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Around the Internet => Continue the Blog Conversation => Topic started by: Aloysius_Poutine on November 29, 2013, 08:09:44 PM
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I'm not convinced. According to this website (http://"http://overpopulationisamyth.com/category/categories/pop101") the entire population of earth could fit into Texas with 1100 sq ft per person, and we already grow 10x more potatoes than is necessary to feed everyone on earth.
I did a geography degree at a liberal arts college, so I'm pretty well aware of the arguments. But I still don't find them convincing. In fact, I don't think overpopulation is a problem at all. I'm more concerned about the trend of birth rates getting dangerously below that 2.1 rate at which populations remain stable.
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If we planned and did it wisely, no, maybe not.
The way we're doing it, yes.
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Overpopulation is not a problem. The Earth could easily sustain a human population of 100 billion without negative effects on the environment. The problem is not population. It's wealth. Wealth is controlled by a very tiny percentage of the population and many people starve to death because they do not have necessities like food, warm clothing, and shelter because they cannot afford them. According to Social Darwinists (aka Objectivists), these people should just die because they are being outcompeted. According to others, the "competition" has become barbaric and it's a relic of our primitive past as a species.
Mustachianism is a way out of the vicious cycle of overconsumption and famine. We need to spread the word far and wide.
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The Earth is already between 25% and 50% beyond its carrying capacity even with 7 billion people (resources are depleted faster than the ecosystem can replenish them). And this is with most of us very poor and thus not yet consuming very much of it. And the climate's ability to stay stable with the surplus carbon input was exceeded decades ago.
Sure, we could support 100 billion people in a giant vegan-fed solar-powered skyscraper megalopolis with an oddly benevolent dictator in control to prevent individual overconsumption. But we couldn't do it sustainably with an oil-powered free market like we do now!
The solution in my mind is that we rich people voluntarily reduce our energy consumption, invest the surplus in bringing up the poorer half of the world in a sustainable way, and then on average choose to have smaller families over time. While maintaining badass and innovative lives with our vastly increased free time!
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No there is not overpopulation. Capitalism and freedom have brough us to where we are today with all the amazing wealth we have to enjoy an MMM / FIRE lifestyle for the common man. We are approachingt he age of post-scarcity. The biggest threat to humanity's survival is the state. Maybe cylons one day.. Human population will peak in the next 30 years and then decline, many countries are already facing decline and due to increased world trade has rapidly decreased poverty and worldwide poverty could be eliminated in that time frame: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/09/these-three-charts-show-how-the-world-could-end-extreme-poverty-by-2030/ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/09/these-three-charts-show-how-the-world-could-end-extreme-poverty-by-2030/)
The overpopulation myth is just another scare tactic (though MMM continually reminds us to reject fear) to justify additional growth of the state at the expense of the people. One if the biggest reasons people have to keep working is the theft from their paychecks.
I read MMM because of the hope of his message and the strength of his example, I am undeterred by his ignorance in this subject.
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I don't know what the arguments would be from a geography degree, but coming at this from an international development perspective, it's definitely a problem. Also, am I the only one getting a failed page from the OP instead of this link (http://overpopulationisamyth.com/category/categories/pop101)?
I don't see anywhere on the site that adequately addresses the fact that overpopulation is a factor behind some of the major problems in the third world: poverty, war, and environmental exploitation.
I'm going to use Tanzania as an example because that's what I know. Your site pointed out that most of Africa has a low population density compared to the world average, and Tanzania follows that pattern (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Tanzania). But this is deceptive, because Tanzania's population density has skyrocketed (http://www.tradingeconomics.com/tanzania/population)compared to the past. This utterly devastates subsistence farmers, who form the bulk of the population. With millions of young people unable to survive on inherited land, the cities are swamped and unemployment is rampant (http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/rights/tanzania-youth-unemployment-crisis).
Let me pull out a relevant statistic from that last article:
Each year, 900,000 young Tanzanians enter a job market that is generating only 50,000 to 60,000 new jobs.
That's the kind of impact overpopulation has, in Tanzania and many other countries. It divides parents' limited education money between children and taxes institutions like schools and hospitals.
Thankfully Tanzania has stayed peaceful, but massive unemployed young populations are also strongly correlated with violence. In Collapse (http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Succeed-Revised-Edition/dp/0143117009), Jared Diamond goes into the connection for several Sub-Saharan African countries with high levels of violence, if you don't want to take my word for it. The lack of jobs also leads to increased poaching and other environmental exploitation (consider slash and burn agriculture in Haiti).
That's not to say that everywhere is the same, since obviously some countries are below the replacement rate. I can't find it now, but I recall reading an article saying that the USA and several other countries are actually even lower than they look, because the average is drawn up by certain populations. However, I don't think that overpopulation as a problem should be dismissed as a myth.
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Just as the plural of anecdote is not data, evidence of overpopulation in one country doesn't mean the world has an overpopulation problem.
Russia has a population of 143 million people and is one of the largest countries in the world. Ditto Canada at 34 million.
So worldwide overpopulation isn't the issue. The issue is raising the standard of living above the subsistence level in poor countries suffering from overpopulation.
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Overpopulation is not a problem, it's the problem. Fix that and fix the rest, environmentally and sociologically.
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Overpopulation is a somewhat relative term. Belgium and Burundi has about the same population density (ca 360/km^2). The latter is dangerously overpopulated while the former is not.
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I did a geography degree at a liberal arts college, so I'm pretty well aware of the arguments. But I still don't find them convincing. In fact, I don't think overpopulation is a problem at all. I'm more concerned about the trend of birth rates getting dangerously below that 2.1 rate at which populations remain stable.
I guess it depends on what country you live in which of these is the bigger problem.
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No, we have a lot more capacity for a lot more people. It's called technology.
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...and then on average choose to have smaller families over time. While maintaining badass and innovative lives with our vastly increased free time!
Thanks for using the word choose. Its a small thing but it makes this statement agreeable for me. I had a teacher in university who said that overpopulation was the number 1 problem in the world today, and that it was a direct result of "Not enough birth control" . I completely disagreed with him. However your statement works perfectly.
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Boy, this brings out some different perspectives. I would agree that it's not the total number of people in the world that's the problem (yet), it's their uneven distribution and demographics throughout the world. So overpopulation with too many young people in some places, underpopulation with too many old people in others. For the first one the solution isn't Chinese style regulation, it's making birth control accessible and letting women have some say in how many kids they have, combined with rising standards of health and productivity which make investing heavily in a few kids a better economic choice than having a whole bunch and hoping enough of them survive to adulthood to support you when you're older. For the low birth rate/aging problem, part of the solution is going to have to be greater freedom for working-age people to move around the world in search of employment.
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Just as the plural of anecdote is not data, evidence of overpopulation in one country doesn't mean the world has an overpopulation problem.
Russia has a population of 143 million people and is one of the largest countries in the world. Ditto Canada at 34 million.
So worldwide overpopulation isn't the issue. The issue is raising the standard of living above the subsistence level in poor countries suffering from overpopulation.
Much of Canada and Russia has a climate that cannot support large populations of humans. I don't see how this is at all relevant.
There are several people throwing out one statistic like how many potatoes we grow and immediately concluding that if worldwide production of a starchy tuber is sufficient, then there is no problem at all. I hope you all realize that our requirements from the environment encompass much more than that.
Has anyone heard about any studies which look at this problem in terms of thermodynamics, negating any effects of technology? For instance, you need access to a minimum amount of water every day (say, 5 gallons as a floor). If you live in a place where the temperature stays below freezing in the winter, that water needs to be melted which is going to take a certain guaranteed amount of caloric energy. Drinking water usually needs to be filtered, this can be treated as a decrease of the water's entropy and therefore modeled by a minimum amount of energy required for the best possible filter to separate contaminants. You could do the same thing by analyzing the entropy of the organic chemicals in our food, the breakdown of human wastes, and so on. Anyone need a master's thesis topic in physics?
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Before we obsess too much on the quantity of people, I'd first look at the overall quality of life. Billions of people are dirt poor and that is changing, but slowly. It's true that producing enough food is becoming less and less of a problem over time, but that is just one part of a good life.
Better a world with 4 billion people not in abject poverty than a world of 10 billion where half live in abject poverty (to move the scale 3 billion in either direction). The areas of the world that are still experiencing surging population growth are mostly underdeveloped countries that are struggling with their existing populations. The areas of the world where population is decreasing over time is overwhelmingly developed countries.
So yes, I would argue that overpopulation is in fact a major problem in many underdeveloped countries.
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I think we have a resource usage problem, if not an actual population problem. I mean, using square feet is only considering physical space and density- but when the population is increasing AND consumption is increasing it seems problematic to me. If you look at the state of our food industry I think it gives you a pretty good idea of the inefficiency involved in how we use resources (and our inability to distribute them). But people in developed and developing nations want lots and lots of meat, not efficient plant matter. They want SUVs, not bicycles. If we were more efficient in how we used resources and in how we distributed them it probably wouldn't be an issue.
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I have heard it said that we have a distribution problem. Places with high populations have less food where as places with low populations have way too much.
I would tend to think that there is a very complex problem going on that cannot be solved with any one label. Even "Over Population" is a label far to general to be a adequate description.
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('over'-population) x (rising standard of living) = 'problem' Not sure how to define 'problem' (standard of living drops for a generation prompting people to 'not want to bring children into a less hospitable future', humans move to a 'matrix' virtual and limitless existence (the singularity), the rich begin to eat the poor...) Chances are, there will be mitigating measures to avoid famine, plague, apocalyptic-style wipe-out, but we're certainly closer to needing to address this than we were in the 1900's. Just spit-balling, it's a good question and I look forward to good answers (and not people looking out their window and saying, 'uh, not in my town').
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No there is not overpopulation. Capitalism and freedom have brough us to where we are today with all the amazing wealth we have to enjoy an MMM / FIRE lifestyle for the common man. We are approachingt he age of post-scarcity. The biggest threat to humanity's survival is the state. Maybe cylons one day.. Human population will peak in the next 30 years and then decline, many countries are already facing decline and due to increased world trade has rapidly decreased poverty and worldwide poverty could be eliminated in that time frame:http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/09/these-three-charts-show-how-the-world-could-end-extreme-poverty-by-2030/
The overpopulation myth is just another scare tactic (though MMM continually reminds us to reject fear) to justify additional growth of the state at the expense of the people. One if the biggest reasons people have to keep working is the theft from their paychecks.
I read MMM because of the hope of his message and the strength of his example, I am undeterred by his ignorance in this subject.
This. A lot of junk science is dependent on public funding so they have an incentive to manufacture this hysteria. It's sad so many blindly buy into it... even admission through hacked emails expose alot of these myths as deception for greed or to support a radical agenda. This is why 'global warming' and Al Gore's carbon tax died on the vine. In due time all these countries with a negative birth rate with show us that the overpopulation hysteria was just another myth for consolidation of power and resources for the insiders.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/World_population_growth_rate_1950%E2%80%932050.svg/640px-World_population_growth_rate_1950%E2%80%932050.svg.png)
The population growth rate has been falling since the mid-1960s, soon be to 0 growth (2030-2040) and then reduction. The symptoms erroneously attributed to overpopulation such as poverty, war, famine can be easily seen by the novel example of the Koreas: same exact population, resources, and history until the 1950s. The clear difference is government causes untold misery, generational misery, human rights crises, genocide. These are the symptoms of government, not overpopulation.
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So yes, I would argue that overpopulation is in fact a major problem in many underdeveloped countries.
I'd say it's a problem with property rights and government abuses of the people. The reason they are undeveloped is due to tyrannical government. Check out the progress of East Germany since liberation.
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The question I always have in these discussions is: Why are more humans considered to be a good thing? If population growth is slowing, why is that a bad thing? I have never understood why the end goal should be as many humans as possible rather than a world where everyone is well cared for without destroying the earth in the process.
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People who claim that overpopulation is a major issue are really just being arrogant and trying to claim their superiority over people who have less money to buy food. That's all it really is.
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People who claim that overpopulation is a major issue are really just being arrogant and trying to claim their superiority over people who have less money to buy food. That's all it really is.
Funny, that's what I think about people who claim it isn't an issue. They are likely to continue to have resources as the population expands, at the expense of those who don't.
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Just putting our head in a sand will not make the issue go away. There might or might not be an overall overpopulation, but certain areas are certainly growing dangerously fast. I'd be very surprised if that doesn't lead to serious regional problems in the next 50 years.
Let's give an example so it's not just a theoretical talk.
Bangladesh: area 150,000 km^2 (a bit more than 1/2 Texas), estimated population 150,000,000, population density 1,034 per km^2 - third highest in the world excluding city and micro states (5x more than Switzerland, 30x more than US), current GDP per capita ca 2,000$. The most worrying part is the still high growth rate of 1.6% giving a doubling time of about 44 years.
How can you possibly say with any confidence that there won't be a problem there or in similar places around the world? Some countries would be starving already if not for an aid and remittances from richer areas.
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People who claim that overpopulation is a major issue are really just being arrogant and trying to claim their superiority over people who have less money to buy food. That's all it really is.
Are you trying to shame us into ostrich like behaviour? Not going to work...
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China has it all figured out. At least they are doing something about it. 1 baby or else.
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Just putting our head in a sand will not make the issue go away. There might or might not be an overall overpopulation, but certain areas are certainly growing dangerously fast. I'd be very surprised if that doesn't lead to serious regional problems in the next 50 years.
Let's give an example so it's not just a theoretical talk.
Bangladesh: area 150,000 km^2 (a bit more than 1/2 Texas), estimated population 150,000,000, population density 1,034 per km^2 - third highest in the world excluding city and micro states (5x more than Switzerland, 30x more than US), current GDP per capita ca 2,000$. The most worrying part is the still high growth rate of 1.6% giving a doubling time of about 44 years.
How can you possibly say with any confidence that there won't be a problem there or in similar places around the world? Some countries would be starving already if not for an aid and remittances from richer areas.
Enhance your calm bro- it's within cities and micro states we find the highest standards of living. The only reason for famine these days is due to their governments stealing food from them. Check out the this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/28/23-charts-to-be-thankful-for-this-thanksgiving/ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/11/28/23-charts-to-be-thankful-for-this-thanksgiving/). Things are getting better as freedom marches forward for all mankind.
1.6% is not a high growth rate, and it's dropping. Serious regional problems only comes from oppressive government.
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Are you partially responding to some other post here???
In demographics 1.6% is a high growth rate, but yes fortunately for them it's not as high as 30 years ago.
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China has it all figured out. At least they are doing something about it. 1 baby or else.
That's not working out for China long term. They have a rapidly aging population and are "relaxing" the one child policy.
http://www.businessinsider.com/one-child-policy-chinese-demographic-problems-2013-11
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Just as the plural of anecdote is not data, evidence of overpopulation in one country doesn't mean the world has an overpopulation problem.
Russia has a population of 143 million people and is one of the largest countries in the world. Ditto Canada at 34 million.
So worldwide overpopulation isn't the issue. The issue is raising the standard of living above the subsistence level in poor countries suffering from overpopulation.
Much of Canada and Russia has a climate that cannot support large populations of humans. I don't see how this is at all relevant.
You are correct. Much of Canada and Russia have climates that don't support large populations. Other large parts could. Those are the ones that are relevant. Australia is another country with a tiny population with room to expand toward the interior (no not the outback). Large portions of the US interior and Alaska are also sparsely populated.
Overpopulation is a localized phenomenon. I'm not saying it isn't a problem, but to say that the Earth as a whole is overpopulated is untrue.
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1. Try reading: What to expect when no one's expecting by Jonathan Last; great job of addressing the population growth issues around the world. Watch Japan they had 300k more deaths than births over the last few years. They are a great indicator of the impact to social/political/economic futures (given a tight barrier to immigration/emigration).
2. My concern is for food production is not over/underproduction, but distribution. When the US gives food aid to African nations the food plummet and their is little incentive for a local African nation farmer to grow his crops and develop his land when he can't bring his goods to market.
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Environmental Engineer here (please note, that means I have a degree in it, not that I am an "environmentalist". I don't work specifically with this stuff, though).
The economy exists as a subset of the society which exists as a subset of the environment (also known as an ecosystem, the words aren't perfectly interchangeable).
Thus, if we do not take care of the environment and include it in our calculations as to what can support a given number of humans, as well as maintaining itself, society will collapse due to low resources per person, and the economy will probably attempt to correct it, but it is not a perfect tool. So we need to work out amount of environment needed to self-sustain (and "the environment" is heterogeneous, so this will vary over the earth's surface). Then some kind of human:environment ratio that tells us, given the remaining amount of earth, what population is a good idea, and allow us to work towards that. The economy and politics/society can give us the tools to reach that goal, as education decreases babies/woman, technology can help us be more efficient with food production and distribution, and we can include more "environment" in our living and working spaces and towns, like wetlands to treat our waste - this has benefits beyond just nicer water.
Is overpopulation a problem? Well, yes, overpopulation means consumption>resources; just ask any organism that consumes what happens when its environment doesn't react quickly enough to bring its population down to equilibrium. Is it a problem for homo sapien over the globe right now? Most certainly, it is a factor in the degradation of our life-support, the ecosystem we are part of. Does that mean the answer is as simple as 1 baby/woman for the next generation? No. That would be too rapid for society to adjust to, and humans seem to respond better to slightly more round-about but well constructed solutions.
Please catch me on anything I've said that's incorrect.
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In my mind the danger of overpopulation, besides for depleting resources the earth does not replenish, is that already humans are building and living in environments that need sooo much technology in order for them to be to first world living standards. I am talking about here in the US even. There are people that have rebuilt their houses 10 times in the last 30 years because they live where hurricanes always strike, where floods always happen, on soil that is mostly sand. Its all well and good to say that humans could expand to areas that are unpopulated but there is usually a reason they are unpopulated. Just look at the revamp of the flooding maps for flood insurance. So many states could be underwater in our lifetime if the sea level continues to rise and hurricanes continue to strike (thankfully this year was easy on the US). I don't know if we are overpopulated but I do know that already here in the US people live where they really shouldn't.
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In my mind the danger of overpopulation, besides for depleting resources the earth does not replenish, is that already humans are building and living in environments that need sooo much technology in order for them to be to first world living standards. I am talking about here in the US even. There are people that have rebuilt their houses 10 times in the last 30 years because they live where hurricanes always strike, where floods always happen, on soil that is mostly sand. Its all well and good to say that humans could expand to areas that are unpopulated but there is usually a reason they are unpopulated. Just look at the revamp of the flooding maps for flood insurance. So many states could be underwater in our lifetime if the sea level continues to rise and hurricanes continue to strike (thankfully this year was easy on the US). I don't know if we are overpopulated but I do know that already here in the US people live where they really shouldn't.
Yes I agree the government should stop subsidizing homes in the middle of flood zones, thats a very inefficient welfare program.
So in conclusion, overpopulation is not a problem we are suffering from. Yay! Please do not advocate for eroding human rights in the name of this non-existent problem. Thank you all.
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1. Try reading: What to expect when no one's expecting by Jonathan Last; great job of addressing the population growth issues around the world. Watch Japan they had 300k more deaths than births over the last few years. They are a great indicator of the impact to social/political/economic futures (given a tight barrier to immigration/emigration).
I was also thinking about the problems in Japan while reading this thread.
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This is a pretty good article from the Washington Post, How The World's Populations Are Changing, In One Map. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/31/how-the-worlds-populations-are-changing-in-one-map/
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If anyone is trying to play catch up on this thread, this guy is honestly one of the world's most gifted staticitians. Good news, population growth will be stabilizing, likely around 11B. The question is can we support all of that.
He did a great video on it, backed up by actual real and modern data. It is worth an hour of your time:
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-population/ (http://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-population/)
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Dozens of answers and nobody has had the humility to give the answer that we don't know, finding out is complex, the uncertainty on what we do know is large, and we have to extrapolate with many assumptions we can't check to draw any conclusions at all.
The question is in principle a scientific question and "I don't know" is the best scientific answer I can think of.
Anyone who tries to tell you a definitive answer almost certainly has an agenda beyond mere accuracy.
There are many other questions we can probably answer now, for example
- Is it a problem for a given community? We may be over capacity in some areas and under in others. If we can't learn to distribute more efficiently and equitably this may be inevitable.
- Is it a problem for rich nations?
- Is it a problem for poor nations?
- Is it a problem for hunger and disease?
- Is it a problem for a given scarce resource or other bottleneck?
etc.
But to estimate a carrying capacity for the planet makes huge assumptions. For example
- Does that mean given optimal distribution of resources? If so, how would we transition from our suboptimal use today to that optimal plan?
- What is the optimal distribution of resources? We are nowhere close now, but this may be the best humans can do.
- If suboptimal distribution of resources, how far below optimal? If far enough below, we could well be over the capacity today.
- On what time scale? We could go over for some time if we went under some other time.
- How comfortable are people with living with pollution? Having limited access to green space?
- How efficiently to people want to live? Optimal efficiency increases the capacity at the expense of things like travel, eating meat, and skiing. Lower efficiency lowers the capacity but allows more freedom.
etc.
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Dozens of answers and nobody has had the humility to give the answer that we don't know, finding out is complex, the uncertainty on what we do know is large, and we have to extrapolate with many assumptions we can't check to draw any conclusions at all.
The question is in principle a scientific question and "I don't know" is the best scientific answer I can think of.
Anyone who tries to tell you a definitive answer almost certainly has an agenda beyond mere accuracy.
There are many other questions we can probably answer now, for example
- Is it a problem for a given community? We may be over capacity in some areas and under in others. If we can't learn to distribute more efficiently and equitably this may be inevitable.
- Is it a problem for rich nations?
- Is it a problem for poor nations?
- Is it a problem for hunger and disease?
- Is it a problem for a given scarce resource or other bottleneck?
etc.
But to estimate a carrying capacity for the planet makes huge assumptions. For example
- Does that mean given optimal distribution of resources? If so, how would we transition from our suboptimal use today to that optimal plan?
- What is the optimal distribution of resources? We are nowhere close now, but this may be the best humans can do.
- If suboptimal distribution of resources, how far below optimal? If far enough below, we could well be over the capacity today.
- On what time scale? We could go over for some time if we went under some other time.
- How comfortable are people with living with pollution? Having limited access to green space?
- How efficiently to people want to live? Optimal efficiency increases the capacity at the expense of things like travel, eating meat, and skiing. Lower efficiency lowers the capacity but allows more freedom.
etc.
Thanks for writing more clearly what I was trying to say :)
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I'm not convinced. According to this website (http://"http://overpopulationisamyth.com/category/categories/pop101") the entire population of earth could fit into Texas with 1100 sq ft per person, and we already grow 10x more potatoes than is necessary to feed everyone on earth.
I did a geography degree at a liberal arts college, so I'm pretty well aware of the arguments. But I still don't find them convincing. In fact, I don't think overpopulation is a problem at all. I'm more concerned about the trend of birth rates getting dangerously below that 2.1 rate at which populations remain stable.
A quick search shows the organization behind that site seems to be a religious group whose primary motives relate to abortion. Its credibility on science seems questionable and its biases significant, though everyone can judge for themselves.
I didn't know that when I wrote "Anyone who tries to tell you a definitive answer almost certainly has an agenda beyond mere accuracy" above, but I think it illustrates the point well.
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Uhm what about the Wikipedia data I posted that shows the human population will be in decline in the next few decades? What about the Washington post article that reviews UN and other NGO research that shows extreme poverty should be eliminated within 20 years?
My take is those who disregard these facts have the ulterior motive to sow fear either to generate contributions to their wasteful "charities" or to support government human rights abuses.
To the vast majority of people on this planet, let alone the USA, overpopulation is a myth.
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In the spirit of the Christmas season, they should all die and relieve the surplus population. That's the appropriate response here, right?
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In the spirit of the Christmas season, they should all die and relieve the surplus population. That's the appropriate response here, right?
Kinda my thought. If you think the world is overcrowded... you first.
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Uhm what about the Wikipedia data I posted that shows the human population will be in decline in the next few decades? What about the Washington post article that reviews UN and other NGO research that shows extreme poverty should be eliminated within 20 years?
My take is those who disregard these facts have the ulterior motive to sow fear either to generate contributions to their wasteful "charities" or to support government human rights abuses.
To the vast majority of people on this planet, let alone the USA, overpopulation is a myth.
You mentioned two predictions, then talked about "these facts." Are you calling the predictions facts and using them to support a claim that overpopulation is a myth?
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Uhm what about the Wikipedia data I posted that shows the human population will be in decline in the next few decades? What about the Washington post article that reviews UN and other NGO research that shows extreme poverty should be eliminated within 20 years?
My take is those who disregard these facts have the ulterior motive to sow fear either to generate contributions to their wasteful "charities" or to support government human rights abuses.
To the vast majority of people on this planet, let alone the USA, overpopulation is a myth.
You mentioned two predictions, then talked about "these facts." Are you calling the predictions facts and using them to support a claim that overpopulation is a myth?
Also that wikipedia data supports a slowdown of population growth not a decline of human population. Growth is still an increase on population. An annual increase of 1% of 8 billion people is still 80 million more people being brought in.
I agree strongly with JoshuaSpodek in that it is an extremely complicated question which cannot be boiled down to such a simplistic yes it is a problem and no it isn't. The correct answer is both and it depends.
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Uhm what about the Wikipedia data I posted that shows the human population will be in decline in the next few decades? What about the Washington post article that reviews UN and other NGO research that shows extreme poverty should be eliminated within 20 years?
My take is those who disregard these facts have the ulterior motive to sow fear either to generate contributions to their wasteful "charities" or to support government human rights abuses.
To the vast majority of people on this planet, let alone the USA, overpopulation is a myth.
You mentioned two predictions, then talked about "these facts." Are you calling the predictions facts and using them to support a claim that overpopulation is a myth?
Also that wikipedia data supports a slowdown of population growth not a decline of human population. Growth is still an increase on population. An annual increase of 1% of 8 billion people is still 80 million more people being brought in.
I agree strongly with JoshuaSpodek in that it is an extremely complicated question which cannot be boiled down to such a simplistic yes it is a problem and no it isn't. The correct answer is both and it depends.
is there something we should be doing about it now? Should we take active steps, Like China? Or is education of the issue the solution?
Or as MMM put it help developing countries become wealthy in a sustainable way and the family sizes will naturally decrease.
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Uhm what about the Wikipedia data I posted that shows the human population will be in decline in the next few decades? What about the Washington post article that reviews UN and other NGO research that shows extreme poverty should be eliminated within 20 years?
My take is those who disregard these facts have the ulterior motive to sow fear either to generate contributions to their wasteful "charities" or to support government human rights abuses.
To the vast majority of people on this planet, let alone the USA, overpopulation is a myth.
You mentioned two predictions, then talked about "these facts." Are you calling the predictions facts and using them to support a claim that overpopulation is a myth?
Also that wikipedia data supports a slowdown of population growth not a decline of human population. Growth is still an increase on population. An annual increase of 1% of 8 billion people is still 80 million more people being brought in.
I agree strongly with JoshuaSpodek in that it is an extremely complicated question which cannot be boiled down to such a simplistic yes it is a problem and no it isn't. The correct answer is both and it depends.
is there something we should be doing about it now? Should we take active steps, Like China? Or is education of the issue the solution?
Or as MMM put it help developing countries become wealthy in a sustainable way and the family sizes will naturally decrease.
It depends, there is no one something we should be doing given the complexity of the situation. I'm not a huge fan of government policies such as China's but I can see the reasoning behind it. I generally agree with MMM that increased education, nutrition, healthcare...etc. has proven effective in lowering population growth. But as I said above lowering population growth does not equal lowering population.
So mostly this is such a big complex issue that any oversimplified opinion, my own included, is missing a crap ton of information and has no chance of having any actual bearing on the issue.
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So yes, I would argue that overpopulation is in fact a major problem in many underdeveloped countries.
I'd say it's a problem with property rights and government abuses of the people. The reason they are undeveloped is due to tyrannical government. Check out the progress of East Germany since liberation.
East Germany at its worst was far more developed than India at its best. India has a myriad of problems, but tyrannical government isn't one of them. Highly ineffective government at times, most assuredly.... Having said that, both China and India are dealing with severely degraded environments due in part to their enormous populations and lack of pollution control infrastructure. The Ganges River basin is a modern day horror story.
Again, I'm referring to quality of life as a whole rather than just the ability to sustain the quantity of the population. Mass starvation has been supplanted by different challenges in an increasingly prosperous China.
The trend for most nations is that as overall wealth increases, population growth falls off (because as the cost of raising kids skyrockets in developed nations people voluntarily choose to have less children).
For many developed countries the looming problem is not the size of the population, but the increasing age of it.
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Uhm what about the Wikipedia data I posted that shows the human population will be in decline in the next few decades? What about the Washington post article that reviews UN and other NGO research that shows extreme poverty should be eliminated within 20 years?
My take is those who disregard these facts have the ulterior motive to sow fear either to generate contributions to their wasteful "charities" or to support government human rights abuses.
To the vast majority of people on this planet, let alone the USA, overpopulation is a myth.
You mentioned two predictions, then talked about "these facts." Are you calling the predictions facts and using them to support a claim that overpopulation is a myth?
There are many facts complied at those washington post links, but here are the main two of my claim that yes overpopulation is a myth:
Fact 1: Human population growth has been slowing for over 60 years.
Fact 2: Between 1990 and 2010, the share of the population of the developing world living in extreme poverty (under $1.25 a day) was cut in half.
See The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/im/notalwayswithus (http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/im/notalwayswithus)
Yes it is difficult to let go of our stereotypes and ideologies, but that's why we're here at MMM, to challenge erroneous conventional thinking.
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So yes, I would argue that overpopulation is in fact a major problem in many underdeveloped countries.
I'd say it's a problem with property rights and government abuses of the people. The reason they are undeveloped is due to tyrannical government. Check out the progress of East Germany since liberation.
East Germany at its worst was far more developed than India at its best. India has a myriad of problems, but tyrannical government isn't one of them. Highly ineffective government at times, most assuredly.... Having said that, both China and India are dealing with severely degraded environments due in part to their enormous populations and lack of pollution control infrastructure. The Ganges River basin is a modern day horror story.
I think it's intentionally misleading to view government tyranny as merely "inefficiencies." Though in India i'd say they have a fair amount of tyrannical government staving people to death: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-28/poor-in-india-starve-as-politicians-steal-14-5-billion-of-food.html (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-28/poor-in-india-starve-as-politicians-steal-14-5-billion-of-food.html)
Again, I'm referring to quality of life as a whole rather than just the ability to sustain the quantity of the population. Mass starvation has been supplanted by different challenges in an increasingly prosperous China.
The trend for most nations is that as overall wealth increases, population growth falls off (because as the cost of raising kids skyrockets in developed nations people voluntarily choose to have less children).
This is the basic fallacy- the wealthiest countries can't afford the cost of raising kids? You have the right correlation, but declines n fertility are caused because people in wealthy countries have retirement money, and don't need kids in old age.
For many developed countries the looming problem is not the size of the population, but the increasing age of it.
You mean people dying and the population shrinking? That's what old people do, they die.
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I'm not convinced. According to this website (http://"http://overpopulationisamyth.com/category/categories/pop101") the entire population of earth could fit into Texas with 1100 sq ft per person, and we already grow 10x more potatoes than is necessary to feed everyone on earth.
I did a geography degree at a liberal arts college, so I'm pretty well aware of the arguments. But I still don't find them convincing. In fact, I don't think overpopulation is a problem at all. I'm more concerned about the trend of birth rates getting dangerously below that 2.1 rate at which populations remain stable.
Been a few decades when I was in Future Farmers of America, but from my talks with old friends we do grow enough food to feed the world a several times over. The problems are:
1. waste - much food rots, spoils, or is not harvested do to effort versus return.
2. other uses - Alcohol production consumes lots of grain, potatoes, sugar, etc. Add in ethanol for car fuel and it gets stupid silly.
3. Nutrients - You can get enough calories out of potatoes and rice to feed the world, you will still die for lack of vitamins, fiber, and other nutrients.
The potato stats are likely correct but misleading.
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Continuing on from MMM's article on Soldier of Luxury - If all 320 million Americans started roaming the country like his idealized soldiers of luxury (migrating and hunting), would our nation's resources be sufficient to return to a Native American lifestyle? Estimates of peak Native American population ranges from 1 - 5 million and there are a lot less buffalo... although it sounds like a nice ideal.
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Continuing on from MMM's article on Soldier of Luxury - If all 320 million Americans started roaming the country like his idealized soldiers of luxury (migrating and hunting), would our nation's resources be sufficient to return to a Native American lifestyle? Estimates of peak Native American population ranges from 1 - 5 million and there are a lot less buffalo... although it sounds like a nice ideal.
The Soldier of Luxury was an allegory. It would be highly impractical and downright impossible to return to a Native American lifestyle. You do realize you are saying no infrastructure, modern medicine, running water, electricity...etc. Also I seriously doubt we'd be able to sustain 320 million people with hunting, it is only with the advent of organized agriculture that we've been able to have population levels at this concentration.
Also not sure what it has to do with the discussion at hand.
Uhm what about the Wikipedia data I posted that shows the human population will be in decline in the next few decades? What about the Washington post article that reviews UN and other NGO research that shows extreme poverty should be eliminated within 20 years?
My take is those who disregard these facts have the ulterior motive to sow fear either to generate contributions to their wasteful "charities" or to support government human rights abuses.
To the vast majority of people on this planet, let alone the USA, overpopulation is a myth.
You mentioned two predictions, then talked about "these facts." Are you calling the predictions facts and using them to support a claim that overpopulation is a myth?
There are many facts complied at those washington post links, but here are the main two of my claim that yes overpopulation is a myth:
Fact 1: Human population growth has been slowing for over 60 years.
Fact 2: Between 1990 and 2010, the share of the population of the developing world living in extreme poverty (under $1.25 a day) was cut in half.
See The Economist:
http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/im/notalwayswithus (http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/im/notalwayswithus)
Yes it is difficult to let go of our stereotypes and ideologies, but that's why we're here at MMM, to challenge erroneous conventional thinking.
My question would be how do those two facts equate that overpopulation is a "myth" as you say? Population growth is still population growth especially given longer lifespans, and what does the poverty level of the developing world have to do with whether overpopulation is a problem or not. I readily admit that with increased prosperity family sizes get smaller but that still doesn't mean that the overall population will not continue to grow. A slow rate of growth is still a growth.
What I'm saying isn't about stereotypes or ideologies but how the facts you present may not be supporting your assertion.
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He's some more facts from Nature: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7179/abs/nature06516.html (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v451/n7179/abs/nature06516.html)
(I hear the liberal statists really like this source) Mod Edit: Striking out comment but leaving it as an example of the sort of comment that is not necessary to make your point, or furthering the discussion in any way. Please play nice in this thread, there's no reason a discussion like this should lead to a thread lock.[/END MOD EDIT]
"The probability that growth in the world's population will end during this century is 88%."
Well if the number of people on this planet is a problem, it will soon reverse.
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Thank you for the article. That is much closer to supporting your point. Now do you have proof that we do not have overpopulation right now?
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Or you could lay out your case why we do have overpopulation.
I know some localities have an overpopulation problem, but not the entire world. if you are confident we have an overpopulation problem, a 3 day drive across the U.S. or Canada should disabuse you of that thought.
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Or you could lay out your case why we do have overpopulation.
I know some localities have an overpopulation problem, but not the entire world. if you are confident we have an overpopulation problem, a 3 day drive across the U.S. or Canada should disabuse you of that thought.
I've laid out my case already above. I believe it is too complex of an issue to say there is or there isn't and anyone claiming otherwise is oversimplifying the issue. I can just as easily say take a walk through Shanghai or the Tokyo metropolitan area, just because you reference a small slice of the world doesn't mean that overpopulation does or does not exist.
And you do bring up an interesting point, as I take my three day drive across the U.S. I can see a massive impact of attempting to feed and produce fuel with large tracts of agriculture, although the land may be devoid of a population it is by no means lacking in evidence that the population of the continent is large.
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if you are confident we have an overpopulation problem, a 3 day drive across the U.S. or Canada should disabuse you of that thought.
I don't think so. If anything, it would convince me that we do have a serious problem. The places that aren't overpopulated by the definition of sheer overcrowding, like for instance the Great Basin & parts of the Great Plains, are still overpopulated in the sense that they are using, and often over-using, local resources such as water.
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I suppose my case rests on mitigating the supposed cause of the problem by showing the raw amount of people will soon decline and then also point to the very questionable data of deaths caused by overpopulation.
I will even try to define what is a problem by saying there should be evidence of property damage or bodily injury, as most social issues people believe to be problems usually present these damages.
Earlier I have proposed that many deaths are falsely attributed to overpopulation, when they can be explained by poverty, and there is ample empirical evidence that poverty is sharply declining though matchewed accuracy pointed out that the population is still growing. Obviously these assertions cannot all be in agreement.
That's my story!
p.s. Interesting the moderators feel that labeling someone a liberal statist is insulting, I am happy to be labeled a Christian and libertarian so please leave those when direct toward me.
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I suppose my case rests on mitigating the supposed cause of the problem by showing the raw amount of people will soon decline and then also point to the very questionable data of deaths caused by overpopulation.
I will even try to define what is a problem by saying there should be evidence of property damage or bodily injury, as most social issues people believe to be problems usually present these damages.
Earlier I have proposed that many deaths are falsely attributed to overpopulation, when they can be explained by poverty, and there is ample empirical evidence that poverty is sharply declining though matchewed accuracy pointed out that the population is still growing. Obviously these assertions cannot all be in agreement.
That's my story!
p.s. Interesting the moderators feel that labeling someone a liberal statist is insulting, I am happy to be labeled a Christian and libertarian so please leave those when direct toward me.
I'm not sure you've proven that the raw number of people will decline though. Although you've proven that growth rates may decline the overall human population will still grow in the short term and may or may not keep growing (see attached from wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World-Population-1800-2100.svg)).
I think you hit the nail on the head in reference to why we may talk past each other on this subject. You're defining overpopulation as being a problem if and only if it causes property damage or bodily injury. In that case my point still stands that it is a problem in some places and not in others. Consider the Ganges River, 400 million people are affected by the pollution in that river. I think it would be hard to refute that overpopulation is not a problem there.
Furthermore the idea that overpopulation is only a problem when it causes property damage or bodily injury is too limited in scope. I can refer to the Ganges again with this as the side affect of overpopulation, environmental damage, is what is causing the damage to people.
I'm not sure where there was discussion about deaths being attributed to overpopulation. I think that would be a strange claim and hard to back up. But again deaths are not the only measuring stick for overpopulation.
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... falsely attributed to overpopulation, when they can be explained by poverty...
I don't see how you can divide between these two causes of someone dying without implying that you can never attribute any death to overpopulation.
As long as resources are distributed unequally, some people will have enough to live on. You could then say the rest are dying of poverty, never overpopulation. I guess if everyone simultaneously did at once of overpopulation, but when a group overpopulates, its members don't die of "overpopulation," they die of lack of whatever bottlenecks affect them at the time -- could be hunger, thirst, disease, etc. No doctor's chart has a checkbox for overpopulation.
In other words, poverty results from an unequal distribution of resources. If there were enough resources, even very poor people could get enough to live on. If they don't, doesn't that imply there isn't enough food?
If we could distribute all resources equally or even just more efficiently we could increase how many people the resources of the planet could sustain, but given billions of people with competing interests and rights, plus history that led to the system we have, can't we conclude we've created the most efficient system we can? If you can come up with a better system and get it implemented, why don't you? If you can't how can you conclude otherwise?
Given the system we have, I don't see how you can say people dying from lack of resources doesn't imply overpopulation, at least locally in a lot of places.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that we are overpopulated or not. I'm just trying to check the meaning of what you wrote -- in particular, could someone who said what you said ever accept overpopulation as long as some people still survived? To put it yet another way, as long as some people survived anywhere in the world, couldn't you say "While some places are overpopulated, that's only a local condition. We're not overpopulated everywhere, so we aren't overpopulated."
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I'm not sure you've proven that the raw number of people will decline though. Although you've proven that growth rates may decline the overall human population will still grow in the short term and may or may not keep growing (see attached from wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World-Population-1800-2100.svg)).
Sure, an asteroid could hit tomorrow too, its nearly impossible to prove with definitive certainty something that hasn't happened yet. But we can use statistics and calculus to estimate and according to both those tools (see the second-derivative of population has been negative for over 40 years, and the Nature research that says The probability that growth in the world's population will end during this century is 88%) most be should satisfied of this (coming) reality.
I think you hit the nail on the head in reference to why we may talk past each other on this subject. You're defining overpopulation as being a problem if and only if it causes property damage or bodily injury. In that case my point still stands that it is a problem in some places and not in others. Consider the Ganges River, 400 million people are affected by the pollution in that river. I think it would be hard to refute that overpopulation is not a problem there.
Furthermore the idea that overpopulation is only a problem when it causes property damage or bodily injury is too limited in scope. I can refer to the Ganges again with this as the side affect of overpopulation, environmental damage, is what is causing the damage to people.
I'm open to discussing other measures and consequences of overpopulation, but if it doesn't meet those levels of damage it might be difficult to justify infanticide or genocidal "solutions."
Regarding the ganges river, this one is actually easy to refute by seeing the apparent cause of its pollution is lack of indoor plumbing and sewer systems by residents due to impoverishment. A simple case in the US is the Chicago river which was polluted by slaughterhouses over 100 years ago, and now 50x the people live near it and it's much less polluted. How is it that more population around a river could not yield more pollution in it if you assigned the causation of pollution to overpopulation?
I'm not sure where there was discussion about deaths being attributed to overpopulation. I think that would be a strange claim and hard to back up. But again deaths are not the only measuring stick for overpopulation.
This is my point, seems not to be the most pressing problem if you are saying it's a strange claim and hard to back up with deaths. Auto accidents is a problem, 30,000+ people die annually in just the USA.
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I don't see how you can divide between these two causes of someone dying without implying that you can never attribute any death to overpopulation.
As long as resources are distributed unequally, some people will have enough to live on. You could then say the rest are dying of poverty, never overpopulation. I guess if everyone simultaneously did at once of overpopulation, but when a group overpopulates, its members don't die of "overpopulation," they die of lack of whatever bottlenecks affect them at the time -- could be hunger, thirst, disease, etc. No doctor's chart has a checkbox for overpopulation.
In other words, poverty results from an unequal distribution of resources. If there were enough resources, even very poor people could get enough to live on. If they don't, doesn't that imply there isn't enough food?
Yes good point that resources are not distributed equally, any guess what are some contributing factors?
If we could distribute all resources equally or even just more efficiently we could increase how many people the resources of the planet could sustain, but given billions of people with competing interests and rights, plus history that led to the system we have, can't we conclude we've created the most efficient system we can? If you can come up with a better system and get it implemented, why don't you? If you can't how can you conclude otherwise?
Given the system we have, I don't see how you can say people dying from lack of resources doesn't imply overpopulation, at least locally in a lot of places.
I wouldn't give up hope so soon, there is much room for improvement to our system. Daily people are rising out of poverty and enjoying more of their rights. There is a better system, and yes part of my responses on here are an effort to implement it. Just like MMM, clearly we believe his lifestyle is superior to the average in America, but it takes a lot of work, and there are competing interests that gain at the suffering of others, namely the coercive government. Just like the battle for civil rights still rages in this country and internationally, it's a hard fight. We have to convince people of a better way against the mental inertia of daily life and also that sacrifices will pay-off. That takes a lot of hard work and leadership, something that I hope we can foster here and that I've been unfortunately frustrated with and difficult to accept. We have to be the change we want to see. There was pain for me switching to Ting, how much pain will there be to close down prisions holding non-violent offenders, or convincing north korea to stop murdering its own people?
To be clear, I'm not arguing that we are overpopulated or not. I'm just trying to check the meaning of what you wrote -- in particular, could someone who said what you said ever accept overpopulation as long as some people still survived? To put it yet another way, as long as some people survived anywhere in the world, couldn't you say "While some places are overpopulated, that's only a local condition. We're not overpopulated everywhere, so we aren't overpopulated."
I see it more as a carrying capacity issue, but combined with the debunking of Malthusian, I think it's a hard argument to make.
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I see it more as a carrying capacity issue, but combined with the debunking of Malthusian, I think it's a hard argument to make.
When you use the wodr 'debunk' in connection with Malthus, you put yourself in the same camp as Young Earth Creationists, global warming denialists, the people who believe that vaccines cause autism, and other cranks. Malthus' theories are logically consistent, and fit the available evidence. The only reason we haven't experienced the consequences yet is that we've been able to use stored fossil fuels to temporarily boost agricultural productivity. What happens when artificial fertilizers become too expensive, running diesel-fueled farm equipment becomes impossible, those giant factory fishing vessels have netted everything larger than a minnow...?
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Well I think by then there will be far less people, less total fuel will be used, I actually think the opposite is in our future: post-scarcity. MMM is sort of possible because we're entering the age of post-scarcity. The main impediment is government at this point wasting so much resources and lives for their friends' benefit.
I'm not sure who all those people are at camp, but Malthus inspired the term "the dismal science" by his conjectures that luckily didn't come to be. Such as "That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, ". Well he might be shocked to learn about most of Europe and Japan.
Free your mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
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Hold up. The question was "is overpopulation a problem", not "is overpopulation a problem such that we should kill people". Over population is a problem. Is it a problem for humans on earth? Possibly. Killing people is a solution. However killing people is not necessarily the best solution. It's one possible solution of many. Also, this conversation stikes me as awfully anthropocentric. Is the earth overpopulated with cows, potatoes or cabbages? Do we have some information on that?
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I think humanity is pretty cool with xenocide if the cows get out if hand, and it would be tasty mmmmm ribeye...
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Hold up. The question was "is overpopulation a problem", not "is overpopulation a problem such that we should kill people". Over population is a problem. Is it a problem for humans on earth? Possibly. Killing people is a solution. However killing people is not necessarily the best solution. It's one possible solution of many. Also, this conversation stikes me as awfully anthropocentric. Is the earth overpopulated with cows, potatoes or cabbages? Do we have some information on that?
Anthropocentric, sure, but on the other hand none of those things you listed have been shown to have a large effect on the planet as a whole.
And, correct me if I'm wrong, but with most of the [non-human] things, nature balances it out via various mechanisms.
You could argue starvation/wars/disease/etc. follow the same function, but we are aggressively trying to eliminate that problem. I don't see an overpopulation of deer that eats its food supply and many starve, or a corresponding increase in their predators, trying to correct either of those problems (specifically with technology).
Anthropocentric? Sure. For good reasons? It seems like it, yes.
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Hold up. The question was "is overpopulation a problem", not "is overpopulation a problem such that we should kill people". Over population is a problem. Is it a problem for humans on earth? Possibly. Killing people is a solution. However killing people is not necessarily the best solution. It's one possible solution of many. Also, this conversation stikes me as awfully anthropocentric. Is the earth overpopulated with cows, potatoes or cabbages? Do we have some information on that?
Anthropocentric, sure, but on the other hand none of those things you listed have been shown to have a large effect on the planet as a whole.
And, correct me if I'm wrong, but with most of the [non-human] things, nature balances it out via various mechanisms.
You could argue starvation/wars/disease/etc. follow the same function, but we are aggressively trying to eliminate that problem. I don't see an overpopulation of deer that eats its food supply and many starve, or a corresponding increase in their predators, trying to correct either of those problems (specifically with technology).
Anthropocentric? Sure. For good reasons? It seems like it, yes.
Interestingly enough even with not directly Anthropocentric examples ( cows and methane (http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html) {Enteric Fermentation is a part of their digestive process}) are still indirectly Anthropocentric, we raise the cows. So our population size which demand things like oil based products and beef/milk have huge impacts on our environment which is a good measure of overpopulation.
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Anthropocentric, sure, but on the other hand none of those things you listed have been shown to have a large effect on the planet as a whole.
And, correct me if I'm wrong, but with most of the [non-human] things, nature balances it out via various mechanisms.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/methane-cow.htm (http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/methane-cow.htm), for instance. Is it a large effect...well the flatulence taxers would have you think so...
How many small effects with their various interaction variables does it take to produce an unexpected large effect? I don't think we know that.
One might think that anything humans do, and which influences the planet, creates an artificial imbalance. But...is it artificial? Now, that is the philosophical heart of the question. One could easily argue that there is no such thing as artificial. If so, then nature balances out via various mechanisms in the end through war, pestulence, disease etc.
Overpopulation is just a swing of the pendulum.
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Anthropocentric, sure, but on the other hand none of those things you listed have been shown to have a large effect on the planet as a whole.
And, correct me if I'm wrong, but with most of the [non-human] things, nature balances it out via various mechanisms.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/methane-cow.htm (http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/methane-cow.htm), for instance. Is it a large effect...well the flatulence taxers would have you think so...
I'm not sure how that's relevant. Are you arguing cows have more of an effect on the planet as a whole than humans? (I didn't specify greenhouse emissions). And isn't that traced to us raising so many. Do you think cows, in the wild, would have a large effect on the planet? I haven't seen many clear cutting forests to make more grasslands for themselves, but then again I haven't been looking.
Unless you'd like to argue cabbages or marmets or whatever have more of an effect on the planet than humans, then you're agreeing with me.
Anthropocentric, sure, but on the other hand none of those things you listed have been shown to have a large effect on the planet as a whole.
And, correct me if I'm wrong, but with most of the [non-human] things, nature balances it out via various mechanisms.
One might think that anything humans do, and which influences the planet, creates an artificial imbalance. But...is it artificial? Now, that is the philosophical heart of the question. One could easily argue that there is no such thing as artificial. If so, then nature balances out via various mechanisms in the end through war, pestulence, disease etc.
Isn't that exactly what I said?
You could argue starvation/wars/disease/etc. follow the same function
I also, though, pointed out how we're trying to eliminate those things, which is in direct counter to the "nature" solving it issue, and you didn't address that?
I guess this is why I generally ignore threads like this - a response that completely fails to address any of the points raised and in fact brings up things already addressed in the original post as if it wasn't even read can be pretty frustrating.
/shrug
Whatever.
My opinion on (over)population is in the second post of this thread. The post above was merely pointing out that while it is an anthropocentric discussion, it makes sense as to why that is so.
Are you arguing that it shouldn't be an anthropocentric discussion, and we should talk about an overpopulation of cabbages?
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arebelspy - you confuse me - given what matchewed posted almost simulateously...about cows - you may have also confused him/her.
My turn to confuse you :-)
I sort of thought cows were non-human. I also thought you were suggesting there was no evidence that the things listed (cows, potatoes, cabbages) have a (large) impact. I was simply responding that they do. Cows being an example (methane, land conversion, etc). However, perhaps you are saying that all (modernish) cows (exception being some wild cow-like things) are there because of humans...and therefore are human - made and thus not an example of a non-human-influenced-thing that might be causing an impact on the planet?
SO, are you asking for a non-human thing (or related thing) that is/has/might cause a large impact on the planet?
Everything we do or don't do causes a natural shift in the natural balance. Therefore, your consideration of our tendency to reduce starvation/wars/disease is not a counter to "nature" solving the issue, it is nature. If you agree that whatever we do/don't do (in one way or the other) will balance out over time, then I agree.
There are only temporary over-populations of anything. There are however permanent under-populations (i.e. dodo). Cabbages are probably safe....until an overpopulation of cabbage loving humans eats them all.
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We need to get off this rock - The Universe beacons. Far as we know, it's all empty, waiting for us.
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I'm not sure who all those people are at camp, but Malthus inspired the term "the dismal science" by his conjectures that luckily didn't come to be. Such as "That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, ". Well he might be shocked to learn about most of Europe and Japan.
Malthus' predictions haven't come to be yet. To claim that that means they won't is like thinking the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building and is now passing the 40th floor has absolutely no reason to worry about his future.
Likewise, claiming that local, temporary reductions in popuplation growth invalidate the longer-term principle is like claiming that winter disproves global warning. There have been other local decreases in population - e.g. the US northeast during the Gold Rush & westward migration, but the population has always recovered and gown to exceed previous levels.
As for your link, would you care to point out exactly where in Europe the population has decreased?
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Interestingly enough even with not directly Anthropocentric examples ( cows and methane (http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html) {Enteric Fermentation is a part of their digestive process}) are still indirectly Anthropocentric, we raise the cows.
Not necessarily. Consider the buffalo, which is closely related to the domestic cow - enough so that they can be crossed to produce 'beefalo'. Now before European settlement there were an estimated 30-70 million of them roaming the plains, a number similar (especially considering that they're somewhat larger) to the number of cows today. So the methane from bovine digestion is largely part of the normal background.
Do you think cows, in the wild, would have a large effect on the planet? I haven't seen many clear cutting forests to make more grasslands for themselves, but then again I haven't been looking.
It's certainly the case for buffalo: their grazing prevented young trees from taking root, and so in effect creatd the Plains grasslands.
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SO, are you asking for a non-human thing (or related thing) that is/has/might cause a large impact on the planet?
Of course not. An meteor can have, and has had, an large impact on our planet. But that doesn't mean there's an overpopulation of them. ;)
The post I was responding to was someone questioning why this was such an anthropocentric discussion.
My point is that it is necessarily so, yes, due to the impact we have on the planet relative to other populations, but further that we're the only ones trying to stop nature from correcting that problem, which can lead to obvious consequences.
Thus the necessity of it towards being an anthropocentric discussion.
Do you think it should not be an anthropocentric discussion, and we ought to discuss overpopulations of other things, but not humans?
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Interestingly enough even with not directly Anthropocentric examples ( cows and methane (http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html) {Enteric Fermentation is a part of their digestive process}) are still indirectly Anthropocentric, we raise the cows.
Not necessarily. Consider the buffalo, which is closely related to the domestic cow - enough so that they can be crossed to produce 'beefalo'. Now before European settlement there were an estimated 30-70 million of them roaming the plains, a number similar (especially considering that they're somewhat larger) to the number of cows today. So the methane from bovine digestion is largely part of the normal background.
Do you think cows, in the wild, would have a large effect on the planet? I haven't seen many clear cutting forests to make more grasslands for themselves, but then again I haven't been looking.
It's certainly the case for buffalo: their grazing prevented young trees from taking root, and so in effect creatd the Plains grasslands.
Even if we go under the assumption of equivalent methane production from both cattle and buffalo you still have to account for the fact that there are far more cattle today than there were buffalo back then. Using your 30-70 million for past buffalo population you have to understand that in the US alone we have over 90 million (http://usda01.library.cornell.edu/usda/nass/SB989/sb1019.pdf) and 1.3 billion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle#Population) in the world. This moves it from a steady state background number to one that is in fact advancing due to human cultivation of cattle and other ruminants which produce methane.
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that is in fact advancing due to human cultivation
Indeed.
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I'm not sure who all those people are at camp, but Malthus inspired the term "the dismal science" by his conjectures that luckily didn't come to be. Such as "That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, ". Well he might be shocked to learn about most of Europe and Japan.
Malthus' predictions haven't come to be yet. To claim that that means they won't is like thinking the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building and is now passing the 40th floor has absolutely no reason to worry about his future.
Likewise, claiming that local, temporary reductions in popuplation growth invalidate the longer-term principle is like claiming that winter disproves global warning. There have been other local decreases in population - e.g. the US northeast during the Gold Rush & westward migration, but the population has always recovered and gown to exceed previous levels.
As for your link, would you care to point out exactly where in Europe the population has decreased?
I could never be a teacher, I don't have the patience to keep asking "did you read the preceding?" ad infinitum.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Demographics_of_Europe.svg/680px-Demographics_of_Europe.svg.png)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe
Here's a fun wall chart from our statist henchmen: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/2006_wppchart.pdf
Malthus is a first year economics example of the many false (but popular) economic models/theory are.
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I could never be a teacher, I don't have the patience to keep asking "did you read the preceding?" ad infinitum.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/Demographics_of_Europe.svg/680px-Demographics_of_Europe.svg.png)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Europe
Don't know why you (or the original creators) think a map without visible labels is in any way informative. But since you want to play Wikipedia games, here's another link which thinks the populations of most European countries are growing. The former Soviet Union is a temporary exception, persumably due to emigration: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5e/Population_growth_rate_world_2013.svg
Now whether Russia &c are properly considered European is perhaps a quibble, but even including Russia & the former Warsaw Pact countries, the total population is growing.
It's surprisingly hard (at least for me) to get Google to come up with a simple graph of European population, either by country or as a whole. Here's a link to the best I could find: http://www.mortality-trends.org/3_special_graphs/77-pop_Eur_selected_HMD.png Doesn't seem to be much evidence of any decline, except for France following WWI & II.
Here's a fun wall chart from our statist henchmen: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2006/2006_wppchart.pdf
And? I don't see any place in that chart that has a population decline that isn't readily explained by temporary factors, and there are few that have declines at all.
Malthus is a first year economics example of the many false (but popular) economic models/theory are.
Sorry, but the anti-Malthusians are, like those who reject Darwin, substituting religious/political dogma and wishful thinking for science. Which, of course, is not to say that either Malthus' or Darwin's original theories are carved-on-stone-tablets revealed TRUTH, but the basic ideas are there.
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Do you not accept the possibility that human food demand might not be insatiable? That the world could actually meet all human needs? That the total population could decline?
Maybe Japan is a better example. Do you think that's a temporary decline?
(http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/20101120_WOC951.gif)
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Do you not accept the possibility that human food demand might not be insatiable? That the world could actually meet all human needs? That the total population could decline?
Maybe Japan is a better example. Do you think that's a temporary decline?
(http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/original-size/20101120_WOC951.gif)
Mumble mumble double(triple?) negatives...
The world could meet all human needs if how we generate our needs was changed. With our current methods on pure efficiency as king and waste be damned we won't. Could total population decline? Sure, there are predictions that it may, there are also predictions that it may not. Your crystal ball is as clear as any other one. Linking to Japan's population spread doesn't prove global population decline, just that the spread changes over time, which is more of a demonstration that we live longer when you take into account that a nation is peaceful and industrialized. Also taking a landmass half the size of Texas and trying to imply global trends using the population demographics of said landmass is kinda silly.
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I would like to hear what a Malthusian says about Japan's population, other than trying to explain it away as temporary. The reason for the decline is that as wealth per capita increases, the fertility rate drops, why does this happen? Because people can afford to save for retirement instead of relying on children. Here's some empirical evidence globally. So the real question is will global growth slow or stop in the next 50 years and reverse this trend? Highly unlikely.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg/288px-TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg.png)
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I would like to hear what a Malthusian says about Japan's population, other than trying to explain it away as temporary. The reason for the decline is that as wealth per capita increases, the fertility rate drops, why does this happen? Because people can afford to save for retirement instead of relying on children. Here's some empirical evidence globally. So the real question is will global growth slow or stop in the next 50 years and reverse this trend? Highly unlikely.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg/288px-TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg.png)
I'm not saying it is temporary, I said it's a narrow datum on an otherwise large global question.
What is your picture empirical evidence of? The fact that as countries grow in affluence that their birthrates lower. Sure that's fact but it doesn't answer the main point of this thread. Is overpopulation a problem? You seem to assert that a decline in growth means it is not a problem. To use an metaphor, a car slowing down and hitting a wall still hit the wall, doesn't matter if it was going 90 mph or 75 mph. Is 7 billion people a problem right now? How we do it? Yeah probably as evidenced by our impact on the global climate (primarily driven by all those affluent countries so kinda difficult if we take your premise that affluence will solve all when it may in fact just make it worse).
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Do you not accept the possibility that human food demand might not be insatiable?
Not as long as the population keeps growing.
That the world could actually meet all human needs?
No, because it can't meet all human needs at current population levels. Unless of course you are limiting your definition of 'need' to the human equivalent of a cattle feedlot or battery chicken operation.
That the total population could decline?
Of itself, by a sufficient number of humans choosing to have fewer offspring? Not likely, on past evidence. It's one of those 'tragedy of the commons' things.
I would like to hear what a Malthusian says about Japan's population, other than trying to explain it away as temporary. The reason for the decline is that as wealth per capita increases, the fertility rate drops, why does this happen? Because people can afford to save for retirement instead of relying on children. Here's some empirical evidence globally. So the real question is will global growth slow or stop in the next 50 years and reverse this trend? Highly unlikely.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg/288px-TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg.png)
Once again, why do you think a graph that's a mere scatter of points on a background, with no legend of any sort - not even axes on this one - conveys useful information?
But on the question of Japan, quite a few other countries (or areas within countries) are as prosperous as Japan, if not more so. If prosperity indeed causes population to decline, then surely their populations should decline as well? But they don't, which suggests that you need to look elsewhere for the cause of Japan's decline.
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I would like to hear what a Malthusian says about Japan's population, other than trying to explain it away as temporary. The reason for the decline is that as wealth per capita increases, the fertility rate drops, why does this happen? Because people can afford to save for retirement instead of relying on children. Here's some empirical evidence globally. So the real question is will global growth slow or stop in the next 50 years and reverse this trend? Highly unlikely.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/43/TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg/288px-TFR_vs_PPP_2009.svg.png)
Once again, why do you think a graph that's a mere scatter of points on a background, with no legend of any sort - not even axes on this one - conveys useful information?
Are you guys fooling with me? You can't see GDP per capita as the control axis with Total fertility rate as the dependent variable?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility "As of 2010, about 48% of the world population lives in nations with sub-replacement fertility." heres the data: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_fertility_rate
I'm sorry I guess I should break it down barney-style here: The dotted line is the fertility replacement rate 2.33, and all the points below that line are countries with rates lower. But notice the correlation between wealth and fertility.
But on the question of Japan, quite a few other countries (or areas within countries) are as prosperous as Japan, if not more so. If prosperity indeed causes population to decline, then surely their populations should decline as well? But they don't, which suggests that you need to look elsewhere for the cause of Japan's decline.
Correct, please see the graph above, the list of the entire should satisfy you.
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I'm not saying it is temporary, I said it's a narrow datum on an otherwise large global question.
What is your picture empirical evidence of? The fact that as countries grow in affluence that their birthrates lower. Sure that's fact but it doesn't answer the main point of this thread. Is overpopulation a problem? You seem to assert that a decline in growth means it is not a problem. To use an metaphor, a car slowing down and hitting a wall still hit the wall, doesn't matter if it was going 90 mph or 75 mph. Is 7 billion people a problem right now? How we do it? Yeah probably as evidenced by our impact on the global climate (primarily driven by all those affluent countries so kinda difficult if we take your premise that affluence will solve all when it may in fact just make it worse).
Thank you you recognizing that fact as that negates Malthusian theory. To your other point, luckily developed countries have the best environmental controls as well. And a wall? Please, don't tell me your a doomsday prepper!
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Do you not accept the possibility that human food demand might not be insatiable?
Not as long as the population keeps growing.
Good because the prior evidence I've shown projects total population to peak in the next 20 years and then decline.
That the world could actually meet all human needs?
No, because it can't meet all human needs at current population levels. Unless of course you are limiting your definition of 'need' to the human equivalent of a cattle feedlot or battery chicken operation.
Luckily the evidence in the WashPost links shows global poverty should be eliminated within 20 years also.
That the total population could decline?
Of itself, by a sufficient number of humans choosing to have fewer offspring? Not likely, on past evidence. It's one of those 'tragedy of the commons' things.
See the 48% of the countries that are choosing to have fewer offspring currently.
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I'm not saying it is temporary, I said it's a narrow datum on an otherwise large global question.
What is your picture empirical evidence of? The fact that as countries grow in affluence that their birthrates lower. Sure that's fact but it doesn't answer the main point of this thread. Is overpopulation a problem? You seem to assert that a decline in growth means it is not a problem. To use an metaphor, a car slowing down and hitting a wall still hit the wall, doesn't matter if it was going 90 mph or 75 mph. Is 7 billion people a problem right now? How we do it? Yeah probably as evidenced by our impact on the global climate (primarily driven by all those affluent countries so kinda difficult if we take your premise that affluence will solve all when it may in fact just make it worse).
Thank you you recognizing that fact as that negates Malthusian theory. To your other point, luckily developed countries have the best environmental controls as well. And a wall? Please, don't tell me your a doomsday prepper!
You still haven't addressed the point that I raised. I wasn't debating Malthusian theory with you that was James, I was debating whether we have an overpopulation issue. The number of people we currently have is unsustainable with our current affluent lifestyles. Your hypothesis that if everyone becomes affluent then all the threats from overpopulation disappear because the population will go down is short sighted in that it doesn't recognize the damage that affluent lifestyle does to the world around it. Regardless of the environmental controls in place in affluent countries those very countries are still impacting the world around them.
Do you believe the United States of America is one of if not the most affluent country in the world today? Then by your theory all these environmental controls would mean that we produce less pollution. But that is demonstrably wrong. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions)
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Here is my evidence no one reads (Matchewed's source is counter to his point) : The link to list of countries by carbon dioxide emissions shows that in 2012 the US produced less emissions than in 2008, yet there are more people in the USA. A better list would be emissions per capita and the USA is an excellent example to my point:
(http://www.aei-ideas.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/C02-600x410.jpg)
Then by your theory all these environmental controls would mean that we produce less pollution.
FACT: the USA produces less C02 emissions than 4 years ago (with higher population today) and per capita less emissions than in 1965.
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More Evidence to show that matchewebs point is demonstrably false:
(emissions per capita)
(http://sagacommodities.com/files/custom/2011%20CO2%20emissions%20per%20capita.png)
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The number of people we currently have is unsustainable with our current affluent lifestyles.
You should have inserted a period after the word unsustainable.
Your hypothesis that if everyone becomes affluent then all the threats from overpopulation disappear because the population will go down is short sighted...
It's also not supported by evidence. Affluence may well cause birth rates to go down, but AFAIK there's no affluent country other than Japan in which the population is declining. Those that do show declines are mostly the former Warsaw Pact countries, which experienced a period of high education combined with local poverty.
FACT: the USA produces less C02 emissions than 4 years ago (with higher population today) and per capita less emissions than in 1965.
Which is not exactly relevant. The question is not the relative amount of emissions (or land/water use, or whatever), it's whether those levels can be sustained without causing an amount of envionmental degradation that will lead to eventual collapse of parts of the ecosystem.
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Your hypothesis that if everyone becomes affluent then all the threats from overpopulation disappear because the population will go down is short sighted...
It's also not supported by evidence. Affluence may well cause birth rates to go down, but AFAIK there's no affluent country other than Japan in which the population is declining. Those that do show declines are mostly the former Warsaw Pact countries, which experienced a period of high education combined with local poverty.
It's ok to learn something new, things change in the world, but I think they are changing for the better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline#Decline_by_nation_or_territory
Germany, Italy, Portugal...I guess Japan isn't good enough for the list..
But hey, now you know!
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It's ok to learn something new, things change in the world, but I think they are changing for the better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline#Decline_by_nation_or_territory
Germany, Italy, Portugal...I guess Japan isn't good enough for the list..
But hey, now you know!
It's ok to learn, not ok to make stuff up because that's what you, or the sources you cite, want to think.
If you check just a bit further than a Wikipedia article, you'll find that Germany's 'population decline' is a statistical artifact. Because for decades Germany didn't conduct a census, other methods were used to estimate population, and they produced an estimate that was about 1.5 million too high. So when they finally did hold a census and got a correct number, it appeared that the population declined. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/01/world/europe/census-shows-new-drop-in-germanys-population.html?_r=0
For Italy, here's a link to population figures, up to 2010: http://www.indexmundi.com/italy/population.html While there were a few years of close to zero growth back in the '80s and '90s (and one year of actual negative growth), the rate has increased in the last decade.
Same for Portugal: http://www.indexmundi.com/portugal/population.html
If I'm remembering my history correctly (can't find exact dates) it wasn't until the late '80s to '90s that birth control became legal in Italy & Portugal. Thes suggests that the decline was a temporary result of women being able to postpone having children for a few years.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany shows population peaked about 10 years ago. But isn't your conjecture these populations would grow unabated? Or more specifically why aren't the natural citizens having more children? How can you explain the drop in fertility rates? How do you explain more people over over 45 than under 45 in Germany?
(http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/germany-population-pyramid-2013.gif)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany shows population peaked about 10 years ago.
See above link about erroneously high population estimates, not (as far as I can see) taken into account in that article. Also note the graph in the sidebar, which clearly shows a growing population.
But isn't your conjecture these populations would grow unabated?
Over the long term, yes. That doesn't preclude short-term fluctuations, which happen for all sorts of reasons.
Or more specifically why aren't the natural citizens having more children? How can you explain the drop in fertility rates?
As with Italy and Portugal, short-term fluctuations owing to factors such as choosing to postpone having children.
How do you explain more people over over 45 than under 45 in Germany?
I'd guess a temporary fluctuation caused by post-WWII baby boom, combined with increased life span, and perhaps some emigration by younger people seeking opportunity elsewhere.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/World_population_growth_rate_1950%E2%80%932050.svg/640px-World_population_growth_rate_1950%E2%80%932050.svg.png)
The population growth rate has been falling since the mid-1960s.
Are you going to brush this off as temporary? How do you explain the decline in growth given the climb in wealth? Given your logic shouldn't a Germanic baby-boom create an even bigger baby-boom especially with income per capita at all time highs? Do you have any evidence that the decline in world fertility is temporary?
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Here is my evidence no one reads (Matchewed's source is counter to his point) : The link to list of countries by carbon dioxide emissions shows that in 2012 the US produced less emissions than in 2008, yet there are more people in the USA. A better list would be emissions per capita and the USA is an excellent example to my point:
(http://www.aei-ideas.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/C02-600x410.jpg)
Then by your theory all these environmental controls would mean that we produce less pollution.
FACT: the USA produces less C02 emissions than 4 years ago (with higher population today) and per capita less emissions than in 1965.
Why is my source counter to my point? My point is affluence does not affect whether a country is a large producer of pollution. Why would per capita be a better measurement than actual pollution production? It doesn't make it any less and just gives a ratio based on population, that ratio doesn't change the actual amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. Yay us we release less than four years ago... so what? You keep asserting that affluence will fix everything when affluence is actually one of the key problems. Making more people more affluent will mean more production and fuel consumption which releases more pollution regardless of actual population. As James pointed out, with a current consumption that is unsustainable why would adding more people to that consumption level suddenly become sustainable?
How does emissions per capita suddenly make my point demonstrably false? The more affluent countries produced more CO2 per capita according to your second post which is actually supportive of my argument and not supporting yours. Affluence will generate more people who have unsustainable consumption habits.
And also I have to mention again that population growth does not equal population number, slow growth is still growth. Especially with better medicine and increasing longevity, populations numbers will still continue to rise with low growth.
Your hypothesis that if everyone becomes affluent then all the threats from overpopulation disappear because the population will go down is short sighted...
It's also not supported by evidence. Affluence may well cause birth rates to go down, but AFAIK there's no affluent country other than Japan in which the population is declining. Those that do show declines are mostly the former Warsaw Pact countries, which experienced a period of high education combined with local poverty.
It's ok to learn something new, things change in the world, but I think they are changing for the better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline#Decline_by_nation_or_territory
Germany, Italy, Portugal...I guess Japan isn't good enough for the list..
But hey, now you know!
Umm... you do realize what you linked as for the countries with populations in decline only account for 8.64% of the entire world population? All the countries listed add up to 616 million people; not a good representation of a decline in global population. But I'm sure that they may have missed some countries given that they went so far as to mention the well known country of Niue. Also population declines are as affected by emigration and other aforementioned short term causes rather than trying to determine some long term trend given a 10 year track record.
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The population growth rate has been falling since the mid-1960s.
(Sigh) Yet another one of those mostly-invisible graphs. Honestly, how can you expect me to take you seriously, when you (or your sources) can't even be bothered to produce portable, legible graphs? (end rant)
So what if the growth rate has been decreasing a bit? It's still way over there in positive territory, isn't it? Let me know when/if it ever becomes sufficiently negative for long enough to produce meaningful levels, or when any locality reduces population to sustainable levels.
Do you have any evidence that the decline in world fertility is temporary?
Do you have any evidence that it's not, or that it ever has or ever will decline enough to produce meaningful declines? All you have is speculation based on an extrapolation of a short-term trend.
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James, it's freaking me out you can't see the axis on these beautiful graphs, can you not see the years as the control and population growth rate as dependent? I hope there is isn't a technical problem that prevents others from seeing it also.
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James, it's freaking me out you can't see the axis on these beautiful graphs, can you not see the years as the control and population growth rate as dependent? I hope there is isn't a technical problem that prevents others from seeing it also.
There is a technical problem, founded in the ignorance/shortsightedness of Microsoft and whoever created the graphs. A lot of graphics file formats have a background 'color' attribute. Whoever created the graphs used that attribute instead of specifying a background color, but went ahead and specified label/text as black.
Now at some point in the development of Windoze/IE, Microsoft made the decision that their default color scheme was going to be black text on a white background. (Despite the fact that white or amber on black is easier to read & causes less eyestrain.) So the graph creators are shortsightedly assuming that everyone is going to view their creation on a white background tike theirs, oblivious to the fact that there are people who've chosen a more pleasant color scheme.
You can see this if you save that last graph to a file, and view it with tools like ImageMagick or GIMP. The background attribute will show up as a pattern of grey squares. And you'll note that the Y axis shows that a) the growth rate is still positive, and remains positive even when extrapolated out to 2050; and b) the extreme variation fom the beginning to say 1985 doesn't at all support an extrapolation from the last couple of decades tou to an indefinite future.
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Hopefully this link is easily viewable for everyone, google is doing amazing things I just found out about this public data visualization they provide, (hit the little play button near the origin):
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&hl=en&dl=en&idim=country:IND:CHN:PAK#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_s=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_x=ny_gdp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=country:IND:PAK&ifdim=country:region:SAS&pit=1324022400000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&hl=en&dl=en&idim=country:IND:CHN:PAK#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_s=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_x=ny_gdp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=country:IND:PAK&ifdim=country:region:SAS&pit=1324022400000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
Yes total world population is still growing, but you can offer no explanation why that has slowed for the past 40 years other than it's temporary?
Here's a basic trendline in excel from this data: y = -1.05ln(x) + 12.102
R² = 0.5905
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/correlation.aspx?v1=31&v2=67&y=2003&l=en (http://www.indexmundi.com/g/correlation.aspx?v1=31&v2=67&y=2003&l=en)
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Hopefully this link is easily viewable for everyone, google is doing amazing things I just found out about this public data visualization they provide, (hit the little play button near the origin):
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&hl=en&dl=en&idim=country:IND:CHN:PAK#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_s=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_x=ny_gdp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=country:IND:PAK&ifdim=country:region:SAS&pit=1324022400000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&hl=en&dl=en&idim=country:IND:CHN:PAK#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_s=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_x=ny_gdp_pcap_pp_cd&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=country:IND:PAK&ifdim=country:region:SAS&pit=1324022400000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
Yes total world population is still growing, but you can offer no explanation why that has slowed for the past 40 years other than it's temporary?
Here's a basic trendline in excel from this data: y = -1.05ln(x) + 12.102
R² = 0.5905
http://www.indexmundi.com/g/correlation.aspx?v1=31&v2=67&y=2003&l=en (http://www.indexmundi.com/g/correlation.aspx?v1=31&v2=67&y=2003&l=en)
But why does the slowdown matter when the population is still growing? When the basic question is "Is Overpopulation Really A Problem?" Your answer being no because the growth is slowing doesn't make much sense in light of the fact that regardless of the growth rate slowing the population is still growing and that is a problem give our consumption driven cultures throughout the world.
Why do we need to even investigate why they are slowing down in growth rate? What does that have to do with the core question?
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Pop Growth slowing in the face of exponential increases of resources per capita is clearly contrary to Malthusian conjecture. That data was more towards James, I hope he can accept the evidence.
Basically my argument is wealth provides more options, it allows us to invest in technologies that are more efficient that yes will eventually lead to less consumption, but also there will be less people in the future consuming so both factors will work to bring down total consumption. Look at MMM, he's voluntarily choosing to consume less because his needs are met, he's at maximum consumption. Now he can enjoy family and friends all day and help educate the rest of the world to follow his example, I think more will follow his lead in the future when everyone's basic needs will be met.
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Pop Growth slowing in the face of exponential increases of resources per capita is clearly contrary to Malthusian conjecture. That data was more towards James, I hope he can accept the evidence.
Basically my argument is wealth provides more options, it allows us to invest in technologies that are more efficient that yes will eventually lead to less consumption, but also there will be less people in the future consuming so both factors will work to bring down total consumption. Look at MMM, he's voluntarily choosing to consume less because his needs are met, he's at maximum consumption. Now he can enjoy family and friends all day and help educate the rest of the world to follow his example, I think more will follow his lead in the future when everyone's basic needs will be met.
Sure but you do have to understand that MMM and the rest of the forum participants, including myself, are outliers to the mainstream culture. That isn't to say that it's not possible for the culture to catch on but in the meantime some real damage is happening due to current population levels and the associated consumption culture. By far I'm not saying just throw your hands in the air and say whatever, but when the question is phrased as is it was in the OP then I think the clear answer is closer to yes but it is still an extremely complex situation not easily boiled down to yes and no, especially with only one narrow set of criteria such as population growth rates and a hope that anti-consumerism catches on.
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Pop Growth slowing in the face of exponential increases of resources per capita is clearly contrary to Malthusian conjecture. That data was more towards James, I hope he can accept the evidence.
I can accept evidence, if you'll provide it. So where exactly are these exponential increases in resources, especially the resources relevant to population growth, such as food supply and living space? And do look up the precise meaning of the word first.
The simple fact is that there have been only linear increases in food supply. Most of these increases are due to unsustainable practices, such as use of fossil fuels & synthetic fertilizers, conversion of wild lands to agriculture, overfishing, &c, so at some not-too-distant date we can expect then to collapse.
As for living space, is it really necessary to point out that this is fixed, and that a large fraction of Earth's population already lives in conditions that would be considered intolerably crowded for livestock?
I'd also be interested in knowing how much of the slowing has been due to things like China's one child policy.
Finally, Malthus' theories say nothing about the about what the growth rate is, or is supposed to be. It's basically just math: any exponential process will eventually overtake any linear process, as long as the exponent is positive. So once again, where is the evidence that the population growth rate has ever been negative for an extended period?
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You're right, it is basic math, and when the 2nd derivative of an concave exponential function turns negative, it's no longer concave, and therefore not a positive exponential growth function. Boom exponent no longer positive, therefore:
WORLD POPULATION GROWTH IS NO LONGER EXPONENTIAL and hasn't been for 40 years.
And food production linear, that's a good one!
Regarding exponential resources, gee how can we have exponential growth in emissions without exponential growth in energy input??? We don't want to violate the laws of physics, but since were ignoring math I guess it doesn't matter..
Yes in sure all the people in Manila are just on the verge of death right now living in the densest city on earth..oh wait the GDP per capita is $23k, more than 2.3x greater the world average. Gee I guess cities aren't all that bad (I bet you live in one).
I'm sorry you believe all the lies that we're running out of room, but with your theory you should really go long on Japanese real estate!
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It's not that we're running out of room, room we have. We're running out of resources.
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Pop Growth slowing in the face of exponential increases of resources per capita is clearly contrary to Malthusian conjecture.
Your quote led me to read a couple wikipedia pages on Malthus. One on Malthus -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthus -- and one on Malthusian Catastrophe -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe. Two main ideas come to mind.
First, this quote from Wikipedia: "In later editions of his essay, Malthus clarified his view that if society relied on human misery to limit population growth, then sources of misery (e.g., hunger, disease, and war) would inevitably afflict society, as would volatile economic cycles. On the other hand, "preventive checks" to population that limited birthrates, such as later marriages, could ensure a higher standard of living for all, while also increasing economic stability." seems consistent with history. Places with lower population growth have higher standards of living. Other places have more hunger, disease, and war.
Those pages seem to say he predicted what could happen but that there was complexity to that. If humans actively slowed their population growth a catastrophe could be averted. He didn't seem to say it was inevitable. If we didn't, we'd see hunger, disease, and war, which our world seems to have more of where population growth is highest.
Second, my understanding of science is that we use data to refine ideas. We don't say Newton was wrong and reject him because he didn't account for, say, relativity and quantum mechanics. We look at his ideas as useful approximations that we've refined.
You seem to be rejecting everything about one aspect of his predictions without including two main issues:
- His predictions were more nuanced than you allow for. Collapse was one outcome, but not the only one
- Science has refined ideas since then and we have reacted to his ideas
I haven't read his original essays. Maybe you have and know better. But I'm less interested in fixed ideas and black and white evaluation of them than in seeing how those ideas have evolved and how we've used them. In other words, he could have been basically right given the data at the time, then refinements based on his general idea and new data could have both changed human behavior and kept his basic idea intact. I find the sections of the pages I mentioned covering refinements to his ideas compelling. You seem to outright reject his ideas and therefore miss these refinements. Maybe I'm misreading you?
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It's not that we're running out of room, room we have. We're running out of resources.
We're becoming more efficient with the resources and soon there will be less people and total resource consumption will fall. Luckily economics teaches that action reveals preference and that you probably have not moved all your investments to natural resources/commodities and sold your house in the city to live on large acreage to farm.
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Josh, malthus may have been correct if applying his system to animals who are at the mercy of their environs, but his error was humans are clearly not. Plus he got it backwards, it's a higher standard of living that causes reduced population growth, not the other way around. War and famine "paradoxically" cause a higher fertility rate.
Anyone can collect data for a short time and draw a line and make up an explanation, but that explanation can be wrong if they didn't consider additional factors. This is the main argument James is using:
"That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."
Which is wrong.
1. Human population slows and declines with higher "subsistence."
2. Human population hasn't been repressed by "misery and vice" as measured by the lowest poverty rates in recorded history.
3. Food is created to meet demand, not as much can be possibly created.
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It's not that we're running out of room, room we have. We're running out of resources.
We're becoming more efficient with the resources and soon there will be less people and total resource consumption will fall. Luckily economics teaches that action reveals preference and that you probably have not moved all your investments to natural resources/commodities and sold your house in the city to live on large acreage to farm.
Define becoming more efficient with resources as that is a rather broad statement that doesn't really mean much. Plus as affluence grows resource consumption increases. So your original premise of affluence reducing population while possibly true doesn't mean that resource consumption will fall but that it will increase as more people demand and have the means to live an industrialized lifestyle.
*Edit for some small amount of clarity and my poor grammar*
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Josh, malthus may have been correct if applying his system to animals who are at the mercy of their environs, but his error was humans are clearly not. Plus he got it backwards, it's a higher standard of living that causes reduced population growth, not the other way around. War and famine "paradoxically" cause a higher fertility rate.
Anyone can collect data for a short time and draw a line and make up an explanation, but that explanation can be wrong if they didn't consider additional factors. This is the main argument James is using:
"That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase, and That the superior power of population is repressed, and the actual population kept equal to the means of subsistence, by misery and vice."
Which is wrong.
1. Human population slows and declines with higher "subsistence."
2. Human population hasn't been repressed by "misery and vice" as measured by the lowest poverty rates in recorded history.
3. Food is created to meet demand, not as much can be possibly created.
When you say "a higher standard of living that causes reduced population growth, not the other way around," I can see some cases of correlation, but also many cases of non-correlation. You go further, to say one causes the other. I still believe my first statement in this thread that we don't know, but I always want to learn more. How can you be so sure about that causality?
Also, I've been under the impression that human population growth has been increasing exponentially for thousands of years. I looked up Population Growth in Wikipedia -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth -- and saw a graph of human population over 12,000 years -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_%28lin-log_scale%29.png. It showed faster growth over the past few centuries than ever before. Even if population is leveling off for fifty years, couldn't you be doing what you said: "Anyone can collect data for a short time and draw a line and make up an explanation, but that explanation can be wrong if they didn't consider additional factors."? Fifty years seems pretty short compared to thousands.
Is it possible you're not considering additional factors? Again, I don't know all the factors and maybe you've caught them all. It just looks like the graph you posted, showing "The population growth rate has been falling since the mid-1960s" consists of data collected for a short time. There were other periods of decline followed by growth before over the past thousands of years.
I've heard other explanations that could explain the data -- for example, that we have been growing based on availability of energy with high return, mainly fossil fuels. I find that explanation plausible too. It has different predictions for the future than yours, guiding behavior for me so knowing they're wrong would matter to me. Are you familiar with models like that? Are they wrong?
I don't know one way or the other. Your statement of causality combined with data on population rate decline since the sixties sounds plausible if you can prove causality and that population growth rate of the past few decades will endure, against the trend of recent centuries and millenia. I hope your view is right. If it is I would change how I live my life. While plausible, I don't find it compelling, especially in light of your own comments, which is why I'd love to find evidence ruling out other views.
Another question comes to mind. Is it possible that we are over the carrying capacity of the planet for essential things like clean water, fish, clean air, and oil, but since we have reserves we haven't noticed that we're using the reserves faster than we can replace them?
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You're right, it is basic math, and when the 2nd derivative of an concave exponential function turns negative, it's no longer concave, and therefore not a positive exponential growth function. Boom exponent no longer positive, therefore:
WORLD POPULATION GROWTH IS NO LONGER EXPONENTIAL and hasn't been for 40 years.
Sorry, but it is. Population growth (or decline) is fundamentally an exponential function. Wikipedia has a good explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth
What you are doing is to taking a piecewise linear approximation to a short portion of an exponential, and extrapolating.
And food production linear, that's a good one!
Yes, it is. Would you care to try to explain why you think it's not?
Regarding exponential resources, gee how can we have exponential growth in emissions without exponential growth in energy input???
Who is claiming that we have either?
But in principle it would be easy to have both, for a comparatively short period. If you have a population that's growing exponextially, each individual extracts (or has extracted on their behalf) X amount of fossil fuel, which is burned with unchanging technology, then there will obviously be exponential growth in both energy & emissions [until the supply of fossil fuel runs out[/u].
Gee I guess cities aren't all that bad (I bet you live in one).
You lose :-)
I'm sorry you believe all the lies that we're running out of room, but with your theory you should really go long on Japanese real estate!
I'm sorry, but I'm only believing what I see with my own eyes. Even here in the western US, which is far from being the most densely populated place in the world, it's becoming intolerably crowded.
Now I'll grant that some of this is subjective: if you think it's ok for people to live in conditions that would have animal rights activists screaming about cruelty if battery chickens were kept that way, then sure, there's plenty of room. Just stack the cages higher: http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/11/20/i-wish-these-buildings-were-photoshopped-but-theyre-not/
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You're right, it is basic math, and when the 2nd derivative of an concave exponential function turns negative, it's no longer concave, and therefore not a positive exponential growth function. Boom exponent no longer positive, therefore:
WORLD POPULATION GROWTH IS NO LONGER (POSITIVE) EXPONENTIAL and hasn't been for 40 years.
Sorry, but it is. Population growth (or decline) is fundamentally an exponential function. Wikipedia has a good explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth
What you are doing is to taking a piecewise linear approximation to a short portion of an exponential, and extrapolating.
Since you'd like to equivocate, I will try and be more precise, and thank you for conceding that population is fundamentally an exponential function, and therefore if the 2nd derivative of an exponential function is negative, it is not a positive exponential function, as population is currently increasing at a decreasing rate. (The only linear part of this discussion is the tangent line to total population where future points are BELOW it.)
And food production linear, that's a good one!
Yes, it is. Would you care to try to explain why you think it's not?
3. Food is created to meet demand, not as much can be possibly created. Demand is exponential right? Therefore so is food unless we were seeing an increase of poverty and hunger-related deaths (which we see the opposite, see prior links). Here's a google link to empirical data.
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&met_y=ag_lnd_crel_ha&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=agricultural_production_index&fdim_y=prodution_index_category:2&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&ifdim=region&tdim=true&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&met_y=ag_lnd_crel_ha&hl=en&dl=en#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=agricultural_production_index&fdim_y=prodution_index_category:2&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&ifdim=region&tdim=true&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
What evidence do you have that it is linear?
Regarding exponential resources, gee how can we have exponential growth in emissions without exponential growth in energy input???
Who is claiming that we have either?
I am by pointing out that yes we do have exponential increases in "resources, especially the resources relevant to population growth, such as food supply and living space"
But in principle it would be easy to have both, for a comparatively short period. If you have a population that's growing exponextially, each individual extracts (or has extracted on their behalf) X amount of fossil fuel, which is burned with unchanging technology, then there will obviously be exponential growth in both energy & emissions [until the supply of fossil fuel runs out[/u].
Thank you for seeing my point, but of course you'll dismiss it as temporary that we can meet the current needs of the world.
Gee I guess cities aren't all that bad (I bet you live in one).
You lose :-)
I'm sorry you believe all the lies that we're running out of room, but with your theory you should really go long on Japanese real estate!
I'm sorry, but I'm only believing what I see with my own eyes. Even here in the western US, which is far from being the most densely populated place in the world, it's becoming intolerably crowded.
Now I'll grant that some of this is subjective: if you think it's ok for people to live in conditions that would have animal rights activists screaming about cruelty if battery chickens were kept that way, then sure, there's plenty of room. Just stack the cages higher: http://www.messynessychic.com/2013/11/20/i-wish-these-buildings-were-photoshopped-but-theyre-not/
What is objective is that people that have moved to the cities, almost every measure of "conditions" per capita such as food, education, wealth, longevity, health, womens rights, etc are improved.
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It's not that we're running out of room, room we have. We're running out of resources.
We're becoming more efficient with the resources and soon there will be less people and total resource consumption will fall. Luckily economics teaches that action reveals preference and that you probably have not moved all your investments to natural resources/commodities and sold your house in the city to live on large acreage to farm.
Define becoming more efficient with resources as that is a rather broad statement that doesn't really mean much. Plus as affluence grows resource consumption increases. So your original premise of affluence reducing population while possibly true doesn't mean that resource consumption will fall but that it will increase as more people demand and have the means to live an industrialized lifestyle.
*Edit for some small amount of clarity and my poor grammar*
We are seeing it in the USA where emissions per capita have been decreasing for the past 40 years, therefore if total "capita" decreases I infer decreases in resource consumption as well.
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_gdp_puse_ko_pp&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:BMU:CAN:USA:CHN&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_gdp_puse_ko_pp&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:BMU:CAN:USA:CHN&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
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When you say "a higher standard of living that causes reduced population growth, not the other way around," I can see some cases of correlation, but also many cases of non-correlation. You go further, to say one causes the other. I still believe my first statement in this thread that we don't know, but I always want to learn more. How can you be so sure about that causality?
Children are economically a substitute good for retirement savings. As retirement security increases, fertility rate decreases. retirement security is basically synonymous with GDP per capita. Empirically fertility falls to sub-replacement rate around $11,000/capita. (2003 $$)
Also, I've been under the impression that human population growth has been increasing exponentially for thousands of years. I looked up Population Growth in Wikipedia -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth -- and saw a graph of human population over 12,000 years -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_growth_%28lin-log_scale%29.png. It showed faster growth over the past few centuries than ever before. Even if population is leveling off for fifty years, couldn't you be doing what you said: "Anyone can collect data for a short time and draw a line and make up an explanation, but that explanation can be wrong if they didn't consider additional factors."? Fifty years seems pretty short compared to thousands.
Is it possible you're not considering additional factors? Again, I don't know all the factors and maybe you've caught them all. It just looks like the graph you posted, showing "The population growth rate has been falling since the mid-1960s" consists of data collected for a short time. There were other periods of decline followed by growth before over the past thousands of years.
I've heard other explanations that could explain the data -- for example, that we have been growing based on availability of energy with high return, mainly fossil fuels. I find that explanation plausible too. It has different predictions for the future than yours, guiding behavior for me so knowing they're wrong would matter to me. Are you familiar with models like that? Are they wrong?
I don't know one way or the other. Your statement of causality combined with data on population rate decline since the sixties sounds plausible if you can prove causality and that population growth rate of the past few decades will endure, against the trend of recent centuries and millenia.
Yes see causation above.
I hope your view is right. If it is I would change how I live my life. While plausible, I don't find it compelling, especially in light of your own comments, which is why I'd love to find evidence ruling out other views.
Another question comes to mind. Is it possible that we are over the carrying capacity of the planet for essential things like clean water, fish, clean air, and oil, but since we have reserves we haven't noticed that we're using the reserves faster than we can replace them?
Really? What would you do differently? I honestly haven't thought much about how I would do things differently now that I'm aware of peak population. Well I guess I'm more comfortable investing for the long term because I think things will be ok.
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It's not that we're running out of room, room we have. We're running out of resources.
We're becoming more efficient with the resources and soon there will be less people and total resource consumption will fall. Luckily economics teaches that action reveals preference and that you probably have not moved all your investments to natural resources/commodities and sold your house in the city to live on large acreage to farm.
Define becoming more efficient with resources as that is a rather broad statement that doesn't really mean much. Plus as affluence grows resource consumption increases. So your original premise of affluence reducing population while possibly true doesn't mean that resource consumption will fall but that it will increase as more people demand and have the means to live an industrialized lifestyle.
*Edit for some small amount of clarity and my poor grammar*
We are seeing it in the USA where emissions per capita have been decreasing for the past 40 years, therefore if total "capita" decreases I infer decreases in resource consumption as well.
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_gdp_puse_ko_pp&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:BMU:CAN:USA:CHN&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_gdp_puse_ko_pp&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:BMU:CAN:USA:CHN&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
1st you're linking gross domestic product per energy use, where is the per capita in that?
But since you're a fan of these visualizations - more agricultural land usage in nearly all regions since the 60's. (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_y=ag_lnd_agri_k2&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_x=ag_lnd_agri_k2&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=region:EAP:ECA:LAC:MNA:NAC:SAS:SSA&ifdim=region&pit=1324098000000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
Or CO2 per capita over time (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=en_atm_co2e_pc&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=region:EAP:ECA:LAC:MNA:NAC:SAS:SSA&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false) (I think that's the one you wanted). I'm pretty sure that 17 metric tons per capita is not what we want the rest of the world to get to. Also a 3.5 metric ton reduction per person in the US is balanced by a .6 increase globally. Since this is a per capita measurement we can do some easy math.
US population 1971 - 206,827,000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States)
US per Capita CO2 emissions 1971 - 20.98 metric tons (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=en_atm_co2e_pc&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=region:EAP:ECA:LAC:MNA:NAC:SAS:SSA&idim=country:USA&ifdim=region&tdim=true&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
Total CO2 emissions 1971 - 4,339,230,460
US population 2009 - 307,007,000 (same source as above)
US per Capita CO2 emissions 2009 - 17.28 (same source as above)
Total CO2 emissions 2009 - 5,305,080,960
Not exactly a good trend to increase our emissions over that same 40 year period. You may infer what you like but the data doesn't suggest a decline in consumption or pollution production.
Want to see what the same analysis looks like globally?
1970 - Population - 3,711,961,664 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates)
1970 - CO2 Emissions - 4.07 Metric Tons (same source as other CO2 emissions)
Total 1970 Emissions - 15,107,683,972.48
2009 - Population - 6,755,987,239
2009 - CO2 Emissions - 4.71 Metric Tons
Total 2009 Emissions - 31,820,699,895.69
Those emissions doubled globally... Still want to make a claim that resource consumption is dropping? We can run these numbers for all sorts of things, cereal production, water pollution production, energy consumption...etc. It'll paint the same picture. Regardless of what you infer the actual scenario is getting worse not getting better because you used a per capita rather than looking at actual usage.
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1st you're linking gross domestic product per energy use, where is the per capita in that?
Shows world " becoming more efficient with resources" (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_gdp_puse_ko_pp&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:BMU:CAN:USA:CHN&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
But since you're a fan of these visualizations - more agricultural land usage in nearly all regions since the 60's. (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_y=ag_lnd_agri_k2&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_x=ag_lnd_agri_k2&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=region:EAP:ECA:LAC:MNA:NAC:SAS:SSA&ifdim=region&pit=1324098000000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
Yes agricultural land usage decreased over time in North America, yet we're still exporting food though population has increased during the same time period...which can only imply we're more efficient with our land, just as we're more efficient with our energy use.
Those emissions doubled globally... Still want to make a claim that resource consumption is dropping? Yes in the United States and other high wealth countries We can run these numbers for all sorts of things, cereal production, water pollution production, energy consumption...etc. It'll paint the same picture. Regardless of what you infer the actual scenario is getting worse not getting better because you used a per capita rather than looking at actual usage.
Pollution/consumption/emissions are getting better in the USA and other high wealth countries. (Real total decreases) It's the high GDP/capita (wealth) that helps us make things better. Have things been getting worse the past 40 years on this planet? No. I think they will continue to improve for the next 40 years as well for my above mentioned reasons.
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1st you're linking gross domestic product per energy use, where is the per capita in that?
Shows world " becoming more efficient with resources" (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_gdp_puse_ko_pp&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country&idim=country:BMU:CAN:USA:CHN&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
Still doesn't show per capita which was your initial point. But whatever, you now want to make a point that we're more efficient with resources, I agree we are, but it isn't enough because it's not just efficiency here, it's actual amounts per year which are increasing even in the US (see my previous post).
But since you're a fan of these visualizations - more agricultural land usage in nearly all regions since the 60's. (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_y=ag_lnd_agri_k2&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_x=ag_lnd_agri_k2&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&idim=region:EAP:ECA:LAC:MNA:NAC:SAS:SSA&ifdim=region&pit=1324098000000&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
Yes agricultural land usage decreased over time in North America, yet we're still exporting food though population has increased during the same time period...which can only imply we're more efficient with our land, just as we're more efficient with our energy use.
Efficiency is great, but I think you're leaning on it too heavily to carry the weight of over consumption especially in the realm of finite resources. There will be an efficiency cap on those specifically fossil fuel based consumption.
Those emissions doubled globally... Still want to make a claim that resource consumption is dropping? Yes in the United States and other high wealth countries We can run these numbers for all sorts of things, cereal production, water pollution production, energy consumption...etc. It'll paint the same picture. Regardless of what you infer the actual scenario is getting worse not getting better because you used a per capita rather than looking at actual usage.
Pollution/consumption/emissions are getting better in the USA and other high wealth countries. (Real total decreases) It's the high GDP/capita (wealth) that helps us make things better. Have things been getting worse the past 40 years on this planet? No. I think they will continue to improve for the next 40 years as well for my above mentioned reasons.
But the emissions rose in the United States. The actual number on it increased. Math in my previous post.
We're also consuming more energy (source)- (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&hl=en&dl=en&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=eg_use_pcap_kg_oe&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:USA&idim=region:EAP:ECA:LAC:MNA:NAC:SAS:SSA&ifdim=region&hl=en_US&dl=en&ind=false)
US energy consumption 1971 per capita - 7,644 kg of oil
US energy consumption 2010 per capita - 7,165 kg of oil
Sure the individual consumption has dropped but given our positive growth rate in this country since 1971 we've actually consumed more energy - 1971 total energy consumption was the equivalent of 1,580,985,588,000, that's 1.6 trillion kg of oil. Seems like a huge amount, dwarfed by the 2010 energy consumption equivalent to 2,216,349,450,000, 2.2 trillion kg of oil.
So while per capita is decreasing and we can pat ourselves on the backs our annual actual consumption of energy as a whole country and annual actual CO2 emissions are increasing.
So not real total decreases, just per capita decreases while the actual populations have gotten larger resulting in real total increases. So your claim that the US is consuming less is not accurate at all. We're consuming more as a country, less per individual sure but that doesn't matter when the actual amount is still increasing.
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Your own source earlier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions) shows less total USA emissions today than in 2008. See EPA also:
(http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/images/ghgemissions/USCO2EmissionsTimeSeries.png)
My main point is that wealthier countries (not everyone) have stronger environmental protections and are able to have a big impact on reducing per capita energy use, and tied with slowing and shrinking populations do reduce their total CO2 emissions. I haven't been able to find an approximate value for what specifically that level of GDP/capital is when we start to see the benefits, but we're past it in the US and other wealthy countries. My point is they are an example of where the rest of the world will be as GDP/capita rises.
My claim is quite accurate for the past 4 years. Its only in wealthy countries where GDP/capita can increase yet emissions can decrease or at least stay flat. The sky is not falling.
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Your own source earlier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions) shows less total USA emissions today than in 2008. See EPA also:
(http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/images/ghgemissions/USCO2EmissionsTimeSeries.png)
My main point is that wealthier countries (not everyone) have stronger environmental protections and are able to have a big impact on reducing per capita energy use, and tied with slowing and shrinking populations do reduce their total CO2 emissions. I haven't been able to find an approximate value for what specifically that level of GDP/capital is when we start to see the benefits, but we're past it in the US and other wealthy countries. My point is they are an example of where the rest of the world will be as GDP/capita rises.
My claim is quite accurate for the past 4 years. Its only in wealthy countries where GDP/capita can increase yet emissions can decrease or at least stay flat. The sky is not falling.
So given a five or four year time frame we should be celebrating that we're in the clear regarding CO2 emissions? That is too narrow of a time frame to start popping the champagne.
Your main point has nothing supporting it. You claim that greater wealth means less total CO2 emissions. The US is the wealthiest nation on earth and has terrible CO2 emissions (we're #2), yet you claim that there is a particular level of GDP/capital (ratio? what is this even?) where we see a benefit (what benefit?) and that we're past if for the US. When did we pass this magical number? And what does this number have to do with actual emissions?
How does more affluence magically lower CO2 emissions? Because whatever way it does doesn't seem to be happening in the US, Germany, the UK, South Korea, or Japan. All five countries are considered quite affluent yet are in the top 10 of CO2 emissions. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co2_emissions_by_country) If we rely on the trend we see give our current affluent countries as an example all we can look forward to is even more CO2 emissions as those countries rise to our level of consumption and pollution.
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So given a five or four year time frame we should be celebrating that we're in the clear regarding CO2 emissions? That is too narrow of a time frame to start popping the champagne.
I agree, but given all the hysteria about emissions it's pretty amazing how much emissions per capita has dropped and that they have been flat and falling in the us for about 10 years now.
Your main point has nothing supporting it. You claim that greater wealth means less total CO2 emissions. Yes see graph above showing less total CO2 emissions and remember how much more people and wealth have grown in the past 10 years.
The US is the wealthiest nation on earth and has terrible CO2 emissions (we're #2), yet you claim that there is a particular level of GDP/capital (ratio? what is this even?) (it means GDP per capita.)
where we see a benefit (what benefit?) (reduced emissions per capita) and that we're past if for the US. (Yes see the graph on page 2 of USA emissions per capita) When did we pass this magical number? (early 1970s per the graph, so whatever GDP per capita was might be a start for that approximate $$ value) And what does this number have to do with actual emissions? (It's the average wealth amount apparently necessary to motivate countries to enact reductions in emissions per capita)
How does more affluence magically lower CO2 emissions? (countries can afford to invest in more efficient technologies) Because whatever way it does doesn't seem to be happening in the US(yes it is, literally look to the above graph), Germany, the UK, South Korea, or Japan. All five countries are considered quite affluent yet are in the top 10 of CO2 emissions. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co2_emissions_by_country) (I'll try and research if those countries have surpassed 1970s GDP per capita in real dollars) If we rely on the trend we see give our current affluent countries as an example all we can look forward to is even more CO2 emissions as those countries rise to our level of consumption and pollution.
It's a synonymous economic phenomenon with the population one, countries total pollution will continue to rise until they hit their own green wealth number that motivates them to start being more efficient, which is hypothesize will also be a higher number than the level of wealth number that reduces fertility to subreplacement levels.
Now that I think about it consumption might be more constrained by marginal utility individually, see this whole MMM site for example where people are just sated. Would you say someone would just keep eating ice cream until they exploded? No, they would eat their fill and be done. Due to the law of marginal utility I don't believe human consumption of food, energy, or making babies is unconstrained.
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But I've already proven that reduced emissions per capita has no relation to actual emissions produced. The US has only increased actual emissions since 1970.
US population 1971 - 206,827,000
US per Capita CO2 emissions 1971 - 20.98 metric tons
Total CO2 emissions 1971 - 4,339,230,460
US population 2009 - 307,007,000 (same source as above)
US per Capita CO2 emissions 2009 - 17.28 (same source as above)
Total CO2 emissions 2009 - 5,305,080,960
Given that CO2 emissions per capita does not reflect an actual reduction in emissions why isn't the magic number working? The US emitting 1 billion more metric tons of CO2 into atmosphere now than in 1971, that is not a reduction.
I think you keep saying that emissions per capita is dropping, and I agree, your graph reflects that, but how does that matter given that the whole amount increased? When will we have an actual reduction lower than 1971?
Marginal utility is a great concept when applied to individuals, it's a microeconomic concept. And clearly doesn't apply to macroeconomic discussions because of the simple fact that we already have too many people for our consumption rates to be maintained.
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Is it possible you're not considering additional factors? Again, I don't know all the factors and maybe you've caught them all. It just looks like the graph you posted, showing "The population growth rate has been falling since the mid-1960s" consists of data collected for a short time. There were other periods of decline followed by growth before over the past thousands of years.
One big factor that actually happened in the mid-60, which I haven't heard anyone in this thread talk about, was that in the 1960s for basically the first time in human history, women got some kind of control over this reproductive biology. For the first time, they were free to pursue things besides babies in large numbers.
Fertility rates decline demonstrably as women gain economic power, education, and freedom -- including reproductive freedom. We see this happening all over the world, only increasing over time, and it's a true sea change from how we've done things for the last 10,000 years.
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When you say "a higher standard of living that causes reduced population growth, not the other way around," I can see some cases of correlation, but also many cases of non-correlation. You go further, to say one causes the other. I still believe my first statement in this thread that we don't know, but I always want to learn more. How can you be so sure about that causality?
Children are economically a substitute good for retirement savings. As retirement security increases, fertility rate decreases. retirement security is basically synonymous with GDP per capita. Empirically fertility falls to sub-replacement rate around $11,000/capita. (2003 $$)
If that is your threshold for causality, I find it hard to find your posts credible. Continuing with "Yes see causation above," implies you haven't critically looked at your own views. Your response led me to review your posts in this thread. They reinforce my earlier statement that "Anyone who tries to tell you a definitive answer almost certainly has an agenda beyond mere accuracy.', from your first post, confusing opinion and belief with fact and misinterpreting marginally relevant sources:
No there is not overpopulation. Capitalism and freedom have brough us to where we are today with all the amazing wealth we have to enjoy an MMM / FIRE lifestyle for the common man. We are approachingt he age of post-scarcity. The biggest threat to humanity's survival is the state. Maybe cylons one day.. Human population will peak in the next 30 years and then decline, many countries are already facing decline and due to increased world trade has rapidly decreased poverty and worldwide poverty could be eliminated in that time frame: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/09/these-three-charts-show-how-the-world-could-end-extreme-poverty-by-2030/ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/09/these-three-charts-show-how-the-world-could-end-extreme-poverty-by-2030/)
The overpopulation myth is just another scare tactic (though MMM continually reminds us to reject fear) to justify additional growth of the state at the expense of the people. One if the biggest reasons people have to keep working is the theft from their paychecks.
I read MMM because of the hope of his message and the strength of his example, I am undeterred by his ignorance in this subject.
through dismissive, emotional comments like "Enhance your calm bro-".
Everyone is free to their beliefs and I support you sharing them, but I'm here for rational discussion. Good day.
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Children are economically a substitute good for retirement savings. As retirement security increases, fertility rate decreases. retirement security is basically synonymous with GDP per capita. Empirically fertility falls to sub-replacement rate around $11,000/capita. (2003 $$)
If that is your threshold for causality, I find it hard to find your posts credible. Continuing with "Yes see causation above," implies you haven't critically looked at your own views. Your response led me to review your posts in this thread. They reinforce my earlier statement that "Anyone who tries to tell you a definitive answer almost certainly has an agenda beyond mere accuracy.', from your first post, confusing opinion and belief with fact and misinterpreting marginally relevant sources:
I am honestly sorry to disappoint you Josh, I have been posting relevant statistics for days now trying to answer questions so I thought we were having a rational discussion for the most part. I guess I'm confused by the threshold for causation, do you disagree with the reasons for declines in fertility or you think there is lack of evidence for the reason? I think the 3 pages of questions and my answers had been a pretty good critique of my views here...
through dismissive, emotional comments like "Enhance your calm bro-".
Everyone is free to their beliefs and I support you sharing them, but I'm here for rational discussion. Good day.
Is there something particularly irrational about stating a hypothesis and presenting empirical evidence to support it?
increases in per capita wealth leads to [increases in retirement savings] reduced fertility rates which leads to slowing of populations and eventually reduction when the fertility rate is below replacement. <- This is an "positive" statement meaning it's measurable and falsifiable, testable.
I've presented cross-sectional and time-series data to support this claim. Yes I earlier made normative (value-judgement) statements on what leads to increased per capita wealth, I don't have great data to back that up, but that's somewhat of a separate topic.
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Is it possible you're not considering additional factors? Again, I don't know all the factors and maybe you've caught them all. It just looks like the graph you posted, showing "The population growth rate has been falling since the mid-1960s" consists of data collected for a short time. There were other periods of decline followed by growth before over the past thousands of years.
One big factor that actually happened in the mid-60, which I haven't heard anyone in this thread talk about, was that in the 1960s for basically the first time in human history, women got some kind of control over this reproductive biology. For the first time, they were free to pursue things besides babies in large numbers.
Fertility rates decline demonstrably as women gain economic power, education, and freedom -- including reproductive freedom. We see this happening all over the world, only increasing over time, and it's a true sea change from how we've done things for the last 10,000 years.
Luckily counties without wide-spread use of contraceptives (because they are too expensive or illegal) also see the reduction in fertility rates when GDP/capita increases.
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I'm not as confident in the relationship between per capita wealth and total CO2 emissions as there's not a lot of countries that I think are rich enough to implement environmental controls and technology efficiencies, we only started in 1960s, and also food and energy are relatively cheap and getting cheaper so there's not a great incentive for most countries to become more efficient
Note the following is simple math that are approximations as I believe all these variables (total population, GDP growth, emissions/capita are not linear)
But I've already proven that reduced emissions per capita has no relation to actual emissions produced. The US has only increased actual emissions since 1970.
Here's the relation: Actual (total) emissions produced = [total emissions/total pop] * [total pop]
US population 1971 - 206,827,000
US per Capita CO2 emissions 1971 - 20.98 metric tons
Total CO2 emissions 1971 - 4,339,230,460
US population 2009 - 307,007,000 (same source as above) a 48.43% increase in 38 years
US per Capita CO2 emissions 2009 - 17.28 (same source as above)
Total CO2 emissions 2009 - 5,305,080,960 only a 22.25% increase in 38 years
(yay decreased Co2 emissions per capita in the past 38 years!)
Now today we see the correlation between population in the US and CO2 emissions is negative:
Wikipedia:
Total CO2 emissions 2008 - 5,461,014
Total CO2 emissions 2009 - 5,273,760
Total CO2 emissions 2010 - 5,492,170
Total CO2 emissions 2011 - 5,420,000
Total CO2 emissions 2012 - 5,190,000
5yr average 5,367,389
Total CO2 emissions in 2012/5yr average= -3.30%
US Population 2012 at 316,364,000/ US population 2008 at 304,375,000 = 3.94% increase implying a correlation of -0.84% decrease in total CO2 emissions for every 1% increase in population in the USA for the past 5 years. THINGS ARE CHANGING HERE.
But thats not the best predictor of reduced emissions, a better correlation is total GDP.
US GDP 2012 15.79 trillion\US GDP 2008 14.57 trillion = 8.37% increase implying an even greater magnitude of negative correlation of -3.30/8.37= -.39% for every 1% increase in GDP. But the real predictor is GDP/capita and total CO2 growth.
Given that CO2 emissions per capita does not reflect an actual reduction in emissions why isn't the magic number working? The US emitting 1 billion more metric tons of CO2 into atmosphere now than in 1971, that is not a reduction.
I think you keep saying that emissions per capita is dropping, and I agree, your graph reflects that, but how does that matter given that the whole amount increased? When will we have an actual reduction lower than 1971?
Im pointing out that it was 1971 we hit an inflection point where increases in GDP/capita wealth were leading to reduced growth in CO2 emissions per capita.
Total CO2 emissions 2012 - 5,190,000,000
Total CO2 emissions 1971 - 4,339,230,460
Looking for a 16.39% drop, so if our correlation with GDP is -.39% we would need about a 42% increase in total GDP if Co2 emissions per capita stayed constant, which since they are decreasing now I think it we will get there faster.
The better variable is real GDP/captia 2012 $49,594.19 / prior 5yr average ($48,198) = 1.03% real per capital GDP growth. -3.3/1.03 = -3.207% reduction in every 1% increase in GDP/captia
Therefore 16.39/3.207= 5.11% increase in real GDP/capita should correlate to a 16.39% drop in CO2 emissions bringing us back to 1971 level. I don't know how long it will take to increase real US GDP/capita by 5.11% to a level of $52,128. (especially because it only grew at 1.03% over a 5 year period, so at current growth rates it could take like 25 years! yikes!)
Marginal utility is a great concept when applied to individuals, it's a microeconomic concept. And clearly doesn't apply to macroeconomic discussions because of the simple fact that we already have too many people for our consumption rates to be maintained. <- opinion
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Actually our consumption rates and CO2 emissions and other pollution and environmental issues are not totally a matter of opinion. We're already generating climate change with our current consumption rates and the like. That isn't sustainable given the very real and very large impact we have. So I'm not so sure that's a matter of opinion rather than a consequence of thinking that it is solely a matter of opinion.
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My brain has exploded 3 times after reading all of this. Kudos to anyone else who has got this far.
I fear that by contributing to this thread I will get slapped down 15 times before I hit the ground so I will refrain.
I only hope that one day when the technology becomes available to solve the worlds ills that corporate greed does not get in the way. Sadly that horse may have already bolted.
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Marty, this place is a nest in a tree of trust and understanding. We can say anything here.
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Since you'd like to equivocate, I will try and be more precise, and thank you for conceding that population is fundamentally an exponential function, and therefore if the 2nd derivative of an exponential function is negative, it is not a positive exponential function, as population is currently increasing at a decreasing rate. (The only linear part of this discussion is the tangent line to total population where future points are BELOW it.)
Again, wrong. You are correct that population would be decreasing if the exponent was negative, but it is not. The only reason you have for thinking that it might become negative at some time in the future is extrapolation from a carefully-selected, short period. Choose a longer period - that is, include more data - and you get a much different result. You're simply selecting the data to get a result that conforms to what you've chosen to believe.
3. Food is created to meet demand, not as much can be possibly created. Demand is exponential right? Therefore so is food...
Again wrong. Food is not magically created to meet demand: production is determined by a host of variables such as the amount of land under cultivation, weather, soil fertility, the inherent (in)efficiency of photosynthesis, etc.
I'll have to make this brief, as thanks to a broken wrist I can only type one-handed, but I'll try for asimple explanation. First, you'll have to agree that the surface area of the Earth is fixed, hence there is an upper bound to the amount of agricultural land? Likewise, that the amount of solar energy is fixed? So any increase in the amount of farm land is linear, or actually asymptotic to the maximum. Plant productivity can be (and has been - see e.g. the 'green revolution') increased somewhat, but those increases are likewise linear and limited to at best insolation * efficiency of photosynthesis.
...unless we were seeing an increase of poverty and hunger-related deaths (which we see the opposite, see prior links).
Because, once again, you are looking at a short-term linear increase temporarily outpacing exponential population growth.
What is objective is that people that have moved to the cities, almost every measure of "conditions" per capita such as food, education, wealth, longevity, health, womens rights, etc are improved.
Do remember that correlation is not causation. Various conditions have improved over time due to scientific & technical advances. Over the same period, people have been relocated to cities, often forcibly. But we find that health conditions in cities are not all that great today, and were far worse historically.
Economically, until comparatively recently the limits of communications technology made city living an economic necessity for many people. But even then, those who achieved a measure of financial success often used that wealth to escape the city. The truely wealthy bought vast country estates; the moderately prosperous might buy a summer cottage; others might only get away to a resort for a week or two. As transportation increased, those who could moved to suburbs, commuting first by train, later by car.
Modern communications has mad it possible for many of us to be economically successful without the need for city living. Cities are becoming an anachronism, and a place for warehousing vast masses of poor & unskilled.
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(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a4/World_population_growth_rate_1950%E2%80%932050.svg/500px-World_population_growth_rate_1950%E2%80%932050.svg.png)
Year Population Annual Growth Rate (%)
1962 3,139,919,051 2.22
1963 3,209,631,895 2.223
1964 3,280,981,862 2.109
1965 3,350,186,115 2.096
1966 3,420,416,498 2.036
1967 3,490,051,163 2.062
1968 3,562,007,503 2.1
1969 3,636,825,800 2.076
1970 3,712,338,708 2.09
1971 3,789,941,225 2.011
1972 3,866,158,404 1.953
1973 3,941,664,971 1.89
1974 4,016,159,586 1.804
1975 4,088,621,062 1.739
1976 4,159,718,199 1.729
1977 4,231,619,236 1.702
1978 4,303,647,736 1.741
1979 4,378,565,589 1.653
1980 4,450,929,761 1.865
1981 4,533,928,518 1.766
1982 4,614,015,853 1.758
1983 4,695,112,999 1.678
1984 4,773,874,962 1.714
1985 4,855,692,131 1.73
1986 4,939,715,093 1.752
1987 5,026,262,667 1.737
1988 5,113,554,741 1.698
1989 5,200,376,354 1.682
1990 5,287,869,228 1.569
1991 5,370,833,520 1.58
1992 5,455,716,183 1.512
1993 5,538,201,967 1.458
1994 5,618,942,438 1.438
1995 5,699,768,392 1.413
1996 5,780,312,511 1.363
1997 5,859,124,817 1.322
1998 5,936,610,692 1.298
1999 6,013,679,354 1.274
2000 6,090,319,399 1.26
2001 6,167,064,399 1.245
2002 6,243,867,851 1.225
2003 6,320,371,175 1.218
2004 6,397,322,922 1.202
2005 6,474,229,144 1.203
2006 6,552,104,498 1.201
2007 6,630,764,007 1.189
2008 6,709,620,605 1.171
2009 6,788,203,578 1.147
2010 6,866,054,281 1.127
2011 6,943,437,438 1.114
2012 7,020,760,225 1.107
Here's 50 years of data, which is also summarized in the graph above, as it shows a local maximum and if we were to approximate a function to this data, it would not be a positive exponential function. Because the 2nd derivative of population is negative, it cannot be a positive exponential function. Increasing at a decreasing rate, look up what that means: U Chicago summary (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CF4QFjAF&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmath.uchicago.edu%2F~vipul%2Fteaching-0910%2F152%2Fconcaveandinflection.pdf&ei=fmqzUpmfE6rt2wW5nYHABA&usg=AFQjCNFCiHfIjd_V5zvfVEZ2h3SPtmtU9g&sig2=9JJHmaUQUTnzPyGopCzBrQ&bvm=bv.58187178,d.b2I)
Since you'd like to equivocate, I will try and be more precise, and thank you for conceding that population is fundamentally an exponential function, and therefore if the 2nd derivative of an exponential function is negative, it is not a positive exponential function, as population is currently increasing at a decreasing rate. (The only linear part of this discussion is the tangent line to total population where future points are BELOW it.)
Again, wrong. You are correct that population would be decreasing if the exponent was negative, but it is not. The only reason you have for thinking that it might become negative at some time in the future is extrapolation from a carefully-selected, short period. Choose a longer period - that is, include more data - and you get a much different result. You're simply selecting the data to get a result that conforms to what you've chosen to believe.
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Total side note, but do we know what's responsible for the big dip in that graph around 1960? Is that all just the Great Leap Forward?
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Marty, this place is a nest in a tree of trust and understanding. We can say anything here.
Ok I'll bite.
Here's 50 years of data, which is also summarized in the graph above, as it shows a local maximum and if we were to approximate a function to this data, it would not be a positive exponential function. Because the 2nd derivative of population is negative, it cannot be a positive exponential function. Increasing at a decreasing rate
So I get that it is not an exponential function. But your % figures don't tell the full story. 4th column added to show the absolute numerical increase in mouths to feed. Even though the % growth is slowing, it is not due to the number of births falling. It's just that the denominator (total number of people) is getting very large. Amazing how linear the function is.
I see this same argument about China's economic growth rate all the time. Everyone is falling over themselves worried that China's growth rate is slowing. Well that's because they are now very very large. The nominal increase might be the same, it's just that the growth is measured against a much larger base.
77m is an awful lot of people calling planet earth home each year. Population of Australia is 23million. Although we have the 7th largest land mass in the world I doubt we can support many more given the lack of water and changing climate.
Year Population % growth abs increase
1962 3,139,919,051 2.22
1963 3,209,631,895 2.22 69,712,844
1964 3,280,981,862 2.10 71,349,967
1965 3,350,186,115 2.09 69,204,253
1966 3,420,416,498 2.03 70,230,383
1967 3,490,051,163 2.06 69,634,665
1968 3,562,007,503 2.1 71,956,340
1969 3,636,825,800 2.07 74,818,297
1970 3,712,338,708 2.09 75,512,908
1971 3,789,941,225 2.01 77,602,517
1972 3,866,158,404 1.95 76,217,179
1973 3,941,664,971 1.89 75,506,567
1974 4,016,159,586 1.80 74,494,615
1975 4,088,621,062 1.73 72,461,476
1976 4,159,718,199 1.72 71,097,137
1977 4,231,619,236 1.70 71,901,037
1978 4,303,647,736 1.74 72,028,500
1979 4,378,565,589 1.65 74,917,853
1980 4,450,929,761 1.86 72,364,172
1981 4,533,928,518 1.76 82,998,757
1982 4,614,015,853 1.75 80,087,335
1983 4,695,112,999 1.67 81,097,146
1984 4,773,874,962 1.71 78,761,963
1985 4,855,692,131 1.73 81,817,169
1986 4,939,715,093 1.75 84,022,962
1987 5,026,262,667 1.73 86,547,574
1988 5,113,554,741 1.69 87,292,074
1989 5,200,376,354 1.68 86,821,613
1990 5,287,869,228 1.56 87,492,874
1991 5,370,833,520 1.58 82,964,292
1992 5,455,716,183 1.51 84,882,663
1993 5,538,201,967 1.45 82,485,784
1994 5,618,942,438 1.43 80,740,471
1995 5,699,768,392 1.41 80,825,954
1996 5,780,312,511 1.36 80,544,119
1997 5,859,124,817 1.32 78,812,306
1998 5,936,610,692 1.29 77,485,875
1999 6,013,679,354 1.27 77,068,662
2000 6,090,319,399 1.26 76,640,045
2001 6,167,064,399 1.24 76,745,000
2002 6,243,867,851 1.22 76,803,452
2003 6,320,371,175 1.21 76,503,324
2004 6,397,322,922 1.20 76,951,747
2005 6,474,229,144 1.20 76,906,222
2006 6,552,104,498 1.20 77,875,354
2007 6,630,764,007 1.18 78,659,509
2008 6,709,620,605 1.17 78,856,598
2009 6,788,203,578 1.14 78,582,973
2010 6,866,054,281 1.12 77,850,703
2011 6,943,437,438 1.11 77,383,157
2012 7,020,760,225 1.10 77,322,787
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Here's 50 years of data, which is also summarized in the graph above
And guess what? It's all positive :-)
I also have to say, once again, that the extrapolation seems really shaky. I'm really limited as to what I can do right now, but just for fun I edited your graph, and added (in green) what seems a more reasonable extrapolation based on the curve from 1990-present. That leads to a pretty constant growth rate of around 0.8-1.0 by 2050.
But of course that period is arbitrary. There are wild swings in earlier years: what justification is there for assuming there will be none in the future?
And again, even if we accept your extrapolation as valid, it still leaves us with positive growth in 2050 :-(
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while technically it is not, I think it is a problem because of over-consumption, pollution, fossil-fuel depletion, allocation of resources and population ..
Size-wise, according to the World factbook, for example, the European Union has 509,365,627 (July 2013 est.), living in less than one-half the size of the US..
you can also look at population density on wikipedia by countries, cities around the world, US states, and more.. there are some quite dense places on earth. Apparently Manila, Philippines has 111,002 ppl per square mile.
perhaps in the future we will stop depleting non-renewable resources (maybe space travel will allow us to dump some waste in space and/or to get more resources from space), and perhaps there will be a real energy breakthrough.. one that will be practical. it will be affordable and it will generate enough power that we won't need to use fossil fuels for electricity or vehicles anymore. If electricity becomes cheaper than fuel, i bet people will start to use electric ovens and stoves and boilers/water-heaters too
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Size-wise, according to the World factbook, for example, the European Union has 509,365,627 (July 2013 est.), living in less than one-half the size of the US..
Very little of the land area of the EU is semi-desert or Arctic tundra.
Even taking that indo account, I think you fail to ask about living conditions, food imports, and sustainability. It certainly seems from published accounts, and from my own experience of living there, that a substantial fraction of the Europen population lives a deprived urban life. Just as with feedlot cattle & battery chickens, you can cram quite a number into a small space if you don't care about their quality of life.
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Oh please...you're the first to wax on about the progressive statism of Europe, and regardless of all that clearly people continue to choose the EU vs their shit-whole countries of origin: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=ee&v=27
You should be happy James, there will be less people in the future and your anxiety will be for naught.
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...regardless of all that clearly people continue to choose the EU vs their shit-whole countries of origin: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=ee&v=27
You really need to understand that there's a fundamental difference between a choice of good vs bad, and one of bad vs even worse.
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...regardless of all that clearly people continue to choose the EU vs their shit-whole countries of origin: http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=ee&v=27
You really need to understand that there's a fundamental difference between a choice of good vs bad, and one of bad vs even worse.
When subsistence farmers and the impoverished move to cities, almost every measure of human development improves dramatically. You need to understand the fundamental difference that wealth is a continuum and small gains in nutrition add decades to longevity.
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When subsistence farmers and the impoverished move to cities, almost every measure of human development improves dramatically.
Got data to support that? Because there are plenty of historical examples to the contrary.
In any case, it's pretty much irrelevant to EU immigration, as most of the migrants there are either coming from 3rd-world urban hellholes, or are leaving their homes because in Europe today one is unlikely to be killed for one's politics, religion, or ethnic origin.
PS: Just ran across a scientific study on happiness, which finds that Being outdoors, near the sea, on a warm, sunny weekend afternoon is the perfect spot for most. In fact, participants were found to be substantially happier outdoors in all natural environments than they were in urban environments..
People recorded the highest levels of happiness in marine and coastal locations, followed by mountains and moors, forests and farms.
http://www.thejournal.ie/sea-sun-happiness-study-973774-Jul2013/
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When subsistence farmers and the impoverished move to cities, almost every measure of human development improves dramatically.
Got data to support that? Because there are plenty of historical examples to the contrary.
http://www.voanews.com/content/urbanization-curbs-poverty-says-world-bank/1648092.html
http://reliefweb.int/report/world/global-monitoring-report-2013-rural-urban-dynamics-and-millennium-development-goals
"Urbanization has helped reduce poverty through the creation of new income opportunities, and has increased both access to and quality of services. However, the number of people living in urban slums is also rising, and cities often contribute to environmental degradation. At the same time, three quarters of the poor still live in rural areas, and better provision of basic services in those areas is essential to open up opportunities for the rural population."
Also I couldn't find a data set for % of population living in cities, so I substituted phone-line density:
Google public health data (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=b&strail=false&nselm=s&met_x=sp_dyn_le00_in&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&ifdim=country&iconSize=0.5&uniSize=0.035#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_s=sp_pop_totl&scale_s=lin&ind_s=false&dimp_c=country:region&met_y=sh_dyn_mort&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&met_x=it_mlt_main_p2&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&ifdim=country&pit=1326787200000&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false)
In any case, it's pretty much irrelevant to EU immigration, as most of the migrants there are either coming from 3rd-world urban hellholes, or are leaving their homes because in Europe today one is unlikely to be killed for one's politics, religion, or ethnic origin.
Have any data to support they are emigrating from urban hellholes? I doubt that.
PS: Just ran across a scientific study on happiness, which finds that Being outdoors, near the sea, on a warm, sunny weekend afternoon is the perfect spot for most. In fact, participants were found to be substantially happier outdoors in all natural environments than they were in urban environments..
People recorded the highest levels of happiness in marine and coastal locations, followed by mountains and moors, forests and farms.
http://www.thejournal.ie/sea-sun-happiness-study-973774-Jul2013/
I guarantee they weren't interviewing the impoverished as they probably weren't part of the "more than 22,000 people who downloaded an app– Mappiness – which was developed specifically for the study on their mobile devices."
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"Urbanization has helped reduce poverty through the creation of new income opportunities, and has increased both access to and quality of services. However, the number of people living in urban slums is also rising, and cities often contribute to environmental degradation. At the same time, three quarters of the poor still live in rural areas, and better provision of basic services in those areas is essential to open up opportunities for the rural population."
You don't think it's possible that those sources could be just a bit biased? As in the people who work for these groups are busy pushing pro-urbanization 'development' programs, so creating the appearance that they're working is necessary for job security. And all that's really necessary for this is a circular definition of 'poverty', such that anyone lacking urban services is automatically counted as poor - while the things available only in rural areas, which many of us comparative wealthy folk willingly pay goodly sums to attain, do not count at all.
Also I couldn't find a data set for % of population living in cities, so I substituted phone-line density:
Don't know what you intended to show there, because - as is typical of Google crap - the link doesn't do much of anything. Still, phone line density? Which century are you living in?
Have any data to support they are emigrating from urban hellholes? I doubt that.
Seems as though the links you posted above make a decent case.
I guarantee they weren't interviewing the impoverished...
So are you doing a reverse Fitzgerald, and claiming that the poor are different from you and me? Sorry, but it just ain't so :-) Thing is, most people have to endure quite a bit of unhappiness out of financial necessity - and it seems fairly obvious that the greater the (perceived) necessity, the greater the quantity of unhappiness one will be subject to. Isn't that really one of the cornerstones of Mustachianism, to attain financial independence in order to minimize that unhappinness?
Indeed, if I can resort to anecdote, I see this in my own life: poverty forced me to spend time in a number of cities (where I was unhappy) as part of the process of becoming prosperous enough to live in a happier place. I see the same thing reflected in living patterns throughout history. Even today... Well, if cities are so great, explain why people's preferred vacation destinations are so often mountains, lakes, and - yes - those tropical beaches?
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People who claim that overpopulation is a major issue are really just being arrogant and trying to claim their superiority over people who have less money to buy food. That's all it really is.
I think that this is the case. Interestingly I also think that as communities (or countries) become wealthier the birthrate declines.
Some more fact based information on this is available here:-
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/the-river-of-myths/
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-population/
I do think that we need to be careful but we also need to be realistic.
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People who claim that overpopulation is a major issue are really just being arrogant and trying to claim their superiority over people who have less money to buy food. That's all it really is.
I think that this is the case.
Wrong. As for example, Manhattan, Silicon Valley, the wealthier parts of LA... All overpopulated, mostly by people with plenty of money.
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People who claim that overpopulation is a major issue are really just being arrogant and trying to claim their superiority over people who have less money to buy food. That's all it really is.
I think that this is the case.
Wrong. As for example, Manhattan, Silicon Valley, the wealthier parts of LA... All overpopulated, mostly by people with plenty of money.
This argument doesn't cut it to me. Yes there will be some areas that are overpopulated but that has nothing to do with human beings overpopulating the world. I also assume that this issue will adjust over time. If too many people live in these areas and they don't like it (they might like it and feel that this isn't an issue) people will move elsewhere.
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"Urbanization has helped reduce poverty through the creation of new income opportunities, and has increased both access to and quality of services. However, the number of people living in urban slums is also rising, and cities often contribute to environmental degradation. At the same time, three quarters of the poor still live in rural areas, and better provision of basic services in those areas is essential to open up opportunities for the rural population."
You don't think it's possible that those sources could be just a bit biased? As in the people who work for these groups are busy pushing pro-urbanization 'development' programs, so creating the appearance that they're working is necessary for job security. And all that's really necessary for this is a circular definition of 'poverty', such that anyone lacking urban services is automatically counted as poor - while the things available only in rural areas, which many of us comparative wealthy folk willingly pay goodly sums to attain, do not count at all.
No, I don't think the UN's data is particularly biased for these variables, they seem to be totally independently generated and verified by other sampling, let me know if you come up any evidence to the contrary.
Also I couldn't find a data set for % of population living in cities, so I substituted phone-line density:
Don't know what you intended to show there, because - as is typical of Google crap - the link doesn't do much of anything. Still, phone line density? Which century are you living in?
Wrong, my google-fu was just weak and I was searching within a data set that didn't capture the variable of % living in urban areas, this one does: Time-series of % in poverty vs urbanization rate. (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kthk374hkr6tr_&ctype=l&met_y=indicator_45106#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_x=indicator_45106&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=indicator_38906&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false) Note the correlation..
Today in countries where more than half the people live in cities, there are only 6 countries with poverty rates above 20% - all in Africa.
Have any data to support they are emigrating from urban hellholes? I doubt that.
Seems as though the links you posted above make a decent case.
No, the data and research say impoverished people living rurally are moving to urban areas to increase their standard of living.
I guarantee they weren't interviewing the impoverished...
So are you doing a reverse Fitzgerald, and claiming that the poor are different from you and me? Sorry, but it just ain't so :-) Thing is, most people have to endure quite a bit of unhappiness out of financial necessity - and it seems fairly obvious that the greater the (perceived) necessity, the greater the quantity of unhappiness one will be subject to. Isn't that really one of the cornerstones of Mustachianism, to attain financial independence in order to minimize that unhappinness?
I'm talking about people who live spending less than $1/day. They are very different from us. They suffer horribly their entire lives with starvation, disease, death, and short lives.
Indeed, if I can resort to anecdote, I see this in my own life: poverty forced me to spend time in a number of cities (where I was unhappy) as part of the process of becoming prosperous enough to live in a happier place. I see the same thing reflected in living patterns throughout history. Even today... Well, if cities are so great, explain why people's preferred vacation destinations are so often mountains, lakes, and - yes - those tropical beaches?
We are not talking about rich people going on vacation. We are talking about the billions of people being lifted out of poverty ($1/day) by freedom and capitalism.
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People who claim that overpopulation is a major issue are really just being arrogant and trying to claim their superiority over people who have less money to buy food. That's all it really is.
I think that this is the case.
Wrong. As for example, Manhattan, Silicon Valley, the wealthier parts of LA... All overpopulated, mostly by people with plenty of money.
We're talking about extreme poverty, not whining about traffic congestion. I haven't seen any evidence that people in major American cities live worse than those in Rwanda where only 18.8% of people live in urban areas yet 65% of the population live on less than $1.25/day. We all get it that we want to retire early but "toiling" in the office after a 45min commute is worlds apart toiling in the fields hoping to feed yourself the next meal before you perish of starvation.
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Wrong, my google-fu was just weak and I was searching within a data set that didn't capture the variable of % living in urban areas, this one does: Time-series of % in poverty vs urbanization rate. (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=kthk374hkr6tr_&ctype=l&met_y=indicator_45106#!ctype=b&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=s&met_x=indicator_45106&scale_x=lin&ind_x=false&met_y=indicator_38906&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&ifdim=country&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false) Note the correlation..
No, it doesn't. We're obviously failing to communicate here: what I am trying to tell you is that whatever you're trying to show with the Google-crap at that link just doesn't work. Maybe it does with Google's own browser, but I have no intention of installing that on my system.
FYI, this is what I see at your link. Informative, isn't it?
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Yah, I don't think custom configuring your setup to be different than 99% of the people out there and then complaining about comparability will get you far. It works on my iPad, which is notorious for limited support.
I find it odd that you don't have another way to access things in a standard clean environment, through a VM or something, for the occasional time something that that happens.
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I find it odd that you don't have another way to access things in a standard clean environment, through a VM or something, for the occasional time something that that happens.
The question, though, is exactly how much of my limited time I want to devote to things like that. It's a question of direction. if I am trying to communicate a point, I might put considerable effort into making sure it can be understood. OTOH, if someone wants to communicate to me, I thing the onus should be on them.
Or to put it another way, I could doubtless find a way to answer questions by uploading a couple thousand lines of C/MPI/CUDA source, but I dare say most people would find that as incomprehensible as I find the Google-crap.
PS: as to my setup, I AM different from 99% of the people out there. I configure things so I can use them productively, not so I can enjoy the pain of trying to pretend I'm 'normal'.
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Thank you for your generous contribution to this topic James. Lol
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I find it odd that you don't have another way to access things in a standard clean environment, through a VM or something, for the occasional time something that that happens.
The question, though, is exactly how much of my limited time I want to devote to things like that. It's a question of direction. if I am trying to communicate a point, I might put considerable effort into making sure it can be understood. OTOH, if someone wants to communicate to me, I thing the onus should be on them.
Or to put it another way, I could doubtless find a way to answer questions by uploading a couple thousand lines of C/MPI/CUDA source, but I dare say most people would find that as incomprehensible as I find the Google-crap.
PS: as to my setup, I AM different from 99% of the people out there. I configure things so I can use them productively, not so I can enjoy the pain of trying to pretend I'm 'normal'.
And you have no smartphone, or other way of testing things in a standard environment?
Seems like it'd be best for you to avoid the discussion then?
/shrug
Just odd is all.
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And you have no smartphone, or other way of testing things in a standard environment?
No, I have no smartphone*. What on earth for? Like I should have spent probably lotsa bucks on one just on the off-chance that at some time in the future I might want to look at something someone has created as part of a casual discussion, but can't be bothered to make viewable in a standard application - that is, any web browser. I mean, who got to define smart phones as standard?
*And if I did, I probably would have taken steps to make it usable to me, or IOW 'non-standard'.
Seems like it'd be best for you to avoid the discussion then?
Oh, great discussion tactic! Disagree with someone's points, couch your counter-arguments in a language he can't read, and suggest he leave. Positively brilliant!
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Seems like it'd be best for you to avoid the discussion then?
Oh, great discussion tactic! Disagree with someone's points, couch your counter-arguments in a language he can't read, and suggest he leave. Positively brilliant!
Huh? I haven't disagreed with any of your discussion points, or put anything in a language you can't read.
Don't be disingenuous, I'm not arguing about overpopulation (the topic of the thread), but commenting on your technological problems.
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I guess it would also help my argument that the Gates foundations shares my view:
annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/~/media/Annual%20Letter%202014/PDFs/2014GatesAnnualLetter_English.pdf (http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/~/media/Annual%20Letter%202014/PDFs/2014GatesAnnualLetter_English.pdf)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-21/bill-gates-sees-no-poor-countries-left-by-2035-in-annual-letter.html (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-21/bill-gates-sees-no-poor-countries-left-by-2035-in-annual-letter.html)
I love this site, tearing down lies and ignorance.
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I guess it would also help my argument that the Gates foundations shares my view:
annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/~/media/Annual%20Letter%202014/PDFs/2014GatesAnnualLetter_English.pdf (http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/~/media/Annual%20Letter%202014/PDFs/2014GatesAnnualLetter_English.pdf)
No, argument from authority doesn't get very far here.
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All the information from the Gates foundation supports the concept that affluence reduces growth rate. Something I agree with. However the one dot that hasn't been connected to all of this IMO is whether our current population size is a massive impact to our environments or not. I believe it is and our population will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. Growth rate reduction is still growth. Without negative growth or some alternative to consumption of limited resources we still run into a problem that we're already overpopulated.
Applauding ourselves for growth rate reduction is fine and all but doesn't even start to hit the main problem IMO.
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Growth rate reduction is still growth. Without negative growth or some alternative to consumption of limited resources we still run into a problem that we're already overpopulated.
Exactly. What's needed is a population shrinkage rate.
It's also more than a bit disengenous to simply equate money with quality of life. Suppose, just to take an extreme case, you are Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a billionaire spending your life in a Russian prison (until just recently). Is your QoL going to be all that high?
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Growth rate reduction is still growth. Without negative growth or some alternative to consumption of limited resources we still run into a problem that we're already overpopulated.
Exactly. What's needed is a population shrinkage rate.
It's also more than a bit disengenous to simply equate money with quality of life. Suppose, just to take an extreme case, you are Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a billionaire spending your life in a Russian prison (until just recently). Is your QoL going to be all that high?
While I think we're in agreement on this one in the big picture James I'm sure you realize your example isn't exactly applicable due to the narrowness of it. Affluence has been shown to improve QoL, citing one Russian billionaire doesn't prove that affluence is sending us all to jail. More towards my point in affluence is things like running water, sewage treatment, modern medicine, and advanced technologies for farming and irrigation. These things come as people become more affluent and their economies improve. The downside is that these things take oil and natural resources that aren't replaceable or are currently difficult to do so.
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Affluence has been shown to improve QoL, citing one Russian billionaire doesn't prove that affluence is sending us all to jail.
You missed the point, I think - which was to show that there's not a simple relationship between affluence and QoL. For a broader one, suppose you're an upper-income Chinese, but your 'affluence' means you have to live in a crowded city with unbreathable air. Simplistic (or even fairly complicated) economic analysis just doesn't consider such things.
More towards my point in affluence is things like running water, sewage treatment, modern medicine, and advanced technologies for farming and irrigation. These things come as people become more affluent and their economies improve.
And there's absolutely no reason such things can't be had by people living in uncrowded, non-urban areas. There is, as usual, a good bit of mistaking correlation for causation in connecting urbanization and prosperity.
Further, I will still argue that the truely affluent - those able to divorce their incomes from daily on-site labor - will tend to vote with their feet, and as far as practical remove themselves from urban overcrowding, because that is what they do, and have done throughout history. The Summer Palace wasn't built in the center of Beijing, Versailles isn't in downtown Paris, Windsor Castle is a good ways from London, even the US has Camp David for its Presidents.
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I think we're just working with two different definitions of affluent. I view middle class people as quite affluent, from your posts you seem to be using the more upper crust for that definition.
I haven't made any comment on city versus non-urban areas. Just as a general point that as economies develop people use more resources. Improving the economies of developing countries is good for reducing poverty but is bad for general limited resource usage.
More towards my point in affluence is things like running water, sewage treatment, modern medicine, and advanced technologies for farming and irrigation. These things come as people become more affluent and their economies improve.
And there's absolutely no reason such things can't be had by people living in uncrowded, non-urban areas. There is, as usual, a good bit of mistaking correlation for causation in connecting urbanization and prosperity.
Further, I will still argue that the truely affluent - those able to divorce their incomes from daily on-site labor - will tend to vote with their feet, and as far as practical remove themselves from urban overcrowding, because that is what they do, and have done throughout history. The Summer Palace wasn't built in the center of Beijing, Versailles isn't in downtown Paris, Windsor Castle is a good ways from London, even the US has Camp David for its Presidents.
If you can provide those examples of broad prosperity without cities I'm all ears until then I think human history has shown that large scale human urbanization has massive benefits for economic, social, technological, and cultural development (also tons of negatives in other areas). Whether it is in fact caused by dense population or just a correlation to it doesn't really matter to my point about economic development reducing growth rates. Listing the getaways for the rich and the powerful doesn't really demonstrate a correlation or causation for prosperity and non-urbanization.
But now I think you're quibbling with my points even though I largely agree with your big picture view on resource consumption and whether we're overpopulated.
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I think we're just working with two different definitions of affluent. I view middle class people as quite affluent, from your posts you seem to be using the more upper crust for that definition.
Not really, it's simply that the rich are extreme cases. Since they have few if any financial constraints on their choices, their behavior likely tends towards what the middle class (or indeed, the poor) would do if only they could afford to. So if we're aiming at maximizing quality of life (which has been my point), we should look at what the rich do.
If you can provide those examples of broad prosperity without cities I'm all ears...
Well, how about the US, for most of its history? Most rural areas were (and are) fairly prosperous. Where they weren't, as with say Appalachia, the external causes (conquest & occupation) are pretty obvious.
...until then I think human history has shown that large scale human urbanization has massive benefits for economic, social, technological, and cultural development (also tons of negatives in other areas).
And as you say, tons of negatives, which for the individual tend to outweigh the positives. Though I'm not sure whether I'm quibbling, or your points really aren't at all related to mine.
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The problem is that most people conceptualize population growth as a linear growth curve. In reality, it is an exponential growth curve. If we wait for population to be "a problem" it will be too late to solve it. I really like the Lester Brown story about the 29th day.
The lilly pads double every day on a pond. On the first day there is one lilly pad. On day two, two lilly pads. On day three, four lilly pads and day 4, eight lilly pads. On the 30th day, the pond is completely full with lilly pads and the ecosystem of the pond dies. On what day is the pond 50% full of lilly pads?
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The problem is that most people conceptualize population growth as a linear growth curve. In reality, it is an exponential growth curve. If we wait for population to be "a problem" it will be too late to solve it. I really like the Lester Brown story about the 29th day.
The lilly pads double every day on a pond. On the first day there is one lilly pad. On day two, two lilly pads. On day three, four lilly pads and day 4, eight lilly pads. On the 30th day, the pond is completely full with lilly pads and the ecosystem of the pond dies. On what day is the pond 50% full of lilly pads?
Day 29, obviously.
And what day would you propose we are at population-wise? Day 3? 4? Day 26? 29?
How long does it take to solve the problem? If you can clear out a lot of lilly pads in 20 minutes, you may be fine dealing with it the day before. Or not. The analogy fails because it's not realistic and fails to account for many variables that are relevant.
Also you fail to address the many graphs and projections (example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population)) based on data already raised about estimates for population leveling off. You see it as an exponential growth curve, apparently continuing to infinity. Many of us don't necessarily.
Further, what would you propose we do to "solve" it?
(Also I'm not sure why this topic was revived after two months.)
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The classics never die ;)
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If this doesn't calm you down about overpopulation control then at least it will give you a good chuckle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrO3TfJc9Qw
The take away is for most first world countries they do not have a overpopulation problem they have a declining population problem. As developing countries advance and birth control becomes more accessible their populations will taper off as well. Rising wealth gives people options and automation is slowly eliminating the need for a lot of manual labor.
I was born in a third world country on both sides of my grand parents they had 10 siblings, my parents generation had 4-6 siblings each, my generation 1-3. My brother and I are outliers in our generation as most only have one child. This is general trend in all socioeconomic classes in my country.
To put that into perspective the birth rate (births/1000 population) of where I was born is 24.24 60th highest, the US is 13.42 150th highest. While Niger the highest is at about 46, total population of 16 million and a life expectancy of 54.
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Day 29, obviously.
[/quote]
While the answer might be obvious to you, it is not obvious to many. I teach at a University and only about 75% of the students understand the concept in class. When I give it to them on the test only about 50% get it correct. Many pick the answer 15 days which is evidence of a linear relationship. Lester Brown talks about this concept in his book Plan B, 4.0. He has some good ideas.
I think you are taking the example a little too literally. The concept is very simple. You figured it out in about 1 second. However, this is not the case for many.
I feel like the strongest argument to derail overpopulation is education. The most educated countries have the slowest population growth trends.
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I feel like the strongest argument to derail overpopulation is education. The most educated countries have the slowest population growth trends.
Absolutely. And that solves a whole host of other issues as well.
(And I'll add: Education for women, specifically.)
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Adding one more voice of support for education. It's common knowledge in the development field that education reduces overpopulation - when it focuses on women it often drops it within a generation.
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...and what factors lead to an increase in women's education? A higher adherence to communism? Pro dominantly Muslim faith practices? Countries with little respect for property rights? Hmmmmm, what ever could lead to the utopian state of women education? Or does it just spontaneously happen?
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Women growing mustaches will help :)
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I am contributing to overpopulation right now, encouraging organisms to reproduce and consume at an unsustainable rate and thus die in their own waste! I am making wine in my kitchen!
Seriously though, I think it could easily become a problem if we ignore it. But if the developed countries focus on consuming less and creating less waste, and the developing countries focus on reducing their birth rates and bringing their people up to a higher standard of living, I think we'll be OK. I agree that education for women (and economic opportunities too) is a great way to better the conditions in the developing world.
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Can our current population feed itself without oil based fertilizers, gmo crops, dangerous degrees of monoculture, and poisoning of the environment with pesticides? If not, we have a population problem.
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Can our current population feed itself without oil based fertilizers, gmo crops, dangerous degrees of monoculture, and poisoning of the environment with pesticides? If not, we have a population problem.
I think probably not right now. In my ideal world, we would gradually reduce the world population by reducing the birth rate. First, everyone would need to be educated and accept that having as many kids as you want is not a right. Then people would voluntarily have less kids, but slowly so we don't end up old-people-heavy. Then when a stable population is reached, we would monitor it and encourage each other to voluntarily have more or less kids to keep it stable. It sounds kinda crazy, but I think it could become a social norm. In the past it was considered crazy to expect people to give up slavery.
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Keep your laws of my body!
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Keep your laws of my body!
Assuming you are talking to me:
What laws? Do you know what "voluntarily" means?
Maybe you are joking; I can't tell :)
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I agree bikebum. Something will need to be done at some point, but the human race has a very long history of always running like lemmings of the cliff until nature takes its course.
It's hard to override 3.5 billion years of evolution & basic instinct.
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If we planned and did it wisely, no, maybe not.
The way we're doing it, yes.
And by "we", we're talking about the affluent (globally). For instance the average American uses roughly 30-100 times the energy of the average low income resident (from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Morocco, El Salvador, etc...). In the aggregate, in terms of energy, ~10-35 billion low income use as much as ~.3 billion Americans. If we break it up strictly on income, it's probably worse. Many resources follow this pattern.
The worse part is that the average American could fairly easily cut their fossil fuel energy consumption by ~75%, and with a few more years of DIY work, cut it by ~80-90%.
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Can our current population feed itself without oil based fertilizers, gmo crops, dangerous degrees of monoculture, and poisoning of the environment with pesticides? If not, we have a population problem.
This is an interesting circular argument. We need X technologies to feed the population but "eventually" these same technologies will lead to starvation and famine.
My counter is that the solution to pollution is dilution, and therefore we haven't seen any negative impact on human caloric intake per capita. In fact the least percentage of the population is starving to death in the history of mankind currently, maintaining a 2000 year trend.
So it's tough to disprove your wild conjecture, but on the other hand there isn't any evidence of it coming to fruition. Yes there are side affects to every technology, even water is deadly to us in sufficient concentration. Most technology is quite helpful in advancing the physical well-being of humanity.
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I agree bikebum. Something will need to be done at some point, but the human race has a very long history of always running like lemmings of the cliff until nature takes its course.
It's hard to override 3.5 billion years of evolution & basic instinct.
But have we really run of the cliff? I imagine you're typed that missive from an air conditioned room while using the internet to communicate instantly with people thousands of miles away.
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If we planned and did it wisely, no, maybe not.
The way we're doing it, yes.
And by "we", we're talking about the affluent (globally). For instance the average American uses roughly 30-100 times the energy of the average low income resident (from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Morocco, El Salvador, etc...). In the aggregate, in terms of energy, ~10-35 billion low income use as much as ~.3 billion Americans. If we break it up strictly on income, it's probably worse. Many resources follow this pattern.
The worse part is that the average American could fairly easily cut their fossil fuel energy consumption by ~75%, and with a few more years of DIY work, cut it by ~80-90%.
Any evidence this could be done by Americans without skyrocketing mortality? You need to count energy usage per capita, so that means all the physical objects that took a bunch of energy to make also. Like if a computer is purchased and used in America that should be counted to Americas energy use and not China's, because those people don't get the benefit of consuming the energy required to make it.
People use less energy in those countries you mentioned because they are poor and suffer great poverty, not because they are environmentally concerned. They die from preventable diseases because they don't have access to energy because they can't afford it.
But I do encourage you to move and reduce your energy consumption to fulfill your fantasy, even swap places with an Afgani or Moroccan.
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Give it a rest and please let this thread die. After 185 posts we've all said our 2c.
Want to change the world, go out there and just do it. Arguing with us is not going to solve anything.
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Soylent Green is PEOPLE!!!
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If we planned and did it wisely, no, maybe not.
The way we're doing it, yes.
And by "we", we're talking about the affluent (globally). For instance the average American uses roughly 30-100 times the energy of the average low income resident (from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Morocco, El Salvador, etc...). In the aggregate, in terms of energy, ~10-35 billion low income use as much as ~.3 billion Americans. If we break it up strictly on income, it's probably worse. Many resources follow this pattern.
The worse part is that the average American could fairly easily cut their fossil fuel energy consumption by ~75%, and with a few more years of DIY work, cut it by ~80-90%.
Any evidence this could be done by Americans without skyrocketing mortality? You need to count energy usage per capita, so that means all the physical objects that took a bunch of energy to make also. Like if a computer is purchased and used in America that should be counted to Americas energy use and not China's, because those people don't get the benefit of consuming the energy required to make it.
People use less energy in those countries you mentioned because they are poor and suffer great poverty, not because they are environmentally concerned. They die from preventable diseases because they don't have access to energy because they can't afford it.
But I do encourage you to move and reduce your energy consumption to fulfill your fantasy, even swap places with an Afgani or Moroccan.
Fulfill my "fantasy"? Are you trying to be offensive? Not that it matters I guess....
Going back on topic, you're conflating two separate statements. One is that most of the impact on the environment is done by a relatively small and wealthy part of the world population. The second is that by virtue of that wealth, this group could have minimal impact without the downsides normally associated with low consumption/impact, but they choose not to.
The idea that someone needs to live like someone in a third world country is a false dilemma. That comparison was just used to illustrate where most of the impact comes from, wealthy individuals in the first world, and to a lesser extent in other places.
If you're interested in specifics, take a look at this.
http://www.withouthotair.com/
It's a UK centric overview, but plug and chug for where ever you live... Look at the stuff chapter for more info on items. A 3 bedroom house for example requires ~42000kWh, which is a lot, but it's amortized over many decades (a 50 yo house would require ~1000kWh/year). For comparison, this is only 25000 miles of driving in a 20mpg vehicle, which plenty of Americans roll through in a year or two.
In the aggregate, the energy associated with making stuff for someone requires ~12000 kWh per capita per year. Someone on the frugal side would probably need half of this, or less. Food requires about the same amount, and could reasonably be cut to ~4000kWh/year with a frugal/mostly vegetarian diet. Heating, cooling, electricity, and transportation can in most cases be configured to use only renewable energy.
This puts the total energy requirements at ~10000kWh/year as opposed to the US average of ~83000kWh/year, which, like I mentioned, would minimize the majority of impacts people have on the planet, and that would also be minimized as agriculture and manufacturing adopt better production standards/use more and more renewable energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
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If you're interested in specifics, take a look at this.
http://www.withouthotair.com/
It's a UK centric overview, but plug and chug for where ever you live... Look at the stuff chapter for more info on items. A 3 bedroom house for example requires ~42000kWh, which is a lot, but it's amortized over many decades (a 50 yo house would require ~1000kWh/year). For comparison, this is only 25000 miles of driving in a 20mpg vehicle, which plenty of Americans roll through in a year or two.
In the aggregate, the energy associated with making stuff for someone requires ~12000 kWh per capita per year. Someone on the frugal side would probably need half of this, or less. Food requires about the same amount, and could reasonably be cut to ~4000kWh/year with a frugal/mostly vegetarian diet. Heating, cooling, electricity, and transportation can in most cases be configured to use only renewable energy.
This puts the total energy requirements at ~10000kWh/year as opposed to the US average of ~83000kWh/year, which, like I mentioned, would minimize the majority of impacts people have on the planet, and that would also be minimized as agriculture and manufacturing adopt better production standards/use more and more renewable energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
Withoutthehotair.com is hands down my favorite book about energy and conservation. So much of the discussion about these matters, like this thread, involve adjectives and not numbers.
What is affluent, upper middle class, how many is a lot of people, what is too crowded. Not everything in the world can be quantified, but as I think we have found in discussion about retirement have numbers $40K/year vs adjectives like comfortable or bare bones is really important. Without The Hot Air provides a common reference point for energy discussion. I urge everyone to check out the website and at least read the summary of the book.
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Give it a rest and please let this thread die. After 185 posts we've all said our 2c.
Want to change the world, go out there and just do it. Arguing with us is not going to solve anything.
If I can convince 1 person to give to worthy charities such as http://www.unbound.org/ (http://www.unbound.org/) (take a look and see real human being suffering poverty that anyone here can greatly ease) with just dollars per day and actually change the world and do good vs make greedy politicians and scammers rich by spending money on "green carbon offsets" or "carbon neutral" crap, it would be a great moment.
Look up their ratings from different charity raters, you can even go on a trip and meet the people your helping. Ironically they also have a trip to Ecuador later this year: http://www.unbound.org/WhatsHappening/AwarenessTrips.aspx?TripID=3171 (http://www.unbound.org/WhatsHappening/AwarenessTrips.aspx?TripID=3171)
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In the aggregate, the energy associated with making stuff for someone requires ~12000 kWh per capita per year. Someone on the frugal side would probably need half of this, or less. Food requires about the same amount, and could reasonably be cut to ~4000kWh/year with a frugal/mostly vegetarian diet. Heating, cooling, electricity, and transportation can in most cases be configured to use only renewable energy.
This puts the total energy requirements at ~10000kWh/year as opposed to the US average of ~83000kWh/year, which, like I mentioned, would minimize the majority of impacts people have on the planet, and that would also be minimized as agriculture and manufacturing adopt better production standards/use more and more renewable energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
Oh my! Canada uses more kWh per capita than the USA?? Tisk Tisk, I better post this to the canada thread...
Also the wiki sources says the USA is 9538.8kWh/yr.
Yes I am also in favor of hydroelectric dams for renewal energy.
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In the aggregate, the energy associated with making stuff for someone requires ~12000 kWh per capita per year. Someone on the frugal side would probably need half of this, or less. Food requires about the same amount, and could reasonably be cut to ~4000kWh/year with a frugal/mostly vegetarian diet. Heating, cooling, electricity, and transportation can in most cases be configured to use only renewable energy.
This puts the total energy requirements at ~10000kWh/year as opposed to the US average of ~83000kWh/year, which, like I mentioned, would minimize the majority of impacts people have on the planet, and that would also be minimized as agriculture and manufacturing adopt better production standards/use more and more renewable energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
Oh my! Canada uses more kWh per capita than the USA?? Tisk Tisk, I better post this to the canada thread...
Also the wiki sources says the USA is 9538.8kWh/yr.
Yes I am also in favor of hydroelectric dams for renewal energy.
That's the value in (average) Watts. Per the table header, multiply by 8.766 to get the kWh/year figure.
The same value in W per capita (1 GJ/a = 31.7 W) (multiply by 8.766 to get kWh/year)
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If you're interested in specifics, take a look at this.
http://www.withouthotair.com/
It's a UK centric overview, but plug and chug for where ever you live... Look at the stuff chapter for more info on items. A 3 bedroom house for example requires ~42000kWh, which is a lot, but it's amortized over many decades (a 50 yo house would require ~1000kWh/year). For comparison, this is only 25000 miles of driving in a 20mpg vehicle, which plenty of Americans roll through in a year or two.
In the aggregate, the energy associated with making stuff for someone requires ~12000 kWh per capita per year. Someone on the frugal side would probably need half of this, or less. Food requires about the same amount, and could reasonably be cut to ~4000kWh/year with a frugal/mostly vegetarian diet. Heating, cooling, electricity, and transportation can in most cases be configured to use only renewable energy.
This puts the total energy requirements at ~10000kWh/year as opposed to the US average of ~83000kWh/year, which, like I mentioned, would minimize the majority of impacts people have on the planet, and that would also be minimized as agriculture and manufacturing adopt better production standards/use more and more renewable energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
Withoutthehotair.com is hands down my favorite book about energy and conservation. So much of the discussion about these matters, like this thread, involve adjectives and not numbers.
What is affluent, upper middle class, how many is a lot of people, what is too crowded. Not everything in the world can be quantified, but as I think we have found in discussion about retirement have numbers $40K/year vs adjectives like comfortable or bare bones is really important. Without The Hot Air provides a common reference point for energy discussion. I urge everyone to check out the website and at least read the summary of the book.
I like Without Hot Air too.
Have you read Limits To Growth, the 30 year edition? If you liked Without Hot Air, I expect you'll appreciate it too.
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I know that comment wasn't directed at my per say, but the LTG stuff I've seen tends to bug me because of some of the assumptions made regarding how resources can be converted. The first LTG model was off by leaps and bounds because they assumed all resources were interchangeable with some penalty, and as a result population increased drastically until we ran out of non-renewable resources and it crashed.
IRL, things don't work like this because we can't convert gold into oil or food into silver. I think the newer model is better, but still not realistic. On the flip side, I also love without hot air because it explicit, realistic, and doesn't make any unrealistic assumptions.
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I have a great idea. Everyone who thinks the world has a problem with overpopulation should just go get themselves sterilized. Problem solved. Unless, of course, you are trying to say that the problem is those "other people", which, of course, opens up an entirely new conversation.
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I have to agree with many others in this thread. Overpopulation is not a problem - not in the slightest. In fact, the opposite may soon become a problem. Here's the issue: never in history has economic growth been accompanied by population decline. Population decline means economic decline. And at the current rate, world population will start declining, leading into a a global economic crisis.
Another problem is that developing countries are already using so much birth control. This may mean that their economy will falter before they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The birth rate of the early United States, in a capitalist economy, is the one of the major reasons it is an economic powerhouse today.
I would argue that the myth of "overpopulation" has done the human race huge damage, and my generation will be dealing with its effects for the rest of our lives. We need to focus on individual consumption, not population.
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I have to agree with many others in this thread. Overpopulation is not a problem - not in the slightest. In fact, the opposite may soon become a problem. Here's the issue: never in history has economic growth been accompanied by population decline. Population decline means economic decline. And at the current rate, world population will start declining, leading into a a global economic crisis.
Another problem is that developing countries are already using so much birth control. This may mean that their economy will falter before they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps. The birth rate of the early United States, in a capitalist economy, is the one of the major reasons it is an economic powerhouse today.
I would argue that the myth of "overpopulation" has done the human race huge damage, and my generation will be dealing with its effects for the rest of our lives. We need to focus on individual consumption, not population.
Your argument contains conflicting points. You discuss the need for constant population growth to (because more people consume more which aids the economy) first. You end with the need for individuals to reduce consumption.
If a country were to seriously tackle individual consumption it would tank the economy. Constant economic growth is not compatible with a tremendous reduction of consumption and a reversion to high savings in a population. The economic model of constant growth is not a sustainable one . . . there are no systems in nature that can support it.
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Obviously it's a problem. Look at the wild habitat destruction and the vastly elevated rated of extinction vs. historical norms. All of it comes back to one thing... too many people competing with wildlife for resources and living space. And why the hell is a growing population a good thing? Almost every stress in my daily life - whether it's traffic, crowds of people, long lines, pollution, destroying all the forests and so on all come back to one thing... too many people. Earth's population has to stop growing at some point, it's a mathematical fact, so why is it better to have 9bn people vs. 1bn when it levels off?
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Big Owl, could you catch yourself up by starting from the first post?
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I'm long Ebola.
The world only "needs" more consumers to support the concept of inflationary currencies. In the absence of pushing for constant inflation, fewer people on the planet would improve the quality of life as more sustainable resources could be allocated per capita.
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I'm long Ebola.
The world only "needs" more consumers to support the concept of inflationary currencies. In the absence of pushing for constant inflation, fewer people on the planet would improve the quality of life as more sustainable resources could be allocated per capita.
Or just maybe, more people means more potential for good in the world? The more people that exist, the more people that can solve the world's problems, discover new technologies (which don't have to be just for more consumption). Why is more humans always a bad thing? Through every obstacle, humanity has persisted. I have positive prospects about the future of our race, and for our ability to deal with environmental issues as well. And once we have matter fabrication, who needs to harvest a specific resource anyway? ;-)
I dislike this fatalist thinking that assumes negative outcomes. As MMM would say, be optimistic!
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I'm long Ebola.
The world only "needs" more consumers to support the concept of inflationary currencies. In the absence of pushing for constant inflation, fewer people on the planet would improve the quality of life as more sustainable resources could be allocated per capita.
Or just maybe, more people means more potential for good in the world? The more people that exist, the more people that can solve the world's problems, discover new technologies (which don't have to be just for more consumption). Why is more humans always a bad thing? Through every obstacle, humanity has persisted. I have positive prospects about the future of our race, and for our ability to deal with environmental issues as well. And once we have matter fabrication, who needs to harvest a specific resource anyway? ;-)
I dislike this fatalist thinking that assumes negative outcomes. As MMM would say, be optimistic!
Current scientific thinking indicates that populations (such as deer) should be controlled for the benefit of the deer. Why do you assume it's different for people?
When you actually have matter fabrication, it may be a different story. Until then, we should live within our means and control our population as MMM did say earlier in the thread.
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http://populationaction.org/Articles/Whats_Your_Number/Summary.php
useful website about how big the earths population was when you were born.
Personally I can't believe how many people on this thread feel this is not a problem. Its a standard predator prey model. We are the predictor and resources are the prey.
Here's a fantastic TED talk on the issue.
https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_on_global_population_growth
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Big Owl, could you catch yourself up by starting from the first post?
Maybe you could be so kind as to fill me in. What's your point?
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Current scientific thinking indicates that populations (such as deer) should be controlled for the benefit of the deer. Why do you assume it's different for people?
When you actually have matter fabrication, it may be a different story. Until then, we should live within our means and control our population as MMM did say earlier in the thread.
The difference between humans and deer is that there aren't deer running around the US using three times more in the way of natural resources than deer from Europe, thirty times more than an antelope in Africa, or even ten times more than another deer in the US.
Deer also can't reduce their resource consumption as much as many humans can, especially the humans that consume the most resources per capita.
If we were already minimizing resource use, then I'd be inclined to agree that we should limit population growth if it wasn't already approaching some steady state.
With that said, the majority (including myself) of the people on this forum probably fall in excess resource consumption category, even with mustachianism, and when I see posts about overpopulation, it's as much (or more) about other people limiting the poster's ability to over-consume as it is about over-population.
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Current scientific thinking indicates that populations (such as deer) should be controlled for the benefit of the deer. Why do you assume it's different for people?
When you actually have matter fabrication, it may be a different story. Until then, we should live within our means and control our population as MMM did say earlier in the thread.
The difference between humans and deer is that there aren't deer running around the US using three times more in the way of natural resources than deer from Europe, thirty times more than an antelope in Africa, or even ten times more than another deer in the US.
Deer also can't reduce their resource consumption as much as many humans can, especially the humans that consume the most resources per capita.
If we were already minimizing resource use, then I'd be inclined to agree that we should limit population growth if it wasn't already approaching some steady state.
With that said, the majority (including myself) of the people on this forum probably fall in excess resource consumption category, even with mustachianism, and when I see posts about overpopulation, it's as much (or more) about other people limiting the poster's ability to over-consume as it is about over-population.
Fixer-upper doesn't disagree with you given what was said.
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Current scientific thinking indicates that populations (such as deer) should be controlled for the benefit of the deer. Why do you assume it's different for people?
When you actually have matter fabrication, it may be a different story. Until then, we should live within our means and control our population as MMM did say earlier in the thread.
The difference between humans and deer is that there aren't deer running around the US using three times more in the way of natural resources than deer from Europe, thirty times more than an antelope in Africa, or even ten times more than another deer in the US.
Deer also can't reduce their resource consumption as much as many humans can, especially the humans that consume the most resources per capita.
If we were already minimizing resource use, then I'd be inclined to agree that we should limit population growth if it wasn't already approaching some steady state.
With that said, the majority (including myself) of the people on this forum probably fall in excess resource consumption category, even with mustachianism, and when I see posts about overpopulation, it's as much (or more) about other people limiting the poster's ability to over-consume as it is about over-population.
Fixer-upper doesn't disagree with you given what was said.
I don't disagree, but would like to point out that deer tend to be fatter in corn fields. Differences in resource utilization aren't strictly limited to humans, and occur naturally wherever the conditions become favorable.
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Until then, we should live within our means and control our population
are you talking financial means? Because I can do that and be very harmful to the environment at the same time if I choose to... How do you define means in terms of population? I mean yes the US consumes a lot of energy compared to the past, but our ability to produce energy has also increased so why not call it an energy "inflation" like how with money, we can increase our yearly withdraws for inflation.
but the deer also can't "make" more resources either, with improving technology, we could in theory produce more food/water/etc... but we don't because of the "costs" aka not easy/cheap.
and we could in theory just make "islands"/boats on the ocean and farm on them too instead of living there. With robotics, it could even grow/transport for us too.
that said, I do think overpopulation is a problem but not exactly the the predatory/prey model either. Look at population densities of tokyo/new york, or even bigger US vs Canada vs Euro zone (each similar in land size, or close but different population densities). I'd almost say that higher densities forces people to use less resources without lowering QOL (not predator/prey in that they run of food then die off). Buildings closer together = more biking/walking/public transportation (no space for individual cars). It also means stores are closer so no need to buy in "bulk" if you can make daily trips and not weekly/monthly.
edit, nice ted video, haven't seen it before
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Here's a good article on the subject.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/oct/27/population-consumption-threat-to-planet
Population is to some degree a problem, but excess consumption is a far, far bigger problem.
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I worked at an agricultural research station in Australia from 1969 to 1998, as a technician. Is it difficult to increase food production quickly enough to keep up with population growth? Of course! I am with terrier56 in being astounded at people who advocate indefinite population growth. How ignorant and irresponsible can you get? This is not a trivial matter; it concerns food supply!
Aloysius_Poutine, if we do grow ten times more potatoes than is necessary to feed the world (of course we do not!), what happens to the huge surplus? This is a fantasy. We are approaching a situation where increases in food supply can only be achieved by growing all the world’s wheat, rice and maize in giant glass houses covering a large fraction of the world’s surface, to stabilize variations in the weather experienced by these crops. This can be done, but at what cost? I presume that rising food costs will eventually force the world population to stop growing.
The long term prospect of modernity, that is applied science, is to create a paradise on Earth. The same modernity can be used to create a purgatory on Earth. I am forced to assume that those who want to risk mass starvation by advocating indefinite population growth are hoping to build a purgatory on Earth. A paradise on Earth would be a world population of say a billion, living the Good Life in the more attractive regions of the earth, supported by an automated economy. Why run the world any other way? There is no law that says we have to pack as many people into the world as possible.
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The long term prospect of modernity, that is applied science, is to create a paradise on Earth. The same modernity can be used to create a purgatory on Earth. I am forced to assume that those who want to risk mass starvation by advocating indefinite population growth are hoping to build a purgatory on Earth. A paradise on Earth would be a world population of say a billion, living the Good Life in the more attractive regions of the earth, supported by an automated economy. Why run the world any other way? There is no law that says we have to pack as many people into the world as possible.
That's very much an inconvenient truth for the other 6 billion people inhabiting planet earth.
You wouldn't want to go down in history as the wo/man who made it happen.
I take a different view on this. In a hundred years we have gone from the Wright brothers to scramjets and rockets and robots capable of reaching the boundaries of the solar system. In 2114 I reckon humanity will be polluting a sizeable fraction of the galaxy.
There's enough 'space' out there for all of us. We may even find a dark corner of the universe to dump ISIL and their ilk into.
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I take a different view on this. In a hundred years we have gone from the Wright brothers to scramjets and rockets and robots capable of reaching the boundaries of the solar system. In 2114 I reckon humanity will be polluting a sizeable fraction of the galaxy.
There's enough 'space' out there for all of us. We may even find a dark corner of the universe to dump ISIL and their ilk into.
We went from wright brothers to scramjets and rockets because of vision and interest. I see little evidence of either related to developing expensive, long term space travel programs. With current technology, travel to the nearest inhabitable planets would take between 4 and 200 thousand years . . . and only once you get there would it be possible to determine if the planet is really inhabitable. There are some rather substantial roadblocks in the way of further exploration.
I'm all for optimism, but at some point it becomes delusion.
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I worked at an agricultural research station in Australia from 1969 to 1998, as a technician. Is it difficult to increase food production quickly enough to keep up with population growth? Of course! I am with terrier56 in being astounded at people who advocate indefinite population growth. How ignorant and irresponsible can you get? This is not a trivial matter; it concerns food supply!
Aloysius_Poutine, if we do grow ten times more potatoes than is necessary to feed the world (of course we do not!), what happens to the huge surplus? This is a fantasy. We are approaching a situation where increases in food supply can only be achieved by growing all the world’s wheat, rice and maize in giant glass houses covering a large fraction of the world’s surface, to stabilize variations in the weather experienced by these crops. This can be done, but at what cost? I presume that rising food costs will eventually force the world population to stop growing.
The long term prospect of modernity, that is applied science, is to create a paradise on Earth. The same modernity can be used to create a purgatory on Earth. I am forced to assume that those who want to risk mass starvation by advocating indefinite population growth are hoping to build a purgatory on Earth. A paradise on Earth would be a world population of say a billion, living the Good Life in the more attractive regions of the earth, supported by an automated economy. Why run the world any other way? There is no law that says we have to pack as many people into the world as possible.
"what if this?? what if that? risk of bad things happening! Don't you know what happens at infinity??"
I'm happy to consider any evidence regarding the threats of starvation or indefinite growth, and I'm not sure anyone here is advocating indefinite growth either. Many of your assumptions are actually wrong, such as food costs as a percentage of income are positively correlated with fertility rates (countries with lower food costs have LESS children) for the reasons explained previously in this thread.
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I take a different view on this. In a hundred years we have gone from the Wright brothers to scramjets and rockets and robots capable of reaching the boundaries of the solar system. In 2114 I reckon humanity will be polluting a sizeable fraction of the galaxy.
There's enough 'space' out there for all of us. We may even find a dark corner of the universe to dump ISIL and their ilk into.
We went from wright brothers to scramjets and rockets because of vision and interest. I see little evidence of either related to developing expensive, long term space travel programs. With current technology, travel to the nearest inhabitable planets would take between 4 and 200 thousand years* . . . and only once you get there would it be possible to determine if the planet is really inhabitable. There are some rather substantial roadblocks in the way of further exploration.
I'm all for optimism, but at some point it becomes delusion.
You sound like an Aussie politician spruiking the benefits of copper wires over fibre-optic cable.
Do you really believe current technology is going to be all there is? I don't see these roadblocks as insurmountable. Sure they might be hard and difficult, but not impossible.
A Japanese company has come out and said they'll be able to build a space elevator by 2030 made from carbon nanotubes that will eliminate the need for rockets to launch people and things into space. They've already started. Imagine what they will accomplish with more advanced technology in 16 years time. 100 years down the track, I don't think it is so much of a stretch to start believing some pretty amazing things will happen.
* Yes I do understand the physics regarding the funny things that happen as you approach the speed of light (special relativity). Call me a dreamer, don't care, but one day someone will come up with a way to get around that problem. My guess it will happen when we can understand enough about quantum physics to harness the power of quark pairs and how a pair on opposite ends of the universe can seemingly be linked by their rotational spin.
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There are clear benefits of fibre-optics over copper wires. I probably sound more like someone 'spruiking' the benefits of fibre-optics over magic unicorn hair. (Surely, in 100 years we will have discovered/bred magic unicorns that have manes of a material that give near infinite bandwidth! Because, FUTURE!)
A space elevator has nothing to do with interstellar travel. There's shockingly little research going into deep space related development. I'd love to see it, but to paraphrase Jerry Maguire . . . Show me the hyperdrive.
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Despite all of the great sci-fi movies out there and the great belief that humanity can accomplish anything I am skeptical that we will have the ability to inhabit space to any significant degree. All major decisions in this world are determined by costs, and it would be much cheaper to wage wars or build cities upwards than to start over in space.
My guess is that overpopulation will be the end to overpopulation. Based on the rate we consume resources it is only a matter of time before major world powers start fighting over resources with wars that devastate their populations. We see this already in the Middle East and the recent moves by Russia, but there will be a point when steel is easier and cheaper to take from other countries infrastructures than through mining practices. The world will get uglier as we populate it further. Capitalism and globalization will spread the wealth for a couple of decades, but as the world westernizes the worlds resources will eventually deplete closer to zero. As this happens countries will become desperate and afraid.
We are likely living in the golden age of technology where we have a great balance of affordable technology and reasonable world peace. There will be a point when the world focuses less on using technology for convenience and entertainment, but instead on death and survival. It may be a 1000 years from now but my guess is a major world war will happen in the next 50 years. Perhaps the US will claim that Iran is preparing a nuclear attack, or Russia will just start marching west. Maybe China's and India's populations will just collide.
The world is already at a point where we can not feed everyone. As starvation becomes more rampant we will see more violence and diseases take out large populations of people. Ebola in Africa is a recent example. In a modern country we have 1 case in Africa we have 4000 deaths. If something more contagious happens in these countries and the population affected is greater we will likely not be able to afford to contain it and whole populations will be wiped out. As resources become scarce we may start allowing these countries to be wiped out from plague or viruses. I would not be surprised if diseases are artificially created for this purpose. If the planet is down to its last 20% of resources (oil, steal, food supply) what measures will countries use to grab hold of these resources?
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What an impressive amount of drivel, Druid. If you had spent the time researching these fantasies instead of leaving them here, you would realize what nonsense you just wrote. We've had quite the productive exchange considering evidence in this thread, please try to keep that standard.
MOD NOTE: Please read the forum rules. Attack an argument, not a person.
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You cannot research a fantasy; at least not effectively. Since my post was a prediction based on my understanding of economics, history, and human nature there was no need to research anything. I have studied economics. I have studied history. I am still figuring out human nature..
Historically wars have often been fought over resources. A few hundred years ago "civilized" countries were eradicating whole populations of people for resources and I see no reason to believe it will not happen again as resources diminish. As resources go down wars will go up. Likewise technology has been used to create all kinds of weapons and the creation of biological diseases would be an effective weapon. Not only could it wipe out huge populations, but it could be done so without an individual or country having to take credit for it. Considering nuclear bombs have been dropped I don't believe I am stretching to far here. Hitler would of used such a weapon. ISIS would use such a weapon.
My intention was not to take a side to an argument, but express a colorful view of the implications of what the world may turn into if we continue on our trajectory. Exchanges are often not productive, so I decided to appeal to people's imagination to see a possible outcome of both resource consumption and unchecked population growth. Look at a world where resources are close to zero but population is immense. Right now resources are immense and we have already seen wars fought over resources.
I also wasn't the one who started the fantasy talk about building populations in space, which almost has no chance of happening. I can build a wooden shack in my backyard for under $5000. That same shack on the moon would cost at least 500 million dollars.
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Care to share any evidence to support these conjectures?
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I worked at an agricultural research station in Australia from 1969 to 1998, as a technician. Is it difficult to increase food production quickly enough to keep up with population growth? Of course! I am with terrier56 in being astounded at people who advocate indefinite population growth. How ignorant and irresponsible can you get? This is not a trivial matter; it concerns food supply!
Aloysius_Poutine, if we do grow ten times more potatoes than is necessary to feed the world (of course we do not!), what happens to the huge surplus? This is a fantasy. We are approaching a situation where increases in food supply can only be achieved by growing all the world’s wheat, rice and maize in giant glass houses covering a large fraction of the world’s surface, to stabilize variations in the weather experienced by these crops. This can be done, but at what cost? I presume that rising food costs will eventually force the world population to stop growing.
The long term prospect of modernity, that is applied science, is to create a paradise on Earth. The same modernity can be used to create a purgatory on Earth. I am forced to assume that those who want to risk mass starvation by advocating indefinite population growth are hoping to build a purgatory on Earth. A paradise on Earth would be a world population of say a billion, living the Good Life in the more attractive regions of the earth, supported by an automated economy. Why run the world any other way? There is no law that says we have to pack as many people into the world as possible.
I think infinite population growth is a straw man. I don't recall anyone of sound mind seriously suggesting it.
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Please review this source that confirms my assertions, this is science, not fantasy:
http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/ (http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/)
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Wow, i had a hard time reading some of these comments. I simply can't understand why it is so hard for some people to accept basic concepts like that our planets finite amount of water, atmosphere, fertile land and wildlife MUST have some kind of limit of human consumption. It's not about population density, or employment, it's about the the rate of resources we use up as a whole, the amount of pollution we create and the rate of ecosystems we change or destroy. I'm not a scientist, so i can't even guess what the true population limit is. For all i know we could already be over what our planet can sustain long term as it is, or perhaps the earth could handle a 100 billion more people just fine, but at SOME LEVEL of consumption our little green and blue world and those that live on it will be IRREVERSIBLY FUCKED. So why deflect away concerns about it? Why name-call and belittle those that actually give a shit about the health of our planet and its people? Just because science doesn't have all the answers doesn't mean we shouldn't still take a step back and question our lifestyles and habits as human beings and try to make better choices for everyones future. After all it's not like us humans haven't made mistakes in the past by blindly following others to extinction...
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I liked the planet better 1 billion people ago.
Sure the earth "can manage" more, it's just less enjoyable in many ways.
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I liked the planet better 1 billion people ago.
1 billion years ago? I'm guessing you don't smoke and eat a pretty clean diet . . .
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5 pages of conjecture, hysterics, and hand-wringing above.
Science, facts, evidence here:
http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/aug/13/the-depopulation-problem/ (http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/aug/13/the-depopulation-problem/)
http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/ (http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/)
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5 pages of conjecture, hysterics, and hand-wringing above.
Science, facts, evidence here:
http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/aug/13/the-depopulation-problem/ (http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/aug/13/the-depopulation-problem/)
http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/ (http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/)
Wow you feel the reasoned and at least thoughtful responses of the posters in this thread are hysterics and hand-wringing, while your first link there is science facts, and evidence. Hmm.
The 2nd link states if things go as we think we will, we will end up with 11 billion people on this planet. This is a planet that already has 7 billion people on it. We have NEVER had this many people on earth. It is unprecendented the amount of fossil fuel we are currently burning, the amount of land humans and human activity is using and hence amount of habitat loss for all other remaining species on this plant.
To me don't really care if you describe it as a human population problem, or a human consumption problem it is not a subtle thing to find evidence we may had already reached this planet's carrying capacity. Everything from the amount of energy being consumed, amount of arable land being used overfishing, amount of fuels used to simply make food, the amount of pollution and contamination of our air, water, land supply. Fact is, this planet is undergoing one of the largest mass extinctions on this planet, and there is compelling evidence it is due to human activities of habitat loss, hunting, pollution and introduction of non-native species into other habitats among other causes This is not even touching upon the fact we are altering and destabling our climate due to the greenhouse gases we are emitting because, at this point I have no patience to entertain climate change deniers.
In an economic model, population drops are bad from an economic, and possibly social perspective. Constant (positive) population growth is a positive thing, creating positive economic exchange and prosperity. However it is being conducted on an essentially closed system with finite amount of resources. It's physics folks. I am hoping and it is possible we may be able to almeriorate this situation, by individually or by aggregate consuming less energy, land, food, meat, etc etc and use existing or future technology and social change to minimize our already negative impact. But just because we can think of ways to help, doesn't mean there isn't a problem. There is being positive and optimistic, and there is fantasy (somehow science or doing nothing will pull our asses out of the fire).
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/earth-carrying-capacity1.htm
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I liked the planet better 1 billion people ago.
1 billion years ago? I'm guessing you don't smoke and eat a pretty clean diet . . .
It says people... as in the time when we had one billion less people
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The question I always have in these discussions is: Why are more humans considered to be a good thing? If population growth is slowing, why is that a bad thing? I have never understood why the end goal should be as many humans as possible rather than a world where everyone is well cared for without destroying the earth in the process.
Because governments, economies and business are basically pyramid schemes that will crumble without growth is what I have always thought. But I am not an economist, so its just a wild guess. :)
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5 pages of conjecture, hysterics, and hand-wringing above.
Science, facts, evidence here:
http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/aug/13/the-depopulation-problem/ (http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/aug/13/the-depopulation-problem/)
http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/ (http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/)
Wow you feel the reasoned and at least thoughtful responses of the posters in this thread are hysterics and hand-wringing, while your first link there is science facts, and evidence. Hmm.
The 2nd link states if things go as we think we will, we will end up with 11 billion people on this planet. This is a planet that already has 7 billion people on it. We have NEVER had this many people on earth. It is unprecendented the amount of fossil fuel we are currently burning, the amount of land humans and human activity is using and hence amount of habitat loss for all other remaining species on this plant.
To me don't really care if you describe it as a human population problem, or a human consumption problem it is not a subtle thing to find evidence we may had already reached this planet's carrying capacity. Everything from the amount of energy being consumed, amount of arable land being used overfishing, amount of fuels used to simply make food, the amount of pollution and contamination of our air, water, land supply. Fact is, this planet is undergoing one of the largest mass extinctions on this planet, and there is compelling evidence it is due to human activities of habitat loss, hunting, pollution and introduction of non-native species into other habitats among other causes This is not even touching upon the fact we are altering and destabling our climate due to the greenhouse gases we are emitting because, at this point I have no patience to entertain climate change deniers.
In an economic model, population drops are bad from an economic, and possibly social perspective. Constant (positive) population growth is a positive thing, creating positive economic exchange and prosperity. However it is being conducted on an essentially closed system with finite amount of resources. It's physics folks. I am hoping and it is possible we may be able to almeriorate this situation, by individually or by aggregate consuming less energy, land, food, meat, etc etc and use existing or future technology and social change to minimize our already negative impact. But just because we can think of ways to help, doesn't mean there isn't a problem. There is being positive and optimistic, and there is fantasy (somehow science or doing nothing will pull our asses out of the fire).
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/earth-carrying-capacity1.htm
Your howstuffworks source claims:
Estimates put Earth's carrying capacity at anywhere between 2 billion and 40 billion people [source: McConeghy].
Not quite the best estimate given the upper bound is 20x the lower...maybe just a wild assed guess on his part?
There's not really a point to address your non-substantiated rant devoid of facts or evidence, other than to point out your silly arguments of "unprecedented" and "no patience" given every minute that passes is also "unprecedented." You know what's also unprecedented? Infant mortality, women's longevity, vaccines, etc...you know the stuff of progress in the classical sense. Physics and science are mutually exclusive from your patience and the concept of patience also, so thanks for professing your ignorant faith in fear and being "green."
Because what benefit would be to engage you and your fellow lemmings? After hundreds of posts and my numerous references the only rebuttals are emotional diatribes.
The evidence is clear, the science is clear: there is not a current threat to mankind's extinction due to overpopulation, nor is there any evidence for a future threat.
Want to hear more smart people explain why this is??
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html)
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5 pages of conjecture, hysterics, and hand-wringing above.
Science, facts, evidence here:
http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/aug/13/the-depopulation-problem/ (http://longnow.org/seminars/02004/aug/13/the-depopulation-problem/)
http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/ (http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/future-world-population-growth/)
Wow you feel the reasoned and at least thoughtful responses of the posters in this thread are hysterics and hand-wringing, while your first link there is science facts, and evidence. Hmm.
The 2nd link states if things go as we think we will, we will end up with 11 billion people on this planet. This is a planet that already has 7 billion people on it. We have NEVER had this many people on earth. It is unprecendented the amount of fossil fuel we are currently burning, the amount of land humans and human activity is using and hence amount of habitat loss for all other remaining species on this plant.
To me don't really care if you describe it as a human population problem, or a human consumption problem it is not a subtle thing to find evidence we may had already reached this planet's carrying capacity. Everything from the amount of energy being consumed, amount of arable land being used overfishing, amount of fuels used to simply make food, the amount of pollution and contamination of our air, water, land supply. Fact is, this planet is undergoing one of the largest mass extinctions on this planet, and there is compelling evidence it is due to human activities of habitat loss, hunting, pollution and introduction of non-native species into other habitats among other causes This is not even touching upon the fact we are altering and destabling our climate due to the greenhouse gases we are emitting because, at this point I have no patience to entertain climate change deniers.
In an economic model, population drops are bad from an economic, and possibly social perspective. Constant (positive) population growth is a positive thing, creating positive economic exchange and prosperity. However it is being conducted on an essentially closed system with finite amount of resources. It's physics folks. I am hoping and it is possible we may be able to almeriorate this situation, by individually or by aggregate consuming less energy, land, food, meat, etc etc and use existing or future technology and social change to minimize our already negative impact. But just because we can think of ways to help, doesn't mean there isn't a problem. There is being positive and optimistic, and there is fantasy (somehow science or doing nothing will pull our asses out of the fire).
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/earth-carrying-capacity1.htm
Your howstuffworks source claims:
Estimates put Earth's carrying capacity at anywhere between 2 billion and 40 billion people [source: McConeghy].
Not quite the best estimate given the upper bound is 20x the lower...maybe just a wild assed guess on his part?
There's not really a point to address your non-substantiated rant devoid of facts or evidence, other than to point out your silly arguments of "unprecedented" and "no patience" given every minute that passes is also "unprecedented." You know what's also unprecedented? Infant mortality, women's longevity, vaccines, etc...you know the stuff of progress in the classical sense. Physics and science are mutually exclusive from your patience and the concept of patience also, so thanks for professing your ignorant faith in fear and being "green."
Because what benefit would be to engage you and your fellow lemmings? After hundreds of posts and my numerous references the only rebuttals are emotional diatribes.
The evidence is clear, the science is clear: there is not a current threat to mankind's extinction due to overpopulation, nor is there any evidence for a future threat.
Want to hear more smart people explain why this is??
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html)
Like I said, I don't really care if it is considered an overpopulation problem or a problem of overusing the planet's resources. There are physical limits on how many people can live on this planet, and simply feed them, let alone all the other resources humans use. One estimate was we could feed 10 billion, if all arable land was converted to (vegetarian) food production (we can support 10 billion, if all were vegetarian). It is you (and others) that seem to have a problem with science and facts, unless you feel the law of physics, or depending on the earth's ecosystem doesn't apply to us somehow. There have also been a number of policy reports discussing our resource scarcity is actually the underlying cause of a number of human conflicts and civil war. Our and other countries have written policy reports on the impact of climate change on our national security, as it will reduce arable land and cause migration of people from those areas.
(edited to add a more recent discussion of this problem)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/earth-lost-50-wildlife-in-40-years-wwf?CMP=share_btn_link
http://science.jrank.org/pages/1244/Carrying-Capacity.html
And, maybe you should read the rebuttal letters of the editorial that you posted, that pointed out the bias and shortcomings of the opinion piece. Myself, rather get my science from peer reviewed and consensus papers.
(here's an example)
K K
London June 1, 2015
Another day, another article denying overpopulation on ideological grounds. This piece by the NYT attempts to strike a "balance" by framing those concerned with the (rather obvious) impact of population on the world's resources as placed on one "extreme", those who think resources are essentially infinite at another, and people like Fred Pearce, a noted population denialist, in the (implicitly more reasonable) "middle". Pearce seems to assume all consumption is optional and that massive cuts in global consumption are both feasible and likely to be implemented. Pearce also appears not to understand the difference between a fall in birth rates and a fall in actual population numbers, and assumes that whatever population size the planet ends up with will be sustainable. Apparently we have no serious global environmental problems and are doing fine at providing for the needs of everyone on this planet! [Except, we obviously do and we aren't.] The article also quotes an out-of-date UN population projection, and ignores Norman Borlaug's explicit concern that overpopulation would remain a problem regardless of the "Green revolution". Disappointing.
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My conclusion after reviewing the pages of evidence:
The evidence is clear, the science is clear: there is not a current threat to mankind's extinction due to overpopulation, nor is there any evidence for a future threat.
Want to hear more smart people explain why this is??
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html)
Like I said, I don't really care if it is considered an overpopulation problem or a problem of overusing the planet's resources. There are physical limits on how many people can live on this planet, and simply feed them, let alone all the other resources humans use. One estimate was we could feed 10 billion, if all arable land was converted to (vegetarian) food production (we can support 10 billion, if all were vegetarian). It is you (and others) that seem to have a problem with science and facts, unless you feel the law of physics, or depending on the earth's ecosystem doesn't apply to us somehow. There have also been a number of policy reports discussing our resource scarcity is actually the underlying cause of a number of human conflicts and civil war. Our and other countries have written policy reports on the impact of climate change on our national security, as it will reduce arable land and cause migration of people from those areas.
(edited to add a more recent discussion of this problem)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/earth-lost-50-wildlife-in-40-years-wwf?CMP=share_btn_link
http://science.jrank.org/pages/1244/Carrying-Capacity.html
And, maybe you should read the rebuttal letters of the editorial that you posted, that pointed out the bias and shortcomings of the opinion piece. Myself, rather get my science from peer reviewed and consensus papers.
Care to share any of those peer reviewed papers that deny my claim?? As opposed to linking to 5th grade level summaries that lack any evidence?
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My conclusion after reviewing the pages of evidence:
The evidence is clear, the science is clear: there is not a current threat to mankind's extinction due to overpopulation, nor is there any evidence for a future threat.
Want to hear more smart people explain why this is??
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/us/the-unrealized-horrors-of-population-explosion.html)
Like I said, I don't really care if it is considered an overpopulation problem or a problem of overusing the planet's resources. There are physical limits on how many people can live on this planet, and simply feed them, let alone all the other resources humans use. One estimate was we could feed 10 billion, if all arable land was converted to (vegetarian) food production (we can support 10 billion, if all were vegetarian). It is you (and others) that seem to have a problem with science and facts, unless you feel the law of physics, or depending on the earth's ecosystem doesn't apply to us somehow. There have also been a number of policy reports discussing our resource scarcity is actually the underlying cause of a number of human conflicts and civil war. Our and other countries have written policy reports on the impact of climate change on our national security, as it will reduce arable land and cause migration of people from those areas.
(edited to add a more recent discussion of this problem)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/29/earth-lost-50-wildlife-in-40-years-wwf?CMP=share_btn_link
http://science.jrank.org/pages/1244/Carrying-Capacity.html
And, maybe you should read the rebuttal letters of the editorial that you posted, that pointed out the bias and shortcomings of the opinion piece. Myself, rather get my science from peer reviewed and consensus papers.
Care to share any of those peer reviewed papers that deny my claim?? As opposed to linking to 5th grade level summaries that lack any evidence?
I'd be happy to. The question was whether the amount of humans on this planet and the amount of resources we are currently consuming, is a problem. Any one species (including humans), is dependent on ecosytem to survive. One way to frame this question is in terms of ecological "carrying capacity". A species is considered to go beyond it's carrying capacity, when natural resources are used at a faster rate than they can be replenished or restored. So, if humans have gone past carrying capacity, one would see evidence of resources being used faster than they can be replenished. Some examples of this are fresh drinking water, fisheries, forestation of the earth, habitable land, carbon cycle balance, and inability for pollution etc to be absorbed.
Some people believe that the normal rules for other animals should not apply to humans, because of tool use and technology, we can use those things to increase our carrying capacity. And we have! However the ways that we have manipulated the environment, by increasing our energy production, crop and fisheries, has had unintended consequences, which ultimately degrade and reduce the carrying capacity of that ecosystem. Even if we are able to game the system, we cannot avoid physics and the basic fact all of us, depend on this earth for our water, air, food, and shelter. Paraphrasing Jared Diamond, when a society collapses the rich have the privilege of starving last.
I'm using a lot of science daily, because it is a synopsis of a peer reviewed paper, with the citation if you want to read the original article.
Here's the scientific consensus report on climate change
http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg2/
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151012181037.htm overview of marine fishery collapse
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151029150250.htm (this is for atlantic cod, can also search under tuna, shark, salmon, for additional examples)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150720133252.htm (acidification's effect of the base of ocean food chain)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150225151839.htm (deforestation)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/07/140729093112.htm (water shortage)
There are many articles on chemicals created by human activity (manufacturing, mining etc) that are accumulating in ground or water that are not easily removed. I'm sure you have heard of the chemicals that mimic hormones and altering fresh water fishes. Here is discussion of decline of amphibians globally due to a variety of factors
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2000/02/000222064857.htm
accumulation of chemicals even in deep sea fish
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080609155135.htm
I can find more examples, introduction of nonnative species, the honeybee collapse, (another unintended consequence of beneficial technology (pesticides) that is now biting us in the butt. Nature is extremely complex, and sometimes we cannot predict the consequences of our actions until they have occurred.
Need to get back to work.
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To piggyback on Partgypsy's post - we are acting like an r-type species instead of a K-type species. And in the long run being a k-type species is nicer from an individual viewpoint.
To the (imaginary) inhabitants of UFOs we would look like a very successful invasive species - we are the purple loosestrife and Eurasian millfoil and zebra mussels of the mammalian world.
And yes, science daily is a great place to see what is happening in science.
PS Speaking of invasive species, if you live in New Zealand, start a campaign to kill off all your Canada Geese now. You don't know what you have there. But you will - world domination is their goal.
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There are clear benefits of fibre-optics over copper wires. I probably sound more like someone 'spruiking' the benefits of fibre-optics over magic unicorn hair. (Surely, in 100 years we will have discovered/bred magic unicorns that have manes of a material that give near infinite bandwidth! Because, FUTURE!)
A space elevator has nothing to do with interstellar travel. There's shockingly little research going into deep space related development. I'd love to see it, but to paraphrase Jerry Maguire . . . Show me the hyperdrive.
Not hyperdrive, but NASA is working on ion propulsion. http://www.nasa.gov/content/next-provides-lasting-propulsion-and-high-speeds-for-deep-space-missions
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A couple recent spacecraft have used ion-drives in space. I imagine some combination of ion-drive and solar sail would allow fairly inexpensive travel around the solar system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster
But getting into orbit is still extremely expensive. Until we can get those costs down, activity will be limited.