Can Overpopulation Fix Itself?

[Moontanman]

  A23 said:

Yes living creature like to play together, but they could also all be maintained separated, for security reasons.(for example sometimes parents have to be separated from their children, for non adequate behavior)

 

What is your point A23? Most normal human beings are not going to want to be maintained separately nor should they be. In the very rare cases where it is a necessity it usually is done that way. Why would you want to keep humans separately? Sex is a normal part of being human, it is a big part of human relationships, there is no point to keep humans apart for"security reasons" shame, fear and perversion are used to control human sexuality by the people who have the real sexual problems.

[A23]

Is is true that crossing crossed phenotypes disturbs the whole human group, that starts to bark, like (blond hair/brown eyes) and (brown hair/blue eyes) ?

[Moontanman]

  A23 said:

Is is true that crossing crossed phenotypes disturbs the whole human group, that starts to bark, like (blond hair/brown eyes) and (brown hair/blue eyes) ?

 

No A23, there is no truth to that at all.

[A23]

And if the chromosom numbers do not match ?

[Moontanman]

  A23 said:

And if the chromosom numbers do not match ?

 

All human beings are of the same species so the chromosome numbers would match, your idea is not true.

[Kriminal99]

WAR!... HUNH!... What is it good for? Fixing overpopulation....

[Kriminal99]

  Eclipse Now said:

 

Basically, the world is full and we have have more than enough educated people to solve this problem IF we could only act!

 

 

Act how though? We have educated women, Mexico has a lot of uneducated everyone that crank out babies like jackrabbits. A bunch of dirt poor Mexicans run the border to America just to be able to eat drink etc and we develop forgiveness and naturalization policies for them, then Mexico cranks out 10 more babies for every one that ran the border. Then our quality of life takes a nose dive as our capital doesn't rise to meet the population.

 

We tell Mexico hey look here and their dictator says whatever and tells their population if your poor run to America.

 

IMO failing to maintain an adequate social programs to keep your population taken care of and then failing to prevent them from running the border to another country on a massive scale diluting that country's quality of life is an act of war.

 

  BrianG said:

Maybe overpopulation isn't a problem to be fixed. If a smaller population was better, why do populations grow? Declining population, infant mortality, low fertility, early death are problems. Limited resources, clean water, expensive food and transportation costs are problems, population growth can bring progress, a solution to the fragile speck problem.

 

The concept of Earth, with a maximum carrying capacity. The idea that sustainable development creates less waste, the view of the "thin veil of atmosphere" is an outer space perspective. The construct of the natural balance, for CO₂ or thermal balance ignores an ever changing exchange, a constant, immensely chaotic and complex dynamic process with a fantasy of a natural balance in perfect set or an out of control tumble toward catastrophe.

 

The fragile speck of rock called Earth is the biggest planet we've ever visited. 70,000 years ago, the climate was different, 70,000 years from now, there will be change. More billions of people, more brains and eyes working on progress, will give us a more realistic view.

 

Yeah, but long before any maximum capacity is reached, life is miserable for everyone. Cut that same population in half, and everyone has their own house with their own backyard and dog to raise their family in, and has a meaningful place to fit into society utilizing all of their ability.

[Eclipse Now]

Yes, um, if we nuked each other back to the stone age it might 'fix' overpopulation and global warming (with global dimming or a 'nuclear winter') but I prefer a more humane answer.

 

  Quote

MO failing to maintain an adequate social programs to keep your population taken care of and then failing to prevent them from running the border to another country on a massive scale diluting that country's quality of life is an act of war.

A rather extreme way of putting it, but I agree that access to free family planning services should be part of a government's main public policy. Remember, 5% of the world's military budget could apparently provide all the fresh water, adequate nutrition, health, education, shelter (NOT McMansions) and family planning to encourage sustainable development and demographic transition.

 

It doesn't take suburban sprawl and western consumerism to bring on the demographic transition.

 

  Quote

Kerala's unusual socioeconomic and demographic situation was summarized by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben:[15]

 

Kerala, a state in India, is a bizarre anomaly among developing nations, a place that offers real hope for the future of the Third World. Though not much larger than Maryland, Kerala has a population as big as California's and a per capita annual income of less than $300. But its infant mortality rate is very low, its literacy rate among the highest on Earth, and its birthrate below America's and falling faster. Kerala's residents live nearly as long as Americans or Europeans. Though mostly a land of paddy-covered plains, statistically Kerala stands out as the Mount Everest of social development; there's truly no place like it.[15]

Demographics of Kerala - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Boerseun]

Get every couple on planet Earth to have no more than two children. This will replace the mother and the father, and reduce population growth to zero. Those unfortunate couples who lose a kid to disease or accident will actually result in a negative population growth on the whole.

 

Enforce this rule with any means available. Give the father a vasectomy and tie the mother's tubes after their second child - at gunpoint, if need be. To hell with personal freedom and choice - this is about an entire planet's survival.

[Eclipse Now]

  Boerseun said:

Get every couple on planet Earth to have no more than two children. This will replace the mother and the father, and reduce population growth to zero. Those unfortunate couples who lose a kid to disease or accident will actually result in a negative population growth on the whole.

 

Enforce this rule with any means available. Give the father a vasectomy and tie the mother's tubes after their second child - at gunpoint, if need be. To hell with personal freedom and choice - this is about an entire planet's survival.

 

While I completely agree with the sense of urgency, how are you going to get something like this passed into law? As you have pointed out in other threads, we're not all like China. Sorry, but I think the moment someone mentions the "p" word people see red and scream eugenics / if reincarnation were true, Prince Charles saying he'd come back as a virus to wipe us all out / Club of Rome / (insert other conspiracy here).

 

from my blog's summary page on population...

 

  Quote

7. Why I think IPAT gives grounds for hope.

 

Impact = Population * Affluence * Technology

 

Just to illustrate how this equation might work, lets arbitrarily call 1 person living a first world lifestyle having an 'Affluence' of 1. Someone living in a slum in Bangladesh might only have an "Affluence' of 0.1 in this example, but for ease of illustration, my Australian lifestyle is 1 unit of terrible environmental impact.

 

So ignoring Technology for the moment the equation would look something like this.

 

Impact = Population * Affluence

 

Impact = 6.7 billion people * Affluence of 1 first world lifestyle = 6.7 billion units of Impact to the environment (how ever we actually want to measure it, whether Co2 emissions, species loss, topsoil erosion, water consumption, or whatever kind of environmental impact you want to insert — I am keeping this argument to general principles only.)

 

Now let's look at the Technology with which we fuel and run our hypothetical society.

 

We live in a society in which fossil fuels have acted as a 'bad' multiplier, especially as oil has enabled suburban sprawl. So for arguments sake say that the negative environmental consequence of the oil & sprawl age have tripled our impact on the environment.

 

Impact = Population * Affluence * Technology

 

Impact = 6.7 billion * Affluence of 1 first world lifestyle * 3 (technologies of fossil fuels and suburbia) = 20.1 billion!

 

That's suddenly 20.1 billion units of Impact on the environment, merely from using the wrong energy and city building technologies.

 

Now lets assume that the world shifts to the city planning Technology of New Urbanism over the next 40 years, and that we wean off fossil fuels onto renewables (and nuclear and fusion and whatever). I'm also going to assume the recycling technologies of "Cradle to Cradle" systems design and green chemistry are providing more of our material and fibre needs than, say, mining. So for this example, I'm going to assume that the right technology can halve our impact! So, maybe 40 years into our future the equation looks more like this:

 

Impact = 2050 Population of 9 billion * Affluence of 1 first world lifestyle * Technology of 0.5 (renewable + New Urbanist technology world) = only 4.5 billion units of impact on the environment. We've cut our impact to a quarter of today's impact by dropping suburbia and fossil fuels!

 

Of course this is illustrative only, but I'm convinced that this is the kind of potential power we have to solve these problems if the right city planning, materials, and energy technologies are implemented fast enough.

 

However, this picture remains a pipe-dream until we actually build all of this infrastructure. And how are we going to afford this when the world's marketplace is bankrupted by peak oil, and with what energy are we going to build all of this after peak oil and gas?

 

All of these innovations in city planning and renewable energy remain utopian fantasies until governments, laws, people, and cultures change to implement them. So ultimately population targets must employ the precautionary principle in setting the limit that as low as humanely possible.

 

We have an oil crisis now.

We have an ecological crisis now.

We have a global warming crisis now.

 

We also have exponential growth in human knowledge, and the ability to change cultures, energy systems, city plans and zoning, and enact emergency legislation for the new conditions we will face. We can and do adapt to new realities. Will we do so in time? Will people care enough? What will you do to help alleviate this situation by spreading awareness?

http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/solutions/reduce-population/

[maikeru]

  Kriminal99 said:

Act how though? We have educated women, Mexico has a lot of uneducated everyone that crank out babies like jackrabbits. A bunch of dirt poor Mexicans run the border to America just to be able to eat drink etc and we develop forgiveness and naturalization policies for them, then Mexico cranks out 10 more babies for every one that ran the border. Then our quality of life takes a nose dive as our capital doesn't rise to meet the population.

 

We tell Mexico hey look here and their dictator says whatever and tells their population if your poor run to America.

 

IMO failing to maintain an adequate social programs to keep your population taken care of and then failing to prevent them from running the border to another country on a massive scale diluting that country's quality of life is an act of war.

 

It's more complicated than that.

 

  Quote

Yeah, but long before any maximum capacity is reached, life is miserable for everyone. Cut that same population in half, and everyone has their own house with their own backyard and dog to raise their family in, and has a meaningful place to fit into society utilizing all of their ability.

 

There are no guarantees of that.

[CraigD]

  Kriminal99 said:

WAR!... HUNH!... What is it good for? Fixing overpopulation....

So it would seem, until you actually count populations during wars (or, more easily, compare wartime birth rates to death rates). To date, on sampling intervals longer than a few days, even the most deadly wars result in only a slight decrease in population growth rate, not such a dramatic decrease that the rate is actually negative.

 

For example, about 60 million (credible estimates range from 58 to 78 million) people died from 1939 to 1945 as a result of WW II, the deadliest war in human history. Nonetheless, world population for that same 6 year period increased by about 100 million, to about 2.3 billion (about +0.75%/year).

 

Historically, epidemic disease is the only thing that has proven itself able to “fix overpopulation”. The black death, a series of bubonic plague (and likely other, less well-documented disease) epidemics, resulted in about 200 million deaths from about 1300 to 1400, resulting in decline in world population of about 100 million, to about 350 million (about -0.2%/year). 1400 is generally considered approximately the last year that the world human population was in steady decline.

 

From 1918 to 1920, about 50 million died from a worldwide flu epidemic, not significantly affecting the world population of about 1.6 billion.

 

This is not to say that war (or at least the use of devices usually associated with war, especially nuclear bombs) is without horrible “overpopulation fixing” potential, but that historically, war hasn’t caused a sustained decrease in world population.

[Eclipse Now]

Good points Craig.

Although, have you seen the latest studies into even a 'limited' nuclear exchange, say between India and Pakistan?

 

Global dimming...

 

  Quote

The particles would remain there for years, blocking the sun, making the earth’s surface cold, dark and dry. Agricultural collapse and mass starvation could follow. Hence, global cooling could result from a regional war, not just a conflict between the U.S. and Russia.

South Asian Threat? Local Nuclear War = Global Suffering: Scientific American

[maikeru]

  CraigD said:

So it would seem, until you actually count populations during wars (or, more easily, compare wartime birth rates to death rates). To date, on sampling intervals longer than a few days, even the most deadly wars result in only a slight decrease in population growth rate, not such a dramatic decrease that the rate is actually negative.

 

For example, about 60 million (credible estimates range from 58 to 78 million) people died from 1939 to 1945 as a result of WW II, the deadliest war in human history. Nonetheless, world population for that same 6 year period increased by about 100 million, to about 2.3 billion (about +0.75%/year).

 

Historically, epidemic disease is the only thing that has proven itself able to “fix overpopulation”. The black death, a series of bubonic plague (and likely other, less well-documented disease) epidemics, resulted in about 200 million deaths from about 1300 to 1400, resulting in decline in world population of about 100 million, to about 350 million (about -0.2%/year). 1400 is generally considered approximately the last year that the world human population was in steady decline.

 

From 1918 to 1920, about 50 million died from a worldwide flu epidemic, not significantly affecting the world population of about 1.6 billion.

 

This is not to say that war (or at least the use of devices usually associated with war, especially nuclear bombs) is without horrible “overpopulation fixing” potential, but that historically, war hasn’t caused a sustained decrease in world population.

 

Agreed. IMO, usually if diseases or epidemics sweep through a population, it's rarely because of the deadliness of the disease itself, but already pervasive problems that afflict the population, such as war, lack of sanitation or clean drinking water, starvation, degraded living conditions, etc. that have stressed and weakened the population and made them susceptible to disease outbreaks and epidemics, and significantly raises the number of fatalities. But that could be what we're facing in the future...

[Kriminal99]

  CraigD said:

So it would seem, until you actually count populations during wars (or, more easily, compare wartime birth rates to death rates).

 

Except that all that is needed to fix overpopulation for the purpose of quality of life and letting the infrastructure catch up is for the growth rate to slow down, not to reverse. It definitely did slow down in america during that time, we definitely had a burst in industry to meet war demands, and we definitely did have a golden age after the war was over.

[madmadmax]

  On 12/31/2009 at 6:08 PM, BrianG said:

Here in Europe, population is falling: Google - public data

 

It doesn't seem to be a problem we need to fix, here.

 

I would be more worried about the extinction of some of the races or ethnic groups.

[jhnmichle]

over population is not an issue. nature adjust has made resources.