Overpopulation

[Perpetual Student]

Many of mankind's problems can be traced or linked to overpopulation:

fresh water shortages
global warming
fossil fuel supply
spread of disease
poverty
malnutrition and food shortages
air, water and ground pollution

Yet, as these subjects are discussed and debated individually, the issue of population control is generally in the background and rarely discussed as a leading cause or issue. Some decades ago overpopulation seemed to be more a part of the collective consciousness -- has that changed, and if so why?

[soylent]

fresh water shortages

I'm not sure how big of a problem that's going to be when we bring to bear the combination of tanacity and technology that have made humans so successful. E.g. wider use of no-till agriculture, high surface area soil ammendments like pyrolysis char(also a method of carbon sequestration), massive earth-works projects to replace the buffering action of glaciers(possibly an added bonus of hydropower), shuffling people around if necessary a result of redistributed water resources, aquaculture(most specifically algaculture which is potentially a very good food source, directly or as fish food). With enough energy you can even desalinate(intermittent is acceptable since potable water is easy to store in large quantities, which allows you to use surplus or otherwise quite useless wind and solar power).

global warming

We'd get around to burning all that coal, oil and gas even if there were much fewer of us. It'd just take a little bit longer; but on geological scales it is just a blink of the eye all the same.

fossil fuel supply

They're highly finite regardless of the size of your population. Only nuclear fuels are undepletable(fission: U-235(small), U-238(large), Th-232(humongous), fusion: Lithium(humongous), Deuterium(for all intents and purposes infinite)).

spread of disease

Why would you expect a large population to make this worse? I would imagine that the rate of virus mutation or the rate at which humans come in contact with virii that could jump the species barrier goes up as a function of population; but I would also expect that medical advancements would be accelerated by having more brains around, poking and proding at more problems from more directions.

I would think rapid transportation accessible to more people than ever is the biggie.

poverty

Less of it than there has ever been at any other period in human history.

malnutrition and food shortages

World calorie intake per capita just keeps going up. Vitamin A is a common deficiency(the most common?) in developing countries and it can be alleviated with genetically engineered crops like golden rice cross bred with local varieties.

air, water and ground pollution

I'd rather come in contact with small amounts of pesticides, plasticizers, medicine traces, organic solvents and heavy metals and live into my 80's rather than living in miserable squalor and dying in my 30's of privation or tribal war.

While pollution is made worse as a first order effect of having a large population; having a larger population also has the second order effect of being able to allocate more people to discovering the health effects of a potential pollutant and inventing ways around or limiting the damage of the particularly noxious ones.

[Bikewer]

I believe it was back in October of last year that Science Friday had author Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) on.
Ehrlich was part of the crew who was predicting huge population-related problems during the period mentioned by Student.
Ira Flatow asked him what happened? Why had the problems not come to pass?

He said that they had; that they were happening now...30 years later than expected.

There seems to be two camps on this issue, which we have discussed before. Those that see overpopulation as exacerbating all the problems listed, and those that seem to think it's no big deal. Improving technology/food production, etc will cope. If not, lots of people will die. So what?

I tend to be in the more alarmist camp, but I admit that no one seems to be even remotely interested in addressing the problem, nor has anyone proposed a viable solution.

The drive to procreate is extremely strong and almost universally approved-of. Although the need for huge families is obviously no longer with us, culture seems to smile approvingly on them. People who do not procreate are seen as "incomplete" or somehow self-centered or irresponsible.
Not surprising, since the very survival of the human race for many millennia depended on it.
We get the extreme positions like "Everyone on the face of the Earth could fit into the state of Texas!" Well....Perhaps true, but would you want to be there?

[macdoc]

There is a clear peak in view and then it tips down and rather rapidly as seen in Japan and some other regions.

The question is how much damage occurs as population peaks, climate shifts and finite resources narrow.

Nuclear helps in all cases save for the knee jerk anti nukes who don't know coal is the killer.

Nature recovers quickly. Hey there was a bear spotted in Germany. :boggled:

IF we use the fossil reserves it's not going to be pretty or very liveable.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2009/roulette-0519.html

Kill coal, build the nukes and renewables and population will take care of itself in a few decades.....

Long term what is sustainable?? a lot less than we have now.:eusa_doh:

[shecky]

Population problems have a tendency to correlate with political problems. As such they tend to be regional. There's little indication of a global population crisis.

Malthusian catastrophes have been predicted at least since, well, Malthus. However, they have never really materialized because of relatively simple and overlooked data, such as human ingenuity and the resulting prosperity.

[macdoc]

They have occurred regionally and may well again with additional pressure from rapid climate shifts.

You may well have your observation backwards...look at the demographics of youth bulges and you get political upheaval - not vice versa....even in the first world.

Rwanda was Malthus - almost classic.

[Delvo]

It's not talked about much now because some of its predictions from decades ago didn't entirely come true, at least not in the countries that we all live in, which is seen by some as meaning the whole concept is completely discredited.

The problem is that this ignores several other possible reasons for our not having yet experienced the predicted problems, which don't involve the concept itself being invalid: they happened somewhere else that we generally don't notice instead, they got delayed by factors that can only delay them but not prevent them, or they were specific little parts of the big picture which were wrong individually but don't reflect the accuracy of the big picture.

[Perpetual Student]

It's not talked about much now because some of its predictions from decades ago didn't entirely come true, at least not in the countries that we all live in, which is seen by some as meaning the whole concept is completely discredited.

The problem is that this ignores several other possible reasons for our not having yet experienced the predicted problems, which don't involve the concept itself being invalid: they happened somewhere else that we generally don't notice instead, they got delayed by factors that can only delay them but not prevent them, or they were specific little parts of the big picture which were wrong individually but don't reflect the accuracy of the big picture.

I think that's a fairly good evaluation.

[UncaYimmy]

Population problems have a tendency to correlate with political problems. As such they tend to be regional. There's little indication of a global population crisis.
Global warming?

How about pollution? The planet can filter out waste to a certain degree, but we seemed to have exceeded that level. I can crap in a river and not cause a problem. My entire family can do it. But at some point the river can no longer support all that waste. Granted, it's a regional issue, but it affects regions all over the globe.

What about the extinction of species due to the expansion of man? Again, it's regional, but it happens all over the globe.

Every problem we encounter with resources would be less of a problem (note that I didn't say not a problem) if the worldwide population were where it was [pick a number] years ago. The OP is right that this is rarely discussed, but it should be.

Look at the USA. The population more than doubled between 1940 and 2000 (due in some part to immigration, I'm sure). If we had kept it to half that level, I wonder how things would be.

[lionking]

Malthus, Erlich et al may be right...........eventually. But I doubt it.

Population growth has leveled out in much of the first world the first world (and in some European countries is below replacement rates) and this will occur as developing countries move up the development ladder.

[UncaYimmy]

Population growth has leveled out in much of the first world the first world (and in some European countries is below replacement rates) and this will occur as developing countries move up the development ladder.
What do you mean by leveled out?

Here are some stats:
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/factbook/countrycompare/pg/1a.html

[lionking]

What do you mean by leveled out?

Here are some stats:
http://education.yahoo.com/reference/factbook/countrycompare/pg/1a.html
This is what I mean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility


Today about 42% of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility


Unless the fertility is above replacement rate the population will reduce.

[wackyvorlon]

Many of mankind's problems can be traced or linked to overpopulation:

fresh water shortages


I take task with this assertion. Remember, the earth is a closed system. Water neither comes to earth, nor leaves it. The process of evapouration from the oceans and rainfall over land acts to desalinate the water. The problem is not a shortage of water, it's desalination.

With regards food, this is more heavily impacted by governments than agriculture.

Living in Canada, it is difficult for me to see the world as overpopulated. Our country has the largest area of any country in the world(used to be no. 2, until the USSR broke up), and yet, it only has a population of about 30 million. Some areas in Saskatchewan have one family every 40-50 square kilometers. There are huge empty regions in Canada, we are nowhere near overpopulated.

[macdoc]

And one of the few places that perhaps is sustainable as a result.
Ask someone in Bangladesh where both rising sealevel and loss of the Himalayan glaciers by the end of the century are real threats.

Canada is no model for the rest of the planet and we are pissing in our own drinking water with that obscenity called the oil sands. :mgbanghead

Population will level but it's arace bewteen that and how much damage we inflict in the getting there.

Japan is probably 2-3 decades ahead on the curve - no immigration and population to halve or more by 2100.

One aspect tho is increasing urbanization so rural is also increasing ( even in Canada despite our immigration). More than 50% live in urban regions now worldwide.
This puts a higher risk of food, water and disease issues at play ( perhaps violence too ).

[lionking]

Erlich had the world down the toilet by now. He was clearly wrong and should admit it. I remain optimistic.

[macdoc]

It all depends on the definition of acceptable damage to the eco system as to optimism or pessimism.....

The loss of bio-diversity.....especially some larger primates and mammals is truly depressing....most else can recover or will not be missed.

Life is tenacious but uncertain on our civilization.

Japan leaves hope, Ethiopia/Somalia not so much :con2:

[lionking]

It all depends on the definition of acceptable damage to the eco system as to optimism or pessimism.....

The loss of bio-diversity.....especially some larger primates and mammals is truly depressing....most else can recover or will not be missed.

Life is tenacious but uncertain on our civilization.

Japan leaves hope, Ethiopia/Somalia not so much :con2:
I can't argue with this.

[Cuddles]

Yet, as these subjects are discussed and debated individually, the issue of population control is generally in the background and rarely discussed as a leading cause or issue. Some decades ago overpopulation seemed to be more a part of the collective consciousness -- has that changed, and if so why?

Basically, what Soylent said. None of the things in your list are directly and solely linked to overpopulation. They are all things that would either be a problem anyway (such as finite resources) or will not necessarily be a problem at all (such as water). That certainly doesn't mean we should just ignore them all and hope they go away, but it does mean it's useless to focus on population as the root cause, since addressing that won't actually solve them.

Of course, the other big problem is the solution. If you decide that overpopulation is a problem, what exactly can you do about it? There are only two possibilities - reduce the number of people or stop them making new people. Neither of those are particularly appealing ethical problems to consider. "Vote for me and you've got a good chance of being killed or sterlised!" is unlikely to be the hit campaign of the near future.

[theprestige]

Of course, the other big problem is the solution. If you decide that overpopulation is a problem, what exactly can you do about it? There are only two possibilities - reduce the number of people or stop them making new people. Neither of those are particularly appealing ethical problems to consider. "Vote for me and you've got a good chance of being killed or sterlised!" is unlikely to be the hit campaign of the near future.
On the other hand, "vote for me and you've got a good chance of surviving the coming global war that will slaughter billions of other people (and incidentally solve the overpopulation problem)," might actually be appealing to some people...

[Prometheus]

On the other hand, "vote for me and you've got a good chance of surviving the coming global war that will slaughter billions of other people (and incidentally solve the overpopulation problem)," might actually be appealing to some people...

Cheney / Limbaugh 2012 !

[theprestige]

Cheney / Limbaugh 2012 !
Ohohoho! Good one, Prometheus! Almost as hilarious as the Obama 2012 campaign speech Cuddles suggested!

[Zeuzzz]

I'm a big fan of mass murder to solve this issue. WW3 would sort this planet out, big time.

...on a more serious note, some population control methods countries have applied have been sucessful. Not invasive ones like China's one child policy, but ones that give monetary incentives via tax, etc, to have less children. Cant remember which countries off the top of my head but I'm sure theres a few.

[UncaYimmy]

This is what I mean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility

You quoted a line from Wiki (Today about 42% of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility) where it says Citation Needed next to it.


Unless the fertility is above replacement rate the population will reduce.
That's not entirely accurate according to your link. It may take several generations before the population will reduce. Your original statement dealt with population growth when it appears you meant total fertility rate.

Just trying to make things clear.

[lionking]

You quoted a line from Wiki (Today about 42% of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility) where it says Citation Needed next to it.


That's not entirely accurate according to your link. It may take several generations before the population will reduce. Your original statement dealt with population growth when it appears you meant total fertility rate.

Just trying to make things clear.

http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/fertilityrate.htm

On the other hand, more than 70 countries have (as of mid-2007) a total fertility rate of less than 2! Without immigration or an increase in total fertility rates, all of these countries will have declining populations over the next few decades. Some of the lowest total fertility rates include developed as well as developing countries alike. For example: Singapore at 1.07, Lithuania at 1.21, Czech Republic at 1.22, Japan at 1.23, and even Canada at 1.61 (the European Union as a whole has a very low total fertility rate of 1.5!)

The total fertility rate for the United States is just below replacement value at 2.09 and the total fertility rate for the world is 2.59, down from 2.8 in 2002 and 5.0 in 1965. China's one-child policy definitely shows in the country's total low fertility rate of 1.75.

Hope this is clearer. I was referring to population growth rate in my original post and even though I omitted the word "rate", I thought my subsequent point on fertility rate made my argument clear. Never mind.

As you can see, virtually all first world countries (as well as China) will have declining populations (without mass immigration, of course) within decades. As countries raise their living standards, fertility rates drop dramatically.

The population bomb looks like a fizzer.

[Blackadder]

I take task with this assertion. Remember, the earth is a closed system. Water neither comes to earth, nor leaves it. The process of evapouration from the oceans and rainfall over land acts to desalinate the water. The problem is not a shortage of water, it's desalination.


I don't agree with this, because, being a closed system doesn't mean a closed circuit in human time scale. Much of the water is in 50, 500, or 5000 year cycles. (Especially in dry areas) It means if humans use up all the water in a few decades, it's gone and will be gone forever from human point of view

[shadron]

I think that, on the contrary, most of the problems are caused by a lack of readily available, cheap, nonpolluting energy sources. Just think about what the ramifications of cold fusion, or even a breakthrough in hot fusion, or solar power satellites, or any number of other "wild-eyed" schemes could yield:

water - use sea water distillation.

Global warming - with a nonpolluting source, we wouldn't need to increase CO2 levels. In fact, we could afford to reduce CO2 into gaseous oxygen and bury the carbon, or make diamonds, or even black crayons from it.

fossil fuel supply - no longer need it; could, in fact, afford to replenish it to some extent, if that were desirable.

spread of disease - with abundant energy, the level of public health could be raised sufficiently to negate the effects of this.

poverty - just imagine.

malnutrition and food shortages - no worries about expensive fertilizers.

air, water and ground pollution - all could be ameliorated and in fact reversed if there was abindant pollution free energy sources.

loss of rain forest and other habitats - wouldn't need them to support people.

zeitgeist - makes their world come true, maybe. :)

Of course, it would also be an almighty shock to the economic systems of the planet, but overall a happy, optimistic one.

[JoeTheJuggler]

It's not talked about much now because some of its predictions from decades ago didn't entirely come true, at least not in the countries that we all live in, which is seen by some as meaning the whole concept is completely discredited.

And, I think the main reason why these predictions didn't come true was the "Green Revolution". That we didn't foresee a pretty significant expansion in our ability to feed a larger population doesn't mean, though, that the overall idea is wrong.

I think we've only postponed the inevitable.

[lionking]

Shadron,

I was with you until you mentioned zeitgeist.;)

But I also am optimistic that a fusion breakthrough will occur.

[JoeTheJuggler]

I think that, on the contrary, most of the problems are caused by a lack of readily available, cheap, nonpolluting energy sources. Just think about what the ramifications of cold fusion, or even a breakthrough in hot fusion, or solar power satellites, or any number of other "wild-eyed" schemes could yield:

<snip>

Of course, it would also be an almighty shock to the economic systems of the planet, but overall a happy, optimistic one.

I think you underestimate that "shock". Our global economy is inherently unsustainable. It's based on growth. There simply cannot be perpetual growth as long as we're confined to this one planet.

Look how devastating it is even when our economy slows down or recedes even a relatively small amount!

ETA: I agree with all your other observations here, though. I didn't mean to slight them.

[DavidS]

I don't agree with this, because, being a closed system doesn't mean a closed circuit in human time scale. Much of the water is in 50, 500, or 5000 year cycles. (Especially in dry areas) It means if humans use up all the water in a few decades, it's gone and will be gone forever from human point of view
I think that misses wackyvorlon's point.

Humans don't "use up all the water", not "in a few decades" nor at all. Humans dirty up fresh water at some pace that might become faster than natural cycles make new fresh water. That doesn't make that water "gone forever from human point of view", it just makes it not-fresh-water until something gets around to cleaning it up into fresh water again. Nature might need "50, 500, or 5000 year cycles" to get the job done, or technology might be able to cycle such not-fresh-water water back into fresh water service much faster.

I suppose some technological processes might be "destroying" water by sequestering hydrogen and oxygen from water into nonaqueous compounds, but I'll go out on a limb and *guess* that human contributions to those processes are more than offset by new water produced by hydrocarbon combustion.

[lionking]

I think that misses wackyvorlon's point.

Humans don't "use up all the water", not "in a few decades" nor at all. Humans dirty up fresh water at some pace that might become faster than natural cycles make new fresh water. That doesn't make that water "gone forever from human point of view", it just makes it not-fresh-water until something gets around to cleaning it up into fresh water again. Nature might need "50, 500, or 5000 year cycles" to get the job done, or technology might be able to cycle such not-fresh-water water back into fresh water service much faster.

I suppose some technological processes might be "destroying" water by sequestering hydrogen and oxygen from water into nonaqueous compounds, but I'll go out on a limb and *guess* that human contributions to those processes are more than offset by new water produced by hydrocarbon combustion.

I'm with you here. The amount of water destroyed would be miniscule. Off to find a link.......

[CapelDodger]

Basically, what Soylent said. None of the things in your list are directly and solely linked to overpopulation. They are all things that would either be a problem anyway (such as finite resources) or will not necessarily be a problem at all (such as water). That certainly doesn't mean we should just ignore them all and hope they go away, but it does mean it's useless to focus on population as the root cause, since addressing that won't actually solve them.

You and Soylent make soom good points. However there is a particular feature of a constantly rising population which I think explains why we seem to have so many problems coming to a head at the about the same time.

Where a constant population is depleting a resource the depletion rate is broadly linear, which gives plenty of warning that ways have to change. With a rising population the depletion rate also rises : the depletion is end-loaded, and can come up on you all of a sudden. Where a number of resources are being depleted at the same time this tends to bunch crises together. Hence the principle of "cluster-hump".

Clear examples can be found in history (and in the now). Whatever the capacity of a society to adjust it is never limitless. All the economic output devoted to adjustment is output lost to consumption - and people hate that. At the same time the economy is initially based to some extent on exactly the resource-depletion it's trying to adjust to.

It's a real headache. There's a great temptation to throw your hands up and have a nice simple war. "Vote for me and there's a good chance those other people will be killed, leaving more for us" has proven popular in the past.

Of course, the other big problem is the solution. If you decide that overpopulation is a problem, what exactly can you do about it? There are only two possibilities - reduce the number of people or stop them making new people. Neither of those are particularly appealing ethical problems to consider. "Vote for me and you've got a good chance of being killed or sterlised!" is unlikely to be the hit campaign of the near future.

There's an ethical strategy : female emancipation and prosperity. Malthus was wrong that people will always on average breed at above the replacement rate. In many prosperous countries we've long seen sub-replacement rates. It is apparently natural for humanity to voluntarily die out.

[CapelDodger]

I suppose some technological processes might be "destroying" water by sequestering hydrogen and oxygen from water into nonaqueous compounds, but I'll go out on a limb and *guess* that human contributions to those processes are more than offset by new water produced by hydrocarbon combustion.

One process that consumes water is plant-growth (including crops, of course). Some is used in photosynthesis, but the majority in transpiration, which is the plant's means of pumping nutrients up from the roots. It also serves to cool the plant.

This means that extra irrigated agriculture in hot arid conditions draws more water from the fixed amount in the natural hydrological cycle. Such extra production has been a feature of the increased food production that has postponed the Malthusian crisis over the last few decades. It has a limit. Already there are major rivers that no longer reach the sea consistently.

Another problem is the depletion of artesian water : there's a world of hurt coming from there in the next few decades.

[CapelDodger]

I think you underestimate that "shock". Our global economy is inherently unsustainable. It's based on growth. There simply cannot be perpetual growth as long as we're confined to this one planet.

Some things really are that simple, aren't they?

[CapelDodger]

Hope this is clearer. I was referring to population growth rate in my original post and even though I omitted the word "rate", I thought my subsequent point on fertility rate made my argument clear. Never mind.

As you can see, virtually all first world countries (as well as China) will have declining populations (without mass immigration, of course) within decades. As countries raise their living standards, fertility rates drop dramatically.

The population bomb looks like a fizzer.

Population is projected to peak at ~9 billion in about 2050. Say 2.5 billion more in forty years or so.

Reproduction rates have been around or less than replacement in some developed countries for a decade or two with a still-rising population, and as you mention it may take another decade or two before they fall. The undeveloped countries where most of the population rise is projected will have to go through the same process - develop, reduce reproduction rates to replacement and below, and then see out the demographic bulge of people going through their reproductive years before population starts to drop off.

Forty years could cover it. So ~9 billion (assuming business as usual) is inevitable. That's impossible. Hence business will not be as usual.

Keep your eye open for widespread food riots. That'll be the first sign.

[CapelDodger]

On the other hand, "vote for me and you've got a good chance of surviving the coming global war that will slaughter billions of other people (and incidentally solve the overpopulation problem)," might actually be appealing to some people...

Oops :o. I humbly concede precedence.

[CapelDodger]

Erlich had the world down the toilet by now. He was clearly wrong and should admit it. I remain optimistic.

He's acknowledged that he had the timing wrong, but the principle remains the same.

The "so far, so good" principle seldom fares so well.

[lionking]

Population is projected to peak at ~9 billion in about 2050. Say 2.5 billion more in forty years or so.

Reproduction rates have been around or less than replacement in some developed countries for a decade or two with a still-rising population, and as you mention it may take another decade or two before they fall. The undeveloped countries where most of the population rise is projected will have to go through the same process - develop, reduce reproduction rates to replacement and below, and then see out the demographic bulge of people going through their reproductive years before population starts to drop off.

Forty years could cover it. So ~9 billion (assuming business as usual) is inevitable. That's impossible. Hence business will not be as usual.

Keep your eye open for widespread food riots. That'll be the first sign.



I'm not at all sure about food riots. The FAO doesn't think so:

http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/news/2002/7833-en.html

The world population will be increasingly well-fed by 2030, with 3050 kilocalories (kcal) available per person, compared to 2360 kcal per person per day in the mid-1960s and 2800 kcal today. This change reflects above all the rising consumption in many developing countries whose average will be close to 3000 kcal in 2030.

[DogB]

...That's impossible.

Why? Seems to me, you solve the energy problem and the rest is just logistics.

[DogB]

Damn lionking beat me to it - and with a pretty linky to boot. :)

[CapelDodger]

Why? Seems to me, you solve the energy problem and the rest is just logistics.

Solving the energy problem involves implementing it, and then applying the energy to extra food production must also be implemented. That's a lot of capital investment in forty years, almost all of it coming out of the consumption-stream of the developed world.

The "logistics" essentially translates to political will to do this for others. There's long been enough food to feed everybody but still there's malnutrition. And an obesity "crisis". (Personally, I regard obesity as part of the solution :).)

That's people for you. Waddya gonna do? Apart from try to keep the ravening hordes off your own turf : that's a given.

[CapelDodger]

I'm not at all sure about food riots. The FAO doesn't think so:

http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/news/2002/7833-en.html

Widespread food riots will be the first sign. The FAO's opinion in 2002 (their assumptions about where the oil-price was going may well have been a bit out) make no difference to that.

Watch out for widespread food riots. The oil-price may have come down drastically in the last couple of years but there won't always be a global recession around when you want one.

[DogB]

Oh, of course.

Of course it won't be us* that do it. We can't look past the next election cycle.

China will do what we never could in Africa. They have a long term view and they don't mind breaking some eggs to make omelette.

*the western world

[lionking]

CapelDodger,

What evidence do you have for this? I mean it must be pretty compelling if you reject the FAO and other sources which predict a 30% increase in agricultural production by 2030.

[CapelDodger]

Oh, of course.

Of course it won't be us* that do it. We can't look past the next election cycle.

China will do what we never could in Africa. They have a long term view and they don't mind breaking some eggs to make omelette.

*the western world

We Europeans broke a whole farmyard of eggs in our day. Our day passed, as will China's.

Something that stands out to me is the US's obsession with the Middle East - the old world, when the US had its oily day - while the Chinese are going where the rich pickings are. All those lovely minerals and rare earths (relatively untouched) and loads of land. What they're not much interested in is the indigenous population - China has no shortage of people.

[CapelDodger]

CapelDodger,

What evidence do you have for this? I mean it must be pretty compelling if you reject the FAO and other sources which predict a 30% increase in agricultural production by 2030.

That's what they predicted in 2002. What do they predict these days?

The world has changed quite a lot in the last seven years.

[Delvo]

Population growth has leveled out in much of the first world the first world (and in some European countries is below replacement rates) and this will occur as developing countries move up the development ladder.How are they to do that with population density and resource depletion already as bad as they are in those same places? Modern Occidental cultures had the luxury of "developing" while population density compared to resource availability was still in their favor.

Living in Canada, it is difficult for me to see the world as overpopulated.Canada is not the world.

Japan leaves hopeSome of how Japan has cleaned itself up has still not been very positive overall. For example, they don't cut many trees, but they do still use lots of wood. They just import it, which means exporting their deforestation to other Pacific and Indian Ocean countries.

I'm a big fan of mass murder to solve this issue. WW3 would sort this planet out, big time.Not if the population reduction from the war were as dinky compared to the overall population as has been the case with previous wars, and not if the population grew back. We've had plenty of war already. Population control has clearly not turned out to be among its effects.

extra irrigated agriculture in hot arid conditions draws more water from the fixed amount in the natural hydrological cycle. Such extra production has been a feature of the increased food production that has postponed the Malthusian crisis over the last few decades. It has a limit. Already there are major rivers that no longer reach the sea consistently.

Another problem is the depletion of artesian water : there's a world of hurt coming from there in the next few decades.Irrigation is generally from wells, as is human drinking water and decorative-fountain water and such. That brings two different problems with it. One is that it's mining a finite geological resource which will run out just like oil and metals and salt and gravel and clay (the ground above some welled areas being measurably lower now than it was before, by up to 12 feet in one Californian valley). The other is that even if the supply were endless, the practice would still be hauling up dissolved minerals which end up deposited in the topsoil in the form of salt and sometimes alters the soil pH. Salinization (and severe pH alteration) reduces the land's overall biological capacity, so once the well irrigation ends, the land won't even grow as much life as it did before irrigation began.

A lot of the middle of the USA and Canada is, naturally, rather dry, not suitable for farming without irrigation. There's not enough rain for more than arid grassland or scrub land. With salinization, a non-irrigated central North America will support even less life than that. And the people living there will also be just as thirsty when that time comes as they are now. And it's hundreds of miles uphill from the oceans, so desalinated ocean water would require not only prohibitively expensive desalination but also prohibitively expensive transportation. The result will be not only the loss of a major food-exporting source for other regions of the world, but also a massive population shift to areas of the continent that get more precipitation, thus radically increasing the population density there and putting much more stress on those areas' own resources and farms.

And that's just one of the various problems that population growth must inevitably cause, in a pair of the countries with the kind of prosperity at the moment that's supposed to make us immune to these things.

[DogB]

We Europeans broke a whole farmyard of eggs in our day. Our day passed, as will China's.

Hopefully it will then be Africa's turn, but maybe India will get in before them.

Something that stands out to me is the US's obsession with the Middle East - the old world, when the US had its oily day - while the Chinese are going where the rich pickings are.

The Chinese are smart people, no doubt.

All those lovely minerals and rare earths (relatively untouched) and loads of land. What they're not much interested in is the indigenous population - China has no shortage of people.

Smart people don't waste resources.

[UncaYimmy]

As you can see, virtually all first world countries (as well as China) will have declining populations (without mass immigration, of course) within decades. As countries raise their living standards, fertility rates drop dramatically.

Just to be clear, as I understand it they will have increasing populations for a few generations due to population momentum before the decline kicks in. So, for example, assuming the fertility rate doesn't change yet again, at what point will China have a population (excluding migration in and out) that is less than it was in 2000?

Furthermore, just 50 years ago the fertility rate in the USA was about 3.8. The living standards in 1950 were far, far better than they were 50 years prior to that. It's patently obvious that raising living standards alone does not reduce fertility rates because mankind has been raising living standards for thousands of years. There has to be more to it.

Looking at this list of countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_fertility_rat e) there seems to be a general correlation with living standards, but it doesn't explain why the USA is 2.05 while Hungary is 1.28 and Israel is 2.75. What happened in New Zealand that made them jump from 1.80 in 2000 to 2.11 in 2008?

More importantly, where is the evidence that these numbers won't change? In the CIA chart the median absolute change over an 8 year period was 10.1%. In other words half the countries had a swing up or down greater than 10% in 8 years (-8.17% was the median change). For those countries less than 2.10, the median absolute change was 7.64% (-4.42% median).

It's obvious that over an 8 year period the numbers are not stable. What evidence do you have that the numbers will remain stable or continue declining in the future? How do we know the USA will never hit 3.8 again?

I'm not saying I know any of the answers, but the data I've seen so far seems insufficient to make any conclusions.

[themusicteacher]

In terms of the food issue, you all should check out May's National Geographic. There is a great article on the terrible agricultural downturn in Australia. It sounds just disasterous. Now, some people may simply attribute this stuff to an unusual drought but the prognosis, long term, is very bad. Crop yields have leveled off after the last "green revolution" since the 1990's but world population has grown considerably and will continue to do so. Unless there is some sort of huge technological revolution in the ag industry in the next ten years or so, there will be massive trouble especially in developing and third world nations. And that, my friends, is one of humanities biggest problems.

We tend to think that some sort of new technology will come along and save us just in the nick of time. We believe that we can maintain, nay, progress in our quality (and quantity) of life with nary an interruption. Fossil fuels depleting and causing global warming? Not to worry; the nukes and "alternative" fuels will be along in no time and we can't be bothered to conserve (it being unnecessary and all with those nukes and alternatives coming). Too many people trying to consume limited food resources? Again, technology to the rescue! Not enough water? Ah, don't be a downer or chicken little, we'll figure it out!

It's this type of hubris and finger-crossing that I'm worried about. 9 billion people? Are you effing kidding me?! There is no amount of technology that will come along all of a sudden and save us the suffering that countless billions will endure over the next century. We can't even take care of the people we have now. I may not bear the brunt of it but my children and grandchildren most definitely will and I do not look forward to the thought of my child or grandchild being shipped off to kill people in order to "secure resources vital to the survival of our way of life." Perhaps, had we taken proper measures in the first place and thought out things further than next week, we wouldn't be in that position. I hope that does not come to pass but I fear it will if we do not make some tough choices and sacrifices soon.

[lionking]

I hope that does not come to pass but I fear it will if we do not make some tough choices and sacrifices soon.

What choices and sacrifices?

[Perpetual Student]

In terms of the food issue, you all should check out May's National Geographic. There is a great article on the terrible agricultural downturn in Australia. It sounds just disasterous. Now, some people may simply attribute this stuff to an unusual drought but the prognosis, long term, is very bad. Crop yields have leveled off after the last "green revolution" since the 1990's but world population has grown considerably and will continue to do so. Unless there is some sort of huge technological revolution in the ag industry in the next ten years or so, there will be massive trouble especially in developing and third world nations. And that, my friends, is one of humanities biggest problems.

We tend to think that some sort of new technology will come along and save us just in the nick of time. We believe that we can maintain, nay, progress in our quality (and quantity) of life with nary an interruption. Fossil fuels depleting and causing global warming? Not to worry; the nukes and "alternative" fuels will be along in no time and we can't be bothered to conserve (it being unnecessary and all with those nukes and alternatives coming). Too many people trying to consume limited food resources? Again, technology to the rescue! Not enough water? Ah, don't be a downer or chicken little, we'll figure it out!

It's this type of hubris and finger-crossing that I'm worried about. 9 billion people? Are you effing kidding me?! There is no amount of technology that will come along all of a sudden and save us the suffering that countless billions will endure over the next century. We can't even take care of the people we have now. I may not bear the brunt of it but my children and grandchildren most definitely will and I do not look forward to the thought of my child or grandchild being shipped off to kill people in order to "secure resources vital to the survival of our way of life." Perhaps, had we taken proper measures in the first place and thought out things further than next week, we wouldn't be in that position. I hope that does not come to pass but I fear it will if we do not make some tough choices and sacrifices soon.

I have also sensed a lot of wishful thinking on this thread. Before we can determine if the earth can sustain projected population increases, we should admit we don't even know how long the earth can sustain the current population level. There are about a billion people throughout the globe who have a life style that we would recognize as borderline to comfortable. The rest struggle in ways the lucky ones cannot even fathom.

[quarky]

If reproduction was postponed for 100 years, there would be no problem.
A less radical approach might only reduce the population by 50% in that same time; requiring no killing, and solving most of humanity's problems. Imagine a world with only 3 billion people. Its easy if you try.

The one with 10 billion people is unlikely to offer a good life for many.

[lionking]

True, many people in the world, and in my opinion too many - perhaps why the powers that be are trying to implement uegenics programs...
Tell us more about these eugenics programs.

[CapelDodger]

Hopefully it will then be Africa's turn, but maybe India will get in before them.

Or Mars Colony perhaps :)?

The Chinese are smart people, no doubt.

No smarter than average, I think. An advantage for a rising power is that it doesn't bear the baggage of assumptions that a falling power is stuck with. A US assumption is that oil is the crucial strategic item since it always was during the US ascendency. Thus the US Old Guard remain fixated on the Gulf and "oil security", as if everything else flows automatically from that.

(The Brits in their time were fixated on keeping hold of India while the rest of the world got on with business.)

The Chinese don't have such blinkers, but they'll develop their own in time.

Smart people don't waste resources.

I talk too much but heck, talk is cheap :).

[CapelDodger]

Irrigation is generally from wells, as is human drinking water and decorative-fountain water and such. That brings two different problems with it. One is that it's mining a finite geological resource which will run out just like oil and metals and salt and gravel and clay (the ground above some welled areas being measurably lower now than it was before, by up to 12 feet in one Californian valley). The other is that even if the supply were endless, the practice would still be hauling up dissolved minerals which end up deposited in the topsoil in the form of salt and sometimes alters the soil pH. Salinization (and severe pH alteration) reduces the land's overall biological capacity, so once the well irrigation ends, the land won't even grow as much life as it did before irrigation began.

Salination is indeed a killer. The land irrigated by the Aswan Dam project is already suffering, and there are many younger projects where it'll show up sooner or later.

Just look to Iraq to see what thousands of years of salination can do to a neighbourhood. From a cradle of civilisation to a dismal wasteland.

A lot of the middle of the USA and Canada is, naturally, rather dry, not suitable for farming without irrigation. There's not enough rain for more than arid grassland or scrub land. With salinization, a non-irrigated central North America will support even less life than that. And the people living there will also be just as thirsty when that time comes as they are now. And it's hundreds of miles uphill from the oceans, so desalinated ocean water would require not only prohibitively expensive desalination but also prohibitively expensive transportation. The result will be not only the loss of a major food-exporting source for other regions of the world, but also a massive population shift to areas of the continent that get more precipitation, thus radically increasing the population density there and putting much more stress on those areas' own resources and farms.

And that's just one of the various problems that population growth must inevitably cause, in a pair of the countries with the kind of prosperity at the moment that's supposed to make us immune to these things.

So I'll put you down as "pessimistic", shall I :)?

You're absolutely right, of course. Desalination can be viable for coastal cities with a good tax-base but once you start moving water uphill the cost mounts horribly. For the quantities involved in staple crop production it's a complete non-starter.

As to deep aquifers (fossil water) the principle of drilling deeper when the bore runs dry only gets you so far.

[DavidS]

One process that consumes water is plant-growth (including crops, of course). Some is used in photosynthesis, but the majority in transpiration, which is the plant's means of pumping nutrients up from the roots. It also serves to cool the plant.

This means that extra irrigated agriculture in hot arid conditions draws more water from the fixed amount in the natural hydrological cycle.
Doh! I confess to forgetting that converting water to not-water is what plants do when they grow. Still, I'd argue that plants decay and return the bulk of that water to the hydrological cycle in a timescale short enough and/or holdup volume small enough to ignore for this purpose.

On the other hand, how water moving from liquid to vapor by plant transpiration is more removed from the natural hydrological cycle than evaporation escapes me. Once vaporized, it all goes back into the atmospheric freshwater production mill. Moving it into the atmosphere from a desert plant rather than from, say, the surface of a pond may influence the distribution of precipitation around the planet, but it's all gonna fall back as rain somewhere. That is, transpiration doesn't draw water from the "fixed amount in the natural hydrological cycle"; it moves water through a particular path in that cycle.
Already there are major rivers that no longer reach the sea consistently.
Not because water has left the natural hydrological cycle, but because water now follows a different path through the cycle.
Another problem is the depletion of artesian water : there's a world of hurt coming from there in the next few decades.
If you mean "fossil" water from depleting unrecharged aquifers, doesn't that amount to adding water that was otherwise sequestered "off line" into the active hydrological cycle? If you mean "cycled" water drawn from aquifers that do get recharged by precipitation, isn't that little more than appending a "sub-cycle" alongside the natural hydrologic cycle -- again, with reduced (or at least not increased) subterranean holdup, thus effectively increasing (or at least not decreasing) the water circulating through the meteoric hydrological systems?

All that water remains in play to be sweetened again, by the natural hydrological cycle at its own pace (which Blackadder argues [reasonably IMHO] may be onerously slow for a large human population) or by human technological processes (which wackyvorlon argues [reasonably IMHO] might be made sufficiently rapid).

However the stream of freshwater is produced from the global water pool, or however great the rate that water cycles as freshwater, I agree that its distribution and availability pose technological, economic, and political problems that increase as human population increases. Knowing that the water you used to draw from the Ogallala has been reconstituted as rainfall in Kuala Lumpur doesn't do your TX panhandle wheat crop much good.

[CapelDodger]

Doh! I confess to forgetting that converting water to not-water is what plants do when they grow. Still, I'd argue that plants decay and return the bulk of that water to the hydrological cycle in a timescale short enough and/or holdup volume small enough to ignore for this purpose.

You miss the point of transpiration. Water (with dissolved nutrients) is drawn up from roots to leaf where the water evaporates. It isn't retained in the bulk of the plant, and represents the vast bulk of water which is used by a plant in its everday life. Transpiration provides the muscle of the machine.

In some environments the transpired water is returned quickly (rain-forests being the extreme example) but mostly it isn't.

On the other hand, how water moving from liquid to vapor by plant transpiration is more removed from the natural hydrological cycle than evaporation escapes me.

I didn't say that. My point was about the consumption of water by plants (including crop-plants). If plant-life is artificially increased then it will draw more water from the natural hydrological cycle it's drawing on.

Once vaporized, it all goes back into the atmospheric freshwater production mill.

Which is dominated by the oceans - 70% of the planet's surface, and as wet as you could ask for.

Moving it into the atmosphere from a desert plant rather than from, say, the surface of a pond may influence the distribution of precipitation around the planet ...

No it won't. Besides which the distribution of precipitation is not at issue here.

... but it's all gonna fall back as rain somewhere. That is, transpiration doesn't draw water from the "fixed amount in the natural hydrological cycle"; it moves water through a particular path in that cycle.

You are confusing the global hydrological cycle with the natural hydrological cycle that matters - where water and land come together to produce food, and where people have gathered to take advantage.

If you mean "fossil" water from depleting unrecharged aquifers, doesn't that amount to adding water that was otherwise sequestered "off line" into the active hydrological cycle?

Yes, obviously.

If you mean "cycled" water drawn from aquifers that do get recharged by precipitation, isn't that little more than appending a "sub-cycle" alongside the natural hydrologic cycle -- again, with reduced (or at least not increased) subterranean holdup, thus effectively increasing (or at least not decreasing) the water circulating through the meteoric hydrological systems?

Just as wood is obviously not a fossil fuel so is water drawn from the water-table not fossil water. That's the point of deep aquifers : you can't rely on them for ever.

All that water remains in play to be sweetened again, by the natural hydrological cycle at its own pace (which Blackadder argues [reasonably IMHO] may be onerously slow for a large human population) or by human technological processes (which wackyvorlon argues [reasonably IMHO] might be made sufficiently rapid).

Remains in play? You talk as if fresh water is a tradable commodity.

However the stream of freshwater is produced from the global water pool, or however great the rate that water cycles as freshwater, I agree that its distribution and availability pose technological, economic, and political problems that increase as human population increases.

The global water pool doesn't matter a toss in the Indus Valley.

Knowing that the water you used to draw from the Ogallala has been reconstituted as rainfall in Kuala Lumpur doesn't do your TX panhandle wheat crop much good.

The rain still falls where it rains. And where it doesn't fall it doesn't. It doesn't much in Texas, so when the deep aquifers run out the land above them will go back to the desert it used to be. Just saltier than before.

[Prometheus]

For a while now, I've wondered about how much of its available fresh water California is actually exporting, in the form of fresh produce which it ships all around the world. Isn't most of its farmland actually irrigated desert? I remember once seeing a claim that the Salinas Valley in central California alone produces enough food to feed the entire US population, so a disruption of a local hydrological cycle might have a global impact, even though the water isn't lost, it might end up in the wrong places.

[shecky]

Indeed, CA does export lots of water in the form of food. The Central Valley isn't exactly desert, but would never naturally support the amount of agriculture that it does without water imports from sources sometimes quite far away.

As I said earlier, the biggest problems are political, which lead to regional overpopulation/resource problems. Things as simple as farm subsidies and immigration restrictions. Subsidies the US gives to corn production create destructive market distortion ripple effects in poorer countries (in addition to affecting energy/pollution, not strictly population related).

I'm a bit baffled by setting Japan as some kind of admirable example. Aside from having a fairly stagnant economy for a long time, their reluctance to increase immigration is very costly not only to them, but to parts of the world that could provide inexpensive labor. They have an aging population that will be increasingly demanding of care, and a smaller workforce to support them, both directly in the form of caregivers and as a source of taxable revenue. Japanese are increasingly pinched to pay for services, lowering prosperity, and impoverished workers elsewhere lose opportunities to earn a living in the Japanese economy, stressing resources in their home countries.

This highlights one of the biggest factors in creating regional overpopulation situations: the inability for people to seek a better life in a different part of the world. To give an example Americans might understand: Imagine people were forbidden to move to another State without permission. Imagine what this would have done to African Americans in the late 18th Century, or dust bowl refugees in the 30s, or Rust Belt survivors today? Yet this is exactly what happens today on a very large scale, internationally. Even the US, a nation built on immigrants, cannot face the reality of it's ravenous demand for labor by any means necessary, legal or not.

The biggest fallacy with the population doomers is the belief that people are nothing but prosperity sinks. The truth is that people are probably the greatest resource to have. People not only consume, they create, and they solve problems. These are long term investments. This is especially true for relatively free societies that allow and reward innovation. When people cannot move, and are discouraged from venturing new ideas, generally cannot pursue prosperity, the result can very easily be disastrous, perhaps characterized by the word "overpopulation".

[macdoc]

You are stuck in a frontier mentality about Japan and old economic metrics.

A falling population and a return of a better eco system balance is a positive aspect of Japan that is not reflected in the metrics of growth oriented current economics.

The Japan of 2009 is a far far better and more balanced place than that of 40 years ago when booming economic growth was occurring.

Better not more is the new thing that humanity has to figure out. Just ask the automotive industry.

Long ways away as yet.

[shecky]

You are stuck in a frontier mentality about Japan and old economic metrics.

A falling population and a return of a better eco system balance is a positive aspect of Japan that is not reflected in the metrics of growth oriented current economics.

The Japan of 2009 is a far far better and more balanced place than that of 40 years ago when booming economic growth was occurring.


"Better eco system balance"? :confused:

[CapelDodger]

The biggest fallacy with the population doomers is the belief that people are nothing but prosperity sinks. The truth is that people are probably the greatest resource to have. People not only consume, they create, and they solve problems. These are long term investments.

People can only produce when they have something to work with. They need land or jobs or tools and materials. These things can't be conjured up by creativity alone. If wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak.

This is especially true for relatively free societies that allow and reward innovation.

Especially in the financial sphere :cool:.

When people cannot move, and are discouraged from venturing new ideas, generally cannot pursue prosperity, the result can very easily be disastrous, perhaps characterized by the word "overpopulation".

When the Vandals and Goths moved into the Roman Empire they were certainly innovative, but the result was still pretty disastrous. When Europeans moved into the New World and Australasia it was disastrous for the indigenes.

Migration on the scale you're suggesting in the few decades we have to play with is untenable. Voters won't accept it. Immigration is already a political issue in Europe and the US (to the benefit of extreme nationalists) and will inevitably be amplified by the recession. Prospects for liberal democracy aren't too shiny even without mass migration.

[CapelDodger]

"Better eco system balance"? :confused:

Japan's not nearly as poisoned as it used to be. It was awful in the 60's and 70's; even Angelenos were known to keel over on Tokyo streets.

It's better than that now :).

[macdoc]

Japan has cleaned up incredibly and continues to do so and is active in eco system preservation through the entire archipelago.

They are very hard on the oceans but in their defence they are a breakthrough in breeding tuna - once a tuna gets to a certain size it's an unstoppable eating machine...Japan balances some it's excesses in that over use of world ocean resources by fundamental research.

Better than spending on military.

Japan to launch carbon footprint labelling scheme
· Government approved labels will appear on food and drink
· Major companies sign up voluntarily

fussy consumers drive the program

http://www.agmrc.org/renewable_energy/agmrc_renewable_energy_newsletter.cfm/japanese_consumers_what_is_the_carbon_footprint_of _north_dakota_grains_66

an aging population can have big advantages - better not more works and Japan has the resources and perhaps accumulating wisdom to understand that.

The island has always been challenged for food and other resources...

It even shows in the cuisine = gorgoeus presentation - just not a lot of it ( speaking as visiting westerner who viewed their entres as tapas :rolleyes:

It's a marvelous island and I do hope it can be a leader in keeping a first world high tech civilization with sustainable practices..

Oddly Cuba is considered the first sustainable society in a second world - ( there are are a number in first world that have been around but would we want to live like that ).

Cuba with some tech has a strong potential.... it's seas are pristine and it HAD to develop low fossil agriculture.

It needs first world tech to move forward - one hopes it does not lose the environment in opening up. :con2:

There are pockets around....Japan with highly controlled conditions due to lack of immigration can be a template....one hopes.....I'd live there in a heartbeat.

Cuba has kept population low compared to Dominican by education, family planning and in doing so made their lack of material wealth result in far better outcomes than a high growth comparable island.

Cuba is also marvelous and one of my fav visiting and hang out places.....the embargo is a CRIME !!!!!

[Cuddles]

Japan's not nearly as poisoned as it used to be. It was awful in the 60's and 70's; even Angelenos were known to keel over on Tokyo streets.

It's better than that now :).

How are the whales doing?

[lightfire22000]

I don't think overpopulation will happen anytime soon. There are lots and lots of scientifically proven ways to deal with larger populations that have not been implemented.
Urban homesteading, seasteading, enhanced irrigation, skyscraper farming, solar power, train transportation, online schooling, and many other techniques suggest a carrying capacity of around 10-12 billion.

Once people start talking about overpopulation, "A Modest Proposal" and Kallikak works soon follow. They've been talking about overpopulation since the bubonic plague. Since then, with the Irish Potato Famine an exception, they've usually been wrong.

[macdoc]

Rwanda and just wait til the climate shift kicks in.

By long term standards we are about 6-9 times over sustainable.

[Moochie]

They have occurred regionally and may well again with additional pressure from rapid climate shifts.

You may well have your observation backwards...look at the demographics of youth bulges and you get political upheaval - not vice versa....even in the first world.

Rwanda was Malthus - almost classic.

The part of Australia I live in (Victoria) is experiencing an unprecedented (in human memory) drought, which is entering its 11th or 12th year now. Capital city's (Melbourne) water supply is down to about 25-26% of capacity. The government's furiously building a desalination plant to ensure our water supply into the future, and we've all been told: Water's about to become a lot more expensive over the coming years.

We've also been told that in the next decade or so Melbourne's population will outstrip Sydney's, making Melbourne the most populous city in Australia. At present, the population is about 3.8 million.

And to think Victoria's State slogan used to be "The Garden State."


M.

[Corsair 115]

Living in Canada, it is difficult for me to see the world as overpopulated... it only has a population of about 30 million.


Actually, 33.67 million according to StatsCan's population clock (http://www.statcan.gc.ca/edu/clock-horloge/edu06f_0001-eng.htm).


IThere simply cannot be perpetual growth as long as we're confined to this one planet.


Fortunately, we've got an entire solar system to play around in. Yes, not without a lot of costs, and yes, not without a lot of technological barriers to overcome. But there's plenty of raw resources available. The mineral wealth contained in the asteroid belt is absolutely enormous from what I understand...

[shecky]

People can only produce when they have something to work with. They need land or jobs or tools and materials. These things can't be conjured up by creativity alone. If wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak.

You underestimate how creative people can be. There was a time when people had little more than rocks, sticks, and dirt to work with. We still do. It's just that we figured out a few more things those rocks, sticks, and dirt can do.

Especially in the financial sphere :cool:.

Meaning...? Do you suggest that the likes of the current economic market have never been seen or lived through before?

When the Vandals and Goths moved into the Roman Empire they were certainly innovative, but the result was still pretty disastrous. When Europeans moved into the New World and Australasia it was disastrous for the indigenes.

I don't suggest anybody take anything forcefully.

Migration on the scale you're suggesting in the few decades we have to play with is untenable. Voters won't accept it. Immigration is already a political issue in Europe and the US (to the benefit of extreme nationalists) and will inevitably be amplified by the recession. Prospects for liberal democracy aren't too shiny even without mass migration.

In the US, immigration is a hot issue, but not as much as you may think. The biggest immigration hawks in last year's election failed miserably early on.

However, migration is a fact of life. That "voters won't accept it" in many places around the globe is precisely the cause of overpopulation effects. As I pointed out, these are political issues on a regional scale, not really resource issues on a global scale.




Japan's not nearly as poisoned as it used to be. It was awful in the 60's and 70's; even Angelenos were known to keel over on Tokyo streets.

That still makes no real sense. "Better eco system balance"? What exactly does that mean?

BTW, Los Angeles has lower crime rates, and less pollution despite being much more populous, with a huge immigrant population, and has more cars and sprawl than it did when I was a kid in the 70s. If anything, this is exactly the type of example for the point I made. Is this better eco system balance?

[shecky]

.Oddly Cuba is considered the first sustainable society in a second world - ( there are are a number in first world that have been around but would we want to live like that ).

You've got to be kidding. Does anybody seriously hold up Cuba as a model for anything other than how to maintain dictatorial rule for long periods of time?

Cuba with some tech has a strong potential.... it's seas are pristine and it HAD to develop low fossil agriculture.

Cuba has huge potential. But it's woes are political in nature, not overpopulation

There are pockets around....Japan with highly controlled conditions due to lack of immigration can be a template....one hopes.....I'd live there in a heartbeat.

If only they'd have you...

Cuba has kept population low compared to Dominican by education, family planning and in doing so made their lack of material wealth result in far better outcomes than a high growth comparable island.

Cuba is also marvelous and one of my fav visiting and hang out places.....the embargo is a CRIME !!!!!

While the embargo is a pointless crime on the part of US, Cuba's biggest impediment to prosperity has always been, first and foremost, Cuba. Cuba's rule is directly responsible for their lack of material wealth and personal freedom.

It is interesting that Cuba might have less of a problem with local resources if they allowed people to freely move to places that are more prosperous.

[macdoc]

Cuba??:

Drunk much Koolaid lately???

When other nations are forced to rethink their agricultural and food security strategies in light of the post-peak oil debate, they only have one living example to draw from: that of Cuba in the 1990s. Based on the first and - up till now - only systematic and empirical study to come out of Cuba on this topic, this book examines how the nation successfully headed off its own food crisis after the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc in the early 1990s.

The author identifies the policies and practices required for such an achievement under conditions of petroleum-scarcity and in doing so, challenges the mainstream globalized and privatized food systems and food security strategies being driven through in both industrialized and more vulnerable developing regions. Paradoxically, the book dispels the myth that Cuba turned to organic farming nationwide, a myth founded on the success of Cuba's urban organic production systems which visitors to the country are most commonly exposed to. In rural regions, where the author had unique access, industrialized high-input and integrated agriculture is aspired to for the majority of domestic production, despite the ongoing fluctuations in availability of agrochemicals and fuel.

By identifying the challenges faced by Cuban institutions and individuals in de-industrializing their food and farming systems, this book provides crucial learning material for the current fledgling attempts at developing energy descent plans and at mainstreaming more organic food systems in industrialized nations. It also informs international policy on sustainable agriculture and food security for less-industrialized countries.


'This is a topical book, now that climate change, the end of cheap oil, growing international disparities and the untenability of the current approaches lead to the insight that business as usual is not in order. The world can learn a great deal from the way Cuba handled its food crisis.'
Niels Roling, Emeritus Professor, Wageningen University, The Netherlands


'There is a great deal of interest in Cuba, including in its radical departure from agricultural policy norms, and in what nations will have to do in the coming years in the context of peak oil. The author has a deep experience of recent transitions in Cuba, and there will be great interest in this book.'
Professor Jules Pretty, University of Essex, UK

http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=26741

Ever been there??

Care to compare outcomes for Cuban metrics with say Dominican Republic - similar island, similar population.....
Don't bother ...it'll look real bad on your market mantra.....

•••

Japan doesn't "have" anyone and I've been there a number of times.

[shecky]

It sounds as if the book you recommend supports my contention that human ingenuity can find solutions to problems such as overpopulation. Once again, it's woes are political in nature, not overpopulation. And of course, if overpopulation were really an issue, it could always let people leave freely.

The comparison with Dominican Republic would be interesting, but not something I would argue over. I've no interest in defending yet another oppressive state. Why not compare Cuba's prosperity and level of personal freedom with that of a place with much higher population density: Hong Kong?

Cuba's ability to self sustain is different than it's ability to prosper. This is much more linked to political will than agricultural output.

[macdoc]

Dominican Republic is hardly repressive....it's a comparable population with open access to trade and poor outcomes despite higher GDP per capita -

Comparing to Hong Kong a 400 year old finance and trade capital funded by the British Empire as grown wealth is ridiculous tho many ROC escapees pre 80s went back as being poor in Hong Kong was way worse than being poor in ROC.

I would suspect even now Kowloon outcomes in health and education and infant mortality and lifespan are worse than Cuba's.

Cuba is sustainable because it is controlling population through education and planning and because it could not obtain fossil fuel so was forced to ingenious measures by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Right now command economies like China are certainly doing better than the market economies which allowed predators loose unsupervised and unchecked.

Resource footprint for Naorth Americans is currently 4 earths......since we have only one....we perhaps need to look at the likes of Cuban ideas and get back within our envelope and wait it out as like Japan our population drops.

better.....not more.....

[themusicteacher]

The part of Australia I live in (Victoria) is experiencing an unprecedented (in human memory) drought, which is entering its 11th or 12th year now. Capital city's (Melbourne) water supply is down to about 25-26% of capacity. The government's furiously building a desalination plant to ensure our water supply into the future, and we've all been told: Water's about to become a lot more expensive over the coming years.

We've also been told that in the next decade or so Melbourne's population will outstrip Sydney's, making Melbourne the most populous city in Australia. At present, the population is about 3.8 million.

And to think Victoria's State slogan used to be "The Garden State."


M.

So is New Jersey.

Yeah, I mentioned this up above after reading an article in National Geographic. Things sound horrid there. How is that going to play out over the coming decades? I suspect not well. Best of luck to you all Down Under. I have an old friend that lives in Adelaide so I hope you all get it fugured out soon.

[CapelDodger]

You underestimate how creative people can be. There was a time when people had little more than rocks, sticks, and dirt to work with. We still do. It's just that we figured out a few more things those rocks, sticks, and dirt can do.

You overestimate what ingenuity can achieve when it has nothing to work with. There are billions of people living in the worlds barrios and slums : where has ingenuity got them?

Meaning...? Do you suggest that the likes of the current economic market have never been seen or lived through before?

Hardly. Creativity has been applied in the financial sphere since the first coins were debased. The ingenuity of many fine minds has been dedicated to it.

I don't suggest anybody take anything forcefully.

The Goths entered the Roman Empire peacefully, as did Slavs in the Balkans. They were legal immigrants. It didn't work out.

In the US, immigration is a hot issue, but not as much as you may think. The biggest immigration hawks in last year's election failed miserably early on.

I don't exaggerate its importance, but the very fact that there were "hawks" and "doves" makes the point. Before the oil-spike and then the recession it was higher on the list. In 2004 it was one of the issues that Bush was going to spend his "political capital" on, you may recall. His plans were too doveish and ran into the sand of Congressional opposition.

However, migration is a fact of life. That "voters won't accept it" in many places around the globe is precisely the cause of overpopulation effects.

And the voters aren't going to change their minds. That's a fact of life.

As I pointed out, these are political issues on a regional scale, not really resource issues on a global scale.

Indeed.

That still makes no real sense. "Better eco system balance"? What exactly does that mean?

In general it would mean that the environment is not degrading as rapidly as before. In the case of Japan the environment has improved greatly since the 70's (implying a positive balance over that period) and is still improving in some regards, repairing damage that was previously done.

BTW, Los Angeles has lower crime rates, and less pollution despite being much more populous, with a huge immigrant population, and has more cars and sprawl than it did when I was a kid in the 70s. If anything, this is exactly the type of example for the point I made. Is this better eco system balance?

We've all cleaned up our acts since the 70's (OK, perhaps not Texas) and we certainly don't have the negative balance of the 60's and 70's that were frankly unsustainable. To my mind (and I think I can speak for macdoc here) that's better.

[themusicteacher]

What choices and sacrifices?

Hmmmmmm, now that's a great question. What could we possibly have to sacrifice in order to bring back some semblance of balance to our relationship with our planet? Gee, I wonder. I'm talking about spending investing large amounts of money in new carbon-neutral (or even negative) buildings and transportation. How is that a sacrifice? Well, just try telling the world that you would like to have a true massive public works project to make all our cities self-sufficient and truly sustainable within 20years. Once they see the price-tag and realize what that will mean to them personally, people will quite literally freak out.

Of course, people (especially Westerners but expanding to the Chinese and Indians) are almost genetically incapable now of seeing the forest for the trees. Long term viability is of little concern to your arch-capitalists. It's "get in, take the money, damn the costs, get out." Spare me the "free market" nonsense, too. The free market is about economics, not the environment or people or anything else. It's about making money as quickly as possible without any care for the consequences. The free market is as stupid, lazy, near-sighted, tunnel-visioned, greedy and impatient as the people who have their hands on the levers of power. And those people are guilty of intellectual dishonesty and willful ignorance regarding the very real problems that currently plague us and are bound to geometrically get worse over the next several decades if we do nothing and try to rely on the "free market" to somehow fix them.

We could turn around this massive problem but nobody is willing to make the tough choices to sacrifice, even if only in the short term, their "prosperity" in order that, perhaps, they do not slowly commit their own DNA to a horrifying fate. Hell, we refuse to even acknowledge there is, in fact, a problem. It's not really a problem until it's staring us in the face, now is it? Just like terrorism. It wasn't a real threat until 9/11. Now, it's a huge deal. How about WWII? Someone else's problem until Pearl Harbor, right? When the cows come home to roost due to overpopulation combined with climate change, it will be a crisis of monumental proportions. Until then, though, keep those bits a-drillin', those SUV's a-rollin and all those inefficient buildings sucking up excess power. After all, that's the free market, right? Not really a problem until it's [I]your[I] problem.

[CapelDodger]

Yeah, I mentioned this up above after reading an article in National Geographic. Things sound horrid there. How is that going to play out over the coming decades? I suspect not well. Best of luck to you all Down Under. I have an old friend that lives in Adelaide so I hope you all get it fugured out soon.

They're traditionally an ingenious and practical bunch so I hope for the best.

On the other hand, that's about climate change, which can only muddy the water here. I think it better we restrict the variables on this thread :).

[CapelDodger]

It sounds as if the book you recommend supports my contention that human ingenuity can find solutions to problems such as overpopulation.

And demonstrates that in Cuba people were able to apply that ingenuity, with the encouragement and assistance of the government.

Once again, it's woes are political in nature, not overpopulation. And of course, if overpopulation were really an issue, it could always let people leave freely.

Overpopulation isn't a problem in Cuba because family sizes are small; family sizes are small because infant mortality has long been very low so there's no need to pop them out like crazy in the hope that some will live. Contraception and safe abortion are also freely available.

You can understand why people might not want to leave, even if the US would let them in.

If Cuba is so awful, why aren't you allowed to go and see for yourself?

The comparison with Dominican Republic would be interesting, but not something I would argue over. I've no interest in defending yet another oppressive state. Why not compare Cuba's prosperity and level of personal freedom with that of a place with much higher population density: Hong Kong?

Because it's got nothing to do with overpopulation. And because the Dominican Republic (or Guatamala or Honduras) is a valid comparison. If Cuba isn't rich like Hong Kong because it's communist, how come they aren't? How come the State of Georgia isn't?

Cuba's ability to self sustain is different than it's ability to prosper. This is much more linked to political will than agricultural output.

Good luck eating political will. The political will in Cuba is that people get enough to eat. And an education. And health services. Is that so wrong?

[CapelDodger]

It is interesting that Cuba might have less of a problem with local resources if they allowed people to freely move to places that are more prosperous.

Good point. The US wouldn't have a problem with local resources if enough of it's SUV drivers moved to Mexico and Venezuela and the Persian Gulf, closer to where the oil imports are sourced, that local resource problem would be solved.

Cuba doesn't have any local oil so they mostly do without. Ingeniously.

[CapelDodger]

How are the whales doing?

Better than they would be if the Japanese had their way.

Their environmental concern is strictly limited to Japan.

[Hindmost]

Go to work on monday morning...by the time you make waffles on saturday, there are another million people on the planet.

no problem...forever...as long as there is infinite energy. About 80% of the energy use on the planet is from fossil fuels. That is a bunch of infrastructure to replace in the next 30 years or so. That's about all the oil available in large quantities.

As has often be indicated, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

glenn

[macdoc]

Their environmental concern is strictly limited to Japan.

a bit harsh but they consider whales a harvestable resource at this point in time in disagreement with other nations.
Not condoning the fiction of "research whaling" but just observing a different opinion at work.

For instance tuna is a critical product and they've done a lot work to make it a renewable resource not out goodness of their heart but as a commercial venture - that's fine as long as it's not mined out of existence.

I consider their hardwood harvesting a couple decades ago a more serious breach of common planetary ecology ...

[JoeTheJuggler]

Another thing to think about is increased longevity. I don't think the metric of replacement reproduction is all that meaningful when people live to see their great-grandchildren grow up.

It's not like you actually just replace yourself. To do that, you'd need to die shortly after having your two kids.