Slaughter
Paladin
There's only enough room for me. I am going to start killing the rest of you, if you don't mind.
I'm going to need a bigger gun, though.
I'm going to need a bigger gun, though.
Is overpopulation cause for concern?
- Thread starter LucyDuke
- Start date
bender19
Warlord
What exactly do people propose to solve this 'problem'?
By mid century Europe's population will start to decline, however Europe isn't overpopulated. Lowering the birth rate in the USA or the EU isn't going to solve overpopulation in Africa.
By mid century Europe's population will start to decline, however Europe isn't overpopulated. Lowering the birth rate in the USA or the EU isn't going to solve overpopulation in Africa.
Mise
isle of lucy
Both options 2 and 3 are kinda what I think. The limit is already very high, and as technology advances, the limit becomes even higher. We won't ever reach the limit.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Overpopulation is definitely a problem in many parts of the world.
In many countries, overpopulation is preventing them from getting richer, since the number of people grows much faster than the capacity of the economy to put them to work. At the same time, more people means more eviromental damage which then translates into less available land to feed the surplus population. The result is a vicious circle of overpopulation -> poverty -> enviromental damage -> more poverty -> overpopulation.
It can end only one way - with a collapse of the whole society into famine, war, genocide and general chaos. This is what we'll see in Africa and maybe also in some Middle Eastern and South East Asian countries within few decades, after the people there finish deforesting their countries and the extent of the enviromental damage makes it impossible to feed the inflated population.
China and India will also face hell of trouble managing their enviroment. Especially India should start SERIOUSLY thinking about China-style birth control.
As for the developed countries in North America, Europe and East Asia, they could easily feed and put to work much more people than they have now without compromising the enviroment.
In many countries, overpopulation is preventing them from getting richer, since the number of people grows much faster than the capacity of the economy to put them to work. At the same time, more people means more eviromental damage which then translates into less available land to feed the surplus population. The result is a vicious circle of overpopulation -> poverty -> enviromental damage -> more poverty -> overpopulation.
It can end only one way - with a collapse of the whole society into famine, war, genocide and general chaos. This is what we'll see in Africa and maybe also in some Middle Eastern and South East Asian countries within few decades, after the people there finish deforesting their countries and the extent of the enviromental damage makes it impossible to feed the inflated population.
China and India will also face hell of trouble managing their enviroment. Especially India should start SERIOUSLY thinking about China-style birth control.
As for the developed countries in North America, Europe and East Asia, they could easily feed and put to work much more people than they have now without compromising the enviroment.
It may not be sustainable in the long run though.
LucyDuke
staring at the clock
You don't understand. See this:
and note that there is stuff that we are using up. We can grow more food. We haven't got time to grow more petroleum.
The fact that you could probably live on a boat in the middle of the ocean with no food for a few days doesn't mean you can afford to start a family while you're out there.
Which ethnicities will be gassing to meet this goal?
All of them proportionally.
I don't think we can easily grow more food. A huge portion of our diet is only possible because of massive fuel use in the creation of fertilizer, though I think we mostly use natural gas.
As well, our abundant fertilizer use has gotten so aggressive that it's actually poisoning the oceans.
As well, our abundant fertilizer use has gotten so aggressive that it's actually poisoning the oceans.
LucyDuke
staring at the clock
I actually wrote a long response to bender saying the same things but decided to cut it since it wasn't very well organized.
What I was trying to convey is that food is renewable, fossils are not. We'll be able to generate some level of food indefinitely, but once we're out of coal, we're out.
Part of what I cut is that we've taken most of the fish out of the ocean and replaced them with pollution.
Poisoning the pantry. The change over time is astonishing.TheLastOne36
Deity
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Yes but who/where are we going to get rid of the extra people? In the West, there are less of us, birth rate is low, we take more resources, but yet we still need more jobs. On the other hand, in the developing world(outside of latin america, and the muslim world), there is much more people that are, well unneeded, their a threat to the enviroment and people would start calling out genocide if we tried to maintain the population there. It is a dilemma...
TheLastOne36
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Muslim countries in general have to face with corruption and <poor> govornment and a society that is unwilling to change. If anything, they'll just go to war with each other, and they'll be completely unimportant and not really a problem in overpopulation.
I agree on the South East Asia problem. Indonesia also needs to start thinking on what to do with it's massive population. The Phillipenes are a christian country that is willing to move on, i think they'll do good in the future but the SEA mainland needs to seriously think about the future. I have a feeling that ASEAN would be an important factor in the future of SEA states.
LucyDuke
staring at the clock
They'll die. Not be killed, just regular die from wearing out. The whole point is to not replace all of them.
When people (especially women, they take a greater incentive in this regard) have knowledge of and access to contraception, most of them stop having nine children each.
As I said in the OP, it's important to stem human trafficking. Right now, if you can't afford to take care of your daughter, you can make a tidy sum selling her to a forced prostitution ring. This kind of pressure-release valve allows too much leniency in having oops-babies.
In low birthrate countries, children are a burden, as they should be. Anywhere they are a resource, you're going to have a harder time decreasing the birth rate. Give folks family-planning resources, end the ability to profit from baby-making, and they'll make fewer people. All of us will get old and die (unless Mac has his way
) and leave fewer grandchildren than there were grandparents.TheLastOne36
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I highly doubt that in a century or two, the human population can willingly drop down to 1 billion without the aid of war or disease.
general_kill
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It is definitely a concern for billions of people in the world. China and India alone account for 2/5 of the world's population and they have been dealing with overpopulation for many years now.
The USA will definitely encounter problems with overpopulation and we already see the problem with many impoverished families with 3+ kids. I do believe something must be done to discourage people from having children if they cannot at least financially support them.
Maybe not with wars, but individual countries have shown that it is possible to enact legislation to control and decrease the population. China's one-child policy has been very successful in accomplishing its goal.
The USA will definitely encounter problems with overpopulation and we already see the problem with many impoverished families with 3+ kids. I do believe something must be done to discourage people from having children if they cannot at least financially support them.
Maybe not with wars, but individual countries have shown that it is possible to enact legislation to control and decrease the population. China's one-child policy has been very successful in accomplishing its goal.
In countries with a young average population, it's very unlikely that we can help get their populations to become lower. At the very best, we could try to help them reproduce more slowly.
However, places like India and China ARE massively overpopulated, and the only non-death solution will be to have people figure out ways of beating Malthus again.
However, places like India and China ARE massively overpopulated, and the only non-death solution will be to have people figure out ways of beating Malthus again.
Ayatollah So
the spoof'll set you free
We think so much alike, sometimes it's scary.
Most of the world is developing fast enough to decrease population growth to rates that will be easy to handle. The only exception is Africa, but that might just be a string of bad luck. Hopefully that luck will change. A little less kleptocracy, and a little less "he may be a bastard but he's our bastard" from the rest of the world, could do wonders.
We aren't going to run out of fertilizer, even if we do run out of fossil fuels. The price of some forms of alternative energy, notably photovoltaics, has been on its way sharply down for a while now. Alternatively, even if progress on those forms of energy somehow suddenly comes to a standstill, nuclear fission sets a limit on energy prices. With enough energy, you can make fertilizer. You can even desalinate water for irrigation. That would cost a fortune, but it looks likely that future generations will have a fortune.
Sustainable development is still a good idea, because harming the environment hurts people, as well as making the world uglier.
What a ridiculous accusation.
Yeah, unfortunately this is not so much a problem of ethnicity but culture as well. I'm not buying the arguments that a higher standard of living alone will sufficiently reduce birthrates-it does happen to coincide with a Western, non-religious culture though. Certain cultural groups (Latinos, for instance) and religions (many more conservative/fundamentalist) do have birthrates quite a bit above replacement. And unfortunately, these are all common in the third world - so I don't think simply increasing standard of living+education would cut it. Sure, it may get people to stop having 9, 10 kids, but 3 or 4 is still way too many. I guess we can hope this is wrong though.
As for the argument about the Earth's long-term carrying capacity, I also think those who are saying it's low (~1 billion or whatever you are proposing) are off. I've seen serious estimates ranging up to 10-12 billion with technology we have now (assuming good circumstances/no nuclear war; global warming and ecological damage are curveballs. But 1 billion is way too low). However, such a world population would most certainly have a lower standard of living - if we want to maintain what we've got and get poorer countries up to the same level of development I agree we could do with no more growth right now, some reduction is fine too.
Lastly, I'd say it's a fallacy that we can expect technology to keep up with our needs, despite the fact that this has been true in the past two centuries. The mid-20th century green revolution would have seemed miraculous from a 1900 standpoint - but we can't count on this type of thing in the next 100 years. Indeed, given facts like depletion of fossil fuels, I could almost guarantee this sort of thing won't happen. The only type of technology that would have major impact is along the lines of free energy/matter replication/ftl travel for colonization - basically impossible stuff with our understanding of physics. Colonizing space is no where close to solving our problems anytime soon (even if we found a habitable planet, at most we could launch a couple colony ships, which themselves may establish exponentially growing populations and all - but doesn't do anything about too many people on Earth). Given current technology we could keep up with more people with massive solar collection =>algae farm type situation - but this would still be a monumental societal shift and costly change. And the ultimate problem is uneven distribution of resources - no matter how many fancy toys the first world gets the starving populations are in places where ecological depletion is the worst and technology the most backwards.
Magic 8-ball says: Outlook not good...