Is overpopulation cause for concern?

[Winner]

Evil capitalists to the rescue?

If everything (or at least food and water, for starters) is about to become in terribly short supply ...

Why hasn't the price gone up already?

Because environmental collapses are relatively sudden occurance - all civilizations that collapsed due to complete enviromental distortion collapsed SUDDENLY, shortly after they reached the pinnacle of their cultural/technological/demographic development. Until that happened, I am sure everything looked fine to ancient Maya or Easter Islanders too - they ignored the subtle signs of coming catastrophe as well.

So far, humanity has ingeniously been founding better and better way how to extract scarcer and scarcer resources. For example, when some fish species became too scarce due to overfishing, it switched to another species or it improved its fishing techniques - this way it can continue doing the bad things for a little while longer. Or, as is the case in agriculture, the rich states distort the markets by subsidizing their agricultural products, and thus keep the prices low. The whole global society is living in denial, it simply ignores the devastating impact it has on the global environment.

So then, why isn't there a booming futures market in water?

Because people who don't have an access to fine water are too poor to be of any interest

 

[Shaihulud]

Evil capitalists to the rescue?

If everything (or at least food and water, for starters) is about to become in terribly short supply ...

Why hasn't the price gone up already?

After all, before the world economy tanked, oil speculators had already bid up the price to levels we can expect to see when oil has peaked and production has begun to decline. And why? Out of the goodness of their hearts, to give us the wake-up call that our favorite form of energy is running low? No, to make money on the inevitable future price rise (they jumped the gun, as it turned out, but never mind about that, their predictions will come true within the decade, I don't doubt). But, it DID have the salutary side effect of sounding that wake-up call.

So then, why isn't there a booming futures market in water?

Wall Street isn't omniscient, of course, but you'd figure there'd be at least a few geniuses out there positioning themselves. Unless - smart money is betting that conservation measures will quickly be worked out, allowing more people to flourish with less water. That "we can do it - we have the technology" to quote a famous TV series.

Not an evil one, just an ignorant one of course. Water is a necessity, millions die from the lack of it every year. We spend increasing billions to process freshwater from our sewage and the sea. Increasing millions die in China and India from lack of access to clean water and disease and you say that the market forces would take a hand and control its distribution if it was a scarce resources? And if the invisible hand of the market forces does not do so, you will dismiss it as a problem?

 

[El_Machinae]

I don't think that there's a futures market in water because it's not really something that can be traded. And I'm under the impression that people are positioning themselves to own the deepest aquifers or the ones that fill first when it rains.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Increasing millions die in China and India from lack of access to clean water and disease and you say that the market forces would take a hand and control its distribution if it was a scarce resources?

I'm thinking the market already has a hand. Very many Chinese and Indians live in big cities; most of them pay a water bill, no? So the next question, what's the price trend (in real yuan, not nominal) of water there? If it's up, that tends to prove a looming shortage.

Of course, if you get your water directly from a well that you dug, like many Indian farmers, then there is no market. And I realize that the water level is sinking, there. The Indian government needs to step in and impose the incentives to conserve. (And good luck with your new career, to any Indian politician who tries to make that happen - if Indians are as crazy as Americans are in similar situations. Bummer.)

And I'm under the impression that people are positioning themselves to own the deepest aquifers or the ones that fill first when it rains.

You can also look at land ownership; a lot of it comes with water rights (drawing from a river etc.) attached.

 

[El_Machinae]

I've read that T Boone Pickens is going to build a pipeline from the Ogallala aquifer (where landowners have the right to tap it) to a local city.

If he charges for it, at least the money will be partially costed and the value captured. Though I still don't think it's the best idea.

 

[Narz]

Is overpopulation cause for concern?

This group of billionaires think so.

Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation

Another guest said there was “nothing as crude as a vote” but a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.

“This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,” said the guest. “They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming.”

Why all the secrecy? “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,” he said.

 

[Oruc]

More people only become a problem when it's just more old people collecting pensions

 

[LucyDuke]

And when it's young people eating food.

 

[Bei1052]

There's no such thing as "overpopulation" in the way the media portrays it.

The human growth rate has been in decline since the late 1960's/early 1970's, food has continued to outstrip population growth, there is less famine and disease today than there was a hundred years ago and approximately 40% of the earth's population currently lives in areas which either suffer from or are in danger of depopulation. Most of the growth in the population is because of population booms in Africa and the Middle East. Countries such as Japan, Canada, Australia, Russia and pretty much all of the Europe have sub-replacement fertility rates, which means that there will be undue tax burdens placed upon those of working age as the ratio of elderly to those of working age increases. But the media ignores all of that.

 

[Narz]

The human growth rate has been in decline since the late 1960's/early 1970's

But overall growth is still increasing. The "rate" is less important.

If a person were going into debt at the rate of $100 a day & slower it to $93 a day they'd still have a problem.

 

[Bei1052]

But overall growth is still increasing. The "rate" is less important.

If a person were going into debt at the rate of $100 a day & slower it to $93 a day they'd still have a problem.

No, it's not. Why? Because that rate is fast approaching 0 growth, which is estimated to occur sometime in the mid-21st century, where the population will cap out at about 10B or so (Given U.N. estimates), after which the rate will go negative and human population will begin to decline.

 

[LucyDuke]

You're gaining x pounds per week. That rate is declining such that eventually you're going to stabilize at 1200 pounds before you start to lose. No problem?

 

[Bei1052]

That analogy only works if you can prove that the earth is past it's "carrying capacity" and that any more humans on the earth will pose serious environmental, social, economic and political problems. So, with that in mind, I now ask you what the earth's "carrying capacity" is. If you say you don't know, then how can you say that adding any more humans to the earth is a bad thing?

 

[LucyDuke]

No, it works if the earth has a carrying capacity. There are a lot of estimates on what the number is. Can you demonstrate that it's above ten billion? That it will be above ten billion with 2050's technology?

 

[Bei1052]

No one ever disputed the fact that the earth has a carrying capacity. But since it is you who is insistent on the fact that the earth is "overpopulated", or fast approaching the point where it can be considered to be as such, then you're faced with the burden of proving that the earth is, indeed, past it's carrying capacity. To make use of a popular phrase, the onus isn't on me to prove that the earth isn't past it's carrying capacity, but on you to prove that it is (Or soon will be).

 

[LucyDuke]

I haven't said it's past the limit, if I have, I concede that I can't prove that. It doesn't matter, we don't need to be there yet, as long as we're getting there.

Anyway, I can't prove it, and I'm pretty sure you can't prove it, in fact, I don't think it's within the realm of things we can prove conclusively, but here's this for you anyway.

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.

Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth's "limits of sustainability".

Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.

Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.

"We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can't support many more people," Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing "wild lands", and in particular water supplies.

Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: "There are probably already too many people on the planet."

<snip GM crops, we have another thread>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7974995.stm

 

[Narz]

They don't use the trail & error system to discover elevator capacity ("Gee doc, when that forty-seventh fat woman steeped on the cord stapped, the exact weight limit should be 3,671 pounds"), they estimate & that is what we have to do. Saying we shouldn't act until we can prove some exact number conclusively is suicidal. Just as with elevators, for safety reasons we should shoot low rather than high.

Ultimately it's more about how we live than an exact number but the more we have the more everyone will have to sacrifice & people may be hard-wired to sacrifice for their wife & father & perhaps even neighbor but few wants to sacrifice for the whole world.

The analogy of Easter Island in the Earth 2100 movie was a very good one if you feel inclined to watch that flick (I don't imagine you do but you never know).

 

[Bei1052]

People have been screaming that "there are too many people on the earth!" since the days of Thomas Malthus and, every time, they're wrong.

*shrugs*

Factually speaking, unless about 90% of the land area suddenly gets submerged underwater, then there are enough resources on the planet to logically house twice the current population, assuming Africa and South America are able to fully utilize their arable land.

 

[Narz]

People have been screaming that "there are too many people on the earth!" since the days of Thomas Malthus and, every time, they're wrong.

*shrugs*

Summoning Malthus, a deniers last resort.

The only problem with your theory is that it's dead wrong.

The Romans didn't think they'd collapse. They did. The Mayans didn't. They did. Rome's metropolitan area population dropped from almost a million to 30,000 or so, the Mayan's disappeared altogether. Collapses have happened countless times, it's nothing new really. Collapse of an unsustainable system is the norm. It just hasn't happened on a global scale yet because the world has never before been globalized.

Factually speaking, unless about 90% of the land area suddenly gets submerged underwater, then there are enough resources on the planet to logically house twice the current population, assuming Africa and South America are able to fully utilize their arable land.

Factually, eh? Now it's your turn to provide sources. Real sources not some random economist (any economist is not a valid source as far as I'm concerned, they are to scientists what a weatherman is to a climatologist).

 

[LucyDuke]

EDIT never mind.