If you think the earth is over-populated, would you rather...

[Valjean]

The earth does seem to have unlimited resources though which can lead to a false sense of security. Religion is the bane of all societies.

Unlimited resources

 

[angelo]

Oh, have you not heard about new oil fields been found almost monthly.

 

[bilby]

There are no new resources. But that's OK, because few resources are 'used up'; they are dispersed, or changed chemically, and can be recycled by re-concentration, and/or by reversing the chemical reactions. In some cases this occurs naturally. For example, water gets contaminated with sewage, salts, garbage etc., but then the sun evaporates it, and it falls as clean fresh rain. Sometimes it can be accelerated by human intervention; we can cut out the middle man and desalinate ocean water using electrical power to pump it through reverse osmosis filters.

Ultimately the only resources that are irreplaceable are Helium gas, and the few kilograms (mostly of metals) that we fired into space on trajectories that never return them to Earth - the Pioneer and Voyager probes, for example.

Everything else can be recycled, given sufficient energy. And energy falls from the sky for as long as the Sun keeps shining.

If you want oil, you can make it from sunshine and Carbon Dioxide. There are lots of ways to do this; Canola or Sunflowers will do it for you, or you can react the gas directly on a catalyst.

Of course, none of this will happen while it is cheaper to burn fossil fuel. Give the Earth a few tens of millions of years, and it will do the job without our intervention; but we don't have the patience. The solution to the fossil fuel problem has zip to do with population. A few million people will burn all the fossil fuel they can find eventually - there is no viable human population level that would have a decent modern lifestyle and use fossil fuels at less than their replacement rate. However there is no need to use fossil fuels at all. It is done because it is cheap; and it is cheap because the huge cost of Carbon Dioxide pollution is externalised by the coal and oil producers.

So the fossil fuel problem - and the climate change problem that is its flip-side - is not amenable to being solved by population reduction. The crisis can be put off a few decades, or even a few centuries, by reducing the world's population, or by preventing the world's poor from becoming wealthy and taking their share. But no amount of that will prevent the crisis; and the not-quite-cure is worse than the disease.

The solution to the fossil fuel issue is to make producers build the full cost of the stuff into the price. This will make other forms of energy more attractive, and fossil fuel use will ultimately stop - not because the oil or coal run out, but because there are better, cheaper ways to do the things that are currently done using fossil fuels.

Population is a non-issue in all of this. Population isn't a problem, because it turns out that you needn't threaten, coerce or force women to have small families - all you need to do is provide them with the choice, and raise their standard of living to a fairly moderate level, and suddenly the population controls itself.

 

[bilby]

I completely disagree. The "problem" is war, hunger, disease, and suffering in general.

Those are all problems. They all existed when population was far lower than it is today; indeed they were all much, much worse with far lower populations than todays. What makes you think that if population was lower, these things would be less common?

The fewer people there are, the fewer will have to endure those inevitable occurrences.

If they are inevitable, then reducing population levels won't help. I suspect that they are far from inevitable; certainly the far lower populations of a century ago, or two, or five, or ten, or twenty centuries ago were no defence against these things, all of which are less common now than they were then.

Of course, if there were only very few people, there might be other problems.

Indeed there might.

So, we should keep the population as low as possible to avoid creating new victims of the problems we will never solve as long as people exist.

That is only true if you assume that the problems must apply to a fixed proportion of people, or a proportion that is directly proportional to population. There is no evidence supporting this assumption; actual trends in history have less war, less hunger, less disease and less suffering in general over time, and that has been particularly true in the last century - in 1914, there were 1.75 billion people; today there are 7.5 billion.

In the end, the only way to truly solve those problems is to stop making people altogether, which I strongly advocate in principle but have no illusions of ever happening in practice.

Suggesting extinction to prevent war, hunger, disease or suffering is effective, but not very helpful. It is like suggesting euthanasia as a treatment for neuralgia. Effective, to be sure; but nevertheless, still stupid, unacceptable and slightly crazy.

When the oxygen tank in the Apollo 13 Service Module exploded, NASA didn't consider reducing the population of the spacecraft as though it was a viable solution to their resource problems; they looked for ways to solve the problems based on the number of crew they had.

And nobody is saying we should kill people as a viable solution to humanity's problems, so that analogy doesn't fit.

But they are - that is one of the options in the OP, and people have seriously discussed it, right here in this thread, and elsewhere.

"Reduce the population" is not a solution. It is always proposed that "they" should reduce their population; never that the reductions should come from "us". As Ksen says, the time to take population alarmists seriously will be when they start killing themselves to save the planet.

I am not a population alarmist per se, but I find that response to be unthinking and glib. There is nothing about the position that births should be limited that implies living people should be exterminated. It's such a tired, boring, knee-jerk retort, and I hate when smart people use it like it's some kind of "gotcha."

Indeed, those who are arguing that population can be controlled by controlling birth rates are not implying that living people should be exterminated; but there are people, in this thread and elsewhere, who most assuredly are suggesting that living people should be exterminated.

Controlling birth rates has two sides - it can be voluntary, or it can be mandatory. Mandatory control of birth rates - as practised in China - is cruel, oppressive, violent and unnecessary. Voluntary reductions in average family size happen without coercion, given only two things - access to safe and effective birth control; and a minimum standard of living.

Enough of the world population now has those two factors that population has already ceased to grow, other than through demographic lag. Despite the efforts of the Islamic and Roman Catholic religions, these factors continue to affect more and more of the world each year. The 'problem' has already been solved; no further effort is required.

In the presence of an immediate problem, it would be kinder to forcibly sterilise women who wanted children than to forcibly euthanase people. But the choice need not be made, because the problem has gone away. And 'kinder' is not even close to 'kind'.

The question in the OP is like a bunch of people on board ship, debating whether it is better to draw lots to see who gets killed and eaten, or to amputate everyone's left arm to provide food for all. It might be a good discussion to have after you are shipwrecked; but while there is the option to stroll down the gangplank and buy food at the supermarket, it seems like insanity to even raise the question.

 

[angelo]

There are no new resources. But that's OK, because few resources are 'used up'; they are dispersed, or changed chemically, and can be recycled by re-concentration, and/or by reversing the chemical reactions. In some cases this occurs naturally. For example, water gets contaminated with sewage, salts, garbage etc., but then the sun evaporates it, and it falls as clean fresh rain. Sometimes it can be accelerated by human intervention; we can cut out the middle man and desalinate ocean water using electrical power to pump it through reverse osmosis filters.

Ultimately the only resources that are irreplaceable are Helium gas, and the few kilograms (mostly of metals) that we fired into space on trajectories that never return them to Earth - the Pioneer and Voyager probes, for example.

Everything else can be recycled, given sufficient energy. And energy falls from the sky for as long as the Sun keeps shining.

If you want oil, you can make it from sunshine and Carbon Dioxide. There are lots of ways to do this; Canola or Sunflowers will do it for you, or you can react the gas directly on a catalyst.

Of course, none of this will happen while it is cheaper to burn fossil fuel. Give the Earth a few tens of millions of years, and it will do the job without our intervention; but we don't have the patience. The solution to the fossil fuel problem has zip to do with population. A few million people will burn all the fossil fuel they can find eventually - there is no viable human population level that would have a decent modern lifestyle and use fossil fuels at less than their replacement rate. However there is no need to use fossil fuels at all. It is done because it is cheap; and it is cheap because the huge cost of Carbon Dioxide pollution is externalised by the coal and oil producers.

So the fossil fuel problem - and the climate change problem that is its flip-side - is not amenable to being solved by population reduction. The crisis can be put off a few decades, or even a few centuries, by reducing the world's population, or by preventing the world's poor from becoming wealthy and taking their share. But no amount of that will prevent the crisis; and the not-quite-cure is worse than the disease.

The solution to the fossil fuel issue is to make producers build the full cost of the stuff into the price. This will make other forms of energy more attractive, and fossil fuel use will ultimately stop - not because the oil or coal run out, but because there are better, cheaper ways to do the things that are currently done using fossil fuels.

Population is a non-issue in all of this. Population isn't a problem, because it turns out that you needn't threaten, coerce or force women to have small families - all you need to do is provide them with the choice, and raise their standard of living to a fairly moderate level, and suddenly the population controls itself.

You're kidding right? What is meant by "population is a non issue" Where pray tell is the space needed for at least a doubling of farmland ? Where are we going to grow the crops needed to feed another 2-3 billion people?

 

[bilby]

There are no new resources. But that's OK, because few resources are 'used up'; they are dispersed, or changed chemically, and can be recycled by re-concentration, and/or by reversing the chemical reactions. In some cases this occurs naturally. For example, water gets contaminated with sewage, salts, garbage etc., but then the sun evaporates it, and it falls as clean fresh rain. Sometimes it can be accelerated by human intervention; we can cut out the middle man and desalinate ocean water using electrical power to pump it through reverse osmosis filters.

Ultimately the only resources that are irreplaceable are Helium gas, and the few kilograms (mostly of metals) that we fired into space on trajectories that never return them to Earth - the Pioneer and Voyager probes, for example.

Everything else can be recycled, given sufficient energy. And energy falls from the sky for as long as the Sun keeps shining.

If you want oil, you can make it from sunshine and Carbon Dioxide. There are lots of ways to do this; Canola or Sunflowers will do it for you, or you can react the gas directly on a catalyst.

Of course, none of this will happen while it is cheaper to burn fossil fuel. Give the Earth a few tens of millions of years, and it will do the job without our intervention; but we don't have the patience. The solution to the fossil fuel problem has zip to do with population. A few million people will burn all the fossil fuel they can find eventually - there is no viable human population level that would have a decent modern lifestyle and use fossil fuels at less than their replacement rate. However there is no need to use fossil fuels at all. It is done because it is cheap; and it is cheap because the huge cost of Carbon Dioxide pollution is externalised by the coal and oil producers.

So the fossil fuel problem - and the climate change problem that is its flip-side - is not amenable to being solved by population reduction. The crisis can be put off a few decades, or even a few centuries, by reducing the world's population, or by preventing the world's poor from becoming wealthy and taking their share. But no amount of that will prevent the crisis; and the not-quite-cure is worse than the disease.

The solution to the fossil fuel issue is to make producers build the full cost of the stuff into the price. This will make other forms of energy more attractive, and fossil fuel use will ultimately stop - not because the oil or coal run out, but because there are better, cheaper ways to do the things that are currently done using fossil fuels.

Population is a non-issue in all of this. Population isn't a problem, because it turns out that you needn't threaten, coerce or force women to have small families - all you need to do is provide them with the choice, and raise their standard of living to a fairly moderate level, and suddenly the population controls itself.

You're kidding right? What is meant by "population is a non issue" Where pray tell is the space needed for at least a doubling of farmland ? Where are we going to grow the crops needed to feed another 2-3 billion people?

We already grow enough crops to feed 10 billion. More people worldwide suffer from obesity than from malnutrition. Why the fuck would we need to double farmland, when we have been producing more food on less land for a century? Even if farmland productivity stopped rising, we can easily feed ten billion with the farmland we currently have; and population is not projected to reach 15 billion EVER. So why would we need double the current farmland? Why??

Surely you haven't missed all the times I and others have pointed out that population will never double again? Surely you don't think that population is still rising exponentially? If you do, then I have to ask - WHY??? If you take enough interest in the subject to feel the need to comment on a discussion board, why are you not aware that population growth has flat-lined?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth

https://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf

In these projections, world population peaks at 9.22 billion in 2075. Population therefore grows slightly beyond the level of 8.92 billion projected for 2050 in the 2002 Revision, on which these projections are based. However, after reaching its maximum, world population declines slightly and then resumes increasing, slowly, to reach a level of 8.97 billion by 2300, not much different from the projected 2050 figure.

Population IS A NON-ISSUE. Really. Truly. All of the facts point to this. Anyone who tells you otherwise today is ignorant, lying, trying to sell you something, trying to get your vote, living in the 1970s or, quite likely, all five at once.

 

[angelo]

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

Sharply divergent trends among countries and regions

Almost all of the additional 3.7 billion people from now to 2100 will enlarge the population of developing countries, which is projected to rise from 5.9 billion in 2013 to 8.2 billion in 2050 and to 9.6 billion in 2100. Much of the overall increase between 2013 and 2050 is projected to take place in high-fertility countries, mainly in Africa, as well as countries with large populations such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United States of America.

Growth is expected to be particularly dramatic in the least developed countries of the world, which are projected to double in size from 898 million inhabitants in 2013 to 1.8 billion in 2050 and to 2.9 billion in 2100. High population growth rates prevail in many developing countries, most of which are on the UN’s list of 49 least developed countries. Between 2013 and 2100, the populations of 35 countries could triple or more. Among them, the populations of Burundi, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia are projected to increase at least five-fold by 2100.

 

[bilby]

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

Sharply divergent trends among countries and regions

Almost all of the additional 3.7 billion people from now to 2100 will enlarge the population of developing countries, which is projected to rise from 5.9 billion in 2013 to 8.2 billion in 2050 and to 9.6 billion in 2100. Much of the overall increase between 2013 and 2050 is projected to take place in high-fertility countries, mainly in Africa, as well as countries with large populations such as India, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United States of America.

Growth is expected to be particularly dramatic in the least developed countries of the world, which are projected to double in size from 898 million inhabitants in 2013 to 1.8 billion in 2050 and to 2.9 billion in 2100. High population growth rates prevail in many developing countries, most of which are on the UN’s list of 49 least developed countries. Between 2013 and 2100, the populations of 35 countries could triple or more. Among them, the populations of Burundi, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania and Zambia are projected to increase at least five-fold by 2100.

Overcrowding is simple to solve by migration; or by importing goods from elsewhere - after all, Manhattan Island is very densely populated, but no sane person is calling for population controls there as a result.

Some places will become crowded; others will be the source of migration to less crowded places. There are no issues here that can't be easily addressed without recourse to draconian measures such as restricting women's reproductive freedom.

You post is long on data, but very short on reasons to worry; exactly what problems do you imagine these countries will face due to tripling of their populations? Ethiopia was in desperate famine in the 1980s (remember Live Aid?); today it has close to three times the population it had back then - and no famine.

 

[angelo]

But you wouldn't want to live there would you? [Ethiopia]

 

[bilby]

But you wouldn't want to live there would you? [Ethiopia]

I would most certainly rather live there today, than in the mid '80s when their population was dramatically lower.

But no, I wouldn't want to live anywhere in the third world. Indeed, I wouldn't want to live in the (first world) country I grew up in either. Like pretty much everybody, I don't want to be told where I can live, how many children I can have, or how long I am allowed to live for.

Fortunately, there is no benefit to the common weal that accrues as a result of dictating such things to people. Unfortunately, there are a lot of petty fascists out there who sincerely believe that there are such benefits, and that by promoting such limitations on freedom, they are pursuing some 'greater good'.

The world is far from perfect; and I am very much aware that I am more fortunate than most in having personally avoided most of the worst problems. But one of the things that is demonstrably not a problem for the world or its people is the sheer number of people alive - or for that matter, the number projected to be alive at any point in the foreseeable future.

 

[angelo]

You're describing Green Party philosophy there bilby. But I disagree with you on the population explosion as is occurring in the developing world. In the animal kingdom when a point is reached where there are too many, sometimes they cannibalise each other.

We wouldn't want to see that among homo sapiens would we!

 

[bilby]

You're describing Green Party philosophy there bilby. But I disagree with you on the population explosion as is occurring in the developing world. In the animal kingdom when a point is reached where there are too many, sometimes they cannibalise each other.

We wouldn't want to see that among homo sapiens would we!

I am certain that any card carrying member of the Green Party would find plenty of things to violently disagree with me on.

No, we wouldn't want to see that in Homo Sapiens; nor would I like to see an alien invasion; or the Earth spiralling into the sun; or Godzilla destroying Tokyo, or any number of other purely fictional disasters.

Before we start a discussion of how terrible the consequences might be, we first need to establish that there is a problem at all - something you have yet to achieve.

How many do you think are 'too many'; why do you think that that many is 'too many' (please be specific - there is more than enough arm-waving in this thread to run a large wind farm); and when and how do you think we will reach that number?

 

[angelo]

How many is too many then? 10 billion, 15 billion, 20 billion, or more? What about Australia, reckon like Rudd and his incompetent cohorts that 50 million would be no problem to this mostly arid land?

 

[angelo]

 

[bilby]

How many is too many then? 10 billion, 15 billion, 20 billion, or more? What about Australia, reckon like Rudd and his incompetent cohorts that 50 million would be no problem to this mostly arid land?

In what fantasy world would this country be expected to get close to 50 million population? Get real; without mass immigration, we are looking at a population decline, not almost a doubling.

That said, unless our economy goes seriously tits-up, we could easily support an urban population many times the current level. In case you hadn't noticed, most Aussies live in high population density areas called cities. Almost all of them on the coast. And potable desalinated water costs a dollar or two per cubic metre. And we have more uranium, and more solar power potential per capita than pretty much anyone - but for dumb-assed economic reasons, we burn brown coal for power.

We have problems. Population is less likely to ever be one of them than a tsunami on the East Coast; or a meteorite strike on Sydney; or Godzilla demolishing Melbourne on Cup day.

 

[bilby]

Dick Smith? Seriously??

 

[angelo]

He has just as much right to express his views than anyone else. Besides, he loves this country dearly and would not wish any harm to it by politically naive politicos.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

... or Godzilla demolishing Melbourne on Cup day.

Wouldn't that only qualify as a problem depending on who's winning the game?

 

[Bomb#20]

The question 'is the world overpopulated' depends for its answer on the answers to a series of questions.

First, is there some resource (eg food) for which the maximum production physically possible is less than the minimum consumption required to sustain the population. ...

Second, is there some resource (eg food) for which there is no sustainable or desirable economic system that produces simultaneously sufficient production AND sufficiently equitable distribution for the entire population to be sustained. Asking this question is pointless unless and until there is agreement on the answer to the first question. I believe the answer here to also be "No"; As long as the poorest family has enough to eat, the system is good enough. We need no utopian or absolute system to achieve this; the trends are clear over at least the last couple of centuries. As world population has increased, the availability of essential resource classes has increased faster, even for the poorest people.

But the trends don't, by and large, give a rat's ass about sustainability. All manner of resources have become more available simply because we've gotten better at extracting them without increasing the total supply. Of course as you note, many of these can be endlessly recycled or substituted, given enough energy; but that's a solution that's more theoretical than practical as long as massive expansion of nuclear power remains politically infeasible. It may be that opposition will melt away if hunger starts getting worse again; but it may not -- it certainly showed no signs of melting away back in the days of Ethiopian famines. Moreover, there's one resource that we can't just manufacture more of out of raw materials and energy: current farming methods destroy topsoil, which is regenerated very slowly. If you think there's a way to produce current levels of food without using up topsoil and without making food far more expensive than it is now, what do you have in mind? (And if it's "Just let it get more expensive.", then the world is likely to remain overpopulated with people who can't afford it. What's your plan for making them rich enough?)

b) I already agreed with you, but you seemed to be claiming that we disagreed. In summary, we were just talking past each other.
...
I most certainly did not suggest that inequality was the cause of hunger.

Actually you did, in post #31. "Their hunger is not caused by their numbers; it is caused by the inequality of wealth distribution; and far more people went hungry (and died of starvation) in Africa last century - when the population was a tiny fraction of what it is today." That's how we got here. But since you've made it clear you meant something different, no worries and enough about that.

If there are sufficient resources, but humans are unable to organise themselves, socially, politically and/or economically in such a way as to avoid famine, then that is obviously a big problem - but it is equally obviously not a population problem, as in that case, population is not the constraining factor.

I don't think that's correct reasoning. When there's a primary problem and there's also a secondary problem resulting from failure to solve the primary problem, pointing at the primary problem and saying "Well there's your problem." doesn't make the secondary problem not a real problem.

If (as we observed in the last few hundred years) hunger declines as population rises, than that is a good indicator that reducing population is not a solution to the problem of hunger.

Not a solution all by itself, no; but it might still be one element of a solution to the problem of the unsustainability of the methods that have been used in the last few hundred years to cause hunger to decline.

So the question in the OP is based on a false premise. The Earth is not now, nor is it ever likely to be, overpopulated.

"Overpopulated" means "too many people". So the question is, too many people for what? It doesn't make a lot of sense either to say there are or to say there aren't too many people, full stop. You have to specify the goal to be achieved. As I pointed out earlier, it's pretty obvious there are too many people for optimally preserving the habitat of endangered species; and that's something else we can't just make more of out of steel and uranium. So when you say the earth isn't overpopulated and won't be when the population is 9 1/2 billion, what goal are you judging that by?

Reduction in birth rate is a done deal. It has already happened - most likely irreversibly.

The only way reduction in birth rate is ever irreversible is extinction. There are, right now, subcultures with exponential population growth rates that have stayed high for generations. Ultra-Orthodox Israelis, for example. Even if the world population stabilizes by 2075 or so as predicted, all it takes to reignite world population growth is one of those subcultures retaining that cultural characteristic long term.

It turns out that, given the choice, most women would prefer not to be baby factories. Problem solved. The solution to the "population problem" has already been implemented, and it isn't to reduce life expectancy, nor is it to explicitly reduce birth rates - it is to provide social and economic freedom, and let the birth rate take care of itself.

I don't think Eric meant quite what you think he meant by "reduce life expectancy". He wasn't proposing that we kill people or abolish health insurance or whatever, as an option in his poll. The general idea among those who think the world is overpopulated is that if we simply take no action at all to reduce birth rates then nature will in consequence reduce life expectancy all by itself without our taking any steps in that direction.

 

[angelo]

That's what I meant. Either we control the birth rate or nature will eventually do it for us.