overpopulation

[MonsieurFish]

the diabetes thread got me thinkin of this, now imagine they find cures for diabetes, eventually cancer, etc etc etc, and the world very soon is going to be over populated. what on earth are we as the human race going to do when there are too many people on this planet?

[droopydrew19]

Paging Dr Kevorkian!!!!!!!

[Barnes]

Originally Posted by MonsieurFish

the diabetes thread got me thinkin of this, now imagine they find cures for diabetes, eventually cancer, etc etc etc, and the world very soon is going to be over populated. what on earth are we as the human race going to do when there are too many people on this planet?

Look up my friend.

[BlackEleven]

Overpopulation is not a problem in first world countries. Most first-world countries today, in fact, have decline population due to birth-control and socio-economic decisions that result in most families having two or less children.

Most of the countries that do have a rapidly exploding population are in Africa where people are still having 6+ kids per family. These are typically not the people that will have access to cures for cancer and other such diseases due to the high cost. Millions in Africa die every year from malaria, a diease that is treatable here in North America. I doubt very much that advances in medial technology would contribute to an huge population explosion.

[Burninator]

Too late. There are too many people on this planet already.

[GoinAllTheWay]

I've often wondered the same thing. As bad as various diseases are, they are a form of population control. We cure everything are we going to be able to feed everone? Let alone just finding a place for them to live.

Cities in the sky are so far off into the future and thats assuming it even happens. I suspect people would be living on the moon before living in sky cities.

[Cube Inmate]

According to those "environmental footprint" calculators, the world is already highly overpopulated ... according to them, it would take something like 6.8 earths to support the world's population if everyone lived like me.

So, in answer to your question, what we're going to do is continue to have a huge disparity between the rich and the poor.

[RougeUnderoos]

This is a nifty little animation about China's population. Apparently they are slowing down with the wee ones. I would imagine as they become "more developed" or "get richer" the birth rate will continue to go down. The same thing will probably happen in India.

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/...im/pop_ani.htm

Curing diabetes will probably help the most in North America, where all the fatties live. We'll have a lot of old fat people.

[Cowperson]

Captain Kirk has already confronted this problem in a Star Trek episode.

http://homepage.mac.com/m5comp/trekb...eon/index.html

Seriously though, aren't we looking at global population trends peaking out at roughly 11.5 billion in about 50 years?

Japan this year is the first major economic power to see its population begin to reverse. Japan's population is now in decline.

Europe will have a dramatic population decline in the next 50 years, about one-third.

China is about to have a major demographic shift and a significant population decline . . . .

But the mega-cities of today are going to rocket in population in third world places.

I wouldn't be surprised if you see more countries begin to erect, as Saudi is going to do on its Iraq border, as Israel has done to the Palestinians, physical barriers on borders stretching hundreds of miles . . . . to keep the poor, disenfranchised or refugees from conflict out.

Cowperson

[MonsieurFish]

Originally Posted by Cube Inmate

According to those "environmental footprint" calculators, the world is already highly overpopulated ... according to them, it would take something like 6.8 earths to support the world's population if everyone lived like me.

So, in answer to your question, what we're going to do is continue to have a huge disparity between the rich and the poor.

sure, but right now we have 6.5 billion people on this planet, and by 2050 its supposed to go up to just under 10 billion. there's gonna be just too rich people to cancel out the poor people and were gonan be screwed

[Looger]

zbigniew brizhinski, carter's chief of staff, has written extensively on how the elite will manage the population.

elites that talk in these terms are usually called 'malthusians' after malthus, this is not a new science, it goes way way back.

the georgia guidestones call for a maximum world population of 500,000,000.

what i find interesting though is that the overpopulation problems in africa and many of the poorer areas, are exacerbated GREATLY by these same elites lending impossible debts to their warlord leaders and buying off their governments for land rights so that the people can't even feed themselves because the crops are taken up growing sugar for rich country supermarkets.

'confessions of an economic hitman' by john perkins is an excellent book on this subject.

i find it ridiculous to imagine that africa can be 'suddenly' way overpopulated, besides obvious famines there are wars, major mismanagement and farmer persecution like zimbabwe, and god knows what else going on the world over.

what i find most interesting is that there are clearly interests at work keeping the third world exactly where it is, because there are plenty of second-world countries like iran and brazil whose birthrates have PLUMETTED in the last 20 years. industrialization always brings this aboot.

the same elites saying we need to 'cull the herd' are in the pockets of the interests that keep many countries in the squalor that leads to large families and massive misery.

cute.

recent example of course that made some headlines is dr. pianka advocating the culling of 90% of humanity by an airborne birus, like ebola.

[Reaper]

"And in today's top story, Soylent Green production is expected to skyrocket over the next financial quarter..."

[Flashpoint]

We are already overpopulated. For everyone on earth to eat like your average North American, we would need approximately 6 planets of Earth's size, with every square inch of arible land cultivated for food production.

Now, granted, we could easily stand to see most North Americans eat less. Myself included. But unless you are willing to cut your diet to 1/6th of it's current size (so one meal every 2 days), and stop popping out kids, there needs to an acknowledgement of one of two things.

We need better resource sharing between the first and third world (and why would we possibly want to do that when we can have Hummers, Big Macs, and Xbox 360's, and all they have to offer us in return is dirt, AIDS, and perhaps cheap manual labour).

We need less people (which isn't going to fly anywhere except maybe in China where the government can do pretty much whatever it wants, and has done so with the "One Child" policy).

A third potential option runs along the lines of "Soylant Green", and we'll see how long it takes for life to start imitating THAT lovely little piece of art.

Realizations like this are part of the reason I stopped watching "The Nature of Things". Too depressing. Maybe I am just a pessimist, but I see more mouths than we can feed in the world, and more interest in making money than in feeding people in the minds of those who hold power.


Hence - we are already overpopulated.

[Cowperson]

Some articles on population trends.

http://www.unfpa.org/6billion/popula...ues/trends.htm

http://www.unfpa.org/pds/trends.htm

http://www.ifpri.org/2020conference/..._bongaarts.pdf

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/...gkh1/chap1.htm

Cowperson

[RougeUnderoos]

Originally Posted by Looger

the same elites saying we need to 'cull the herd' are in the pockets of the interests that keep many countries in the squalor that leads to large families and massive misery.

cute.

recent example of course that made some headlines is dr. pianka advocating the culling of 90% of humanity by an airborne birus, like ebola.

Who are these "elites"? This Pianka guy is a cranky old biology professor in Texas. Does he count?

[troutman]

Stephen Hawking recently said the ONLY way the human race will survive, is to expand to other planets.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articl...-1.xml&src=rss

Humans must colonize planets in other solar systems traveling there using "Star Trek"-style propulsion or face extinction, renowned British cosmologist Stephen Hawking said Thursday.

Referring to complex theories and the speed of light, Hawking, the wheel-chair bound Cambridge University physicist, told BBC radio that theoretical advances could revolutionize the velocity of space travel and make such colonies possible.

"Sooner or later disasters such as an asteroid collision or a nuclear war could wipe us all out," said Professor Hawking, who was crippled by a muscle disease at the age of 21 and who speaks through a computerized voice synthesizer.

"But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe," said Hawking, who was due to receive the world's oldest award for scientific achievement, the Copley medal, from Britain's Royal Society Thursday.

[MonsieurFish]

Originally Posted by troutman

Stephen Hawking recently wrote an article that said the ONLY way the human race will survive, is to expand to other planets.

wow that's intense... kinda scary, yet intense

[Superfraggle]

I figure nature will probably end up culling much of the population for us. Maybe a disease, maybe severe climate change, maybe something else. If we're lucky, we'll manage to avoid extinction for a while...we'll just have a lot less mouths to feed.

[Devils'Advocate]

I remember going to a David Suzuki seminar where he just opened the floor to questions. One activist grabbed the mic and launched into a tirade about overpopulation being the ONE and ONLY environmental issue. David acknowledged that, yes, overpopulation is a problem. He said something along the lines of "The world population keeps doubling every 40 years. So let's say the world can hold 10 billion people. Let's take something looney like saying we could colonize Mars to the extent that it could hold 10 billion people. What do we do 40 years after that?" Good question.

It is obvious that the issue of population needs to be addressed. And what needs to be addressed is poverty issues, women's rights issues, and GET THE #@&%* CHURCHES TO STOP CONDEMNING PEOPLE WHO USE BIRTH CONTROL. *******s all.


-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

However, Suzuki didn't stop there. He said that overpopulation is an easy subject for first world countries to grasp onto. "We're running out of resources like fresh water.... AND WE CAN BLAME THE BLACK, BROWN AND YELLOW PEOPLE FOR IT! COOL!" It completely ignores the fact that we overconsume. We saw by the "Buy Nothing Day" thread that most people don't give two ****s about the overconsumption in our society, but this overpopulation issue is easy to gripe about. Stupid Asians. Wasting all the worlds resources.

Suzuki came right out and said that those people who blame third world overpopulation for the worlds problem but fail to recognize first world overconsumption have to be racist because there is no other possible explaination for their illogical conclusions.

[eazyduzzit]

If it got to the extreme, countries could simply pass laws allowing families to only have a certain number of children (As china has already done?)

I doubt it would get that extreme and in the next 200 years i wouldn't be too suprised if space exploration was a lot more advanced than it is now - leading to the possibility of humans on other planets.

Plus, i think even with population growth now, the Earth still has lots of room.