture*
36% of irrigated land in India is now being damaged by salinization.
This article explains how this happens.
The massive chemical pollution from fertilizers is another issue.
You... Didn't click on the link I gave you, did you? This all boils down to poor management of agricultural systems by the government, which is what I've said like a gazillion times now yet you've ignored.
One past example of how an intensive unsustainable agriculture can ruin the land is the so-called "fertile crescent" - now a desert area.
You mean damming the land and draining off the water, right?
Where are you getting this nonsense? Europe is not killing its population, it has achieved a stable demographic situation (like other highly developed countries, Japan is another example).
Because a declining population is a stable demographic situation.
...Oh wait. No, it's not.
Every EU country has a sub-replacement fertility rate. Every one of them. Without immigration, they would all be in population decline. But I suppose your logic is that if Europeans don't exist, then they can't pollute
.
US is slightly less developed in this respect, but it will gradually become stable too. Or at least it's present-day population will, immigration can affect this in a negative way.
You know what I find to be totally hilarious? You're trying to pass off declining birth rates as a good thing while the majority of European governments (As well as the Japanese, Australian and Canadian governments, among others) are besides themselves in fear, trying to do everything to raise birth rates. So, you know, this leads me to having a question for you. Is the sky purple and do pink firebreathing ponies abound in your world?
Also, Europe is adopting technologies connected with sustainable development much faster than any of the countries you mentioned as examples (India? China?
). Coupled with a stable demographic situation, it gives us a head start - we don't have to deal with problems tied to rapidly growing population so we can fully focus on improving our environment.
...I'm not sure if you heard that sound, but it was me laughing profusely. This isn't the 17th, or 18th or even 19th century. The only thing Europe leads today is the march to irrelevency (And, no, that's not a cheap shot. It's the cold, hard truth). I don't know if it was you I said it to prior, but arguing that rapidly growing populations cause environmental problems and thus need to be reduced is like arguing that more cars on the road cause more accidents thus less cars on the road would mean less accidents. It's faulty cause and effect. More people do not lead to an increase in environmental problems; policies enacted by different regimes lead to environmental problems (As evidenced by the fact that the largest countries aren't even the per capita largest polluters). Just like more cars on the road don't lead to more car accidents; reckless or irresponsible behavior leads to more accidents.
Your "solution" is like cutting off someone's arm after they broke it. It's, simply put, asinine.
I guess this logic eludes you. Anyway, there is a fat chapter about China in Diamond's book, and his assesment of the facts is pretty gloomy. One thing that GREATLY helped China to avert major disaster was the one-child policy which stopped Chinese population from booming into unmanagable numbers. So again, historical experience speaks against you.
... ... ...
You do realize that China's "one-child" policy has been a dismal failure, since it's enforced for less than 40% of the population and has caused quit a number of social ills, right?
(And, funnily enough, it didn't do a darn thing to help the environment (See:
here).
Earth actually ran out of resources already, relatively speaking. Human population is too big already, although there are huge regional imbalances. Population in some regions can become sustainable with relatively little effort, other regions are hopelessly doomed to a massive collapse in the next 30 years.
No, it didn't; no, it's not; enter free trade.
Three words: read the book.
Nineteen words: Instead of telling me to read the book, how about you provide some excerpts or something from the book?
It most definitely will if the Indian government doesn't stop the demographic explosion. As the population grows, more soil is being rendered useless by salt and chemical damage. Pollution is bad enough already, the country is choking in trash, people in many region are getting poorer, not richer, and the social differences are just crazy. This is a recipe for a major social/economic/environmental disaster. Too bad India seems to be obsessed with military buildup and ignores it's much more serious problems.
No, it won't. Read the link on India I provided you before.
Deforestation is getting faster, not slower.
In Brazil? No, it's not.
"Self-culling" - jeez this is so idiotic. Get a grip.
Really? Then, per chance, how do you expect to drop a population from 61M to 30M? Because there's only three ways to do it (As I said before).
1.) Prevent all immigrants from entering the country.
2.) Enact a strictly enforced one-child policy or create a system of vouchers in which the government sells a certain number of "rights" to have children per year.
3.) Start killing people and/or sending them out of the country.
Christ, I am sick of answering all this when it is all clearly explained in the book I keep mentioning. Read it and stop asking dumb questions.
How can you be sick of answering "all this" when you've yet to answer anything? Your arguing style is fairly odd. I ask you to prove an assertion and you tell me to read a certain book. Uh-huh... Right. How about you go and find the pertinent information, since it'd be easier for you to do that to prove yourself right than me to go do it to prove yourself wrong.
Man, I could see how you write reports in school.
Page 1: "Look up the information yourself"
Japan and many pacific island nations survived thanks to a strict environemntal protection and a policy of birth control. Funny thing is that many pacific islands now face overpopulation because the European missionaries told them that birth control was wrong.
Do you ever get tired of being wrong? Let's look at the growth rate for those Pacific Island countries (Excluding Australia and New Zealand), based on U.N. estimates for 2005 to 2010.
Cook Islands: -2.23%
Fiji: 0.62%
Kiribati: 1.58%
Federated States of Micronesia: 0.46%
Marshall Islands: 2.23%
Nauru: 0.29%
Niue: -1.85%
Palau: 0.41%
Papaua New Guinea: 2.00%
Samoa: 0.87%
Solomon Islands: 2.33%
Timor Leste: -
Tonga: 0.50%
Tuvalu: 0.42%
Vanuatu: 2.38%
Only five countries have above average growth rates (The average is considered to be 1.17%).
Link
Now, let's look at where each country ranks in population density.
Cook Islands: 120
Fiji: 152
Kiribati: 77
Federated States of Micronesia: 70
Marshall Islands: 30
Nauru: 22
Niue: 223
Palau: 159
Papaua New Guinea: 209
Samoa: 131
Solomon Islands: 197
Timor Leste: -
Tonga: 76
Tuvalu: 25
Vanuatu: 196
The country with the highest population density is Nauru, but it only has a population growth rate of 0.29%. The next highest is Tuvalu, which has a population growth rate of 0.42%. Then comes the Marshall Islands, at 30, with a population growth rate of 2.23%. So, outside of the Marshall Islands, you're going to be hard pressed to argue that "many Pacific Island nations now face overpopulation issues", as that's a bold faced lie.
Link
Stable population is a huge benefit, not a problem, because it is a prerequisite for sustainable development.
Well, first of all, a stable population will be reached naturally as a country becomes more developed. Second of all, no, it's not. Sustainability is the ability for the current generation's to live without negatively impacting future generation's to live. If what you say is true, then absolutely no population at any time during the earth's history has ever lived sustainable, since they were growing.
Great, another place living totally unsustainably
I was Afraid you were going to say Australia, because then I'd have to quote a whole chapter from the book explaining why Australia is heading towards an environmental disaster.
I don't know what you're talking about.
BTW, here's a map from our "altered maps" thread.
*snip picture*
This map really doesn't mean anything to me. Where'd you get it from?
![[to_xp]Gekko](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/74/74677.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
) however, in seriousness, I'd say we'll never reach the number. I mean, If we got a trillion people, yeah it would be too many, but there is no way this could happen.
