Poll: Is the world overpopulated?

[Zeluvia]

I don't see how you can claim that is the only definition of overpopulation. If you have to change everything to sustain it, you've shown that you overpopulated your previous environment.

By this definition, the world has been overpopulated since the widespread adoption of agriculture. If you want to use this definition, then I am forced to agree that the Earth is overpopulated; but you must equally accept that it really is not a problem at all. After all, we have been overpopulated for longer than we have had history, and yet quality of life for all has improved beyond belief for all of that time.

The question 'Is the Earth overpopulated?' is rather like the question 'Am I going too fast?'; the answer is meaningless without more context, and so the question is also meaningless without more context.

Going at 15km/h is too fast when driving around a hairpin bend in icy conditions; it is not too fast on a straight stretch of dry freeway. A half-billion people is too many if we are not allowed to change the natural environment one iota. it is not too many if we are allowed to farm.

Anything and everything is unsustainable at ANY population level, unless there is a way to re-cycle it. Some recycling happens without human intervention - such as in the water cycle; some requires intervention using various technologies - from the super simple like shovelling up the cow-pats and spreading the muck on the fields to fertilise the grass, to feed the cows; to the more complex stuff, like using solar power to convert excess atmospheric carbon dioxide into aviation fuel.

The natural recycle rates can be boosted using technology - desalination bypasses the waiting for the sun to evaporate water from the ocean, then waiting for the rain to fall where you want it to fall. Ploughing and tilling means you needn't wait for worms or pigs to turn over the soil; spreading muck means not waiting for the cows to poop where you need them to poop, and using chemical fertilisers means not waiting for the cows to poop at all - or not waiting for the legumes to fix nitrogen for your next grain crop.

Technology changes the carrying capacity of the planet. To date, it has almost always increased that capacity faster than we have increased our numbers; and now that our numbers have stopped increasing (or rather, are about to stop increasing), we need not worry about absolute population numbers - which means we are free to solve real problems, such as poverty, disease, slavery, war, and the existence of Justin Bieber.

Worrying about non-issues on a large scale is positively harmful to humanity. This is true whether the issue is whether a magic skybeast will burn you for eternity for falling in love with someone with the wrong shaped genitals; or whether it is "overpopulation".

bilby, just curious. But where do you stand on the rights of indigenous peoples? Amazonia, Africa, Australia, North America, Mongolia, areas of China. These people live tribal subsistence level lives. Much of the time their land is taken to be "improved", their culture and life style destroyed, and they become a new generation of poor while they try to catch up. This is actually the way superior technology has played out many places in the world, even in Great Britain during the first agricultural revolution. What do you suggest about this human problem?

I don't have a solution. I would prefer to see the lands of indigenous peoples recognised as being their property, and therefore not available to exploit without their permission as owners; but in most cases, they simply don't have the ability to defend themselves, nor the political influence to obtain adequate protection from the national governments.

The nomadic lifestyle doesn't lend itself to learning how to defend against theft of property that people have no concept of ownership over; If you offer a tribe a dozen cases of whiskey in return for a few thousand square miles of land, they think you are an idiot, and gladly fleece you - what kind of fool give perfectly good whiskey away? The land isn't 'property', it is just there; If you want to buy the Eiffel tower from me, I will take your money and run.

Today, many governments are beginning to provide some protection to their indigenous peoples. The majority of those parts of Australia that has been stolen from its original inhabitants was stolen within a century or so of the landing of the First Fleet; by 1888 the population of Australia was around 3 million migrants and their descendants, plus an unknown number of Aborigines. World population at that time had yet to reach 2 billion. Today, with protections in place, Aboriginal lands cannot even be visited by non-Aborigines without a permit from the locals - which is as it should be; after all, you can't take a stroll around my backyard without asking me first either. There are still many issues, and it is too complex to go into all of them here; but on the whole, things are less awful today than they were a century ago, or even a half century ago, for Australian Aborigines. This despite the population of non-aborigines in Australia having multiplied by five in the last century, mainly through further immigration.

This problem is a dreadful and difficult one - but its causes are not population growth, but rather the pursuit of economic growth by a small number of people from a small number of nations mostly in Western Europe, mostly in the 16th through 19th centuries. The English, Spanish, French, Dutch and Portuguese didn't go to America because they had too many people at home; they went because they had the technology necessary to get there, and they hoped to get rich. Stealing stuff from people who have no ability to prevent you from doing so is a very effective way to get rich, no matter how large or small the world population may be.

So in summary; it sucks; but I don't know what else to do about it that isn't already being tried; and it isn't relevant to the topic of the thread.

Overpopulation is like Goddidit. You can point to any problem and say that's the answer; but all you achieve thereby is a smug feeling of not being totally clueless. It is better to say you don't know the answers; at least that way you don't stop looking for them.

The reason I asked this was because while you are right about technology, in some ways technological improvements have in the past created poverty by replacing workers or more importantly, populations that live at subsistence level, and done nothing FOR them while the future rolled Over them. You can see this everywhere where the first world meets the third, from Afghanistan to Chile.

I have many more reasons than just food and resources to think population is a problem. My biggest is the change in the human gestalt, which I am still pondering until I grok it more completely.

 

[bilby]

The reason I asked this was because while you are right about technology, in some ways technological improvements have in the past created poverty by replacing workers or more importantly, populations that live at subsistence level, and done nothing FOR them while the future rolled Over them. You can see this everywhere where the first world meets the third, from Afghanistan to Chile.

I have many more reasons than just food and resources to think population is a problem. My biggest is the change in the human gestalt, which I am still pondering until I grok it more completely.

I agree that technology causes, as well as solves, problems; I don't see more than the most tenuous connection between these problems and population though. The colonisation of the Americas, Africa, India, and Australasia were all driven by technology, but none were particularly population driven. Technology and the promise of wealth meant that these would likely have occurred even had the population of Europe at the time been far smaller.

 

[DBT]

I doubt that a single world city could ever work in practical terms. The sheer scale of infrastructure to transport food from vast areas of farmland and factories, include vast mountains of waste products, commuting, recreation and so on... it would be a nightmare. Not at all practical.

How is that different from what we *already* have? We already need all of those things today, for the same number of people; except we have to spread that shit out across almost the entire planet instead of having it neatly centralized. That's way more infrastructure to accomplish the same thing, even taking into account how with centralization the infrastructure would have to accommodate greater volumes of traffic.

Scale matters. What works on a small scale does not necessarily work on an extremely large scale. The logistics of daily transporting billions of people over a relatively small area is just one barrier.

 

[dystopian]

You guys do know the difference between a thought experiment designed to make it easier to imagine a complex situation, and an actual policy proposal, don't you?

IF the entire world population was to be in one place, it would be possible for them to occupy a city the size of Texas, at currently widely accepted population densities; and they could be fed by a land area similar to that of the USA; and they could get all of their water needs from the Colombia river.

The first word in that sentence should be a warning to anyone who is hoping to make a killing supplying concrete and steel to the San Angelo region; or by selling their farmland in Germany to fund the purchase of an farm in Arizona.

Thank you, that's what I've been trying to say; the idea of a single world city isn't meant as a serious proposal, it's just meant to put the issue into perspective.

 

[dystopian]

IF one looks at your idea of 100x, and does not _even_ try to cram it into the state of Texas-sized spots, just take the current countries, their current populations and their current densities and multiply them 100x, how does this extended thought experiment LOOK and FEEL in context?

Nobody was talking about just taking the current densities of countries, though. That's absurd.

But in the thought experiment, of course, one KNOWS that one must subtract land unfit for cities. Like lakes, deserts (maybe not! Tatooine here we come!) and mountain peaks.

If that were true, Las Vegas wouldn't exist. Lakes also are not actually an obstacle; for instance, the city I live on is situated in the southwest corner of the largest artificial island in the world, which is located in the largest artificial lake in the world, which used to be an actual sea. And mountain *peaks* represent maybe 0,001% of the surface of the US, if that. If you meant to say mountains; well, those aren't a problem either... there's plenty of cities built on mountain sides.

One also knows, that even in a thought experiment, one needs space for garbage, sewage treatment, oh, and to grow food.

And you'd have plenty of space for all of that. Cities already have garbage and sewage treatment within their city limits, and so that's already calculated into the population density. And I've already mentioned vertical farming; which allows you to mix the growth of food right in with the people.

One can think about what kind of food can be grown in the least possible space and whether it's diverse.

Yes, actually, it would be diverse. In fact, it could easily be MORE diverse than traditional farms. Greenhouses can accomodate a far wider range of foods, after all.

One can also think, "they are having water battles already over much of that space what will happen at 100x?"

No, nobody is having water battles anywhere in the US (except the fun kind); which is what matters since you were talking about covering the US in a city.

And for that matter, NOBODY on the entire PLANET is having water battles because there isn't enough water. There is more than enough water to sustain the world population many times over. The people who are currently having fights over water, live in poor and dry countries where they can't afford to create the infrastructure to gather and distribute the water that's there. So it's not a problem of the water supply itself.

So, that Miami population density is merely the BEST possible unrealistic case and only for one of the least populated countries on the planet.

What? I can't even parse the above sentence. How is the miami population density the 'best' possible scenario for the US? Huh? why not NYC population density? It'd leave you with far less sprawl fucking everything thing up. Obviously NYC density would be far better.

So that's why I did that. That's the brack. You can't get any _better_ than that outside of Australia and Russia (as examples; see the list for more). But you can't get any better than that for 182 countries.

I don't even know what you're saying anymore.

IF we made a city more dense than Singapore (by 25%) and made it 700 miles across the thought experiment again asks, and this would not cause major upheaval?

Sure. The industrial revolution caused major upheaval too? So fucking what?

But this part of the thought experiment was only a step to the larger population, the 100x. So now you need a land area of 100 Texases which equals 7 USAs

No. Math fail. I was talking about the population density of PARIS. Fitting the current world population into a city with the density of Paris takes about HALF of texas. So you'd need 50 Texases. If we went with Manilla, we'd need 25 texases.

We are at 46% of the planet's surface, and we still haven't subtracted out the swamps, mountains, lakes, volcanoes, glaciers,

Because we don't have to; all of those environments are home to urban developments on our planet (well, except maybe glaciers).

garbage dumps and sewage treatment plants.

Just to repeat; but garbage dumps and sewage treatment plants do often exist within city limits of cities with high densities, and as such are already included in the calculations made to arrive at that city's population density. In other words, no, we don't have to subtract them.

It would leave no room for parks, wildlife or wilderness. Miami. Coast to coast.

Once again; yes it would.

I am _definitely_ suggesting that Miami's parks (and Paris' and Manilla's) are not what I think of when I think "Parks." I'm thinking Everglades, Tetons, Glacier, Badlands, Yellowstone, Denali and Big Bend.

Those are not parks, those are nature reserves. Incidentally, there are cities in the world with similar or higher popular densities as Miami; where the density figure covers an area which actually INCLUDES large areas of nature and rural parks. So, yes, you could actually have such areas, even when you're going with an arbitrarily low density like that of Miami (why again are you so fixated on the density needing to be as low as that of miami?)

 

[dystopian]

When 700 Billion people go out for the day, it is not "countryside" any more. I mean, it _isn't,_ right?

Of course it is. The 'countryside' just refers to any area that exists outside of cities and towns with a low (or non-existent) population density. Visitors don't count.

I meant they currently choose a mix. Your scenario has no mix.

Boohoo.

Oh, because the parks would be gone. Just a small city square left and a million people to use it.

See my above post for why that's not true.

Really What's the measure of "quality of life"? Genuinely curious, assuming you have a reason to say that and I'm looking to learn what it is.

Urban populations are better educated, have greater income equality, live longer, live *healthier* too (despite the increased air pollution), and have easier access to any service they may need or want. It's really hard to look at these facts and think urban populations DON'T have a higher quality of life.

We got all that. Our fire department has saved 4 cellar holes this year alone.

Wow, FOUR whole cellar holes! Wait. What the fuck even is a cellar hole? That sounds like something a hobbit would live in. And why the hell are these things even catching fire to begin? Cellars generally don't catch fire unless you're cooking meth in them or something.

Also I didn't say you didn't have a fire department. But it's a basic fact that response times are generally going to be much lower in rural areas.

Compared to the average? I'm not sure it'd be "obscene" Definitely western-privileged, but I'm curious what factors do you think are present to make it "obscene"? I mean, yeah, my outhouse is a two-holer, and the seats are made of local cherry, but it's still an outhouse.

Resource consumption. On average, urban populations consume significantly fewer resources per capita than do rural populations. And contrary to stereotypes, urban populations on average also put out less population than their rural counterparts. And the resource consumption/ecological footprint of someone living in the west (rural or otherwise) is going to many times higher than that of the global average. Especially that of someone living in the US: The ecological footprint of the average person is 2.7 hectares, for the average american it's 8.0 hectares. However you put it, that's pretty obscene.

 

[dystopian]

Scale matters. What works on a small scale does not necessarily work on an extremely large scale. The logistics of daily transporting billions of people over a relatively small area is just one barrier.

No, there's little reason to think the scale here would matter. After all, the local scale would actually stay the same. Again; it doesn't matter if the city grows a hundred times the size or not when you have the same overall density as before. Besides, we have plentiful examples of concentrated populations with much higher factors of difference between them; if it isn't an insurmountable problem there, why would we magically assume it becomes one here?

 

[Rhea]

Nobody was talking about just taking the current densities of countries, though. That's absurd.

dys. You're having a hard time understanding people talking about a thought experiment. You give a "thought experiment" and somehow refuse to accept people putting those thoughts into a context so it can be considered? Open up a little, dude, and see what people are contributing. Or did you really mean to define a thought experiment so rigid no one can discuss it?

Now obstacles - LasVegas, and Phoenix for that matter, have some limits. Water is a huge one.
Many many large cities do _not_ have internal sewage and waste facilities. I would be interested in hearing from you which ones actually do. Most worldwide cities, as far as I know, export their garbage. I'm open to education: who doesn't? And what percentage of cities don't?

Vertical farming: explain how that exists. Is the farming underground or are the people underground? Who gets the windows in the buildings?

One can also think, "they are having water battles already over much of that space what will happen at 100x?"

No, nobody is having water battles anywhere in the US (except the fun kind); which is what matters since you were talking about covering the US in a city.

Your google is broken. Use this term:
water rights battle conflict in usa
They are already having conflicts over water rights which include court, legal, and police events and include violence.

The people who are currently having fights over water, live in poor and dry countries where they can't afford to create the infrastructure to gather and distribute the water that's there. So it's not a problem of the water supply itself.

That's "The Supply". The supply line, the supply method the way of getting water to people who are in conflict over it. Your answer is, "we could fix it, we just don't" and that's supposed to comfort folks into thinking, "but in some future case we'll behave better. No, really, we will."

So, that Miami population density is merely the BEST possible unrealistic case and only for one of the least populated countries on the planet.

What? I can't even parse the above sentence. How is the miami population density the 'best' possible scenario for the US?

Sigh. It's just the math. One does the math, sees what density comes up, compares it to an existing city so one can picture it. "Best" meaning least dense possible, all other variables with only increase density. I should have used the phrase "least dense" or better yet, "the smallest amount of change from existing that is possible" but I thought you'd understand. Sorry.

So that's why I did that. That's the brack[et]. You can't get any _better_ than that outside of Australia and Russia (as examples; see the list for more). But you can't get any better than that for 182 countries.

I don't even know what you're saying anymore.

okay. I see that.

But this part of the thought experiment was only a step to the larger population, the 100x. So now you need a land area of 100 Texases which equals 7 USAs

No. Math fail. I was talking about the population density of PARIS. Fitting the current world population into a city with the density of Paris takes about HALF of texas. So you'd need 50 Texases. If we went with Manilla, we'd need 25 texases.

I was going with the actual population and the size of Texas, as you said in your thought experiment.

I am _definitely_ suggesting that Miami's parks (and Paris' and Manilla's) are not what I think of when I think "Parks." I'm thinking Everglades, Tetons, Glacier, Badlands, Yellowstone, Denali and Big Bend.

Those are not parks, those are nature reserves. Incidentally, there are cities in the world with similar or higher popular densities as Miami; where the density figure covers an area which actually INCLUDES large areas of nature and rural parks. So, yes, you could actually have such areas, even when you're going with an arbitrarily low density like that of Miami

We call them parks. National Parks. They are run by the National Park Service. You get a Park Pass (for the ones that need passes - the highly used and hence "densely populated" ones) to use them.

Please give an example of a city that includes a park like the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho, USA.

(why again are you so fixated on the density needing to be as low as that of miami?)

You had a hard time understanding that I didn't pick Miami, Miami matched the numbers, so it was representative. I could have said 30 other cities, but Miami is easier to picture. It's the density you get if you take 100x population and spread it evenly across the USA. It merely gives an image, a feeling, of how many people that is.

 

[Rhea]

Urban populations are better educated, have greater income equality, live longer, live *healthier* too (despite the increased air pollution), and have easier access to any service they may need or want. It's really hard to look at these facts and think urban populations DON'T have a higher quality of life.

That's an interesting question and deserves it's own thread. I find the quality of life in cities to be extremely compromised. Wonder what forum I should put that in...

We got all that. Our fire department has saved 4 cellar holes this year alone.

Wow, FOUR whole cellar holes! Wait. What the fuck even is a cellar hole? That sounds like something a hobbit would live in. And why the hell are these things even catching fire to begin? Cellars generally don't catch fire unless you're cooking meth in them or something.

It's a joke. A rural joke. We don't use our fire companies to save buildings, we use them to save people, and then to keep the fire from spreading to the woods. Generally speaking, all fires (here) result in a total loss, hence the only thing that is "saved" is the cellar hole.

But we are fine with that, since the alternative is having to live in a city and/or pay more than we want for "protection" that we don't really care about. Yes response times are lower and this is not a bad thing in our eyes.

Compared to the average? I'm not sure it'd be "obscene" Definitely western-privileged, but I'm curious what factors do you think are present to make it "obscene"? I mean, yeah, my outhouse is a two-holer, and the seats are made of local cherry, but it's still an outhouse.

Resource consumption. On average, urban populations consume significantly fewer resources per capita than do rural populations. And contrary to stereotypes, urban populations on average also put out less population than their rural counterparts. And the resource consumption/ecological footprint of someone living in the west (rural or otherwise) is going to many times higher than that of the global average. Especially that of someone living in the US: The ecological footprint of the average person is 2.7 hectares, for the average american it's 8.0 hectares. However you put it, that's pretty obscene.

Another interesting question. Would be interesting to count up all the actual footprints. Usually the count includes cars, and - what else? I know there's more. But usually when I read those something seems missing. And a lot of that is the sort of background stuff that is somehow not counted. One fact is that people who live urban spend more money. The cost of living is higher. So, in some way, they spend more, more people are middlemen to get a single thing and this is somehow less of a footprint. That's curious. I'm not sure how it shakes out, but don't you think that's curious that all this commerce goes on with no carbon footprint from it?

That deserves a new thread, too.

 

[dystopian]

dys. You're having a hard time understanding people talking about a thought experiment. You give a "thought experiment" and somehow refuse to accept people putting those thoughts into a context so it can be considered? Open up a little, dude, and see what people are contributing. Or did you really mean to define a thought experiment so rigid no one can discuss it?

Hang on. What is this, opposite day? I gave a thought experiment to put our current situation into *perspective*; you then react to the thought experiment as if it were a serious proposal and then make counter-arguments against a position that the thought experiment doesn't even put forth.

Many many large cities do _not_ have internal sewage and waste facilities. I would be interested in hearing from you which ones actually do.

I don't know of a single one that does. Most or all cities have some manner of sewage and waste facilities within their city limits; even if this is not 100% sufficient. Amsterdam, for instance, handles waste and sewage on a number of locations within its city limits; the waste treated in the city is 99% reused in some fashion; heat for the city, electricity, resources.

Vertical farming: explain how that exists. Is the farming underground or are the people underground? Who gets the windows in the buildings?

Sigh, this again. As I explained to Loren, you *don't* need windows because you don't actually need sunlight to grow plants. Nowadays, we can grow crops using far more efficient LED lighting; which produces three times the yield as sunlight based farming does, on just 10% the resources. A LED based greenhouse therefore is not restricted in terms of where it can be located. A vertical farm therefore can be located anywhere; underground if you'd like, in an entire skyscraper, just a few floors; whatever. Hydrophonics and Aerophonics can increase the verticality even on the same floor. A vertical farm can produce crops year round, and requires only a fraction of the ground space. A city-based vertical farm also has the advantage of drastically cutting down on wasted resources going to transportation, and also decreasing chances of infestation and spoilage. Using modern techniques and engineered crops, a 30-story building with a base of a building block (5 acres (20,000 m2)) would yield a yearly crop analogous to that of 2,400 acres (9,700,000 m2) of traditional farming; at least.

Your google is broken. Use this term:
water rights battle conflict in usa
They are already having conflicts over water rights which include court, legal, and police events and include violence.

What you're describing is about economic profit and has nothing to do with water running out; there's no danger of that. There's no violence either.

That's "The Supply". The supply line, the supply method the way of getting water to people who are in conflict over it.

No. That's the 'most profitable' supply. Companies generally aren't interested in extracting harder to get resources, even if those resources could net them a profit; not when there's much easier/cheaper resources to be extracted elsewhere which net them greater profits. This fact does NOT mean we're in any real danger of running out of extractable drinking water.

"Best" meaning least dense possible, all other variables with only increase density.

And that, is the absurdity that I can not parse. Least dense is NOT "best"; in fact, least dense is quite clearly the WORST option, as you yourself demonstrate by claiming it would require a city from coast to coast without break. Decreasing urban density leads to all sorts of problems that could easily be avoided by maintaining a high urban density.

I was going with the actual population and the size of Texas, as you said in your thought experiment.

I never once said anything of the sort. I only ever mentioned a hypothetical city that fitted the entire world's population into about half of texas using the density of Paris.

Please give an example of a city that includes a park like the Nez Perce National Forest in Idaho, USA.

This is obviously a dishonest line of argument, since it relies on equating the word 'park' with national reserve; and because the reserve in question you've chosen is vastly bigger than any city. Obviously you're not going to find any like that. However, there are plenty of examples of parks within city limits that are far bigger than what you'd think of as an urban park; there's the Frankfurt City Forest, for instance; 48 square kilometers of inner city forest (and there are other forests in Frankfurt aswell). By comparison, the Amsterdam forest; which also exists within the city of limits; is a much more modest park at just over three times the size of central park. However; Central park itself could hardly be considered a tiny urban park either.

You had a hard time understanding that I didn't pick Miami, Miami matched the numbers, so it was representative.

No, actually, you DID pick the city; because YOU decided that you'd need to spread the population evenly across the US; which is absurd.

That's an interesting question and deserves it's own thread. I find the quality of life in cities to be extremely compromised.

Your personal opinion really isn't all that relevant; facts are facts. Better education, better healthcare, better health, better income, better everything. Qualify of life is not determined by whether you'd rather stare at a green mountain or a skyline, but by actual living conditions; which are indisputably better in urban environments.

But we are fine with that, since the alternative is having to live in a city and/or pay more than we want for "protection" that we don't really care about.

You'd actually pay LESS for these services if you lived in the city. A fire department that has to cater to ten thousand people living spread out over a huge area is going to have far higher operating costs than one that has to cater to ten thousand people living in a few city blocks.

Also, if you "don't really care" about having emergency services, then you're welcome to see what happens when they're not around.

Yes response times are lower and this is not a bad thing in our eyes.

I'm sure someone will remember that at the funeral they're having because you burned to death before anyone could show up to put out the fire.

Another interesting question. Would be interesting to count up all the actual footprints. Usually the count includes cars, and - what else? I know there's more. But usually when I read those something seems missing. And a lot of that is the sort of background stuff that is somehow not counted.

Actually, all of that stuff *is* in fact counted up in the calculations of ecological footprint. It isn't just cars.

One fact is that people who live urban spend more money. The cost of living is higher.

Generally, but that depends on the area. It's also rather moot since urban populations also MAKE more money.

So, in some way, they spend more, more people are middlemen to get a single thing and this is somehow less of a footprint. That's curious. I'm not sure how it shakes out, but don't you think that's curious that all this commerce goes on with no carbon footprint from it?

I didn't say that it didn't. However, here's what you don't seem to understand: Concentrating people and commercial activity DECREASES overall resource usage and pollution output. Let's say you have a hundred thousand people living spread out at rural densities, and there's just a single supermarket they need to go to in order to get their food or whatever. They're all going to take the car to do their shopping. Not to mention, that supermarket has the exact same problem as any other; namely that its supply also has to be trucked in. Now imagine a hundred thousand people living in a small dense city, and a single supermarket for them. Unlike the rural people, the urbanites don't actually need to take the car; many of them will be close enough to walk. Others can take a bicycle, or take advantage of public transportation. Even the ones who DO take a car will drive only a fraction of what the rural people do. This means that the rural people are going to be outputting a LOT more pollution; on average; than the urban people. And you'll find a similar situation for just about every other factor that comes into play with one's ecological footprint. Water? Yep. Waste disposal? Yep. Etc, etc.

 

[Rhea]

I've posted my answer to the carbon footprint questions in the separate "carbon footprint" thread because I think it deviates from the overpopulation idea and is interesting to expand upon.

Hang on. What is this, opposite day? I gave a thought experiment to put our current situation into *perspective*; you then react to the thought experiment as if it were a serious proposal and then make counter-arguments against a position that the thought experiment doesn't even put forth.

Perhaps I erred in thinking you wanted serious discussion of your thought experiment.

 

[DBT]

Scale matters. What works on a small scale does not necessarily work on an extremely large scale. The logistics of daily transporting billions of people over a relatively small area is just one barrier.

No, there's little reason to think the scale here would matter. After all, the local scale would actually stay the same. Again; it doesn't matter if the city grows a hundred times the size or not when you have the same overall density as before. Besides, we have plentiful examples of concentrated populations with much higher factors of difference between them; if it isn't an insurmountable problem there, why would we magically assume it becomes one here?

Given the total area of this world city of 7 billion plus, and given the sheer numbers living in that area, it cannot be the same as a city with the same density but a fraction of the area. People are not going to stay within the boundary of their allocated space. We have cities now that do not necessarily have a particularly high density but the sheer number of inhabitants makes it extremely difficult to commute. I just came back from a trip, and Cairo comes to mind. 22 million inhabitants going about their daily business does not make it easy to get around. In fact it was nearly unbearable during peak hours. Overall scale does indeed matter.

 

[dystopian]

Given the total area of this world city of 7 billion plus, and given the sheer numbers living in that area, it cannot be the same as a city with the same density but a fraction of the area. People are not going to stay within the boundary of their allocated space.

That's a different problem altogether.

We have cities now that do not necessarily have a particularly high density but the sheer number of inhabitants makes it extremely difficult to commute.

That's because those cities haven't been designed for those kinds of numbers from the ground up; and generally also because they can't afford to or just won't properly upgrade their infrastructure.

I just came back from a trip, and Cairo comes to mind. 22 million inhabitants going about their daily business does not make it easy to get around. In fact it was nearly unbearable during peak hours. Overall scale does indeed matter.

This is unfair; Cairo is hardly a good example of a city with well designed infrastructure; plus it doesn't help when drivers don't follow basic traffic laws en masse. Your experience with Cairo would not be mirrored in say Tokyo; or the big European cities.

Not to mention that it obviously isn't 'nearly unbearable'; those 22 million inhabitants seem to bear it just fine. Your standards are just too high compared to theirs.

 

[DBT]

That's a different problem altogether.

I don't see why. When planning the layout of a city, commuting is supposed to be taken into account. People are not going to stay in an allocated zone. Some may even want to go surfing, swimming in the ocean, camping in the wilds, fishing or even, dare I say it, hunting. Given a world city that spans the area of a state, that makes for a lot of commuting.

That's because those cities haven't been designed for those kinds of numbers from the ground up; and generally also because they can't afford to or just won't properly upgrade their infrastructure.

Sure, design helps. But we are talking about 7 billion people housed within a single city. Roads, rail, etc, have to be able to cope with volumes way beyond any of our current cities. And these are becoming more and more difficult in terms of both vehicle traffic and pedestrian congestion as their populations increase.

This is unfair; Cairo is hardly a good example of a city with well designed infrastructure; plus it doesn't help when drivers don't follow basic traffic laws en masse. Your experience with Cairo would not be mirrored in say Tokyo; or the big European cities.

It's not just a matter of obeying the laws. It is the sheer volume of traffic on the streets. Sometimes it moves along surprisingly well considering the volume. My trip started in Rome, and I toured through many European cities, which I've visited several times over a period of decades. While these aren't comparable to Cairo, they are getting progressively more congested. I can say the same for Melbourne, Sydney, etc.

Not to mention that it obviously isn't 'nearly unbearable'; those 22 million inhabitants seem to bear it just fine. Your standards are just too high compared to theirs.

I didn't mean to suggest that living in Cairo is unbearable, it is not (unless you happen to have no money), just that the difficulties for commuting have come to that point during the peak hours of the day.

Believe me, the locals do not necessarily disagree.

 

[dystopian]

I don't see why. When planning the layout of a city, commuting is supposed to be taken into account.

It's a different problem because in this hypothetical scenario people wouldn't HAVE to commute. Everything they'd possibly need or want would be concentrated within their immediate surroundings. Human behavior running contrary to what is a more efficient structure isn't a problem *with* that efficient structure, but a problem with human behavior.

People are not going to stay in an allocated zone. Some may even want to go surfing, swimming in the ocean, camping in the wilds, fishing or even, dare I say it, hunting. Given a world city that spans the area of a state, that makes for a lot of commuting.

Not necessarily. You're imagining a world city that has a uniform/circular shape where people need to travel large distances to get to those activities. This is not necessary. I already mentioned Amsterdam's Lobe structure in a previous post to someone else; rather than imagining a city that is dense and circular, imagine instead a city that has spokes like a wheel; the spokes represent urban corridors while the space in between them represents rural/recreational areas. This minimizes travel time.

Sure, design helps. But we are talking about 7 billion people housed within a single city. Roads, rail, etc, have to be able to cope with volumes way beyond any of our current cities.

No, they don't. Yes, again, if you consider a centralized metropolitan design; but that's obviously not the design we'd go with. If you went with a polycentric/conurbation model instead, you would not need to cope with impossible increases in volume.

It's not just a matter of obeying the laws. It is the sheer volume of traffic on the streets.

That is exactly why it's mostly a matter of obeying the laws; with that kind of volume, people commonly ignoring basic traffic laws results in chaos.

Sometimes it moves along surprisingly well considering the volume. My trip started in Rome, and I toured through many European cities, which I've visited several times over a period of decades. While these aren't comparable to Cairo, they are getting progressively more congested. I can say the same for Melbourne, Sydney, etc.

Sure, but again, those cities aren't particularly well designed for this sort of thing; even Australian cities aren't really optimized for it.

 

[Rhea]

So, to recap,
IF the population goes up 100x and
IF all cities are redesigned to be optimized for this and
IF no one minds tearing down the old structures and
IF everyone agrees to move to an urban life and
IF no one ever wants to commute a longer than non-traffic jamming distance (say to live with someone new that they've met or work at a different job while a spouse keeps his) and
IF no traffic is created by bringing goods into the neat little don't-have-to-commute-far enclaves and
IF we find a way to power it and
IF we find a way to deal with garbage within a city and
IF we find a way to get potable water to it and
IF everyone goes vegan or
IF we find some way of moving meat from pastures without traffic ...

THEN everything will work out just fine and what's-your-problem?

 

[bilby]

So, to recap,
IF the population goes up 100x and
IF all cities are redesigned to be optimized for this and
IF no one minds tearing down the old structures and
IF everyone agrees to move to an urban life and
IF no one ever wants to commute a longer than non-traffic jamming distance (say to live with someone new that they've met or work at a different job while a spouse keeps his) and
IF no traffic is created by bringing goods into the neat little don't-have-to-commute-far enclaves and
IF we find a way to power it and
IF we find a way to deal with garbage within a city and
IF we find a way to get potable water to it and
IF everyone goes vegan or
IF we find some way of moving meat from pastures without traffic ...

THEN everything will work out just fine and what's-your-problem?

How about

BECAUSE population is going to go up to 1.5x its current level, worrying about "IF population goes up 100x" is pure fiction, so anything goes.

You can write unRhealistic utopian sci-fi, like Dystopian; or unrealistic dystopian sci-fi, like Rhea, but either way, it is still fiction.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

How about

BECAUSE population is going to go up to 1.5x its current level, worrying about "IF population goes up 100x" is pure fiction, so anything goes.

You can write unRhealistic utopian sci-fi, like Dystopian; or unrealistic dystopian sci-fi, like Rhea, but either way, it is still fiction.

He asserted we could support 100x the current population.

 

[DBT]

Folks DBT, ɹǝpunuʍop uɐɯ ǝɥʇ, asked for No debate.

Yeah, I did. But on the other hand I didn't seriously expect that to happen. The horse has bolted, so go for it. It's now every man for himself.

 

[DBT]

It's a different problem because in this hypothetical scenario people wouldn't HAVE to commute. Everything they'd possibly need or want would be concentrated within their immediate surroundings. Human behavior running contrary to what is a more efficient structure isn't a problem *with* that efficient structure, but a problem with human behavior.

People don't have to do a lot of things, but that does not mean they won't do these things. It's completely unrealistic to assume that masses of people will not commute for whatever reason takes their fancy. Based on human nature, the assumption must be that people are going to commute to the seaside, visit their friends a hundred kilometers away, etc. This is why it is related.

Not necessarily. You're imagining a world city that has a uniform/circular shape where people need to travel large distances to get to those activities. This is not necessary. I already mentioned Amsterdam's Lobe structure in a previous post to someone else; rather than imagining a city that is dense and circular, imagine instead a city that has spokes like a wheel; the spokes represent urban corridors while the space in between them represents rural/recreational areas. This minimizes travel time.

Also depends on the assumption of orderly mass migrations. Human beings are not like that. We are chaotic and messy, we have needs that do not suit utopian visions.

No, they don't. Yes, again, if you consider a centralized metropolitan design; but that's obviously not the design we'd go with. If you went with a polycentric/conurbation model instead, you would not need to cope with impossible increases in volume.

It's the sheer number of people living in a given area in relation to the physical constraints of having only so many trains, buses, cars, etc running at any given time.

That is exactly why it's mostly a matter of obeying the laws; with that kind of volume, people commonly ignoring basic traffic laws results in chaos.

Nothing works to absolute perfection. It only takes a breakdown and you have a gridlock like you wouldn't believe. This happens in our capital cities right now.

Sure, but again, those cities aren't particularly well designed for this sort of thing; even Australian cities aren't really optimized for it.

Even if all of the given assumptions are granted, and everything works like clockwork, you still have the problem of putting all of your eggs in a single basket. If something goes wrong, food supply, water outage, meteorite impact....the human race is virtually wiped with in a single event (except maybe farm workers if the farms are not automated)
Based on a total disruption of supply our cities are estimated to be roughly 3 days from the beginning of starvation. During cyclones, except for canned food, our supermarket shelves are virtually emptied out within that time frame. If nothing else, I think it would be poor practice to confine a whole world population to a single location.