Will human population and economic activity exceed the Planets carrying capacity?

[DBT]

Just because Malthus was way out in terms of timing doesn't mean he was wrong in principle. Innovation, recycling, efficiency, etc, only goes so far.

Yes, he was wrong in principle.

His principle was that population would grow exponentially until such time as it would collapse from a lack of food, yet here we are nearly ten times the population when he wrote his book, with a higher per capita food availability than in his day - and yet the population has stopped growing exponentially.

The principle I was referring to is that any environment or ecosystem, being finite, can only support a given number of animals, be they human or any other species.

Population growth need not be exponential for that to be true.....it just takes longer to get to the point of unsustainability.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Considering that carrying capacity depends on many factors, population size, rate of consumption, climate conditions, habitat loss, pollution, etc, do you believe that the course we are on is sustainable in the long term, let's say over the next hundred years?

We'll be fine. Right now, it's our consumption culture that's creating all the problems. If we stop behaving like idiots the problem would be solved immidately. We could add twice as many humans easy

 

[DBT]

I have not made that claim. I have merely point out that there is quite a range of actions or 'solutions' to be found amongst those who do advocate conservation.



Nor have I mentioned 'rigid population control'

I have been pointing to the impossibility of perpetual growth (distinguished from sustainable development) within a finite system. That at some point an ever increasing population and demand for non nonrenewable, including arable land, becomes unsustainable.

To even talk about 'ever increasing population' is to engage in fantasy. If we do nothing at all to change current trends, human population will stop increasing at some point in the near future; The best estimates are that this will occur some time between 2040 and 2065, at a population of between 8.8 and 10 billion. After that point, population will decline slowly, but steadily.

Why even discuss this idea of perpetual population growth? You might as well talk about your concern that as your penis grew from one to six inches between the ages of 8 and 18, it might be three feet long by your eightieth birthday, and you will start tripping on it when you walk. It's simply not something that is going to happen.

I refer to 'ever increasing population growth' because that appears to be the aim of our economists, politicians and business models.

All they talk about is ''jobs and growth' 'jobs and growth' and given a fall in family size, increasing immigration in order to bolster house prices and 'stimulate the economy'

The 'economy' as in 'growth,' more people, increasing consumption, investment returns, etc. The 'economy' being far more important than ecology, which only gets lip service.....''oh, of course we care about ecology, of course we care about the environment'

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Considering that carrying capacity depends on many factors, population size, rate of consumption, climate conditions, habitat loss, pollution, etc, do you believe that the course we are on is sustainable in the long term, let's say over the next hundred years?

We'll be fine. Right now, it's our consumption culture that's creating all the problems. If we stop behaving like idiots the problem would be solved immidately. We could add twice as many humans easy

That's a Big If. If the human race can stop behaving like idiots? I wouldn't be betting on that.

 

[bilby]

I refer to 'ever increasing population growth' because that appears to be the aim of our economists, politicians and business models.

All they talk about is ''jobs and growth' 'jobs and growth' and given a fall in family size, increasing immigration in order to bolster house prices and 'stimulate the economy'

The 'economy' as in 'growth,' more people, increasing consumption, investment returns, etc. The 'economy' being far more important than ecology, which only gets lip service.....''oh, of course we care about ecology, of course we care about the environment'

Economic growth requires neither population growth nor growth in resource use.

Economic growth is quite possible while both population and resource consumption fall.

There is every reason to expect population to stop growing in the middle of this century. There is no reason at all to expect economic growth to slow or stop in response to this; There are plenty of poor people who will get richer, increasing the size of the economy regardless of declining population.

Increasing efficiency and an increase in the non-manufacturing sectors of the economy even allow economic growth to occur in a time of both falling population and falling resource use.

The only hard limits on economic growth are numeric and value based - if we run out of numbers, or of human desire for things we continue to value more than before, then economic growth will need to stop. But both numbers and human value judgements are, as far as I am aware, unlimited.

Girl with Balloon increased massively in value recently, with no increase in resource use.

Two tonnes of steel ingots require much the same physical resources as a new Rolls Royce, but the conversion of one to the other represents a much larger growth in the economic sense, than in the resource utilisation sense.

Recycling of materials adds economic value without any requirement for new resources.

 

[Jokodo]

Just because Malthus was way out in terms of timing doesn't mean he was wrong in principle. Innovation, recycling, efficiency, etc, only goes so far.

Yes, he was wrong in principle.

His principle was that population would grow exponentially until such time as it would collapse from a lack of food, yet here we are nearly ten times the population when he wrote his book, with a higher per capita food availability than in his day - and yet the population has stopped growing exponentially.

The principle I was referring to is that any environment or ecosystem, being finite, can only support a given number of animals, be they human or any other species.

The principle that finite != infinite is not due to Malthus.

Applying it to human populations is what he's known for, and this requires the additional assumption that human populations will always tend towards infinity until carrying capacity is reached. The demographic history of the late 20 century shows this assumption to be flawed. This is 2018, much of that ancient history - and all of can be read up just a mouse click away on the internet.

 

[DrZoidberg]

We'll be fine. Right now, it's our consumption culture that's creating all the problems. If we stop behaving like idiots the problem would be solved immidately. We could add twice as many humans easy

That's a Big If. If the human race can stop behaving like idiots? I wouldn't be betting on that.

I think nature will give us a helping hand with that lesson. I think environmentalism and green campaigning is a complete waste of time. Our species are too stupid. But when we have mass starvation on our hands and social collapse people will wisen up fast. And eventually we'll sort ourselves out, and it'll be fine. But without polar bears, whales and coral reefs.

 

[barbos]

It's too early to say they were wrong. And if you accept global warming projections then you have to admit that they were right.

I take it that you haven't actually read their predictions. Those predictions were timelines derived from their mathematical models.

For instance Paul Ehriich's book, "The Population Bomb", published in 1968 predicted that there would be food riots and mass starvation in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s. I must have slept through those social upheavals because I don't remember them happening.

None of those panic mongers took into account or even imagined that human fecundity would decrease as world wealth increased. Current population predictions is that the world population will level off without starvation being the cause. Most developed nations now have less than replacement birth rates and developing nations have decreasing birth rates - with greater wealth promoting lower infant mortality rates, people have decreased the number of children they are having,

The population increase in the US is due to immigration, not birth rate of natives. The same for Europe and Russia. Japan's low birth rate, below replacement, is real concern because there is worry that so few young will be overly burdened supporting the elderly in the future. It is third world countries that are currently the primary contributors to world population growth.

I have a basic idea about these predictions which turned out to be "wrong". They were actually correct. They justifiably assumed that current evrything would stay the same. That's how projections work. You can't just say "Oh well, we would somehow find a way out of it"

In theory any problem can be solved. One can synthesize food in factories. Completely ban fossil fuels and use fusion power (can't use solars because it takes too much land) But if you understand human nature nothing will be done until it's too late. And the fact is, it's most likely too late already, we just have not gotten full report from Planet Earth yet.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Here are my generalizations -- feel free to blast them apart.
We're on the forward edge of climate change -- we've seen the buildup of heat energy in the atmosphere for 30+ years and what we're seeing now with heat waves and hurricane systems is bound to intensify. If Northern Africa is seeing high temps of 115 F (I think one of the overnight lows was 105!), then we're quite likely seeing stretches of the planet that will be uninhabitable in the lifetimes of people alive today. Agriculture will be impossible with sustained heat waves -- stress on the body will be unendurable. On the east coast of the USA, who says 'storm of the century' anymore? How will the coastal areas be inhabitable with rising ocean levels, catastrophic storm fronts and floods? How many times will flood-devastated cities rebuild before the futility drives populations inland? Political movements and engineering feats will likely lag behind the heavy price our species will pay for altering the climate. This is the headline for the rest of the century. It's urgent that we start thinking long-range, but we're not good at that.

 

[skepticalbip]

It's too early to say they were wrong. And if you accept global warming projections then you have to admit that they were right.

I take it that you haven't actually read their predictions. Those predictions were timelines derived from their mathematical models.

For instance Paul Ehriich's book, "The Population Bomb", published in 1968 predicted that there would be food riots and mass starvation in the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s. I must have slept through those social upheavals because I don't remember them happening.

None of those panic mongers took into account or even imagined that human fecundity would decrease as world wealth increased. Current population predictions is that the world population will level off without starvation being the cause. Most developed nations now have less than replacement birth rates and developing nations have decreasing birth rates - with greater wealth promoting lower infant mortality rates, people have decreased the number of children they are having,

The population increase in the US is due to immigration, not birth rate of natives. The same for Europe and Russia. Japan's low birth rate, below replacement, is real concern because there is worry that so few young will be overly burdened supporting the elderly in the future. It is third world countries that are currently the primary contributors to world population growth.

I have a basic idea about these predictions which turned out to be "wrong". They were actually correct. They justifiably assumed that current evrything would stay the same. That's how projections work. You can't just say "Oh well, we would somehow find a way out of it"

The predictions would have been right if their assumptions had been right... but their assumptions had nothing to do with the real world. You really should read their books.

In theory any problem can be solved. One can synthesize food in factories. Completely ban fossil fuels and use fusion power (can't use solars because it takes too much land) But if you understand human nature nothing will be done until it's too late. And the fact is, it's most likely too late already, we just have not gotten full report from Planet Earth yet.

None of that or any other measures were taken to avert the food riots and mass starvation in the US in the 1970s and 1980s that was predicted by Ehriich because the predictions were nonsense. Life and farming continued as normal.

 

[barbos]

None of that or any other measures were done to avert the food riots and mass starvation in the US in the 1970s and 1980s that was predicted by Ehriich because the predictions were nonsense.

I am aware that food is still grown naturally. But productivity did increase.

 

[skepticalbip]

None of that or any other measures were done to avert the food riots and mass starvation in the US in the 1970s and 1980s that was predicted by Ehriich because the predictions were nonsense.

I am aware that food is still grown naturally. But productivity did increase.

It only increased at the normal rate it had for the previous decades, the same rate it would have if the prediction had not been made.

 

[barbos]

None of that or any other measures were done to avert the food riots and mass starvation in the US in the 1970s and 1980s that was predicted by Ehriich because the predictions were nonsense.

I am aware that food is still grown naturally. But productivity did increase.

It only increased at the normal rate it had for the previous decades, the same rate it would have if the prediction had not been made.



View attachment 18132

it proves nothing. You need a graph for output per acre, not the total output.

 

[skepticalbip]

It only increased at the normal rate it had for the previous decades, the same rate it would have if the prediction had not been made.

it proves nothing. You need a graph for output per acre, not the total output.

Why? The total food supply available for consumption is what people survive on, not the number of acres under cultivation. My guess would be that the total acreage being farmed decreased during that time since it has been decreasing ever since WWII because of better fertilizers and farming techniques. A fair amount of land that was farmed in the 1940s has been returned to forests.

Maybe you should prove that the US took extraordinary measures to avert the famine since that seems to be what you want to believe.

 

[steve_bank]

We already have water problem aside from drought. In the USA loss of farmland in part is due to urban growth.

We seem to be thinking in terms of future problems when we already have problems. Ca agriculture is in serious trouble and has been for a while.

A simple analysis is liters of water per person per year compared to global rainfall in liters.

What I wonder is who checked off the no problem everything will be ok choice.

 

[barbos]

It only increased at the normal rate it had for the previous decades, the same rate it would have if the prediction had not been made.

it proves nothing. You need a graph for output per acre, not the total output.

Why? The total food supply available for consumption is what people survive on, not the number of acres under cultivation. My guess would be that the total acreage being farmed decreased during that time since it has been decreasing ever since WWII because of better fertilizers and farming techniques. A fair amount of land that was farmed in the 1940s has been returned to forests.

you just proved my point that production rose because of increase of production per acre not because of expansion of farmland as before.

Maybe you should prove that the US took extraordinary measures to avert the famine since that seems to be what you want to believe.

Just because it happened "naturally" does not mean it will always be that way.

 

[skepticalbip]

Why? The total food supply available for consumption is what people survive on, not the number of acres under cultivation. My guess would be that the total acreage being farmed decreased during that time since it has been decreasing ever since WWII because of better fertilizers and farming techniques. A fair amount of land that was farmed in the 1940s has been returned to forests.

you just proved my point that production rose because of increase of production per acre not because of expansion of farmland as before.

Maybe you should prove that the US took extraordinary measures to avert the famine since that seems to be what you want to believe.

Just because it happened "naturally" does not mean it will always be that way.

Farmers don't waste time, labor, and expense growing more than they can sell. Less land is needed to reach that point as techniques, fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides improve. If more produce is needed to meet demand (like fighting off that fucking predicted famine) then they would have put more land under cultivation and created a large bubble in that graph. However, the records show that there was only a fairly steady increase in production (NO BUBBLE) over time to meet fairly steady population growth, not a sudden increase in production in the '70s and '80s to address a FAMINE because the prediction of it coming was pure bull shit.

Please read the fucking book so you will understand what that fear monger was claiming. Your arguments are completely missing his claims.

 

[bilby]

you just proved my point that production rose because of increase of production per acre not because of expansion of farmland as before.

Just because it happened "naturally" does not mean it will always be that way.

Farmers don't waste time, labor, and expense growing more than they can sell. Less land is needed to reach that point as techniques, fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides improve. If more produce is needed to meet demand (like fighting off that fucking predicted famine) then they would have put more land under cultivation and created a large bubble in that graph. However, the records show that there was only a fairly steady increase in production over time to meet fairly steady population growth, not a sudden increase in production in the '70s and '80s to address a FAMINE because the prediction of it coming was pure bull shit.

Indeed, famine has essentially disappeared, not just from the developed world where Ehrlich predicted it would arise (but it never did), but also from the developing world, where it was assumed to be a permanent and inevitably growing concern.

There hasn't been a large scale famine anywhere in the world since the Ethiopia famine made famous by Live Aid in 1985. Ethiopia, btw, had a population of 40 million in 1985; Her current population is 107 million. And there was a very similar drought condition in the region a few years ago to the one that struck in the mid-1980s. The difference is that Ethiopia is no longer at war - the end of the proxy wars between the USA and USSR in Africa has done more to prevent famine than population controls could ever have hoped to achieve.

War is now at historical lows worldwide - in contradiction of another of the predictions of The Population Bomb, which predicted widespread warfare over resources in the late 20th Century.

 

[barbos]

you just proved my point that production rose because of increase of production per acre not because of expansion of farmland as before.

Just because it happened "naturally" does not mean it will always be that way.

Farmers don't waste time, labor, and expense growing more than they can sell. Less land is needed to reach that point as techniques, fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides improve. If more produce is needed to meet demand (like fighting off that fucking predicted famine) then they would have put more land under cultivation and created a large bubble in that graph. However, the records show that there was only a fairly steady increase in production (NO BUBBLE) over time to meet fairly steady population growth, not a sudden increase in production in the '70s and '80s to address a FAMINE because the prediction of it coming was pure bull shit.

Please read the fucking book so you will understand what that fear monger was claiming. Your arguments are completely missing his claims.

Stop agreeing with me

 

[barbos]

you just proved my point that production rose because of increase of production per acre not because of expansion of farmland as before.

Just because it happened "naturally" does not mean it will always be that way.

Farmers don't waste time, labor, and expense growing more than they can sell. Less land is needed to reach that point as techniques, fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides improve. If more produce is needed to meet demand (like fighting off that fucking predicted famine) then they would have put more land under cultivation and created a large bubble in that graph. However, the records show that there was only a fairly steady increase in production over time to meet fairly steady population growth, not a sudden increase in production in the '70s and '80s to address a FAMINE because the prediction of it coming was pure bull shit.

Indeed, famine has essentially disappeared, not just from the developed world where Ehrlich predicted it would arise (but it never did), but also from the developing world, where it was assumed to be a permanent and inevitably growing concern.

There hasn't been a large scale famine anywhere in the world since the Ethiopia famine made famous by Live Aid in 1985. Ethiopia, btw, had a population of 40 million in 1985; Her current population is 107 million. And there was a very similar drought condition in the region a few years ago to the one that struck in the mid-1980s. The difference is that Ethiopia is no longer at war - the end of the proxy wars between the USA and USSR in Africa has done more to prevent famine than population controls could ever have hoped to achieve.

War is now at historical lows worldwide - in contradiction of another of the predictions of The Population Bomb, which predicted widespread warfare over resources in the late 20th Century.

Famines in Africa were caused by locust. Have you ever wondered why you never hear of it anymore? That's because, thanks to entomologists, it does not happen anymore.

 

[bilby]

Indeed, famine has essentially disappeared, not just from the developed world where Ehrlich predicted it would arise (but it never did), but also from the developing world, where it was assumed to be a permanent and inevitably growing concern.

There hasn't been a large scale famine anywhere in the world since the Ethiopia famine made famous by Live Aid in 1985. Ethiopia, btw, had a population of 40 million in 1985; Her current population is 107 million. And there was a very similar drought condition in the region a few years ago to the one that struck in the mid-1980s. The difference is that Ethiopia is no longer at war - the end of the proxy wars between the USA and USSR in Africa has done more to prevent famine than population controls could ever have hoped to achieve.

War is now at historical lows worldwide - in contradiction of another of the predictions of The Population Bomb, which predicted widespread warfare over resources in the late 20th Century.

Famines in Africa were caused by locust. Have you ever wondered why you never hear of it anymore? That's because, thanks to entomologists, it does not happen anymore.