Too many people?

[Loren Pechtel]

We can't support 5 billion for an extended period with current technology. Resources are being consumed that can't be replaced.

That is basically what I have been saying. I think we may be fine with a population of 5 billion at today's technology and level of affluence until cheap renewable energy runs out, then we may need to reduce to 2 billion.

Yes, new technologies will make things better. But increasing affluence will put more stress on the planet. As I have been saying, the best I expect out of technology is that gains in technology make up for the rising average level of affluence. I hope I am wrong, and technology does better than I expect.

That's not the limiting factor.

 

[Merle]

as a crude first pass, here are some solutions:

Oh, good. Solutions.

Maybe you should run for president. I see you already got 4 votes. Let's look at your platform:

Diversity Loss
Establish large areas of National (or International) Parks and reserves.

I agree.

And countries have been doing this for years. But deforestation is getting way ahead of efforts to save it. So your platform is for the governments (who are all short in money) to buy half the planet and save it as natural lands?

Pay local people NOT to engage in destructive agricultural and other economic practices.

Ah, we just pay all farmers who don't have a need for a certain destructive practice. That might be a good talking point in Iowa, but most people don't want the government to fork out that kind of money.

Employ local people at good wages as game wardens, so they have better options to make money than poaching.

I don't think you grasp the extant of the problem. 20% of all species are in danger of extinction in the next few decades. (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full ) Tell me again how many game wardens you plan to employ worldwide to stop this. Who is going to pay for it? What about the countries that don't cooperate with your plan? Is your charisma going to win them over? How are game wardens going to save insects and plants that are going extinct?

Nitrogen Contamination of Rivers
Capture and process runoff before it enters rivers (this can be as simple as digging and maintaining a system of ditches).

Uh, where do the ditches go?

So we are just going to build dikes around all the farmland--"Build that wall!"-- to prevent fertilizer runoff? I don't think so.

And then, I suppose, you will propose other expensive programs to save the species that are endangered by the dikes, yes?

Use less fertiliser, or use different fertilisers that are less prone to running off the land.

Good ideas. I suspect people are working on this. But I wouldn't bet the farm it is going to solve the problem any time soon.

The nitrate that ends up in rivers was put on the land to do a specific job, and what ends up in rivers is a dead loss for farmers, so recovery of this valuable material that they paid good money for seems like an excellent idea; Cleaning up the rivers is a mere side effect of saving money in this scenario.

If it is economically viable, why aren't people doing it? Or do I see another massive government program paying for this?

Global Warming
Nuclear Fission.

Now you're talking! Vote for Bilby!

Governments could certainly promote more nuclear, mainly by just getting out of the way and letting utility companies build the facilities. Winning popular support will be difficult.

How do we fuel it all? We have uranium reserves to provide all our power requirements for six years. That's not much. Yes, I know, you say we will find more if we just look, but one would think, if reserves are that low, there would be major efforts to find reserves and get them listed on the company books. This stuff is probably going to be worth a lot of money in the coming decades. Perhaps we have found most of the economically viable reserves.

If the stuff we are finding is like getting the copper out of this mine, maybe it will never get extracted-- (https://peakprosperity.com/lessons/crash-course-chapter-23-the-environment-depleting-resources/)

Note that each of these proposed frameworks for solving each of these three problems makes no mention whatsoever of the completely irrelevant question of how many people there are.

Again, per the I=PAT formula I keep referencing, we have 3 levers to control our impact on the planet: population, affluence, and technology/lifestyle. You keep going for the last one. I am all for technology and lifestyle changes that will work to preserve the planet. But the simple truth is that these levers are falling way behind. It looks to me like blind faith to say this will turn around significantly without need to address the other two levers.

Don't underestimate the problem. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full

 

[Gospel]

Don't underestimate the problem. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full

That article doesn't mention "too many people" either.

Edit: I mean it actually does, but it doesn't endorse population control.

 

[bigfield]

Diversity Loss
Establish large areas of National (or International) Parks and reserves.

I agree.

And countries have been doing this for years. But deforestation is getting way ahead of efforts to save it. So your platform is for the governments (who are all short in money) to buy half the planet and save it as natural lands?

You've asked if that's bilby's position, but those extra details you've added are all ideas you've brought up. So:

1. Why do you believe that all governments are short of money?
2. When you say half the planet you were obviously exaggerating. (I hope.)
   • The planet is only about 30% land, and just over a third of that is forest. So countries would have to turn about 11% of the planet into national parks and reserves to prevent deforestation due to logging.
   • 18% of the world's forests are already in national parks. I don't know how much of the rest is on privately-owned land, but I doubt it's all of the remaining 82%. Some forest can be turned into national parks and reserves without buying anything.
   • Over half of the world's forests are in Russia, Brazil, Canada, USA and China.

Pay local people NOT to engage in destructive agricultural and other economic practices.

Ah, we just pay all farmers who don't have a need for a certain destructive practice. That might be a good talking point in Iowa, but most people don't want the government to fork out that kind of money.

Americans aren't most people.

The "kind of money" is likely going to vary dramatically depending on who you're paying. There are quite a fwe places around the world where farmers don't make much money and therefore wouldn't need to be paid much to farm differently.

Employ local people at good wages as game wardens, so they have better options to make money than poaching.

I don't think you grasp the extant of the problem. 20% of all species are in danger of extinction in the next few decades. (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full ) Tell me again how many game wardens you plan to employ worldwide to stop this. Who is going to pay for it? What about the countries that don't cooperate with your plan? Is your charisma going to win them over? How are game wardens going to save insects and plants that are going extinct?

That 20% of all species aren't at risk of extinction due to poaching, so there's no reason to think that game wardens could possibly save them all. Poaching is just one small slice of the problem, but that doesn't mean that hiring game wardens isn't a good solution.

Nitrogen Contamination of Rivers
Capture and process runoff before it enters rivers (this can be as simple as digging and maintaining a system of ditches).

Uh, where do the ditches go?

So we are just going to build dikes around all the farmland--"Build that wall!"-- to prevent fertilizer runoff? I don't think so.

And then, I suppose, you will propose other expensive programs to save the species that are endangered by the dikes, yes?

Farmers already know how to build earthworks that direct huge volumes of water. In fact it's a significant problem in Australia where corporate-owned farms redirect huge amounts of flood water into private reservoirs and dams instead of letting the water continue downriver.

wHo'S gOiNg To PaY fOr iT aLL?

I find it funny that this complaint arises in a conversion where people are advocating for the world's population to be reduced by billions of people in a hurry. That's going to fuck the world's economy much harder than parks, wardens, nuclear power and high-tech farming.

 

[Merle]

Don't underestimate the problem. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full

That article doesn't mention "too many people" either.

Edit: I mean it actually does, but it doesn't endorse population control.

I didn't say it did.

It does include a large section discussing how a large population aggravates all the problems it discusses.

See https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full#:~:text=al., 2015, 2017).-,ecological overshoot: population size and overconsumption,-The global human

 

[Gospel]

Don't underestimate the problem. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full

That article doesn't mention "too many people" either.

Edit: I mean it actually does, but it doesn't endorse population control.

I didn't say it.

It does include a large section discussing how a large population aggravates all the problems it discusses.

See https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full#:~:text=al., 2015, 2017).-,ecological overshoot: population size and overconsumption,-The global human

I agree that population control is a topic that deserves to be discussed. However, it is a sensitive subject because of the horrific acts of genocide that have been committed in the name of population control in the past. Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to have children should be left to individuals.

 

[Merle]

When you say half the planet you were obviously exaggerating. (I hope.)

Sorta.

E. O. Wilson, for instance, said we do need to dedicate half of the Earth to nature if we want our species to survive. See https://www.half-earthproject.org/.

I know Bilby isn't saying that. But I thought I would ask.

The planet is only about 30% land, and just over a third of that is forest. So countries would have to turn about 11% of the planet into national parks and reserves to prevent deforestation due to logging.

Some scientists have reached the conclusion that deforestation could trigger the total extinction of humanity in the next 20 to 40 years. For instance, Wikipedia says:

According to a 2020 study published in Scientific Reports, if deforestation continues at current rates it can trigger a total or almost total extinction of humanity in the next 20 to 40 years. They conclude that "from a statistical point of view . . . the probability that our civilisation survives itself is less than 10% in the most optimistic scenario." To avoid this collapse, humanity should pass from a civilization dominated by the economy to "cultural society" that "privileges the interest of the ecosystem above the individual interest of its components, but eventually in accordance with the overall communal interest."
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation

That sounds serious. Are we doing enough to allow our species to survive?


See also:

Deforestation and world population sustainability: a quantitative analysis

In this paper we afford a quantitative analysis of the sustainability of current world population growth in relation to the parallel deforestation process adopting a statistical point of view. We consider a simplified model based on a stochastic growth ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

and

Theoretical Physicists Say 90% Chance of Societal Collapse Within Several Decades

Deforestation and rampant resource use is likely to trigger the 'irreversible collapse' of human civilization unless we rapidly change course.

www.vice.com

 

[Merle]

I agree that population control is a topic that deserves to be discussed. However, it is a sensitive subject because of the horrific acts of genocide that have been committed in the name of population control in the past.

Evolution has been associated by some with Social Darwinism. Does that mean we should not talk about evolution?

Ultimately, the decision of whether or not to have children should be left to individuals.

I agree.

 

[Elixir]

Does that mean we should not talk about evolution?

Probably not responsive to the intent of that question, but no. We should not try to talk about evolution, because most people don’t want to hear it, can’t understand it and get very defensive about “I ain’t no monkey”.

 

[Gospel]

Evolution has been associated by some with Social Darwinism. Does that mean we should not talk about evolution?

No, but people will rightfully start to question our motives if we do not directly clarify that support for Darwinism is not our real agenda.

 

[bilby]

Oh, good. Solutions.

Yeah, that's what adults look for. Looking for problems instead is just a waste of everyone's time. Obsessing over unsolvable non-problems (such as how many people are alive) is actively counterproductive.

 

[bilby]

How do we fuel it all? We have uranium reserves to provide all our power requirements for six years. That's not much.

Are you not reading my responses at all? I have debunked the No Breakfast Fallacy twice already in this thread, and here you are raising it again as though it wasn't utterly stupid nonsense based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what a "reserve" is, what a "resource" is, and how these things differ from one another.

We have reserves of everything sufficient to supply our needs for between five and fifty years; We always have had, And we always will have. Because nobody's going to spend vast sums of time and money on turning resources into reserves, when we already have several years of reserves.

Uranium is available, in cost-effectively extractable quantities, sufficient to fuel humanity for at least many tens of thousands of years.

And we haven't even looked at Thorium yet, and there's a fucking HUGE amount of Thorium.

Shit, you could supply three centuries of electricity to the USA just using the existing spent fuel in dry cask storage at US power plants as fuel for fast reactors.

Anyone who is even vaguely concerned that fission fuel might be too scarce to replace our fossil fuel usage doesn't have a clue what they are talking about.

 

[Merle]

How do we fuel it all? We have uranium reserves to provide all our power requirements for six years. That's not much.

Are you not reading my responses at all? I have debunked the No Breakfast Fallacy twice already in this thread, and here you are raising it again as though it wasn't utterly stupid nonsense based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what a "reserve" is, what a "resource" is, and how these things differ from one another.

This post was my response to the No breakfast post.

In my post I suggested that surely people must be looking for more uranium, and asked why they aren't finding more. So I looked on the web, and found this link showing exploration started skyrocketing in 2008, and they only seem to be finding limited, high-cost to extract reserves as a result of all this effort.

Uranium Supplies: Supply of Uranium - World Nuclear Association

Uranium is ubiquitous on the Earth. It is a metal approximately as common as tin or zinc, and it is a constituent of most rocks and even of the sea.

world-nuclear.org

 

[Merle]

That article doesn't mention "too many people" either.

Edit: I mean it actually does, but it doesn't endorse population control.

That paper talks about overpopulation but it does not talk about solutions to overpopulation.

I suppose Bilby will tell you the authors are not adults.

 

[bilby]

That article doesn't mention "too many people" either.

Edit: I mean it actually does, but it doesn't endorse population control.

That paper talks about overpopulation but it does not talk about solutions to overpopulation.

I suppose Bilby will tell you the authors are not adults.

As we have already discussed, there are no solutions to overpopulation other than genocide.

It's the perfect problem for people who don't want solutions; The only options are to do nothing about it, or to do something completely unacceptable.

The reality is though that it's not a problem. It might be a contributing factor in a bunch of other problems, but those other problems have tractable potential solutions, so they're no good for people whose sole purpose is the loud decrying of the existence of a problem.

You suppose that saying "there's a population problem" is somehow anything other than a valueless distraction from actual problems we should be looking to address. So that's two badly wrong suppositions on your part right there.

 

[Merle]

As we have already discussed, there are no solutions to overpopulation other than genocide.

I disagree. See

https://iidb.org/threads/too-many-people.27312/page-21#post-1102262

Please do not pretend I agree with you on this when I have repeatedly disagreed very strongly.

It's the perfect problem for people who don't want solutions; The only options are to do nothing about it, or to do something completely unacceptable.

I disagree. I have told you before that I am an engineer and I love technical solutions. You simply ignore what I say. See

https://iidb.org/threads/too-many-people.27312/page-23#post-1102852

and

https://iidb.org/threads/too-many-people.27312/page-17#post-1101368

You suppose that saying "there's a population problem" is somehow anything other than a valueless distraction from actual problems we should be looking to address. So that's two badly wrong suppositions on your part right there.

I disagree. Population overshoot is an integral part of the problem, as I have documented many times. See

https://iidb.org/threads/too-many-people.27312/page-23#post-1103803

and

https://iidb.org/threads/too-many-people.27312/page-29#post-1105437

and

Ecological overshoot - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and

Overshoot (population) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Are you reading anything I write?

 

[Elixir]

Just a reminder; “population overshoot” is not something with objective existence, it’s a descriptive phrase, and does not refer to a condition that has rigorously defined parameters.
ok, carry on … but let’s not mistake the map for the territory.

 

[Merle]

Just a reminder; “population overshoot” is not something with objective existence, it’s a descriptive phrase, and does not refer to a condition that has rigorously defined parameters.

The overshoot limit may not be precisely defined, but as Justice Stewart said about pornography, "I know it when I see it."

 

[Elixir]

Justice Stewart said about pornography, "I know it when I see it."

... a statement for which he has been rightly excoriated and mocked ever since 1964.
Are you expecting something different?

 

[Merle]

... a statement for which he has been rightly excoriated and mocked ever since 1964.
Are you expecting something different?

Yes.