NationStates Jolt Archive

In another thread someone indicated that they did not believe that the world is overpopulated by humans. This shocked me because I believe that it is clear that we are way overpopulated. What do you think?

Laws get in the way of... *ahem* natural selection and a little something I like to call "open hunting season on humanity". Honestly, we haven't had a good plague or anything in a long time.

Laws get in the way of... *ahem* natural selection and a little something I like to call "open hunting season on humanity". Honestly, we haven't had a good plague or anything in a long time.

Wow you quickly responded to this thread. After writing the post I set up the poll and by the time I submitted the poll you had already posted. My hat is off to you.

In another thread someone indicated that they did not believe that the world is overpopulated by humans. This shocked me because I believe that it is clear that we are way overpopulated. What do you think?

What do you propose we do about it?

Wow you quickly responded to this thread. After writing the post I set up the poll and by the time I submitted the poll you had already posted. My hat is off to you.

I'm quick as a bunny when I see a thread with zero replies. :) First post in gets the glory of full-blown jackassory.

Yes.

Not really, most of the problems are, rather, associated with human misuse and abuse of resources. If somewhat more discretion and responsibility were exercised by humanity, the so-called problem of overpopulation would not be nearly what it is perceived to be.

I think that instead of saying well we could minimize the negative effects of overpopulation if we acted in a more intelligent manner, we have to admit that yes we are overpopulated or else we would not even have to think about acting in a more environmentally intelligent manner.

It is true that primitive man made some species extinct and I am sure that our population was pretty small then in comparison to now. However, I am convinced that we are destroying habitats and making wildlife extinct or endangered at a speed that is exponentially greater than anything we did in the past.

As urbanization continues and agricultural processes improve, we can always fit more people. I imagine we'll have colonized space by the time it becomes a problem.

We just need to stop global warming until we get our space colonies up...

yes it is.

we are destroying and/or moving into too much habitat that should be left for the rest of the animal kingdom. the more people we have, the more that happens

The fool-proof, air-tight, perfect plan to control global population submitted by Anbia:

STOP HAVING SEX!

There problem solved.... your welcome.



(This was a semi-serious post) :)

There is no population problem and I doubt there ever will be.Technology will always improve. Also, this talk of saving the rest of the animal kingdom is sillyness. We are the best adapted. We have conquered. If they want to survive they should adapt, and do it quickly. :P

I think some people's ideas about overpopulation are kind of...um...what's the phrase I want? I guess I'll say, childishly unrealistic. Technology is not a panacea, and I sincerely doubt we are all going to be enjoying the Battlestar Gallactica lifestyle any time soon.

We are overpopulated

It is not a good thing.

Best way to deal with it is widespread use of birth control and family planning, to bring birth rate down to slightly less than the death rate. Allow the population to decrease slowly, by attrition. Not so easy in a world where affluent people in urbanized nations live longer and longer, but still worth the effort.

Yes, and the overpopulation is made worse due to the fact that over half the humans alive are very unintelligent.

The human race has developed an evolutionary immunity to natural selection, therefore nature's disasters and plagues have a lessened efficiency to them, and those who would normally not survive are shielded by somewhat brighter humans who seek power throughout their lives.

Zukariaa;13358837']There is no population problem and I doubt there ever will be.Technology will always improve. Also, this talk of saving the rest of the animal kingdom is sillyness. We are the best adapted. We have conquered. If they want to survive they should adapt, and do it quickly. :P

We have less power over nature than some would like us to think. Almost all animals, save fish, that are used by humans for any reason, food or otherwise, have been born and bred in captivity.

Further, spreading Malthusian claims of impending doom by overpopulation are somewhere between ridiculous and negligent.

What do you propose we do about it?

This is the tough question. I think at minimum we should all limit our number of children voluntarily to a maximum of 2. If someone has two children that should be it. Personally, I would love to see more countries adopt a policy like China's one child policy.

I also think that at the minimum, there should be no financial encouragement to have children. I guess what I am really getting at here is the various tax incentives around the world that promote reproduction.

I also think that (and this where I probably push past the fringe of what people consider normal if I have not already) is that no foreign aid should be spent on combatting life threatening illnesses. I believe that Bush approved $25 billion for aids retroviral treaments in Africa. I think that disease is probably the best of nature's weapons against overpopulation and we should not resist nature's attempts to cure our overpopulation problem. We also have famine as an option but I think that this entails more suffering. Anyway, most people that die in a famine die of diseases anyway because the malnourished have a reduced immune defese system and tend to be more susceptible to illness.

Of course, if I had AIDS and did not suicide over it I would want the treatments so I acknowledge that this is somewhat hypocritical.

If I had my radically environmentalist way, I would like to see all foreign medical aid be in the nature of reducing sufferring instead of saving lives. For example, instead of tring to get life sustaining medicines such as retrovirals to people with life threatening diseases, I would want resources to be spent on anasthesia, cataract surgery, prosthesis, plastic surgery (not boob jobs but real important stuff like giving the disfigured a nice appearance), wheelchairs, etc.

I acknowledge that my views are pretty out there in terms of environmentalist extremism. I would be surprised if a lot of people reading my views 100% agreed with me but perhaps a few of my ideas might meet with some approval.

yes it is.

we are destroying and/or moving into too much habitat that should be left for the rest of the animal kingdom. the more people we have, the more that happens

I agree 100%

Zukariaa;13358837']There is no population problem and I doubt there ever will be.Technology will always improve. Also, this talk of saving the rest of the animal kingdom is sillyness. We are the best adapted. We have conquered. If they want to survive they should adapt, and do it quickly. :P

Although you were probably being sarcastic, I think that you identified the view that if it was widely believed would spell the end for biological diversity beyond those species that would be preserved because someone was making a living by raising them. In other words, most species other than pets and agricultural or horticultural species would end up endangered or extinct.

That would not only be a shame but I cannot even begin to comprehend the arrogance that people would have to believe that they have a right to endanger or end the existance of another species. Although I myself would love to see poison ivy become extinct.

Further, spreading Malthusian claims of impending doom by overpopulation are somewhere between ridiculous and negligent.

I agree with you on the point that overpopulation will not result in a Mathusian famine. However, I am concerned about the effect of encroachment upon the wilderness on other species.

Further, spreading Malthusian claims of impending doom by overpopulation are somewhere between ridiculous and negligent.
Negligent of what?

Also, I, for one, never said anything about impending doom. The bad effects of overpopulation are evident right now, and come in the form of on-going problems that reduce quality of life for people in general. Lowering the population eases those problems and improves quality of life. This does not require any doom-point. I do not see any reason to wait for some point at which it all come tumbling down, before making an effort to improve conditions.

Is the world overpopulated by humans? No. By idiots? Yes. Hippies, conspiracy nuts, Greenpeace, Eureka Australis-types, they all need to go. You can never have too few idiots.

Yes, we are unfortunately...

eat the rich?....and the lawyers?

Depends on what you mean by overpopulated.

This source is interesting: anyone care to try and refute it?

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/3046/overpop.htm

Is the world overpopulated by humans? No. By idiots? Yes. Hippies, conspiracy nuts, Greenpeace, Eureka Australis-types, they all need to go. You can never have too few idiots.
Yes, and the more cretinous elements of the right, such as yourself, too, squire ;)

Depends on what you mean by overpopulated.

This source is interesting: anyone care to try and refute it?

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/3046/overpop.htm
How's about "living like that would just be really quite sad"?

Yes.

why do you think we invented war, apart from being unable to play nice of course?

This source is interesting: anyone care to try and refute it?

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/3046/overpop.htm

are you suggesting sensible land redistribution?

talk like that will bring down the middle class moms oh so precious property prices :eek:

I also think that (and this where I probably push past the fringe of what people consider normal if I have not already) is that no foreign aid should be spent on combatting life threatening illnesses. I believe that Bush approved $25 billion for aids retroviral treaments in Africa. I think that disease is probably the best of nature's weapons against overpopulation and we should not resist nature's attempts to cure our overpopulation problem. We also have famine as an option but I think that this entails more suffering. Anyway, most people that die in a famine die of diseases anyway because the malnourished have a reduced immune defese system and tend to be more susceptible to illness.


Okay...you are worried that over-population will cause suffering and death, am I right? And to prevent over population, you think we should let suffering and death continue.

Does this make sense?

The fool-proof, air-tight, perfect plan to control global population submitted by Anbia:

STOP HAVING SEX!

There problem solved.... your welcome.



(This was a semi-serious post) :)

Allow me to make a counterproposal:

Mandatory homosexuality. There, birth control solved. Now you can only have the kind of sex which makes babies after you get a government permit.

You do that with strict restrictions on births until we scale back human population to, say, a billion. Or maybe half a billion. And then we'll all have enough resources to live in luxury.

Also, notice how this solution neither kills anybody, nor forces them to give up on sex. It's elegant, simple, and it works! :D

are you suggesting sensible land redistribution?

Are you calling the redistribution in the source sensible? Ha!

But yeah, I was only using that source to demonstrate that, the land isn't physically overpopulated by humans, and that we have enough resources to survive easily, its just fucked up governments fuck everything up with the resources.

I don't know, what are the criteria for overpopulation?

Humans aren't overpopulated in the sense that we cannot sustain our current population indefinitely. We cannot sustain our current rate of population growth, but if we can develop more efficient ways to use our resources, we should be able to sustain our current population.

Encouraging birth control and family planning is a good idea right now, but the problem isn't as bad as some make it out to be.

Glorious Freedonia, your views are pretty extreme. Frankly, I would be horrified if our politicians started advocating such policies. If something happens that disrupts our ability to sustain our current population, then I would rather look into alternate methods of dealing with overpopulation (ie colonizing other planets).

Ultimately, I am a human supremacist. If it comes down to choosing between the welfare of homo sapiens and the welfare of other animals, I'll pick my own species. I care about the environment chiefly because of the harmful effects on humans. That said, animals still have rights. Humans merely take priority.

Let me deal with the specific issue of food. Admittedly, my knowledge in this area is vague, and if you have actual data that is relevent, I'd be happy to see it. Right now, the majority of humans can find enough to eat. It might take effort, but they can get food somehow. There are not large areas of the world devastated by famine.

Furthermore, the main cause of food shortages is a problem in the distribution system. War or dictatorships limit production (ie Zimbabwe or North Korea), and economics impair distribution. Developed countries (especially the United States), produce tons and tons of food, to the point that obesity is becoming an issue. If this surplus food was instead delivered to poor countries, that would help a lot. Also, if we could end the various wars and dictatorships that impair production, production would increase. I believe that this would be sufficient to deal with famine.

Over populated by a certain color of humans...You know who I am talking about whitey. :mad:

Over populated by a certain color of humans...You know who I am talking about whitey. :mad:

You sure whites are not a minority?
Globally speaking?

I think some people's ideas about overpopulation are kind of...um...what's the phrase I want? I guess I'll say, childishly unrealistic. Technology is not a panacea, and I sincerely doubt we are all going to be enjoying the Battlestar Gallactica lifestyle any time soon.

We are overpopulated

It is not a good thing.

Best way to deal with it is widespread use of birth control and family planning, to bring birth rate down to slightly less than the death rate. Allow the population to decrease slowly, by attrition. Not so easy in a world where affluent people in urbanized nations live longer and longer, but still worth the effort.

I do agree with the fact that we are overpopulated, lets face it, we are with way too much people on this planet, our agriculture can only manage to feed us due to scientific tricks (the genetic engineering so many people are against :P) but unless an other growth gene is discovered in plants/animals there are limits to that growth... So in the end it is very likely most of the human race will die of hunger (that is if we manage to have enough clean water of course...)

But i don't agree with the way to solve the problem. You see, humans are getting older and older, and thus to have a negative growth by birth control would imply that lesser and lesser people are capable doing the daily jobs. Since after all, once a mason is 70 years old he/she is very likely to build up a house slower then when he/she is 30... And thus eventually this system will fail because of a lack of youngsters... A healthy civilization has more people from 20-40 then people whom are 60+ some western countries fail this moment already and they are facing lots of difficulties with that matter... With the birth control one will only speed up this process... The example of China shows us that there are lots of troubles already, but most of them are solved just because the individual doesn't have that much rights... Plus the fact that with that much inhabitants they can manage there culture for quite a while... But already there government is coming back to there earlier decisions when it comes to a first born girl and persons at the country...
A more radical way is to kill the elderly, but apart from being inhumane, which politician would defend such a thing? After all, most of them are almost old enough to be treated the same way...
An other way is to conquer space like said before, but or we need to develop an engine that goes faster then the speed of light that ain't going to happen either...
Holding back medicine for only the "enlightened few", or the rich ones will cause a civil war in no time...

So personally i don't see how we are going to solve the problem without the "help" of mother nature with a plague or an other natural disaster... Well or war of course... But i do hope we can all agree that neither of these solutions are things we need to hope for...

Laws get in the way of... *ahem* natural selection and a little something I like to call "open hunting season on humanity". Honestly, we haven't had a good plague or anything in a long time.

Yes, but the automobile is slowly "killing off" bad reflexes. And abortion clinics (talk about selection) may slowly be ridding us of genetic defects. Indeed, I have overheard that there may be evidence evolution is speeding up.

I do not believe the world is overpopulated, as we have shown ourselves time and time again of being more then capable of finding the technologies to deal with any present danger, include starvation. When populations and the demand for meat grew fast in England back in the 1600's, they found ways to yield more crop off of the same land, and today we have technologies that may soon allow us to yield food without land at all, using hydroponic gels and abandoned mines layered down with silt that would otherwise wash in to the ocean.

When we were running out of land in New York City and Chicago, and dealing with citywide fires that killed thousands and brought the life of a city to a halt, they found ways of building much taller structures out of concrete and steel.

Something will eventually kill off the Human Race, but I don't believe it will be environmental, as whatever it will be it will have to be something too fast to innovate around.

EDIT: Genetic engineering of crops. As long as done properly, there will be no issue, as the changes are minute and small, the chemical involved is still DNA, and the chemicals created by the DNA are still proteins. If I were you, I would be a hell of a lot more worried about the cow poop they use as fertilizer.

Are you calling the redistribution in the source sensible? Ha!

I was more talking about the government ceasing to play a giant game of Mayfair hotels and seizing those pointless estates that litter our countryside putting house prices into free fall

however that may be a tad stupid for the economy :confused:

(not that living in a coronation street land would be all that horrific)

But yeah, I was only using that source to demonstrate that, the land isn't physically overpopulated by humans, and that we have enough resources to survive easily, its just fucked up governments fuck everything up with the resources.

so we are overpopulated by stupid people, sadly these are not the same ones who fight the wars

Allow me to make a counterproposal:

Mandatory homosexuality. There, birth control solved. Now you can only have the kind of sex which makes babies after you get a government permit.

You do that with strict restrictions on births until we scale back human population to, say, a billion. Or maybe half a billion. And then we'll all have enough resources to live in luxury.

Also, notice how this solution neither kills anybody, nor forces them to give up on sex. It's elegant, simple, and it works! :D
Mandatory homosexuality?

Gaaaaay.

No. Not at all. Fuck the planet, why do so many think we owe it something other than exploitation?

No. Not at all. Fuck the planet, why do so many think we owe it something other than exploitation?

Because said exploitation is going to mess us up too?

No. Not at all. Fuck the planet, why do so many think we owe it something other than exploitation?

Because it is our home. The species on Earth are possibly the only other life forms in the universe. It is also morally wrong to kill off other life just because it is in the way of 'profit', or whatever else you think is worth the exploitation of Earth.

Ultimately, I am a human supremacist. If it comes down to choosing between the welfare of homo sapiens and the welfare of other animals, I'll pick my own species. I care about the environment chiefly because of the harmful effects on humans. That said, animals still have rights. Humans merely take priority.

I think this brings up a relevant video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tglVg9_G5nk)

and people say we are defenseless in the UK :p

No. Not at all. Fuck the planet, why do so many think we owe it something other than exploitation?

because like rules about smoking in the house we also don't want hideous nicotine stains all over the ceiling?

Im not saying they are or aren't a minority. In fact, I know whites are a minority. am just saying that there are too many of them as it is.

Wtf...if there are too many people on the planet, it'd be Asians. Over 2 billion in 2 countries...seriously wtf.

You sure whites are not a minority?
Globally speaking?

Im not saying they are or aren't a minority. In fact, I know whites are a minority. am just saying that there are too many of them as it is.

EDIT: Genetic engineering of crops. As long as done properly, there will be no issue, as the changes are minute and small, the chemical involved is still DNA, and the chemicals created by the DNA are still proteins. If I were you, I would be a hell of a lot more worried about the cow poop they use as fertilizer.

newsflash, i am pro genetic engineering, in fact i am hoping to become one of those whom are capable doing so (currently my third year of study) In fact most crops have already been altered... But now there is an other problem, there are only that much genes capable boosting up growth, and all of those we already know are being altered a bit already to boost the speed/length... To give you an idea, corn grown in the wild has an average length of +/- 50 cm... Now it is almost 250 cm thanks to the engineering... such dramatic growth changes can't be expected in the near future though :(

Im not saying they are or aren't a minority. In fact, I know whites are a minority. am just saying that there are too many of them as it is.

Stupid people come in all kinds of color and variety.

Ignorance does not discriminate. Well, it does, but not... Ah, I mean, er... *head asplodes*

Somewhat, I guess.

There's no problem with overpopulation; the real issues are improper resource allocation and insufficient infrastructure. I'd bet that, once we solve those problems and develop some new technology, our little blue planet could comfortably support over twenty billion people.

There's also the fact that we could, with some effort, expand into space.

I'm not worried at all. It really doesn't do anyone any good to be pessimistic about such things; we should instead try to find reasonable solutions to our problems. We humans are actually pretty good at that.

At what expense? Would there still be a place for wild animals in this crowded world of yours? Would nature still exist?

There's no problem with overpopulation; the real issues are improper resource allocation and insufficient infrastructure. I'd bet that, once we solve those problems and develop some new technology, our little blue planet could comfortably support over twenty billion people.

There's also the fact that we could, with some effort, expand into space.

I'm not worried at all. It really doesn't do anyone any good to be pessimistic about such things; we should instead try to find reasonable solutions to our problems. We humans are actually pretty good at that.

Ignore; duplicate post.

There's no problem with overpopulation; the real issues are improper resource allocation and insufficient infrastructure.

things like water don't come out of thin air (...well okay it does) the big issue facing overpopulation will be making sure people get the bare necessity's which are destroyed by population growth itself

not that I disagree however its just that clean drinking water is rather scarce as it is

I'd bet that, once we solve those problems and develop some new technology, our little blue planet could comfortably support over twenty billion people.

provided this technology actually gets developed hardly a nice thing to gamble on that

There's also the fact that we could, with some effort, expand into space.

deals with the symptoms not the cure

I'm not worried at all. It really doesn't do anyone any good to be pessimistic about such things; we should instead try to find reasonable solutions to our problems. We humans are actually pretty good at that.

like our solution to world peace being rigging the world up to apocalypse?

There's no problem with overpopulation; the real issues are improper resource allocation and insufficient infrastructure. I'd bet that, once we solve those problems and develop some new technology, our little blue planet could comfortably support over twenty billion people.

There's also the fact that we could, with some effort, expand into space.

I'm not worried at all. It really doesn't do anyone any good to be pessimistic about such things; we should instead try to find reasonable solutions to our problems. We humans are actually pretty good at that.


How comes that there are lots of people thinking that it will be easy to conquer space? It takes time to travel... and lots of it. When distances are calculated in light years one knows that it ain't close... And suppose we get to an other planet (lets say mars since that only takes +/- 1-6 months to travel there depending on the positions of the planets) how will the human body react to such a long travel in outer space. Since one might not forget that one of the major reasons of cancer today still is UV radiation... And you will already know that we ain't have proper protection against that accept an atmosphere... And guess what, such a thing isn't provided in a rocket, and most likely neither on the planet we are supposed to set foot on...

No. Not at all. Fuck the planet, why do so many think we owe it something other than exploitation?

We don't owe it anything but we do only have one, you know. We're kind of fucked if we break it.

Locally, yes, but globally, no.

The problem is that population growth is fastest in the places least capable of dealing with it; carrying capacity has not been able to escape Malthusian limits in these places, with the results being various environmental degradations and starvation, suffering, and death. Of course, industrialization and economic development are the way to escape this, but the challenge is to achieve this level of development without incurring significant damage from the process itself.

I do not see overpopulation as a serious long-term problem; indeed, a large, diverse, and most importantly growing population is necessary for the continued survival of the species. We cannot remain confined to one planet, nor can we limit our growth as such; on the converse, we can't destroy said planet and we can't assume undue existential risk prior to expanding beyond it. This is why overpopulation must be managed in the regions in which it occurs, but we should not seek to completely halt population growth or even worse allow it to decline...that would ensure our extinction more than anything else on Earth.

Locally, yes, but globally, no.

The problem is that population growth is fastest in the places least capable of dealing with it; carrying capacity has not been able to escape Malthusian limits in these places, with the results being various environmental degradations and starvation, suffering, and death. Of course, industrialization and economic development are the way to escape this, but the challenge is to achieve this level of development without incurring significant damage from the process itself.

I do not see overpopulation as a serious long-term problem; indeed, a large, diverse, and most importantly growing population is necessary for the continued survival of the species. We cannot remain confined to one planet, nor can we limit our growth as such; on the converse, we can't destroy said planet and we can't assume undue existential risk prior to expanding beyond it. This is why overpopulation must be managed in the regions in which it occurs, but we should not seek to completely halt population growth or even worse allow it to decline...that would ensure our extinction more than anything else on Earth.

Nonsense, our population can shrink without disaster striking. A long slow decline to about 500 mil to 1 billion people would do wonders for the world. Also, a long time ago (I don't remember when, exactly) mankind's population dropped to 10,000. We bounced back. A relatively stable population around the 500 million to 1 billion mark would be perfectly fine. (relatively as it grows sometimes, and sometimes it shrinks)

The world is not over-populated. If the land gets too crowded, some humans will just evolve so they can live underwater. Evolution will not fail us.

The world is not over-populated. If the land gets too crowded, some humans will just evolve so they can live underwater. Evolution will not fail us.

Evolution takes millions of years. Its starting to get crowded now.

Nonsense. A long slow decline to about 500 mil to 1 billion people would do wonders for the world. Also, a long time ago (I don't remember when, exactly) mankind's population dropped to 10,000. We bounced back. A relatively stable population around the 500 million to 1 billion mark would be perfectly fine. (relatively as it grows sometimes, and sometimes it shrinks)

It would lead to ignorance, barbarism, and decay just like it did at multiple times in the past. Every single Dark Age in human history has been accompanied by depopulation, and every period of depopulation has been accompanied by severe decline in many parts of the world...we were lucky to avoid such a fate during the Black Plague, if only because Europe was actually overpopulated and it helped break the stagnation of the feudal era. The sheer loss of 5 billion people, of whom a significant proportion would be the most educated and most necessary to maintain our living standards, would cause nothing but loss. Everything we've achieved in the present era is due to the population growth of the past two centuries...without it, we would be nowhere near where we are today.

Humankind would gain nothing but reversion to the far harsher life of the early 18th century, if not worse when famines and plagues still posed a serious danger, child mortality was massively high, and science was still trapped in a cloak of ignorance and fear.

And in regard to the massive population decline in the past (I also don't recall the date)...we came very, very close to extinction. That was a close call at best; had a few things gone differently, we would not be here today. Mankind needs to grow beyond Earth if it does not want to die out. There is no other option.

Nonsense, our population can shrink without disaster striking. A long slow decline to about 500 mil to 1 billion people would do wonders for the world. Also, a long time ago (I don't remember when, exactly) mankind's population dropped to 10,000. We bounced back. A relatively stable population around the 500 million to 1 billion mark would be perfectly fine. (relatively as it grows sometimes, and sometimes it shrinks)

Exactly. We have enough resources on earth to make half a billion to a billion people live very comfortably, without undue strain to the ecosystems, thus preserving a modicum of genetic diversity among the wildlife.

While we *could* theoretically be 20 billion to survive on this globe, the vast majority would have to revert to almost tribal conditions, living off the land without any of the modern comforts us westerners are used to. Most likely problems such as draughts and resources exhaustion would be frequent nevertheless. Mass poverty and famine, criminality due to scarcity of resource, etc. Not a very nice picture.

All in all, isn't it better to be fewer, but well-cared for, rather than push numbers at all costs?

I know if I ever get around to founding a family, I'd rather have one or two kids I know I can provide adequately for, rather than breeding mindlessly like a lemming and see my 10-12 offsprings suffer from lack of basic commodities.

things like water don't come out of thin air (...well okay it does) the big issue facing overpopulation will be making sure people get the bare necessity's which are destroyed by population growth itself

not that I disagree however its just that clean drinking water is rather scarce as it is

I agree; it would be a challenging problem, but it certainly is not impossible.

provided this technology actually gets developed hardly a nice thing to gamble on that

The necessary technologies will come; it is not a question of if, but when.

deals with the symptoms not the cure

Cure? What cure, exactly? What do you propose?

like our solution to world peace being rigging the world up to apocalypse?

Well, I didn't say we were perfect, did I? :(

How comes that there are lots of people thinking that it will be easy to conquer space? It takes time to travel... and lots of it. When distances are calculated in light years one knows that it ain't close... And suppose we get to an other planet (lets say mars since that only takes +/- 1-6 months to travel there depending on the positions of the planets) how will the human body react to such a long travel in outer space. Since one might not forget that one of the major reasons of cancer today still is UV radiation... And you will already know that we ain't have proper protection against that accept an atmosphere... And guess what, such a thing isn't provided in a rocket, and most likely neither on the planet we are supposed to set foot on...

I never said it would be easy. However, difficult as it may be, it is certainly worth doing, and we'll find a way to make it work. It would be absolutely foolish not to try.

Nonsense, our population can shrink without disaster striking. A long slow decline to about 500 mil to 1 billion people would do wonders for the world. Also, a long time ago (I don't remember when, exactly) mankind's population dropped to 10,000. We bounced back. A relatively stable population around the 500 million to 1 billion mark would be perfectly fine. (relatively as it grows sometimes, and sometimes it shrinks)

The shrink could happen in 25 years time really if there was an effort in doing so.

As for the 10,000 mark that is only theory but a strong one and I believe it was below 10,000.

The 500 mill to 1 bill mark wont happen until we are far on our way in space colonization. Earth would most likely in my opinion be turned into a reserve and the remaining population would be the conservationists and work in tourism. ;)

In another thread someone indicated that they did not believe that the world is overpopulated by humans. This shocked me because I believe that it is clear that we are way overpopulated. What do you think?
Yes, the Earth is massively overpopulated. Like, 4.5 billion people overpopulated.

The shrink could happen in 25 years time really if there was an effort in doing so.

As for the 10,000 mark that is only theory but a strong one and I believe it was below 10,000.

The 500 mill to 1 bill mark wont happen until we are far on our way in space colonization. Earth would most likely in my opinion be turned into a reserve and the remaining population would be the conservationists and work in tourism. ;)

No, the human race hasn't been below 10,000 since well before 30,000 BC. Well before. But ditto on the space colonization. I hope I'm around to see it happen.

It would lead to ignorance, barbarism, and decay just like it did at multiple times in the past. Every single Dark Age in human history has been accompanied by depopulation, and every period of depopulation has been accompanied by severe decline...we were lucky to avoid such a fate during the Black Plague. the sheer loss of 5 billion people, of whom a significant proportion would be the most educated and most necessary to maintain our living standards, would cause nothing but loss.

Humankind would gain nothing but reversion to the far harsher life of the late 18th century, if not worse when famines and plagues still posed a serious danger, child mortality was massively high, and people had barely begun to climb out of the

And in regard to the massive population decline in the past (I also don't recall the date)...we came very, very close to extinction. That was a close call at best; mankind needs to grow beyond Earth if it does not want to die out. We will not be able to survive any other way.

Bah, I don't know about all that. Less people around would give the people living lots of living room. Room to roam around, hunt, etc. And who says 'barbarism' was so bad anyway?

Also, it would be a gradual decline, not a sudden loss of 5 billion people (That would be insane!), so things would have time to adapt.

But, even if the slow decline caused civilization to crash, so what? That'd be a good thing for the planet.


If people want to leave Earth, fine, but I won't. But, Earth and the sun still have billions of years left. Who knows if we'll even still be around then? My bet would be no.

Evolution takes millions of years. Its starting to get crowded now.

I was being less than 100% serious;)

Well as an agnostic optimist, I'm going to say that I'm sure that either science or God will solve the problem for us. Kidding aside, one thing of which I'm sure is that no democratic government will achieve sufficient support for legislation such as the one-child policy in China. And arbitrarily killing large sections of the existing population isn't going to be particuarly popular either...

No, the human race hasn't been below 10,000 since well before 30,000 BC. Well before. But ditto on the space colonization. I hope I'm around to see it happen.

Well, I did say it was a long time ago. But the point stands, we bounced back!

I would have to agree that the world is quite overpopulated. In my personal opinion, a population of between 2.5 and 3 billion would be ideal to ensure that we can survive in a renewable manner (i.e. not rely on fossil fuels for food production which has become the case, thanks to the Green Revolution of the 1960s). Of course, there have been plenty of suggestions made already about how to deal with the problem and I would say that the best way to solve the problem would be to eliminate all governmental incentives for reproduction, plus, quite possibly bringing back eugenics; at the very least, the way the Swedes did it until the 1970s where people with certain disorders were sterilised.

No, the human race hasn't been below 10,000 since well before 30,000 BC. Well before. But ditto on the space colonization. I hope I'm around to see it happen.

I didn't specify on when it happened but was agreeing with the earlier poster. The theory that I linked was in the Late Pleistocene.

Geneticists Lynn Jorde and Henry Harpending of the University of Utah proposed that the variation in human DNA is minute compared to that of other species. They also propose that during the Late Pleistocene, the human population was reduced to a small number of breeding pairs — no more than 10,000 and possibly as few as 1,000 — resulting in a very small residual gene pool. Various reasons for this hypothetical bottleneck have been postulated, one of those is the Toba catastrophe theory.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human

http://www.ldolphin.org/world.gif

Exactly. We have enough resources on earth to make half a billion to a billion people live very comfortably, without undue strain to the ecosystems, thus preserving a modicum of genetic diversity among the wildlife.

While we *could* theoretically be 20 billion to survive on this globe, the vast majority would have to revert to almost tribal conditions, living off the land without any of the modern comforts us westerners are used to. Most likely problems such as draughts and resources exhaustion would be frequent nevertheless. Mass poverty and famine, criminality due to scarcity of resource, etc. Not a very nice picture.

All in all, isn't it better to be fewer, but well-cared for, rather than push numbers at all costs?

I know if I ever get around to founding a family, I'd rather have one or two kids I know I can provide adequately for, rather than breeding mindlessly like a lemming and see my 10-12 offsprings suffer from lack of basic commodities.

It would be absolutely impossible for 20 billion people to simply live off the land like that; it would require an incredibly well developed infrastructure to support such a large population.

Bah, I don't know about all that. Less people around would give the people living lots of living room. Room to roam around, hunt, etc. And who says 'barbarism' was so bad anyway?

Room to starve, to die of easily preventable diseases, to see our children die in their youth, to revert to ignorant and irrational superstition, to see mankind reduce to a mere shadow of what it had been at its peak as it again dies back down to a level barely removed from other animals. The "noble savage" was nothing more than a myth cultivated by those with the luxury to indulge in such fantasy.

...one of the greatest fears of the ancient Greeks was reversion to barbarism, and for good reason. Their culture had seen it happen during the Mycenaean dark age, and it had left enough of a cultural impression to imbue them with fear.

Also, it would be a gradual decline, not a sudden loss of 5 billion people (That would be insane!), so things would have time to adapt.

You can't engineer that, and even so the decline would still be felt. Without replacement, systems begin to break down for lack of labor, and those that remain will become increasingly taxed as people are forced to relocate to the remaining settlements. Eventually, those fail and you end up with a population crash.

It's exactly what happened in Europe during the period during the fall of Rome and its aftermath.

But, even if the slow decline caused civilization to crash, so what? That'd be a good thing for the planet.

And bad for us. Our accomplishments, goals, dreams and achievements would be for nothing, left to rot and be forgotten as people revert to ignorance ...that's the most terrifying thing I can imagine. Everything every person has ever done would literally be for nothing; to give up our civilization would be to give up what makes us who we are.

None of the things we do today would be possible in such a decaying world.

If people want to leave Earth, fine, but I won't. But, Earth and the sun still have billions of years left. Who knows if we'll even still be around then? My bet would be no.

If we get off of Earth, the probability of mankind surviving indefinitely begins to increase exponentially as we expand further. People are perfectly free to stay here, but we as a species need to expand in order to not go extinct.

Human extinction means everything we will ever do is utterly meaningless.

Well, I did say it was a long time ago. But the point stands, we bounced back!

Again, barely. If human populations had fallen any further, it would have meant extinction...

And bad for us. Our accomplishments, goals, dreams and achievements would be for nothing, left to rot and be forgotten as people revert to ignorance ...that's the most terrifying thing I can imagine. Everything every person has ever done would literally be for nothing; to give up our civilization would be to give up what makes us who we are.

None of the things we do today would be possible in such a decaying world.

When you really think about it, the stuff Trollgaard says is scary as hell. We simply cannot let any of this happen.

Room to starve, to die of easily preventable diseases, to see our children die in their youth, to revert to ignorant and irrational superstition, to see mankind reduce to a mere shadow of what it had been at its peak as it again dies back down to a level barely removed from other animals. The "noble savage" was nothing more than a myth cultivated by those with the luxury to indulge in such fantasy.

...one of the greatest fears of the ancient Greeks was reversion to barbarism, and for good reason. Their culture had seen it happen during the Mycenaean dark age, and it had left enough of a cultural impression to imbue them with fear.


Well, they might have feared it, but I don't. And are you referring to religion as 'irrational superstition'? If so, that is completely uncalled for. If not, what do you mean?


You can't engineer that, and even so the decline would still be felt. Without replacement, systems begin to break down for lack of labor, and those that remain will become increasingly taxed as people are forced to relocate to the remaining settlements. Eventually, those fail and you end up with a population crash.

It's exactly what happened in Europe during the period during the fall of Rome and its aftermath.

Possibly. Systems can be redesigned, or people can go off the system and live on their own in smaller groups.



And bad for us. Our accomplishments, goals, dreams and achievements would be for nothing, left to rot and be forgotten as people revert to ignorance ...that's the most terrifying thing I can imagine. Everything every person has ever done would literally be for nothing; to give up our civilization would be to give up what makes us who we are.

None of the things we do today would be possible in such a decaying world.


Well, in a sense you could be correct, but it doesn't change the fact that people did accomplish those things. The human race will be extinct someday, along with everything else that ever has or will live. Does that make life meaningless? Only if you let it. You give your own life meaning and purpose.


If we get off of Earth, the probability of mankind surviving indefinitely begins to increase exponentially as we expand further. People are perfectly free to stay here, but we as a species need to expand in order to not go extinct.

Human extinction means everything we will ever do is utterly meaningless.

Humans expanding beyond Earth will greatly extend the lifespan of species, but the species will go extinct eventually, be it through evolving into something else, war, or natural disasters. All species eventually go extinct. Does that make life meaningless?

When you really think about it, the stuff Trollgaard says is scary as hell. We simply cannot let any of this happen.

Haha, why do people always say that I say scary stuff?!

It would be absolutely impossible for 20 billion people to simply live off the land like that; it would require an incredibly well developed infrastructure to support such a large population.

And such a well developed infrastructure would take more resources than are available. Hence, overpopulation.

Haha, why do people always say that I say scary stuff?!

Actually, I think I agree with you for once. :)

And such a well developed infrastructure would take more resources than are available. Hence, overpopulation.

Which is why there's no chance in hell we'll have 20 billion people on Earth...I mean, we're talking 9 billion by 2050 at most. By that point, we're talking blindingly advanced technology and commercialized space expansion; from there, we can pretty much grow forever as long as we don't concentrate it all in one place. This is our primary instinctual goal, to make sure mankind never goes extinct and we expand ourselves and our civilization as far as is possible, and even to eventually pursue expansion in ways that are currently seen as impossible.

Haha, why do people always say that I say scary stuff?!

It's because you want humanity to discard all of its great accomplishments as if they were nothing. It's just horrible to throw away all of that knowledge and effort.

Humans expanding beyond Earth will greatly extend the lifespan of species, but the species will go extinct eventually, be it through evolving into something else, war, or natural disasters. All species eventually go extinct. Does that make life meaningless?


Maybe our species will go extinct and maybe not but odds are our legacy will live forever. Consider the fact we will most likely expand out as far as we can go and carry aloft animals and plant life from Earth. Of course they would have to be genetically altered to fit a new enviroment.

Stretching but possible:

If we go along terraforming planets and seeding life everywhere. Humans could be the Johnny Appleseed of the Milky Way.
We could be in fact end up being the Gods of many worlds. You know the story how God brought life to the planet where there was no life before. A bible written by other human based beings about chariots of fire coming from the heavens. Sounds a bit to familiar doesn't it.

It's because you want humanity to discard all of its great accomplishments as if they were nothing. It's just horrible to throw away all of that knowledge and effort.

I agree, however, unless we use this knowledge and some effort to prevent overpopulation and the eventual destruction of our own species(whether it be total destruction or a very, very, poor quality of life), we might as well know nothing.

It's because you want humanity to discard all of its great accomplishments as if they were nothing. It's just horrible to throw away all of that knowledge and effort.

These kids nowdays don't appreciate all the hard work we have done for them! :D

Which is why there's no chance in hell we'll have 20 billion people on Earth...I mean, we're talking 9 billion by 2050 at most. By that point, we're talking blindingly advanced technology and commercialized space expansion; from there, we can pretty much grow forever as long as we don't concentrate it all in one place. This is our primary instinctual goal, to make sure mankind never goes extinct and we expand ourselves and our civilization as far as is possible, and even to eventually pursue expansion in ways that are currently seen as impossible.

Fair enough. But currently, not possessing the requisite technologies, our expansion is coming at the expense of the ecological niches occupied by other species. I question whether that is morally justified. I also question whether it is prudent, because we could knock down the whole house of cards before we ever put a colony on Mars.

And are you referring to religion as 'irrational superstition'? If so, that is completely uncalled for. If not, what do you mean?

Well, in a sense you could be correct, but it doesn't change the fact that people did accomplish those things. The human race will be extinct someday, along with everything else that ever has or will live. Does that make life meaningless? Only if you let it. You give your own life meaning and purpose.

Except that, in this society, there will be no opportunity to make further accomplishments, and a great deal of paths to meaning and purpose are removed.

Also, I don't think Vetalia is talking about religion exactly, but you really haven't spent much time here, have you?

For those of us that grew up in the 70's, there was the ZPG movement, Zero Population Growth. The thinking then was that as the population of the planet approached 1 billion, the resources of the planet could not support that high a population. Because there were going to be shortages of food (not the ones created by disasters or government ineptitude), there were going to be nuclear wars, especially between the then USSR which had an ongoing grain shortage; and the US/Argentina; which had a vast majority of the grain crops at the time.

Also, if the population made is past 1 billion, there were going to be pandemic diseases due to the ever growing travel between continents.

I have yet to see any of the disasters that have been "praised" to the heavens about the end of the earth.

The state of Texas in the US has an area of 268,581 square miles/429,729.6 square kilometers. If we convert that to acres, it comes to 171,891,840 acres just in Texas. The average residential lot is about 1/4 acre in the city, so that gives us 687,567,360 homes. If we look at an average of 2 adults and 2 children in each home, then the state of Texas can have 2,750,269,440 humans. Of course, the state of Alaska is larger than Texas. So, between Texas and Alaska; we can place approximately 3/4 of the current world population.

Nah, can't be that crowded.

I agree, however, unless we use this knowledge and some effort to prevent overpopulation and the eventual destruction of our own species(whether it be total destruction or a very, very, poor quality of life), we might as well know nothing.

We have, to a degree. There's a colossal amount of work left to do, but humanity has been able to prevent these problems through ingenuity; I am confident we are able to do so, but this does not mean we should stand idly by as hundreds of millions of people still suffer waiting patiently for the solutions arise.

That's one of the few things that bugs me about some people who share my views...they are well within reason to be certain of technological solutions or offsets to many current problems, but they fail to see the human cost that lies between now and that future. People will still be starving and suffering from these effects in between now and these future advances, and we can't ignore that.

For those of us that grew up in the 70's, there was the ZPG movement, Zero Population Growth. The thinking then was that as the population of the planet approached 1 billion, the resources of the planet could not support that high a population. Because there were going to be shortages of food (not the ones created by disasters or government ineptitude), there were going to be nuclear wars, especially between the then USSR which had an ongoing grain shortage; and the US/Argentina; which had a vast majority of the grain crops at the time.

Also, if the population made is past 1 billion, there were going to be pandemic diseases due to the ever growing travel between continents.

I have yet to see any of the disasters that have been "praised" to the heavens about the end of the earth.

The state of Texas in the US has an area of 268,581 square miles/429,729.6 square kilometers. If we convert that to acres, it comes to 171,891,840 acres just in Texas. The average residential lot is about 1/4 acre in the city, so that gives us 687,567,360 homes. If we look at an average of 2 adults and 2 children in each home, then the state of Texas can have 2,750,269,440 humans. Of course, the state of Alaska is larger than Texas. So, between Texas and Alaska; we can place approximately 3/4 of the current world population.

Nah, can't be that crowded.


Well the solution in the 70's for population growth was the coming ice age. They say the drugs nowadays are far more potent, lol. :p

We have, to a degree. There's a colossal amount of work left to do, but humanity has been able to prevent these problems through ingenuity; I am confident we are able to do so, but this does not mean we should stand idly by as hundreds of millions of people still suffer waiting patiently for the solutions arise.

That's one of the few things that bugs me about some people who share my views...they are well within reason to be certain of technological solutions or offsets to many current problems, but they fail to see the human cost that lies between now and that future. People will still be starving and suffering from these effects in between now and these future advances, and we can't ignore that.

You've got your old confidence back! :) Not at all like you were just after you read Defeyes book. :)

The state of Texas in the US has an area of 268,581 square miles/429,729.6 square kilometers. If we convert that to acres, it comes to 171,891,840 acres just in Texas. The average residential lot is about 1/4 acre in the city, so that gives us 687,567,360 homes. If we look at an average of 2 adults and 2 children in each home, then the state of Texas can have 2,750,269,440 humans. Of course, the state of Alaska is larger than Texas. So, between Texas and Alaska; we can place approximately 3/4 of the current world population.

Nah, can't be that crowded.

How about maintaining the population?
Food, water, building all those shelters on a massive grid network?
Powering it all?
Could you really jam all those ethnicities in one massive state like that without repercussions?(sad but a fact of life it seems)
Do you really want that kind of lifestyle?

The more the merrier, lets not be Malthusians.

We're already running out of resources; entire habitats are disappearing to meet the demands of a growing population. It's not about how many people you can shove into a piece of land, it's about the resources and energy those people consume. Yes we have too many people. Far too many people.

We have, to a degree. There's a colossal amount of work left to do, but humanity has been able to prevent these problems through ingenuity; I am confident we are able to do so, but this does not mean we should stand idly by as hundreds of millions of people still suffer waiting patiently for the solutions arise.

Humanity has prevented many problems, but it has all been the cause of the most severe crisis(in my opinion) that faces the world today. Overpopulation. Once we get control of our exponentially expanding population, I am confident we can fix up everything else.
That's one of the few things that bugs me about some people who share my views...they are well within reason to be certain of technological solutions or offsets to many current problems, but they fail to see the human cost that lies between now and that future. People will still be starving and suffering from these effects in between now and these future advances, and we can't ignore that.
I'm more of a "the environment determines the lifestyle and limits of the population" kind of guy, as opposed to "we can shape the environment to our benefit indefinitely through technological advances".

Well, they might have feared it, but I don't. And are you referring to religion as 'irrational superstition'? If so, that is completely uncalled for. If not, what do you mean?

Not religion, not at all...the irrational aspects are the dark side of religion. The things that existed in the past, such as human sacrifice, witch hunts, book burnings, inquisitions and all those things that acted not out of reason but out of misguided fear.

Religion combined with reason is a powerful creative force, one that can massively advance mankind (if classical polytheistic systems are any evidence).

Possibly. Systems can be redesigned, or people can go off the system and live on their own in smaller groups.

It's very difficult to redesign them; this is only possible with the economic base to do so, and if the human population and economy are both declining, it's not easy.

And, of course, there's the simple fact that a lot of the most useful people today are not so in a survival environment. Those engineers, scientists, and doctors will simply not be anywhere near capable of making the same kind of contributions as they do now, and without a society capable of supporting them most will be rapidly lost.

Well, in a sense you could be correct, but it doesn't change the fact that people did accomplish those things. The human race will be extinct someday, along with everything else that ever has or will live. Does that make life meaningless? Only if you let it. You give your own life meaning and purpose.

Not if we expand far beyond our current confines; mankind will evolve, grow, and change and adapt to so many environments that it will never truly go extinct. Life is not doomed a priori; the only way it's doomed is if we don't do anything to save it...and that includes our fellow species as much as ourselves.

Humans expanding beyond Earth will greatly extend the lifespan of species, but the species will go extinct eventually, be it through evolving into something else, war, or natural disasters. All species eventually go extinct. Does that make life meaningless?

But that's not the same; the posthuman era, which will be occurring far sooner than later, will maintain continuity with the current human experience. Extinction, ever, is the complete destruction of mankind, the total loss of its history; mankind will certainly change, just like it has in the past, but that does not mean it will go extinct. There is a significant difference.

Since it is likely that most people alive today will not only be a part of this transition but will see it come to fruition, we will be capable of maintaining that critical link and ensuring that the entire process is one of continuous change, not a clean break.

Some of us will choose to accept the responsibilities of the posthuman era while others, undoubtedly yourself included, will accept their own responsibility of ensuring that they maintain the legacy of humanity and ensure that neither group lose contact with our origins and our history. I can't say I agree with your sentiments on many issues, but I do know that people like you will play an important role in ensuring that the entire future of mankind remains one continuous experience.

I think that we are running out of resources now, but eventually (roughly 100 years) we're going to start running out of space. We should start trying to colonize the Moon, Mars etc. If we can utilize those resources we can stay alive long enough to solve our other problems

Which is why there's no chance in hell we'll have 20 billion people on Earth...I mean, we're talking 9 billion by 2050 at most. By that point, we're talking blindingly advanced technology and commercialized space expansion; from there, we can pretty much grow forever as long as we don't concentrate it all in one place. This is our primary instinctual goal, to make sure mankind never goes extinct and we expand ourselves and our civilization as far as is possible, and even to eventually pursue expansion in ways that are currently seen as impossible.

People have been saying overpopulation is going to bring things down for 200 years, still hasn't happened.

We have, to a degree. There's a colossal amount of work left to do, but humanity has been able to prevent these problems through ingenuity; I am confident we are able to do so, but this does not mean we should stand idly by as hundreds of millions of people still suffer waiting patiently for the solutions arise.

That's one of the few things that bugs me about some people who share my views...they are well within reason to be certain of technological solutions or offsets to many current problems, but they fail to see the human cost that lies between now and that future. People will still be starving and suffering from these effects in between now and these future advances, and we can't ignore that.

But how can we prevent their suffering, other than by ending their lives?

Given that it is still about 20% of the population consuming 80% of the resources, isn't overconsumption more of a problem than overpopulation?

People have been saying overpopulation is going to bring things down for 200 years, still hasn't happened.

That's because carrying capacity has, and continues to, exceed the rate of population growth. More people=more innovators=more technology and economic growth=greater carrying capacity=more people, and so on. It's a classic feedback loop.

But how can we prevent their suffering, other than by ending their lives?

Same way we have for our own society. Science, technological and economic development, sustainable land and water management, and modern medical services.

It's not easy, but these are the only ways to lift carrying capacity; allowing them to suffer and die while we live lives of surplus is simply not responsible or ethical. That's not to say we should feel guilty for our abundance, but we should also think about those who are less fortunate, especially when that misfortune has to do with circumstances far beyond the control of the individuals exposed to it.

"we can shape the environment to our benefit indefinitely through technological advances".

I'm one of these guys, but even I'll admit that we can't just do things without considering the consequences of our actions. Still, it's better to be more optomistic than pessimistic; after all, we've made it this far, right?

Barely.

Given that it is still about 20% of the population consuming 80% of the resources, isn't overconsumption more of a problem than overpopulation?

Yes, primarily. It's almost never a question of outright overpopulation, but rather misappropriation and waste of resources.

For example, look at how much of our fossil fuel consumption is used in personal transportation (over 72%)...that's a ton of CO2, a ton of energy, and a ton of pollution all produced due to our continued reliance on an archaic (and in many ways artificially subsidized) means of transportation.

We're already running out of resources; entire habitats are disappearing to meet the demands of a growing population. It's not about how many people you can shove into a piece of land, it's about the resources and energy those people consume. Yes we have too many people. Far too many people.

What is an acceptable level? And, secondly, would you be willing to take the risk of social collapse for this end to be achieved? (Not to mention the question of who exactly deserves to live and who deserves to die).

How about maintaining the population?
Food, water, building all those shelters on a massive grid network?
Powering it all?
Could you really jam all those ethnicities in one massive state like that without repercussions?(sad but a fact of life it seems)
Do you really want that kind of lifestyle?

I would never want to live in something like that. I was just making a point as to the "overpopulation". However, keep in mind that China and India have the largest populations of the world, with the US being the 3rd most populated, and there is plenty of open space in the US outside of the metro areas. http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbrank.pl

I would never want to live in something like that. I was just making a point as to the "overpopulation". However, keep in mind that China and India have the largest populations of the world, with the US being the 3rd most populated, and there is plenty of open space in the US outside of the metro areas. http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbrank.pl

Yes, but we want those spaces to remain wide open, not turned into an urban shit hole.

Humanity has prevented many problems, but it has all been the cause of the most severe crisis(in my opinion) that faces the world today. Overpopulation. Once we get control of our exponentially expanding population, I am confident we can fix up everything else.

I think that's likely, although we're almost certain to see another population explosion once we successfully build up the infrastructure for continued growth. 9 billion by 2050 is pretty tame, especially compared to the kind of population density seen in cyberpunk novels...

Plus, we have to take in to account the post-fossil era; I don't think most people have calculated the potential benefits of the transition from fossil fuels to alternative sources. This will definitely not be enough to slow global warming, but may help the environment considerably.

I'm more of a "the environment determines the lifestyle and limits of the population" kind of guy, as opposed to "we can shape the environment to our benefit indefinitely through technological advances".

And I represent kind of a middle ground between the two; I recognize that ecological limits are not unsurmountable in the intermediate and long term, but in the short term they can be very powerful and very devastating. That's what a lot of people forget; we might be able to, say "manage" global warming in 25 years (that's a random number, but not necessarily unreasonable or unrealistic)...

...but that means there's still 25 years worth of uncontrolled warming to deal with, plus the challenges in the period immediately after deployment. That's a lot of time, in which a lot can go wrong. That's what too many people fail to see, at least on my side of the issue.

I'm one of these guys, but even I'll admit that we can't just do things without considering the consequences of our actions. Still, it's better to be more optomistic than pessimistic; after all, we've made it this far, right?

Barely.
It's best to be realistic, but yes.
At any rate, science makes everything better. :p
I would never want to live in something like that. I was just making a point as to the "overpopulation". However, keep in mind that China and India have the largest populations of the world, with the US being the 3rd most populated, and there is plenty of open space in the US outside of the metro areas. http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/ipc/idbrank.pl
Yes, but I was just trying to make the point that overpopulation is not just about physical space, but about supporting said population.

That's because carrying capacity has, and continues to, exceed the rate of population growth. More people=more innovators=more technology and economic growth=greater carrying capacity=more people, and so on. It's a classic feedback loop.



Same way we have for our own society. Science, technological and economic development, sustainable land and water management, and modern medical services.

It's not easy, but these are the only ways to lift carrying capacity; allowing them to suffer and die while we live lives of surplus is simply not responsible or ethical. That's not to say we should feel guilty for our abundance, but we should also think about those who are less fortunate, especially when that misfortune has to do with circumstances far beyond the control of the individuals exposed to it.

I know man, I run Malthus (overpopulation) in debates.

Well of course, but we can't exactly get these things to people right now? How do we reduce their suffering now? While we speak, people are dying because they're starving, or because they can't get access to a drug that's quite common here.

Yes, but we want those spaces to remain wide open, not turned into an urban shit hole.

While I agree with you, let's not speak for all of humanity here.

Well of course, but we can't exactly get these things to people right now? How do we reduce their suffering now? While we speak, people are dying because they're starving, or because they can't get access to a drug that's quite common here.

Well, that's why I strongly support efforts by governments to finance, produce, and distribute needed medications and supplies to poor places ravaged by diseases (how can you develop yourselves if a big chunk of your population is weakened by easily preventable diseases?)

I mean, I understand the need for biotech/pharma to make a profit; they need the money to finance the revolutionary drugs and treatments that make our lives better. However, there's no reason why a person should die of an illness because they can't afford treatment...these companies, charities, and governments all need to come together and agree that they need to work for the public good, above and beyond just profit.

probably time for a good old fashion cull.

I never said it would be easy. However, difficult as it may be, it is certainly worth doing, and we'll find a way to make it work. It would be absolutely foolish not to try.


I don't say we can't try, i merely said i don't believe that we will ever colonize a foreign planet... Except when we find a way to travel faster then the speed of light...
First of all, if we want to colonize an other planet then we need to find one that is livable... Mars doesn't qualify for that. Not because it doesn't have water, since it has a bit of it, and besides we can always import that... But because of the conditions on the surface... With almost no atmosphere the chance of getting a big rock on top of our new colony is just way too big... And even when we do take the chance, are there actually people who want to live there? Seriously, nowadays i see caution cancer this and caution cancer that anywhere... And with reason... But what would happen when you get there? UV will fall down directly on top of you. And that is reactive enough to alter our DNA (for those who don't know a thing about the subject, UV is known for its ability to bind two T-residue's together, and thus make sure that there will be errors occuring in 1 out of 10 chances that doesn't get repaired by our defense mechanisms... doesn't seem much? Think twice such a thing would happen to you every few seconds...

And how to get there with the exodus? I assume we all take some kind of a space bus or something to get there? And start all over, with no way to produce food except for our own feces we are recycling?
Since how would you plant food on mars? If you manage to bring humans up there they will need some food as well... here (http://www.uic.edu/classes/bios/bios100/lecturesf04am/absorption-spectrum.jpg) is the spectrum of chlorophyll a, b and the major carotenoids as you will see that is adept to the wavelengths of light from this planet, with atmosphere... In order to make plants livable in outer space we would need to construct an atmosphere that has the same breaking index as the one on earth, or build lamps that give out the same wavelenghts. And with that last solution we would need one for every plant... Very convenient if you ask me...

But then again, who needs food? We can always import it from earth can't we? Well wasn't that the reason why we would leave it in the first place? Because it became to croudy?

Big deal, just find an other planet that is capable of growing food... How hard can that be? To find it, i don't think it should be such a big deal... To get there is quite something different. Traveling by the speed of light (a thing we can't possibly do at this time) it would take us 8,5 hours to leave our solar system... To be capable visiting our neighbors (the next solar system) at that speed we would need 4.2 years...
The current speed a space shuttle can reach is about 16,210 m/s pretty much if you ask me... but then again the speed of light is 299 792 458 m / s thus approximately 18494 times more...
Can you imagine to be on a rocket for like 77676 year? I mean thats about 10x as long as humans have been living in organized societies

At any rate, science makes everything better. :p

The best thing about it is that if we inadvertently create new problems, we can use science to solve them! :D

In all seriousness though, Vetalia makes a very good point here:

And I represent kind of a middle ground between the two; I recognize that ecological limits are not unsurmountable in the intermediate and long term, but in the short term they can be very powerful and very devastating. That's what a lot of people forget; we might be able to, say "manage" global warming in 25 years (that's a random number, but not necessarily unreasonable or unrealistic)...

...but that means there's still 25 years worth of uncontrolled warming to deal with, plus the challenges in the period immediately after deployment. That's a lot of time, in which a lot can go wrong. That's what too many people fail to see, at least on my side of the issue.

This is important, and I have to admit that I sometimes forget about it.

Well, that's why I strongly support efforts by governments to finance, produce, and distribute needed medications and supplies to poor places ravaged by diseases (how can you develop yourselves if a big chunk of your population is weakened by easily preventable diseases?)

I mean, I understand the need for biotech/pharma to make a profit; they need the money to finance the revolutionary drugs and treatments that make our lives better. However, there's no reason why a person should die of an illness because they can't afford treatment...these companies, charities, and governments all need to come together and agree that they need to work for the public good, above and beyond just profit.


Pharmaceuticals in third world countries are dirt cheap by US standards. There is no reasonable reason why the government of any nation cannot vaccinate it's population.

Well, that's why I strongly support efforts by governments to finance, produce, and distribute needed medications and supplies to poor places ravaged by diseases (how can you develop yourselves if a big chunk of your population is weakened by easily preventable diseases?)

I mean, I understand the need for biotech/pharma to make a profit; they need the money to finance the revolutionary drugs and treatments that make our lives better. However, there's no reason why a person should die of an illness because they can't afford treatment...these companies, charities, and governments all need to come together and agree that they need to work for the public good, above and beyond just profit.

I agree, I just think that it's going to take time to get food, water, and other things to these people.

Actually, Wolf, I'd have to say you've hit on the biggest challenge to space expansion: the biological effects of space travel on humans. It would be difficult to assess the physiological effects of space travel and elevated radiation, and this would pose a significant challenge to any long term attempts to settle beyond our solar system. Even within the solar system, there would still be considerable challenges for anything outside of near-Earth settlement (temporary work, such as asteroid mining, would be a little different and more workable).

Obviously, this is where fields like bionics become especially useful; by shifting more critical biological functions to any source of energy rather than just the chemical sources available in food, it greatly reduces the amount of this input needed to survive (and with suitable BCI technologies, it could even be like eating food...far better than dehydrated space meals, at any rate).

These technologies would place the onus of space exploration on the most modified, posthuman* members of our civilization, forging the environment necessary for humans with fewer biomechanical enhancements to settle in these more habitable areas.

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*If you notice, I tend to use "transhuman" less and less because I just don't like the sound of it. Too often, it is used by my fellow transhumanists (not all, just some) to denote a sense of misanthropic superiority that does not fit with my own views of friendly and equal relations between the humans and posthumans of our near future. Posthuman simply means "after human", referring most accurately to the broad spectrum of changes in human behavior and physiology, either through biological evolution, genetic engineering, or cybernetic technologies (the last of which I support most strongly, due to its inherent durability and advantages, while others may prefer the other two for various reasons).

Those of us who choose enhancement may have more abilities, but this does not give us more worth as human beings than those who do not. Once you start playing around with the value of human life...God help you, because things are going to turn very horrible very quickly.

I agree, I just think that it's going to take time to get food, water, and other things to these people.

Well, getting rid of some of the more dangerous diseases makes it all the easier. More healthy, productive workers would be capable of building and expanding infrastructure necessary to deal with basic forms of material scarcity such as lack of access to good food or clean water.

Well of course, but we can't exactly get these things to people right now? How do we reduce their suffering now? While we speak, people are dying because they're starving, or because they can't get access to a drug that's quite common here.

Is that because there isn't enough or is it because of the costs of distribution? If you notice, famines almost never occur near seaports where crops can be brought in cheaply by ships. They occur deep in the interior where years of neglect have lead to unusable roads and such ridiculous costs to airlift or bring the food in by off-road truck make it much more difficult to distribute aid. If you also notice, farms in the United States were closing down for want of customers, and Agriculture only recently stopped it's decay when ethanol buffered demand.

Regardless, however, if those regions were more economically developed they could easilly afford both the food and the drugs without our assistance. I think one of the best ways to help Africa would be building a simple series of two-lane paved highways, like the old US Routes, throughout Africa, to allow semitrucks and other more efficient movers to bring aid in paid for by private organizations. What's even better, it would create greater demand for American crops, which would help America's farmers and thus partially pay for itself. It would also grow Africa economically, and some of that growth, be it through cheaper goods like Tapioca, Coffee, and Cocoa, or through businesses and banks that could come back and invest in here, help us as well. We would, in effect, be investing in Africa.

And as for overpopulation, while I disagree about it being a problem, I will say that developing Africa would be one of the best ways of slowing population growth, as developed countries have greater portions of their populations living in cities where it is an economic liabillity to have children, versus in the country where they are cheap farm labor, and as such, people tend to have smaller families or no families at all. Many developed countries, like Japan, are actually shrinking in population:News Article about Japan's Shrinking Population (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/20669.php)

At least we will always have our Soylent Green...well, on Teusdays if They don't run out.

Yes, the Earth is overpopulated and if humanity does not stop the runaway birthrates found in many countries then nature will start to take care of the problem when resources run out.

If there are too many wolves, they eat up all of the food and the wolves starve and die off until food has a chance to recover. If there are too many people... yeah. How cheerful! :p

Yes, the Earth is overpopulated and if humanity does not stop the runaway birthrates found in many countries then nature will start to take care of the problem when resources run out.

If there are too many wolves, they eat up all of the food and the wolves starve and die off until food has a chance to recover. If there are too many people... yeah. How cheerful! :p

Wolves don't grow their own food. Wolves can't do calculus, and they certainly don't understand the principles of thermodynamics. And they can't find new ways of organizing themselves, or ways of taking waste products to generate things that are not usually generated from waste products.

Thanks i guess :)

Well we are using the most common energy source that is available on our planet, shifting that won't be easy (if i am allowed to use that euphemism) ... Just to give you an idea, to break down our glucose we need nothing less then 23 enzymes plus 5 big enzyme complexes, from which it still is uncertain how much enzymes they contain exactly...
To give you an idea of our metabolic complexity here (http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails.pl) is a map of the +/- 3000 mostly used enzymes and how they interact with each other... You might know that humans have 20-30 000 genes (depends on which study you believe) and each one has several different splicing abilities so we can go to a theoretically maximum of about 210 000 enzymes. Note that it is very unlikely that it will be that much... Personally i do think we have about 30 000 enzymes, but then again i am very likely to be wrong about that...

Just for the fun of it here (http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails.pl?2) is a map that contains the most important info of how enzymes are getting created... Not all of course, just the basics... When you would alter our energy metabolism you would need to alter this as well...

PS: you can click on the maps for zooming, so you can actually see something ;)

Thanks i guess :)

Well we are using the most common energy source that is available on our planet, shifting that won't be easy (if i am allowed to use that euphemism) ... Just to give you an idea, to break down our glucose we need nothing less then 23 enzymes plus 5 big enzyme complexes, from which it still is uncertain how much enzymes they contain exactly...
To give you an idea of our metabolic complexity here (http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails.pl) is a map of the +/- 3000 mostly used enzymes and how they interact with each other... You might know that humans have 20-30 000 genes (depends on which study you believe) and each one has several different splicing abilities so we can go to a theoretically maximum of about 210 000 enzymes. Note that it is very unlikely that it will be that much... Personally i do think we have about 30 000 enzymes, but then again i am very likely to be wrong about that...

Just for the fun of it here (http://www.expasy.ch/cgi-bin/show_thumbnails.pl?2) is a map that contains the most important info of how enzymes are getting created... Not all of course, just the basics... When you would alter our energy metabolism you would need to alter this as well...

I'm not totally sure who you're replying to, but if you're talking about using something other then the sun to grow crops, I believe that certain grades of flourescent lights, and power sources such as wind, nuclear fission, geothermal, and (potentially, if they get it working) nuclear fusion could be used. It would use energy, but if the energy is cheap enough, and the demand is expansive enough, and the supply is limited enough, it can be done.

I'm not totally sure who you're replying to, but if you're talking about using something other then the sun to grow crops, I believe that certain grades of flourescent lights, and power sources such as wind, nuclear fission, geothermal, and (potentially, if they get it working) nuclear fusion could be used. It would use energy, but if the energy is cheap enough, and the demand is expansive enough, and the supply is limited enough, it can be done.

nope i was replying on this message (cut some spaces to reduce space)

Actually, Wolf, I'd have to say you've hit on the biggest challenge to space expansion...

Obviously, this is where fields like bionics become especially useful; by shifting more critical biological functions to any source of energy rather than just the chemical sources available in food, it greatly reduces the amount of this input needed to survive (and with suitable BCI technologies, it could even be like eating food...far better than dehydrated space meals, at any rate).


A basic thing is that plants need certain things to grow: light from following wavelength see this picture (http://www.uic.edu/classes/bios/bios100/lecturesf04am/absorption-spectrum.jpg), water (but we already assumed we had that), enough ions like Mg, K, Ca, Fe,Cl,... and of course CO2. Let us assume that we have enough of those ions, since after all they are found within the ground. Now we have only two problems left... The light, but as i said before, we could use lamps that donate the same wavelengths, not very practical, since every decent plant would need to have his own light bulb; but doable as long as you don't need too much plants...
Now the CO2 will become a problem since to have that you need to have a atmosphere... luckily for us that is available on mars (approximately 95%) here (http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Marsatmos.html) you can check that Now most plants we use to eat need bacteria as well, left out those before for the ease of it, but those don't need CO2, but rather N2 and only 2,7% ain't enough of it... Result or there would need to be some kind of a micro atmosphere build around the plant (preferably around the entire colony since there is simply too less oxygen to survive) which would give once again there own "cute little problems"...

Yes. It is obvious to me that planet Houston is overpopulated by you humans, and that most of you are not kneeling as I have commanded you to do! So I shall immediately start work on solving this overpopulation problem!

By the Gods, Zod, I swore I would have my revenge...I'm still plotting it, still plotting for the day when your reign of terror would come to an end at last.

In another thread someone indicated that they did not believe that the world is overpopulated by humans. This shocked me because I believe that it is clear that we are way overpopulated. What do you think?

Yes. It is obvious to me that planet Houston is overpopulated by you humans, and that most of you are not kneeling as I have commanded you to do! So I shall immediately start work on solving this overpopulation problem!

(*flies off in search of people not kneeling*)

Wolves don't grow their own food. Wolves can't do calculus, and they certainly don't understand the principles of thermodynamics. And they can't find new ways of organizing themselves, or ways of taking waste products to generate things that are not usually generated from waste products.
No, they can't. There aren't going to be over seven billion wolves though.

Earth is overpopulated only if we accept the Western standard of living as being the one that is desirable.


I answered yes, because it's much easier to kill off extra population than to give up acquired goods and benefits.

In another thread someone indicated that they did not believe that the world is overpopulated by humans. This shocked me because I believe that it is clear that we are way overpopulated. What do you think?

I think it's silly to say that world is over populated. Some countries are but some arent. Canada definately isnt overpopulated while Bangledesh is.

In another thread someone indicated that they did not believe that the world is overpopulated by humans. This shocked me because I believe that it is clear that we are way overpopulated. What do you think?

How do you measure overpopulation?

I would imagine that you figure out if we have enough resources for the total of humanity present on the planet, and also measure the amount of resources in reserve against the projected population growth(or decline) and work out how long that will last.

If you end up in the red(so to speak) then I would say that is a good indicator of overpopulation.

But I really don't know how it is measured, can anybody shed light on it?

With the current systems in the world, the world cannot support as many people as we have today, if this is to be prevented, then i'd like to hear how.

How do you measure overpopulation?

I would imagine that you figure out if we have enough resources for the total of humanity present on the planet, and also measure the amount of resources in reserve against the projected population growth(or decline) and work out how long that will last.

If you end up in the red(so to speak) then I would say that is a good indicator of overpopulation.

But I really don't know how it is measured, can anybody shed light on it?
That's basically how it's done. You also have to decide how long you want the population to be supported.

You also have to define what standard of living each human will have. For instance, if we wanted each human being on the planet to have an average European standard of living, and if we want this to be maintainable indefinitely, then the resources on this planet could support a couple billion humans.

Now, the resources on this planet can obviously support way more than 2.5 billion humans, but only because we are consuming those resources at a rate faster than they can be replaced. This means that we can't support that many humans indefinitely. We will eventually run out of resources necessary for human life.

With the current systems in the world, the world cannot support as many people as we have today, if this is to be prevented, then i'd like to hear how.

How do you know that?

That's basically how it's done. You also have to decide how long you want the population to be supported.

You also have to define what standard of living each human will have. For instance, if we wanted each human being on the planet to have an average European standard of living, and if we want this to be maintainable indefinitely, then the resources on this planet could support a couple billion humans.

Now, the resources on this planet can obviously support way more than 2.5 billion humans, but only because we are consuming those resources at a rate faster than they can be replaced. This means that we can't support that many humans indefinitely. We will eventually run out of resources necessary for human life.

All of which tells me that the planet could well be overpopulated, or that the population of the planet are resource greedy and using more than we need.

This is of course all subject to change. If for example we found alternative and cheaper fuels, or discovered a way to make more food in less space.

So it seems to me that cries of overpopulation may be a little imature at this moment.

Ahhhh statistics!

All of which tells me that the planet could well be overpopulated, or that the population of the planet are resource greedy and using more than we need.

Well, that's why I specified that you have to define the standard of living.


This is of course all subject to change. If for example we found alternative and cheaper fuels, or discovered a way to make more food in less space.

Actually, conservative estimates usually confine themselves to unquestionable resources. For instance, our need for fresh water, breathable air, physical space to live, etc.


So it seems to me that cries of overpopulation may be a little imature at this moment.

If anything, I think they're long overdue.

What's this Bottle! We disagree with each other? Well I never!:D

How do you know that?

That information is classified.

That information is classified.

*shrug* Then I guess I can't believe it.

*shrug* Then I guess I can't believe it.

well okay, i'll tell you but you've got to promise not to tell anyone else.

Most people think the world is overpopulated.

Almost none consider themselves to be among the surplus.

don't know if that first part is correct, but that last part sure is...
Well i am replaceable... but that would make me unique and thus irreplaceable... dang

well okay, i'll tell you but you've got to promise not to tell anyone else.

Okay shhh, just whisper it to me!

We're overpopulating the Earth yes, but we probably won't be able to stop it, same as Global Warming. We'll probably destroy the planet. Make an effort anyway because it'll make you feel better, but just don't expect too much to come from it.

Okay...you are worried that over-population will cause suffering and death, am I right? And to prevent over population, you think we should let suffering and death continue.

Does this make sense?

I am not worried about that overpopulation will lead to suffering and death (of people). I am worried that overpopulation now and in the future is hurting the environment and causing extinction and endangering the existence of other species.

To reduce overpopulation, death is a necessary component. However, I think as compassionate people we should do everything possible to reduce suffering. I know that death causes suffering in the form of bereavement but I am more concerned with the sort of suffering that goes on in places where there is no anesthesia and where fairly basic health care for non life threatening but burdensome conditions is unavailable. As an example there are many who are blind (I think by cataracts) where they could see if they received fairly cheap and easy surgery.

We're overpopulating the Earth yes, but we probably won't be able to stop it, same as Global Warming. We'll probably destroy the planet. Make an effort anyway because it'll make you feel better, but just don't expect too much to come from it.There's no way to prevent overpopulation? You're kidding, right? There's plenty of ethically unsound means to do it, including mass-murder, euthanasia, or forced sterilization.

There's no way to prevent overpopulation? You're kidding, right? There's plenty of ethically unsound means to do it, including mass-murder, euthanasia, or forced sterilization.
And there's also plenty of ethical ways to do it.

The #1 way to do this is to educate women and ensure that they have access to reproductive health care. Countless studies have confirmed that if women know how to limit the number of children they have, and if they are granted access to the tools they need to do so, then they will choose to have smaller families. No force or coercion is necessary. Very few women are actually thrilled at the notion of being endlessly pregnant, after all, so it's not really any surprise that they'll generally choose to limit how many pregnancies they go through.

It would also help if it were socially acceptable to be childless by choice. Lately I've been getting lots of questions about when Himself and I will be marrying and spawning progeny, and when I reply that I'm not particularly interested in having children people look at me as though I just insulted their mama. In my culture there is an expectation that all women must want to have children, and if you don't then you're a bitter old hag who will die alone and miserable. Men are somewhat more free to remain childless, but there's still a ton of pressure on them to pass on their name and their genes.

Finally, you could probably knock down a huge chunk of the overpopulation problem if you simply made contraception and contraceptive education free and available to everybody.

And there's also plenty of ethical ways to do it.

The #1 way to do this is to educate women and ensure that they have access to reproductive health care. Countless studies have confirmed that if women know how to limit the number of children they have, and if they are granted access to the tools they need to do so, then they will choose to have smaller families. No force or coercion is necessary. Very few women are actually thrilled at the notion of being endlessly pregnant, after all, so it's not really any surprise that they'll generally choose to limit how many pregnancies they go through.

It would also help if it were socially acceptable to be childless by choice. Lately I've been getting lots of questions about when Himself and I will be marrying and spawning progeny, and when I reply that I'm not particularly interested in having children people look at me as though I just insulted their mama. In my culture there is an expectation that all women must want to have children, and if you don't then you're a bitter old hag who will die alone and miserable. Men are somewhat more free to remain childless, but there's still a ton of pressure on them to pass on their name and their genes.

Finally, you could probably knock down a huge chunk of the overpopulation problem if you simply made contraception and contraceptive education free and available to everybody.Yeah, but those take more time :p

Global Warming may indeed be something we can't stop, but overpopulation? Seriously. It's as simple as killing a billion people or so and preventing the rest from breeding too much, if you're lazy. The comparison is off by a mile.

Yeah, but those take more time :p

Global Warming may indeed be something we can't stop, but overpopulation? Seriously. It's as simple as killing a billion people or so and preventing the rest from breeding too much, if you're lazy. The comparison is off by a mile.
What makes me sad is that it would be pretty goddam easy to slow, halt, or even reverse overpopulation, and it wouldn't necessarily require any serious sacrifices.

Well, I take that back. It would require a lot of sacrifices from men who are accustomed to owning women's bodies. It would require a lot of sacrifice from parents who don't believe in educating their children. It would require sacrifice from the "family values" crowd, who would be forced to live in a world where people are allowed to control their own reproduction (*GASP* THE SIN!!!).

But, frankly, I have no problem asking people to "sacrifice" undeserved privileges which they only hold at the expense of the health and freedom of others.

What makes me sad is that it would be pretty goddam easy to slow, halt, or even reverse overpopulation, and it wouldn't necessarily require any serious sacrifices.

Well, I take that back. It would require a lot of sacrifices from men who are accustomed to owning women's bodies. It would require a lot of sacrifice from parents who don't believe in educating their children. It would require sacrifice from the "family values" crowd, who would be forced to live in a world where people are allowed to control their own reproduction (*GASP* THE SIN!!!).

But, frankly, I have no problem asking people to "sacrifice" undeserved privileges which they only hold at the expense of the health and freedom of others.

Nice bit of stinging feminism there. I don't know about any other man in here, but I've never owned a woman's body in my life. I think it's condescending of you to say that all men see women as mindless objects. You make it sound as if no woman ever wants to have sex and that us evil men have been torturing you into doing so since the beginning of time. Really.

Depends on what you mean by overpopulated.

This source is interesting: anyone care to try and refute it?

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/3046/overpop.htm

There is no doubt that a hypothetical solution such as this could work. The problem is that this is not the land policy anywhere in the world and I do not see such a radical solution ever happening. It is not so much a solution to be refuted but instead we are faced with the problem that present prevailing land use policy throughout the world does not do a good job at protecting natural raw land from being develloped in a manner that puts great stress on biodiversity.

In other words we have a serious problem on our hands and to say "we do not have a problem because it could go away if we all enacted radical land use policies" is ridiculous. That is like saying, "I cannot afford to pay my bills and I have a lot of debt but I do not have a financial problem because I could win the lottery today."

I think it's silly to say that world is over populated. Some countries are but some arent. Canada definately isnt overpopulated while Bangledesh is.It isn't? Consider this: Is Canada capable of sustaining it's population without the help of any other country? To establish whether or not Canada is overpopulated, you'd have to cut off food imports and see if people starve. That would be the only serious way to establish whether Canada has reached its carrying capacity for human beings.

Humans aren't overpopulated in the sense that we cannot sustain our current population indefinitely. We cannot sustain our current rate of population growth, but if we can develop more efficient ways to use our resources, we should be able to sustain our current population.

Encouraging birth control and family planning is a good idea right now, but the problem isn't as bad as some make it out to be.

Glorious Freedonia, your views are pretty extreme. Frankly, I would be horrified if our politicians started advocating such policies. If something happens that disrupts our ability to sustain our current population, then I would rather look into alternate methods of dealing with overpopulation (ie colonizing other planets).

Ultimately, I am a human supremacist. If it comes down to choosing between the welfare of homo sapiens and the welfare of other animals, I'll pick my own species. I care about the environment chiefly because of the harmful effects on humans. That said, animals still have rights. Humans merely take priority.

Let me deal with the specific issue of food. Admittedly, my knowledge in this area is vague, and if you have actual data that is relevent, I'd be happy to see it. Right now, the majority of humans can find enough to eat. It might take effort, but they can get food somehow. There are not large areas of the world devastated by famine.

Furthermore, the main cause of food shortages is a problem in the distribution system. War or dictatorships limit production (ie Zimbabwe or North Korea), and economics impair distribution. Developed countries (especially the United States), produce tons and tons of food, to the point that obesity is becoming an issue. If this surplus food was instead delivered to poor countries, that would help a lot. Also, if we could end the various wars and dictatorships that impair production, production would increase. I believe that this would be sufficient to deal with famine.

We do have a fundamental difference. You are a human supremist and I have a more economical view of life. I think that the rarer members of a species are then the more valuable it is and the more plentiful the numbers of that species the less valuable a member is. Accordingly, I mourn the death of a highly endangered white rhino more so than I do the death of an ant or a human.

If humans and ants were endangered and white rhinos were plentiful, I would have the opposite conclusion of the importance of life.

I am sure that if people with two very divergent perspectives can reach a common ground or consensus that this consensus would appeal to most people. Are there any of my recommendations that you like?

One problem with your recommendation concerning food has to do with hydrological problems for the future of American agriculture. It is true that the USA feeds a large percentage of the world. However, much of our agricultural production comes from the plains. The plains do not get aenough rainfall to provide for this miracle. Instead irrigation largely depends on fossil water. We have a great underground lake if you will under the plains and this is accessed through wells to irrigate the land. It is drying up. The great plains will not be an agricultural powerhouse forever unless we come up with cactus corn that can grow using only the limited rainfall there. I guess another possibility would be to develop technology to produce water from the air in sufficient levels to allow major irrigation.

Nonsense, our population can shrink without disaster striking. A long slow decline to about 500 mil to 1 billion people would do wonders for the world. Also, a long time ago (I don't remember when, exactly) mankind's population dropped to 10,000. We bounced back. A relatively stable population around the 500 million to 1 billion mark would be perfectly fine. (relatively as it grows sometimes, and sometimes it shrinks)

Those were the numbers that I was thinking would be pretty ideal too.

I am not worried about that overpopulation will lead to suffering and death (of people). I am worried that overpopulation now and in the future is hurting the environment and causing extinction and endangering the existence of other species.

I see, so you are more worried about animals than humans at this point. May I ask, are you a vegetarian?

To reduce overpopulation, death is a necessary component. However, I think as compassionate people we should do everything possible to reduce suffering. I know that death causes suffering in the form of bereavement but I am more concerned with the sort of suffering that goes on in places where there is no anesthesia and where fairly basic health care for non life threatening but burdensome conditions is unavailable. As an example there are many who are blind (I think by cataracts) where they could see if they received fairly cheap and easy surgery.

Hmm. I suppose. But I still you think you are hindering your very ends by your proposed means.

And there's also plenty of ethical ways to do it.

The #1 way to do this is to educate women and ensure that they have access to reproductive health care. Countless studies have confirmed that if women know how to limit the number of children they have, and if they are granted access to the tools they need to do so, then they will choose to have smaller families. No force or coercion is necessary. Very few women are actually thrilled at the notion of being endlessly pregnant, after all, so it's not really any surprise that they'll generally choose to limit how many pregnancies they go through.

It would also help if it were socially acceptable to be childless by choice. Lately I've been getting lots of questions about when Himself and I will be marrying and spawning progeny, and when I reply that I'm not particularly interested in having children people look at me as though I just insulted their mama. In my culture there is an expectation that all women must want to have children, and if you don't then you're a bitter old hag who will die alone and miserable. Men are somewhat more free to remain childless, but there's still a ton of pressure on them to pass on their name and their genes.

Finally, you could probably knock down a huge chunk of the overpopulation problem if you simply made contraception and contraceptive education free and available to everybody.

Bottle strikes again! Backed-up by her trusty sidekick, Reason.

It would lead to ignorance, barbarism, and decay just like it did at multiple times in the past. Every single Dark Age in human history has been accompanied by depopulation, and every period of depopulation has been accompanied by severe decline in many parts of the world...we were lucky to avoid such a fate during the Black Plague, if only because Europe was actually overpopulated and it helped break the stagnation of the feudal era. The sheer loss of 5 billion people, of whom a significant proportion would be the most educated and most necessary to maintain our living standards, would cause nothing but loss. Everything we've achieved in the present era is due to the population growth of the past two centuries...without it, we would be nowhere near where we are today.

Humankind would gain nothing but reversion to the far harsher life of the early 18th century, if not worse when famines and plagues still posed a serious danger, child mortality was massively high, and science was still trapped in a cloak of ignorance and fear.

And in regard to the massive population decline in the past (I also don't recall the date)...we came very, very close to extinction. That was a close call at best; had a few things gone differently, we would not be here today. Mankind needs to grow beyond Earth if it does not want to die out. There is no other option.

I do not understand your point sorry. I do not see why a lower population requires a dark age where knowledge and technology is lost.

How do you measure overpopulation?

I would imagine that you figure out if we have enough resources for the total of humanity present on the planet, and also measure the amount of resources in reserve against the projected population growth(or decline) and work out how long that will last.

If you end up in the red(so to speak) then I would say that is a good indicator of overpopulation.

But I really don't know how it is measured, can anybody shed light on it?

This is a measure of overpopulation that I came up with in about 20 seconds. If all species had enough habitat and resources to ensure survivability forever. We have a balanced ecosystem with no overpopulation. If one of the species within that ecosystem uses resources to the point that any other species' survival is even threatend, let alone ended, then there is overpopulation. Basically, if one population of species makes another population of species underpopulated, then this imbalance is caused by the overpopulation of one of the species in the ecosystem.

What makes me sad is that it would be pretty goddam easy to slow, halt, or even reverse overpopulation, and it wouldn't necessarily require any serious sacrifices.

Well, I take that back. It would require a lot of sacrifices from men who are accustomed to owning women's bodies. It would require a lot of sacrifice from parents who don't believe in educating their children. It would require sacrifice from the "family values" crowd, who would be forced to live in a world where people are allowed to control their own reproduction (*GASP* THE SIN!!!).

But, frankly, I have no problem asking people to "sacrifice" undeserved privileges which they only hold at the expense of the health and freedom of others.

Why is it that a man owning a womn's body contribute to overpopulation. In marriage, a man typically has some type of ownership of his woman's body but that does not mean he will necssarily try to fill her up with as many babies as possible. Men are just as capable of not wanting a bizillion babies.

I do not understand what "family values" means. I can see how it would include the idea that gays should not be able to get married but I do not really see how contraception or abortion of unwanted babies is a family value. I think planned families are a good family value. They are certainly the value that my family has embraced. The decision of when to have a family is too important to be left up to chance.

I may be off base here but I define family values as values that strengthen the family by promoting the family's stability, traditions, wealth, and reputation.

I see, so you are more worried about animals than humans at this point. May I ask, are you a vegetarian?

Hmm. I suppose. But I still you think you are hindering your very ends by your proposed means.

As to your first question. I am not a vegetarian. I do not look at all animals as the same. I would never eat endangered animal flesh if that is what you are asking and I do not think that is what you were getting at.

As far as the ends and means business. No offense but I am sure that in your own mind you understand the point that you were trying to get at, but the way you brought this up does not convey to me the point that you were trying to express. Can you be specific about how my ends are hindered by my proposed means?

Some parts of the world are very overpopulated, yes. We are running out of resources, yes. Water supply may prove a significant cause for the next world war.

However: most of the countries in the modern world have seen a substantial decrease in the amount of children each family has. This is possibly due to the wider availability of birth control, perhaps due to better sex education, maybe the Church isn't having as significant a grip upon people, or perhaps it's part of our instincts to breed less when resources are becoming limited.
There is also the fact that there is a correlation between IQ and the amount of children people have.

There are also many unpopulated regions around the world. Some of it could be due to economic conditions or poor climate... but I live in the Midwest. Most of the people who go to my university are from small towns around the area and graduated in a class of 50 or fewer. The population of the United States is shifting south, because that's where the money is. Increasingly people are drawn to large cities because that's where the jobs are.

Is this country overpopulated? Well, come to North Dakota or South Dakota or Montana and try to make that claim. We do have a lot of humans and we are causing harm to the earth, but that could be taken care of--if this administration would budge.

Overpopulation is exactly the reason we should be allowing abortions and assisted suicide to take place.

Maybe George Bush was trying to compensate for those by going to war, eh? Who the f*** knows.

Why is it that a man owning a womn's body contribute to overpopulation.

This is related to the whole, "Women tend to have fewer babies when they are able to choose whether or not they have babies."

If a woman is not permitted to make her own decisions about reproduction, obviously she won't be able to limit her family size even if she wants to. In our world, the most common problem of this type is rooted in male ownership of women. It doesn't necessarily have to be that way, of course, but it is. I don't know of any nation in the world where women are owned by other women, though you're free to correct me if I'm wrong about that.


I do not understand what "family values" I can see how it would include the idea that teh gays should not be able to get married but I do not really see how contraception or abortion of unwanted babies is a family value. I think planned families are a good family value. They are certainly the value that my family has embraced. The decision of when to have a family is too important to be left up to chance.
This is why I put "family values" in scare quotes. The "family values" movement in the USA is characterized by a profound disregard for the well-being of families. "Family values" proponents tend to support policies that hurt families, as well as hurting individual men, women, and children. It's yet another charming joke brought to you by the Radical Right.

I would never eat endangered animal flesh

Hmm... this gives me an idea.

Since humans are supposedly overpopulating the world, may we hunt them and eat their flesh as a means of controlling population? Natural selection, says Darwin. :D

Most people think the world is overpopulated.

Almost none consider themselves to be among the surplus.
Very true. You get people shrieknig "Humans need culling to save the earth!", but I doubt they'd be the first to volunteer for it!

Obviously the population is higher than ideal and getting worse. I don't really go for the animal rights platform, I just think that it would be better off for everyone if the population was at a more sensible level. Of course, the big question is 'What can we do about it?'. Birth rates in the developed world are lower than ever, but even if we stopped breeding entirely, it wouldn't really make much of a difference when you look at the way things are in poorer countries. They'll carry on breeding like rabbits the same as ever. I can't really see a way to stop it, except through the completely unacceptable means.

We do have a fundamental difference. You are a human supremist and I have a more economical view of life. I think that the rarer members of a species are then the more valuable it is and the more plentiful the numbers of that species the less valuable a member is. Accordingly, I mourn the death of a highly endangered white rhino more so than I do the death of an ant or a human.

If humans and ants were endangered and white rhinos were plentiful, I would have the opposite conclusion of the importance of life.


Stop trying to get my national animal endangered... Seriously though, it seems like you and i have a rather big difference on what kind of animal is "more important" then an other. Personally i do believe that it is more shameful to see a fully adapt animal (like an ant) die then to see an animal die that isn't adapted to its situation at all (like a panda for example)


This is a measure of overpopulation that I came up with in about 20 seconds. If all species had enough habitat and resources to ensure survivability forever. We have a balanced ecosystem with no overpopulation. If one of the species within that ecosystem uses resources to the point that any other species' survival is even threatend, let alone ended, then there is overpopulation. Basically, if one population of species makes another population of species underpopulated, then this imbalance is caused by the overpopulation of one of the species in the ecosystem.

Personally i don't think this is a fair measurement of the overpopulation since humans don't tend to have an natural predator (anymore) they aren't threatened and thus can't be possibly be underrepresented because of an other animal... Plus it could be that the animal that is getting extinguished isn't adapted to its situation at all, in which case i wouldn't care too much about the loss... I would rather not see it happen of course, but when there is a non-adapt going i wouldn't find it a great loss...

And there's also plenty of ethical ways to do it.

The #1 way to do this is to educate women and ensure that they have access to reproductive health care. Countless studies have confirmed that if women know how to limit the number of children they have, and if they are granted access to the tools they need to do so, then they will choose to have smaller families. No force or coercion is necessary. Very few women are actually thrilled at the notion of being endlessly pregnant, after all, so it's not really any surprise that they'll generally choose to limit how many pregnancies they go through.

It would also help if it were socially acceptable to be childless by choice. Lately I've been getting lots of questions about when Himself and I will be marrying and spawning progeny, and when I reply that I'm not particularly interested in having children people look at me as though I just insulted their mama. In my culture there is an expectation that all women must want to have children, and if you don't then you're a bitter old hag who will die alone and miserable. Men are somewhat more free to remain childless, but there's still a ton of pressure on them to pass on their name and their genes.

Finally, you could probably knock down a huge chunk of the overpopulation problem if you simply made contraception and contraceptive education free and available to everybody.

I am not sure if it would be the #1 way like you've said, but it is without a doubt one of the best human solutions we have to do some birth control... It is rather shaming to see that there are still people thinking that women are less then men... Of course there are things that men can do better, but there are lots of things women do better as well...

One of the other things you have said is so true as well... Personally i can't figure out how it is possible that people in a country that claims to be the greatest in the world can do such strange things. Agreed, family issues are important, but does one have the right to tell an other how to lead there lives? So is it wrong for women not to have babies if they don't want to (well if they can work it out with there partners that is...) or for homosexuals to get married... After all, they are humans as well...

Maybe a better idea is just avoid and compensate for causing significant harm to the earth. One of the best compensators I've heard of is adding iron to certain parts of the ocean to grow algae, and those algae will convert CO2 to oxygen and then, potentially, can be processed in to animal feed. Sulfur eating bacteria are another case in point, and they could potentially be fermented in to detergents.

I would argue that the ideal size for the world is larger, as we know from information we've collected that for any set of people born a certain number of geniuses are created, and for that certain number of geniuses, their talent is greatly increased by cooperation with other geniuses, still other geniuses, and the effect is exponential. Add to this the people of other types who are there to support them and you end up with a powerful force for innovation in the world.

Still, I will agree that open lands have to be preserved, both for the enjoyment of humans and the survival of the ecosystem that we need on so many levels, practical and quality of life.

As for the claim that water supply will cause the next war, don't worry, the modern combat environment with all it's impossibly expensive precision equipment has effectively killed that likelihood, as no matter what the cost of extracting water, it will almost certainly be less then the cost of going to war, and by a margin high enough to be obvious. More likely we'll just start prefabbing Desalinization plants and putting them everywhere. It'll drive up our electric needs, but the State of Georgia is already building two nuclear power plants to provide for that need.

Bottle: If your demand is contraception, you need not be worried, most of America and the Developed World is already very close to your goal. But don't ever expect perfection, as human beings never have been, and never will be perfect. The ethical road is always the road less traveled. It should hearten you, though, that a man who is still estimated (despite a few bad primaries, hardly suprising as they've so far been 2 podunk Guns & Gays kingdoms and the most Anti-war state in America) as one of the front-runners of the GOP is a pro-Gay Rights, pro-Abortion, law enforcement free-trade and free-market man. It will do wonders in our country for Gay Rights to have both parties dominated by those who support these measures.

Canada definately isnt overpopulated while Bangledesh is.

Yet because it is the most wasteful nation on the face of the planet, Canada is getting close to its carrying capacity in spite of its massive size and relatively small population.

Dont think we should be asking whether the world is over populated because there is enough space on earth to provide for up to 8 billion people. The issue of overpopulation stems from the unbalanced population distribution of humans.

Even with such unihabitable places as deserts and artic lands there is still enough place for humans. We have the issue today where much of the lands suitable for humans have become claimed by nations and certain peoples have populated more land than should be provided.

Lets share the world people.

Dont think we should be asking whether the world is over populated because there is enough space on earth to provide for up to 8 billion people. The issue of overpopulation stems from the unbalanced population distribution of humans.
While it's true that the earth could probably still take some more humans just for kicks and that the main problem is not (yet) scarcity but rather distribution, be it of goods or land, we have to act now to prevent the global population from going completely overboard. It would be rather difficult to just say at eight billions : "Well okay, I think we can now stop with the whole excessive reproducing thing, was nice while it lasted, rubbers for everyone!"

Finally, you could probably knock down a huge chunk of the overpopulation problem if you simply made contraception and contraceptive education free and available to everybody.

Or if the world wants to get draconian they just stop exporting food to countries that cannot or will not control their populations.

Finally, you could probably knock down a huge chunk of the overpopulation problem if you simply made contraception and contraceptive education free and available to everybody.

That's true. A lot of people forget that most of the population growth isn't people having kids because they want them, but because of raw economic need and the lack of effective birth control. Providing these resources would not take away the right of people to have kids, but it would control the main driver of overpopulation, the high birthrates in the developing world that are caused by the lack of said resources and economic need.

(Economic development would be a necessary corollary, of course...however, if world birthrates decline to the level of Russia, you'd have to reduce the death rate to zero to approach the current population growth rate)

According to a number of people I have talked to, the world itself is not overpopulated so much as is certain regions. The world itself has enough resources to support this much, but a lot of the world population is in areas where they cannot get ample resources because that region has too many people. Thus, if humanity spread out more, it wouldn't be an issue.

I BEFRIEND CHESTNUTS;13361196']Of course, the big question is 'What can we do about it?'. Birth rates in the developed world are lower than ever, but even if we stopped breeding entirely, it wouldn't really make much of a difference when you look at the way things are in poorer countries. They'll carry on breeding like rabbits the same as ever. I can't really see a way to stop it, except through the completely unacceptable means.
You can't see a way to stop it through ethical means? Really? Not even after I specifically provided ways to achieve that on this very thread?

Quit assuming that people in poorer countries are stupid animals. They may be "breeding like rabbits," but they're human beings. They are just as capable of reason as you are. If they are choosing to have craptons of kids, try considering that maybe there are REASONS why they are doing so. Instead of viewing them as stupid beasts who don't know any better, maybe you should try considering ways to provide them with better options and access to the means to make better choices.

If you'd like, I could give you contact information for a number of charity organizations that focus on family planning in poorer countries.

According to a number of people I have talked to, the world itself is not overpopulated so much as is certain regions. The world itself has enough resources to support this much, but a lot of the world population is in areas where they cannot get ample resources because that region has too many people. Thus, if humanity spread out more, it wouldn't be an issue.Yes, the planet can support the number of humans we currently have...but only if we consume at a rate far faster than resources are replenished. "Spreading out" won't solve the problem. We'll still be passing the planet on to our children in much worse condition than we received it. I think that's lame.

Or if the world wants to get draconian they just stop exporting food to countries that cannot or will not control their populations.
But JuNii lives in Hawaii ='(

I don't want to have to see him starve!