kx000
Valued Senior Member
China, and India are not as advanced as us, the first world leader (possibly first) will come from America.
Overpopulation
- Thread starter Xerxes
- Start date
China, and India are not as advanced as us, the first world leader (possibly first) will come from America.
It means that the extra demand you cited (due to development in China and India) is being met. If it were not, the price would be exploding.
Nobody disputes that oil is, ultimately, a finite resource. But that doesn't imply that it won't last a long time yet, nor that we won't invent some alternative system long before it runs short.
Why not? Note that there are a slew of other empty-ass states to boot: Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, etc. Then there's pretty much all of Canada and Australia, etc.
I know plenty about water already. If you don't have any actual point to make about it, and are just going to imply that I'm ignorant, then I'll thank you to fuck right off.
It would be to even out the over-crowded and under-crowded places.
Yes, it was that your viewpoint here relies on out-dated, discredited premises. I thought that was pretty clear, frankly.
That's exactly what has already happened over the past decade or two, and what will happen again over the next couple of decades. Pretty much all of the population growth in the USA is concentrated in that region.
What will happen, is that we will built some more desalination plants, and maybe reconsider whether lawns are an appropriate type of landscaping for arid climates in the first place.
I would agree that it is a problem when too many people live in deserts because then you run into huge collective action problems with respect to water sharing. That is more an issue of needing people to live elsewhere (and there there is plenty of elsewhere to hold them) than it is of overpopulation of the planet as a whole.
That said, the price of water in those deserts should be a constraint on populations there...with the potential problem that the price of water is usually pretty stringently regulated, and held too low.
The Chinese government says that without the already 3 decades long population control, there would be 400 million more Chinese. That is one helluva number. There would be 1.7 billion Chinese. As much as nobody likes such a drastic controls, at least there has been results and also unwanted consequences...
But the bottom line is, we have way less people. After all we aren't rabbits...
But the bottom line is, we have way less people. After all we aren't rabbits...
The many species that face imminent extinction due to habitat loss are a very strong argument against it. There are those who are complete human supremacists who aren't troubled by this (Pronatalist, to give one example), but they are in the minority.
The theoretical number is meaningless. Unless we establish a worldwide government and distribute the people evenly, (socialism oh!!) there will always be overcrowded parts and nice part of Earth.
Simple analogy: A house with 5 floors, 20 apartments. On the top a rich guy owns alone 4 apartments. On the bottom, each apartment has 6-7 occupants crowded, in the middle floors, 2-4 renters per apartment, comfortably.
Now could we redistribute these people with a city or government order? Sure, but that wouldn't be capitalism, and some of the people sure wouldn't like it. Now expand this house to the size of the Earth, and you have the same problem...
Can we (and will we) add another 1-2 billions to the population. Probably. Are they gonna be generally happy? Most likely not, and they definitely won't live by average Western standard of living. Hell, if everyone were living like the Amish, we could probably have 15 billions of people.
One more thing: when wars and natural calamities occur, the more people you have, the more people die.
Simple analogy: A house with 5 floors, 20 apartments. On the top a rich guy owns alone 4 apartments. On the bottom, each apartment has 6-7 occupants crowded, in the middle floors, 2-4 renters per apartment, comfortably.
Now could we redistribute these people with a city or government order? Sure, but that wouldn't be capitalism, and some of the people sure wouldn't like it. Now expand this house to the size of the Earth, and you have the same problem...
Can we (and will we) add another 1-2 billions to the population. Probably. Are they gonna be generally happy? Most likely not, and they definitely won't live by average Western standard of living. Hell, if everyone were living like the Amish, we could probably have 15 billions of people.
One more thing: when wars and natural calamities occur, the more people you have, the more people die.
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First question, are these people immortal? Or do you not need to also account for the number of people who die each year? According to the Worldometer, there have been about 60 million births so far this year, but also about 25 million deaths. Thus the net increase is only about 33 million so far this year which would suggest about 66 million for the entire year.
Regardless, that's still a lot of rockets, but world population is not going to get much higher anyway.
Here's an interesting perspective on the current world population. According to this, you could easily fit the entire human population into Texas and have a population density no higher than that which presently exists in New York City:
"The city's population density of 26,403 people per square mile (10,194/km²), makes it the densest of any American municipality with a population above 100,000."
Yeah, let's make the whole world as dense as NYC!!! By the way NYC can't even handle its own waste, it is carried to NJ. Not to mention, how big of a land is needed to feed NYC???
The latest numbers on the overall growth:
"all birth 2011 level of 134 million, while deaths number 56 million per year"
So that is about 80 million extra people per year (220K per day)... Neither of you were correct...
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Where is Waldo?
China's Qingdao Huiquan Beach...
The same beach at a different time...
We haven't even mentioned the enviroment. A few day's ago China asked the US embassy to stop reporting the air pollution in Beijing....
"BEIJING (Reuters) - A senior Chinese official demanded on Tuesday that foreign embassies stop issuing air pollution readings, "
Beautiful Sunday morning in Beijing:
China's Qingdao Huiquan Beach...
The same beach at a different time...
We haven't even mentioned the enviroment. A few day's ago China asked the US embassy to stop reporting the air pollution in Beijing....
"BEIJING (Reuters) - A senior Chinese official demanded on Tuesday that foreign embassies stop issuing air pollution readings, "
Beautiful Sunday morning in Beijing:
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
You need to stop taking static snapshots and instead look at trends. The birthrate in India has fallen dramatically, just as it has everywhere else as democracy, education, and post-industrial technology spread. These days most educated couples in India have only 2-3 children, and the percentage of the Indian population who can be described as "educated" is growing rapidly. Even that 2-3 rate is as much a nod to the entreaties of their parents' generation as their own desire. When these people become the grandparents they won't be nagging the younger generation to overpopulate.
You're certainly not quoting me on that one. Specific types of misery are causes of overpopulation. Without pensions or a social security system, people need children to take care of them when they retire. With no opportunities for cultural or recreational pursuits, people have nothing to do at night except stay home and make more babies. Etc.
Yes, up through the 19th century, the growth rate was lower in impoverished countries because they tended to have poor sanitation, nutrition and medical care so most children didn't reach puberty. But once we "gifted" them with antibiotics, vaccines, and water treatment plants, without building the economic infrastructure that would have weaned them off of their traditional way of life, those children all lived to have children of their own and their populations exploded.
Never forget the Law Of Unintended Consequences: "You can never do just one thing."
I've posted the stats on this thread and several others. The second derivative of population went negative in the early 1980s. It's now universally predicted that the first derivative will go negative by the end of this century: in other words, the birth rate will fall below replacement level of 2.1 children per adult female, and the population will start to shrink--after just barely reaching ten billion, a number which, although it seems scary to us, will be quite manageable once all the despotic governments are gone and people can do a better job of caring for themselvevs.
No, but slightly better management of our economy (by both government and industry leaders) would bring everybody (except the crazies who avoid interacting with the authorities) up to a satisfactory level without confiscating any rich kid's trust fund.
The problem is that the people who run both the government and industry are morons. One of the loudest complaints we hear today is that taxes are too high. Huh??? Taxes are at their lowest level in more than a generation. No modern, high-tech nation can possibly keep itself going with the paltry taxes the U.S. collects. That complaint is not just selfish, but ignorant.
On the other hand the other complaint commonly heard is that the income gap in the USA is too great, and paradoxically no one listens to this one. In Germany, the average CEO makes about ten times as much money as his average employee. There's absolutely no problem living a glamorous lifestyle on that much money. But in the USA, the average CEO makes more than two hundred times as much as his average employee!
And these guys think their taxes are too high!!!
When you hear a Libertarian complaining that some people are way too rich, others are way too poor, and taxes need to be raised, you know that your country is completely fucked!
California is universally regarded as a crowded place. Yet about 75% of the state's land is farm, forest or desert.
Virtually all of the countries in the Western Hemisphere are sparsely populated by the standards of the Eastern Hemisphere. Mexico has gigantic farming regions. So does Argentina.
But just wait until the current warming cycle melts the tundra. Greenland and Siberia will become breadbaskets!
That's a problem that will solve itself too. When the current ice age finally comes to an end, which is defined as "no permanent ice anywhere," with the icecaps and glaciers melted and the average temperature a few degrees higher, relative humidity rises and average global rainfall increases. There will still be weather "patterns" and a few dry places will still exist, but on the average there will be no shortage of water or food.
And everybody can have a lawn. With a fish pond and their own pet capybara lolling in it.
And it's fine to pass laws that protect habitat, natural resources and that otherwise solve collective action problems (within limits, I think, many people want to go way too far with those things, especially those who live a great distance away the areas they want to "protect").
That is not as I see it a question of planetary overpopulation but "too many humans want to live at position X right now"...in other words, it's not "overpopulation", but "overcrowding" in a local areas of the population that does exist. If there were only 10,000 humans on Earth, and they all wanted to build houses along rivers in which the last living Ashy Darters (an endangered fish) lived, pollution of those rivers would be an issue, even though it could not be claimed that "the Earth is overpopulated"
It would be much, much easier to save an apex predator like the tiger if there were fewer people. Humans don't like to have their livestock eaten, much less be eaten themselves, and will naturally defend themselves. Also, it's hard to fault extremely poor people for poaching when irrational demand and scarcity have made tiger bits so valuable. Between the habitat loss, and the lack of political will, I think wild tigers are doomed.
These animals were doing pretty well forty or fifty years ago, and it isn't as though the world was dangerously underpopulated then. Why not have a world where the vast areas needed to support such a predator can be left wild? This is just one example of many, many species that require vast areas over which they can roam/and or migrate without coming into conflict with farms, ranches and cities.
I think overcrowding will be with us always. Many places that are empty, or were once populated and are now abandoned are that way for a reason; they are miserable places to live. Humans are only really comfortable in a pretty narrow range of climate. We can survive just about anywhere, but there's a big difference between living comfortably, and surviving. Even here in the USA, more people want to live in our most popular cities than really can. Supply and demand see to it that rents/property values shoot sky high, and people move farther out where they can afford an apartment or home. I'd really like to live in Santa Barbara. And while I'm dreaming, I'd like Miranda Kerr to leave Orlando Bloom, and move in with me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger
Since India has been a democracy for at least 4 decades, the highest rate of growing also fell under the democratic rule.
Pretty much irrelevant, when you have 800 million (just made that up) poor and uneducated, who can and do still breed.
Do you know what you get when you apply 2.5 kids to every family? Huge growth. As long as it is higher then 2.1, the population is going to grow... And that is just the educated, still a minority.
I know, and India's crowdedness doesn't bother me, because I don't live there. They also easy on resources because overall they don't use much. It is the Westerners (USA it is you) who waste resources...
I don't really care because I will be dead for a long time by then. And if we still add 3 billion people by then, that doesn't really help us now does it?
We "think" it will. My guess is that it never will, but wars and viruses will decimate the population anyway...
An assumption. Second, even democratic governments start wars or don't care about their people, so just despotism disappearing doesn't solve the problem.
I could make a point that people are LOSING this skill, and depending more and more on the government. Unlike 200 years ago, when nobody cared about them, thus they really had to care for themselves...
Slightly?? America is deep in debt and the number of homeless is actually GROWING. So your daydream is not coming to pass, at least not very likely. But keep dream on...
Otherwise I have to start to call you Captain Obvious. You sated lots of facts, but those are pretty much well known and kind of irrelevant to the topic.
Although in one way a bad economy is good for population loss. People getting poorer can't afford more kids, like before...
This is just in:
With forests and fish stocks declining, water demand rising and lack of action on climate change, humanity's path is anything but sustainable, the UN warns:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18339905
Now where is that extra 3 billion people when I need them???
With forests and fish stocks declining, water demand rising and lack of action on climate change, humanity's path is anything but sustainable, the UN warns:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18339905
Now where is that extra 3 billion people when I need them???
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
We used to have an Anatolian, a gigantic Turkish dog (120lb/55kg) bred specifically to protect livestock from lions. (Imagine a greyhound on steroids with the head of a mastiff. You're already running away!) African lions are apparently a little larger, so American breeders have been producing larger Anatolians (150lb/70kg) and simply donating them to African farmers. Two of those suckers will keep the lions away from a whole village. Everybody wins. The lions don't die, the farmers don't lose their stock, the environmentalists are happy and the people in the village have milk and beef.
Tigers are the largest feline, but they don't hunt in groups. Perhaps it will require three Anatolians to keep a village free from tigers.
I think places like Shanghai have proven that there's no limit to the size of a city.
Although humans started out as a pack-social species like gorillas and chimpanzees, living in extended-family units of a few dozen, somewhere along the way we have made the transition to herd-social, living more-or-less in harmony and cooperation with millions of anonymous strangers. Both the USA and the planet as a whole reached the toggle point in this century: More than half of the population now live in cities.
That said, of course I can't ignore the impact of the Industrial Era work paradigm on population movement. People have to "go to work" every day, which means that they have to live within practical travel distance of their jobs, which are all in the cities.
The Electronic Era is changing all that, and doing it much more quickly than any previous Paradigm Shift. It took thousands of years for the majority of the population to shift from hunting and gathering to farming and animal husbandry, and there are still a few places where the Industrial Revolution hasn't quite happened yet. But it's taken less than 180 years for the first commercial telegraph to evolve into an internet connection in everybody's pocket linking them to the whole world.
Fewer and fewer jobs require human labor as process-control software takes over everything from janitorial work to grain refining. We still have a generation of dinosaur managers who insist that people can only work as a team when they're working in the same room, but my grandfather insisted that no one would ever be comfortable transacting business over a telephone wire. Telecommuting will become the norm as webcams proliferate, we all have multiple monitors, and "pass the mouse" software makes it easy to take turns writing on the six virtual blackboards in every virtual conference room.
At that point we'll find out how many of us really want to live out in the country, and how many of us really like living in the city where there are museums, concert halls, crafts fairs, foreign restaurants, night clubs, exotic apparel and the sounds of exotic languages, stadiums, zoos, art galleries, flower shows, and magic around every corner. (Oops I guess now you know which camp I fall into.
)Fortunately everyone will be able to live wherever they want. It will certainly take the population pressure off of the cities without causing them to drop below critical mass so a rock concert can't fill a stadium and the flower show only has six varieties of daffodil. In particular it will take the pressure off the poor people to live in a place they can't afford because it's the only place they can find work and/or welfare.
I can tell that you've never really spent any time there. If you paint your shutters the wrong color the cops will show up in the morning. I'll take Hollywood any day--lived there for ten wonderful years.
Much of the habitat destruction is being done for raising cattle for disgusting fast food restaurants such as mcdonalds. This is either for the cattle itself or food to feed the cattle. Many third world countries waste resources farmiing cattle to sell to the U.S. which consumes immense amounts of meat. A reduction in meat consumption would solve many world hunger problems and leave more land for nature preserves. One acre of land can produce up 60000 pounds of potatoes but only 300 pounds of beef. Vegetarianism requires much less land to produce so much more. Few major obstacles exist that can't be easily solved. Most don't even require a significant technological breakthrough. Though I do believe some form of fusion or other technology will come out in the next decade to solve the energy crisis and bring power and education to all the world. Then again I am an optimist. Infinite free energy can let us do almost whatever we want. Build giant orbiting farms or housing complexes, shipping becomes very easy. If these don't come to fruition I have backup strategies but they aren't all as nice.
too-open-minded
Registered Member
WW3 population control? Our governments are a little smarter than that. They would simply blame a massive solar flare on shutting down all our electricity or something. During a bad economic time. Then wait a few years and let everyone dependent on running water, electricity, and processed food to die.
The great depression, WW1, and WW2 didn't put a dent in the skyrocketing human population that started in the 1800's after the discovery of oil.
Lots of people consume, drive, and pollute. The earth can't stand the amount of people on it nor a growing amount.
Carrying capacity is a law of nature, although we can alter it we can never outdo it at its games.
Whether population control is implemented or carrying cap wakes us up, People will have a different perspective on life in the next 300 years.
The great depression, WW1, and WW2 didn't put a dent in the skyrocketing human population that started in the 1800's after the discovery of oil.
Lots of people consume, drive, and pollute. The earth can't stand the amount of people on it nor a growing amount.
Carrying capacity is a law of nature, although we can alter it we can never outdo it at its games.
Whether population control is implemented or carrying cap wakes us up, People will have a different perspective on life in the next 300 years.