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I think I'll make this a multi-part answer.
1) What is the role of population in environmental impact?
The environmental impact of humanity can be thought of as a function of three things, something like this:
Impact = Population * Standard of Living * Impact of Unit of Technology
Think of it like this:
Other things being equal, 500m Chinese would have half the impact of 1bn.
But 1bn Chinese living in poverty with no electricity would have a lot less environmental impact than 1bn with electric lighting supplied by coal fired power stations.
While 1bn Chinese with electric lighting supplied by solar power would have a lot less impact than if the electricity came from coal.
It even comes down to things like the fact that as the Chinese got richer they could afford to eat a lot more meat. And meat takes a lot more land and water for the same amount of nutritional value than vegetables and grain.
So while population is definitely one of the elements of environmental impact, it's not the only one.
The possible places to leverage environmental impact are population, standard of living, and technology. i.e. We could try to have less people around, live more simply, or find technologies that deliver the same standard of living "bang" for less environmental "buck". Or most probably, combinations of all three.
2) Is the population too big? Or heading that way?
It depends who you ask. People and organisations have their own agendas, they make up formulas for how many people the world can support, and then conclude there are way too many. Or not.
The UN's population projections show the world's population peaking somewhere between 8-10bn sometime around mid-century. These are probably the best projections available, and they haven't done a bad job of prediction over the last 30 or so years. When they've been off, it's usually been that the population grew *less* than expected.
That level of population (8-10bn) is probably perfectly supportable.
But one reason why David Attenborough especially would be concerned is that while people have been ok as populations have risen, there has been a cost in wilderness and wildlife.
It applied in the US and Europe, and it applies in Africa and Asia. More people in North America = less wolves, buffalo, bears etc. But it doesn't mean North America is a giant landfill, or that people don't get enough to eat.
It does mean if you want to keep wilderness and wildlife, you'll need to figure out how you're going to do it in the face of all of the people who want the land for something else.
3) What, if anything, can be done about population?
The evidence shows that that birthrate drops dramatically as people (esp women) get richer and more educated. That is even more effective than the kind of draconian policies the Chinese tried with their One Child policy, which can't be applied in free societies anyway.
So to keep population growth as low as possible, the main thing we'd want to do is support development and education. The world is doing quite a lot in those areas, though like with anything, it could always do more.
The kind of shifts we're talking about are getting people up from a standard of living of less than a $1 a day up to maybe $1.50 or $2. And getting women enough schooling to be able to read. More is even better, but that level is enough to make a huge difference to birthrate.
On a Mahalo note, by supporting Kiva or similar organisations, you are helping to do exactly those kinds of things.
Conclusions
In the 60s and 70s over-population was a big topic of debate. It hasn't been forgotten about since then, we have actually just learned a lot more about how population growth works, and what can and can't be done to impact it.
There is no taboo on the topic. Anyone involved in the development field sees info about population and demographic trends and their implications all the time. Governments of countries with increasing populations are acutely aware of the trends, and usually pretty keen to do what they can to keep birthrates down. Whether they can do anything is another matter, but there's no taboo or lack of interest about it.
Population is one of the factors that drives environmental impact, but not the only one. The degree of leverage we have on it is actually not that huge because many of the future mothers and fathers are already here today as kids. They're already being educated or not, already being raised in poverty, already forming their views about life.
The scope for action we have would maybe change the level at which the world's population peaks by 10% or so, say from 10bn to 9bn. That's worth going for, but is not the difference between environmental catastrophe or salvation.
What will make that difference is for example whether we can make our technologies five times cleaner than they are. Or whether we're willing to cut our living standards in half if we can't.
Personally I'm pretty optimistic. At any rate, there's no mileage in despair, the only thing is to get to work and give it a shot.
Source(s):
http://esa.un.org/unpp/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
Long interest and experience in development issues.
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I learned this from a game called SimWorld. Mother Nature has a way of taking out large populations of living things when overpopulation is looming. War, disease, changes in environment, new predators... these appear when there are too many of one thing in one location.
A friend of mine has adopted his second child from China. From his findings through the research (and I consider him a very intelligent person by the way), China doesn't have an overpopulation problem and the "only two children" laws are not motivated by fears of overpopulation, but by desire of money.
So... I'm leaning on the side of... things will work themselves out.
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dumblonde
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
There was a lot of criticism of that book and a lot of it was justified. His predictions did not happen. He used methodology that was flawed. He was attacked from the right and from the left.
And yet his basic concept, that our resources are limited, is true. I think that there is still incredible amounts of oil to be found, but that doesn't change the fact that the amount of oil is finite.
One of the worst things that environmentalists do is to start their discussions about future planning without taking in to account future population growth and what that will mean to everything; housing, water, food, transportation, the environment.
How many people will live on this earth by the year 2050? A lot of you reading this will still be alive at that time.
Ehrlich predicted that the earth could not hold 5 billion. There are over 6 billion of us now. So he was wrong, but look at what the increase in population has done to the environment, to the concept of food production (the necessity of GMO's), to the possibility of pandemic.
In 2050 there may be 25 billion people on this earth. The earth can sustain that many people. But there may enormous consequences, and one of those may be in the amount of freedom that people in the USA enjoy.
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Sometimes I feel like human beings are like a plague of locusts eating away at the planet.
With advances in medicine and an aging population that will not die anytime soon, increases in population are inevitable.
I don't advocate limiting the number of children people can have or mandatory sterilization but I think there's not enough education about family planning and birth control. People go and have babies willy nilly when every human being added to the population is one more strain on the environment, one more person using up resources and generating waste. (1,600 lbs of garbage a year to be exact.)
I don't doubt the world can hold 20 billion people but will the quality of life on it be worth it?
Are we waiting for the world to look like this?
http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2008-07-04-image3WALLE.jpg
Source(s):
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-much-garbage-does-a-person-create-in-one-year.h...
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For example, using the data from the CIA World Factbook, here are some population densities:
billion people. If the population density matched Monaco, we would have
2.5 trillion people.
I realize we need some space for crops, but with the current growth rate (1.188%), in 50 years, we will have approximately 12.3 billion people and a population density of only 82.3 people per square km. I don't think we're in any sort of trouble.
Source(s):
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
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It's a big problem. But Earth is a big planet. Really big. People say: "It's a small world." I say: "I wouldn't want to paint it."
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The ideas of Malthus were just as wrong as the ideas of those who warn of overpopulation today, and for just the same reasons. The simple answers to any claim of overpopulation with increasing longevity are much as follows:
1) Population growth declines and reverses with increasing wealth, longevity and technological progress:
Decelerating population growth appears to be an inevitable result of growing wealth. Early on in a country's developmental curve, children can be regarded as 'producer goods' (as economists would say). Parents put their children to work on the farm to generate food and revenue. Very little effort is put into caring for the child: no expensive health plans, special classes, trips to Disneyland, X-Men action figures, or mounting phone bills. As we become wealthier, children become 'consumer goods'. That is, we look on them more and more as little people to be enjoyed and pampered and educated, not beasts of burden to help keep the family alive. We spend thousands o dollars on children to keep them healthy, entertain them, and educate them. We come to prefer fewer children to a vast mob of little ones. This preference seems to be reinforced by changing tastes resulting from improved education.
2) It is self-evident from even a few back of the envelope calculations that the Earth can support tens of billions in comfort using the technology of today - and never mind the rest of the solar system once the cost of getting into orbit has been sufficiently reduced.
So it turns out that if 5% of the United States were converted into urban area with a population density of 6,000/km2, and 45% were converted into suburban area with a population density of 2,000/km2, with the remaining 50% left for rural area, parks, and farms, there would be enough room for 3 billion in the urban areas, and 9 billion in the suburban areas, for a total population of 12 billion. This is in the US alone. This scheme could be extended to the other countries and continents for a total population of around 100 billion. Everything between the Arctic and Antarctic circles are potential targets for colonization. This is about 130,000,000 km2 of land area (the circumpolar regions have about 20,000,000 km2 of land).
3) What some presently view as "overpopulation" is more accurately described as crushing poverty amidst the potential for plenty and resources left unused. This is the result of despotism, corruption, economic ignorance, short-sighted greed and the inhumanity of man unto man - it is not a matter of counting heads.
Here, then, is a short guide for kleptocrats and egalitarians who want to keep their countries poor. All of these policies have stood the test of time as techniques for creating and maintaining poverty. The list is by no means exhaustive, but it will give would-be political leaders a good idea of how to start their countries on the road to ruin.
Malthusianism and cries of overpopulation in the face of a future of healthy life extension are forms of relinquishment. It is a call for death and suffering to continue on a massive scale; a certain type of person prefers any present horror to the uncertainty of change. Fortunately, such people have usually been swept aside in the past by the urge of the many to better their lives, one step at a time. May that long continue to be the case.
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The worst-case scenario for people experiencing overpopulation, according to Lawrence Smith, president of the Population Institute, is a lack of fresh, clean water. Third world war will be fought for WATER! "If the water goes, the species goes," he said.
Mother Nature will manage it, but do want to leave it to Mother Nature? Do we want people to die due to HUNGER or LACK OF WATER or DECEASE OUTBREAKS?
"That sounds kind of alarmist," Smith conceded, "considering there's water all around us, but 97 percent plus is saltwater, and the freshwater that we use to sustain ourselves is just native to 3 percent. ... So the accessibility of water, the competition for water, the availability of water is going to be a major, major threat," he said, noting world population growth estimates at more than 9 billion people by 2050.
Nine billion is an exceptional amount of people, considering the world's population only reached 1 billion in 1830, according to the Population Institute, a nonprofit organization that works to fund population and family planning programs around the world.
By 1999, world population reached 6 billion, and in the relatively short time between 2007 and 2050, there could be roughly 2.4 billion more people on Earth needing clean water, space and other natural resources from their environment in order to survive.
Governments facing overpopulation will also struggle to manage waste, said Allen. "Handling your waste and the public health consequences of not handling it well is the biggest problem that will be faced in rapidly growing urban areas in the developing world." When London, England, faced a population boom in the 1850s, for example, its infrastructure was not prepared for the excess waste, which resulted in Cholera outbreaks.
"Huge outbreaks," said Allen. "Fifty-thousand people dying over the summer. That's the kind of thing that in the developed world we no longer have problems with, but in the developing world are very, very real."
Smith said that 97 percent of world population growth between now and 2050 will occur in the developing world, where governments face serious economic and social challenges.
"I would say most of this is in sub-Saharan Africa, where by every other health indicator, they rank at the bottom," Smith said. "This growth rate is taking place despite the high levels of HIV and AIDS and tuberculosis and malaria."
Health care -- and the lack of it -- is also a factor in the rising populations in developing countries, according to Stan Bernstein, United Nations Population Fund senior policy adviser.
"We've seen a global trend of people wanting smaller families, but in the poorer settings that's not quite the case yet," Bernstein said. "And it's certainly not the case within countries that the poor not have access to the kinds of services that the wealthy avail themselves of."
Globally, Bernstein said the poorest fifth of people in countries with rapid population growth have twice as many children, on average, as the wealthy people in those same countries.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/25/overpopulation.overview/index.ht...
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Answered Question
M$5
April 14, 2009 01:29 AM
How big of a problem is overpopulation?
I'm a big fan of David Attenborough and was surprised that out of nowhere he announced that he was joining the ''Optimum Population Trust''
--quote--
The Trust, which accuses governments and green groups of observing a taboo on the topic, say they are delighted to have Sir David as a patron.
--/quote--
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7996230.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BbkQiQyaYc
What do you have to say about the overpopulation problem?
--quote--
The Trust, which accuses governments and green groups of observing a taboo on the topic, say they are delighted to have Sir David as a patron.
--/quote--
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7996230.stm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BbkQiQyaYc
What do you have to say about the overpopulation problem?
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| April 14, 2009 05:15 AM |
1) What is the role of population in environmental impact?
The environmental impact of humanity can be thought of as a function of three things, something like this:
Impact = Population * Standard of Living * Impact of Unit of Technology
Think of it like this:
Other things being equal, 500m Chinese would have half the impact of 1bn.
But 1bn Chinese living in poverty with no electricity would have a lot less environmental impact than 1bn with electric lighting supplied by coal fired power stations.
While 1bn Chinese with electric lighting supplied by solar power would have a lot less impact than if the electricity came from coal.
It even comes down to things like the fact that as the Chinese got richer they could afford to eat a lot more meat. And meat takes a lot more land and water for the same amount of nutritional value than vegetables and grain.
So while population is definitely one of the elements of environmental impact, it's not the only one.
The possible places to leverage environmental impact are population, standard of living, and technology. i.e. We could try to have less people around, live more simply, or find technologies that deliver the same standard of living "bang" for less environmental "buck". Or most probably, combinations of all three.
2) Is the population too big? Or heading that way?
It depends who you ask. People and organisations have their own agendas, they make up formulas for how many people the world can support, and then conclude there are way too many. Or not.
The UN's population projections show the world's population peaking somewhere between 8-10bn sometime around mid-century. These are probably the best projections available, and they haven't done a bad job of prediction over the last 30 or so years. When they've been off, it's usually been that the population grew *less* than expected.
That level of population (8-10bn) is probably perfectly supportable.
But one reason why David Attenborough especially would be concerned is that while people have been ok as populations have risen, there has been a cost in wilderness and wildlife.
It applied in the US and Europe, and it applies in Africa and Asia. More people in North America = less wolves, buffalo, bears etc. But it doesn't mean North America is a giant landfill, or that people don't get enough to eat.
It does mean if you want to keep wilderness and wildlife, you'll need to figure out how you're going to do it in the face of all of the people who want the land for something else.
3) What, if anything, can be done about population?
The evidence shows that that birthrate drops dramatically as people (esp women) get richer and more educated. That is even more effective than the kind of draconian policies the Chinese tried with their One Child policy, which can't be applied in free societies anyway.
So to keep population growth as low as possible, the main thing we'd want to do is support development and education. The world is doing quite a lot in those areas, though like with anything, it could always do more.
The kind of shifts we're talking about are getting people up from a standard of living of less than a $1 a day up to maybe $1.50 or $2. And getting women enough schooling to be able to read. More is even better, but that level is enough to make a huge difference to birthrate.
On a Mahalo note, by supporting Kiva or similar organisations, you are helping to do exactly those kinds of things.
Conclusions
In the 60s and 70s over-population was a big topic of debate. It hasn't been forgotten about since then, we have actually just learned a lot more about how population growth works, and what can and can't be done to impact it.
There is no taboo on the topic. Anyone involved in the development field sees info about population and demographic trends and their implications all the time. Governments of countries with increasing populations are acutely aware of the trends, and usually pretty keen to do what they can to keep birthrates down. Whether they can do anything is another matter, but there's no taboo or lack of interest about it.
Population is one of the factors that drives environmental impact, but not the only one. The degree of leverage we have on it is actually not that huge because many of the future mothers and fathers are already here today as kids. They're already being educated or not, already being raised in poverty, already forming their views about life.
The scope for action we have would maybe change the level at which the world's population peaks by 10% or so, say from 10bn to 9bn. That's worth going for, but is not the difference between environmental catastrophe or salvation.
What will make that difference is for example whether we can make our technologies five times cleaner than they are. Or whether we're willing to cut our living standards in half if we can't.
Personally I'm pretty optimistic. At any rate, there's no mileage in despair, the only thing is to get to work and give it a shot.
Source(s):
http://esa.un.org/unpp/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
Long interest and experience in development issues.
| Asker's Rating: |
• Great answer bud, you considered all things with this one
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Other Answers (10)
April 14, 2009 01:45 AM
My personal opinion is that we don't have an overpopulation problem. I learned this from a game called SimWorld. Mother Nature has a way of taking out large populations of living things when overpopulation is looming. War, disease, changes in environment, new predators... these appear when there are too many of one thing in one location.
A friend of mine has adopted his second child from China. From his findings through the research (and I consider him a very intelligent person by the way), China doesn't have an overpopulation problem and the "only two children" laws are not motivated by fears of overpopulation, but by desire of money.
So... I'm leaning on the side of... things will work themselves out.
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dumblonde
April 14, 2009 03:16 AM
The difference between SimWorld and this world is that humans are really smart and find ways to outsmart diseases. Illness and old age are not killing fast enough to counteract the population explosion. While I'm not advocating getting rid of medicine or killing the old, it's arithmetic. The people that under other conditions should have died are alive and then babies keep being born.
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April 14, 2009 03:32 AM
A large fraction of the biomass of the planet has been converted into human beings. So that for sure can't go on for ever. :)
More to the point, as countries get richer and people, especially women, get more educated, they choose to have fewer children. This well established pattern is called the Demographic Transition Theory.
Eventually all countries will have to contend with ageing populations just like Europe and Japan today.
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More to the point, as countries get richer and people, especially women, get more educated, they choose to have fewer children. This well established pattern is called the Demographic Transition Theory.
Eventually all countries will have to contend with ageing populations just like Europe and Japan today.
April 14, 2009 01:54 AM
I remember when Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb
There was a lot of criticism of that book and a lot of it was justified. His predictions did not happen. He used methodology that was flawed. He was attacked from the right and from the left.
And yet his basic concept, that our resources are limited, is true. I think that there is still incredible amounts of oil to be found, but that doesn't change the fact that the amount of oil is finite.
One of the worst things that environmentalists do is to start their discussions about future planning without taking in to account future population growth and what that will mean to everything; housing, water, food, transportation, the environment.
How many people will live on this earth by the year 2050? A lot of you reading this will still be alive at that time.
Ehrlich predicted that the earth could not hold 5 billion. There are over 6 billion of us now. So he was wrong, but look at what the increase in population has done to the environment, to the concept of food production (the necessity of GMO's), to the possibility of pandemic.
In 2050 there may be 25 billion people on this earth. The earth can sustain that many people. But there may enormous consequences, and one of those may be in the amount of freedom that people in the USA enjoy.
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April 14, 2009 03:25 AM
- New Source
The projections for 2050 are 8-10 billion, and the projections in the past have always turned out to be too high.
http://esa.un.org/unpp/
Btw, that is also the projected peak of the world population. It's expected to stabilise or slowly go down from there.
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http://esa.un.org/unpp/
Btw, that is also the projected peak of the world population. It's expected to stabilise or slowly go down from there.
April 14, 2009 02:38 AM
It has always amazed and distressed me that so many people refuse to do simple arithmetic. You can't just keep increasing the number of people on the planet. It's only a question of which disaster eventually strikes down billions of people. Will it be famine, or plague, or lack of water? And there is one other question, just how much damage will be done to the rest of the world before it happens? Will everything except cockroaches be wiped out? Will the atmosphere support life? One of the smaller lobbying groups puts it more or less like this: "All causes are lost causes without population stabilization."
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April 14, 2009 02:55 AM
I am of the opinion that we don't have so much a population problem as we have a problem within society as a whole. If we all did our share of reduce reuse and recycle our footprint on this earth would not be anywhere near as damaging as it is now. Does it really matter how many of us there are when there is so much waste and conspicuous cosumption?
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April 14, 2009 03:06 AM
I think there is overpopulation and that we are feeling the strain on resources and the environment. --> Freshwater shortage, landfills are full, deforestation, global warming, ozone layer depletion (all due to human abuse) Sometimes I feel like human beings are like a plague of locusts eating away at the planet.
With advances in medicine and an aging population that will not die anytime soon, increases in population are inevitable.
I don't advocate limiting the number of children people can have or mandatory sterilization but I think there's not enough education about family planning and birth control. People go and have babies willy nilly when every human being added to the population is one more strain on the environment, one more person using up resources and generating waste. (1,600 lbs of garbage a year to be exact.)
I don't doubt the world can hold 20 billion people but will the quality of life on it be worth it?
Are we waiting for the world to look like this?
Source(s):
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-much-garbage-does-a-person-create-in-one-year.h...
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April 14, 2009 03:26 AM
So how much does where you live factor in how you perceive overpopulation? Because I was thinking. I live in Puerto Rico, population density 1,115/sq mile. I'm sure someone in Australia or Canada may not feel like I do.
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April 14, 2009 03:34 AM
I think this concern rises from people who live in high population density areas and don't realize how much open space there is. For example, using the data from the CIA World Factbook, here are some population densities:
- United States has 33.5 people per square km of land.
- China has 143.5 people per square km of land.
- Japan has 339 people per square km of land.
- Monaco has 16,905 people per square km of land.
- The world has 45.6 people per square km of land.
billion people. If the population density matched Monaco, we would have
2.5 trillion people.
I realize we need some space for crops, but with the current growth rate (1.188%), in 50 years, we will have approximately 12.3 billion people and a population density of only 82.3 people per square km. I don't think we're in any sort of trouble.
Source(s):
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
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April 14, 2009 03:58 AM
- Fact Refuted
I don't think the world population density data should be taken at face value.
In China for example, a lot of the land is inhabitable or practically inhabitable. The Gobi desert is 1,295,000 km²
And in the population density projection is Antarctica being counted? 14,000,000 km2
Not to mention the Sahara (9,000,000 square kilometers).
Counting areas that are uninhabitable gives unreal results.
The earth's land area is 148,940,000 km² and deserts account for 1/3 of the land. When 1/3 of the land is uninhabitable, 11% is used for agriculture and you need more land to support cows, crops, factories, etc to provide for a growing population that needs more land to live in, you start to see how the numbers grow scary.
(My numbers are from Wikipedia and the World Factbook)
It's also about resources. Unless we can come up with cold fusion, our current energy crisis will only grow worse. And unless we (all 6 billion of us) go green, we will have consumed so much.
You can keep packing sardines in a can but I don't think the sardines will be very happy.
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In China for example, a lot of the land is inhabitable or practically inhabitable. The Gobi desert is 1,295,000 km²
And in the population density projection is Antarctica being counted? 14,000,000 km2
Not to mention the Sahara (9,000,000 square kilometers).
Counting areas that are uninhabitable gives unreal results.
The earth's land area is 148,940,000 km² and deserts account for 1/3 of the land. When 1/3 of the land is uninhabitable, 11% is used for agriculture and you need more land to support cows, crops, factories, etc to provide for a growing population that needs more land to live in, you start to see how the numbers grow scary.
(My numbers are from Wikipedia and the World Factbook)
It's also about resources. Unless we can come up with cold fusion, our current energy crisis will only grow worse. And unless we (all 6 billion of us) go green, we will have consumed so much.
You can keep packing sardines in a can but I don't think the sardines will be very happy.
April 14, 2009 04:21 AM
Exactly which of my facts were wrong? I'd like to know what you are refuting. Or do you merely disagree with my interpretation of the data?
Most of Japan is mountainous and rugged, so they have even higher population density in the cites than the facts show but are still quite "green" and have a great economy.
At what point will we have gone green enough? What is the target we are aiming for?
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Most of Japan is mountainous and rugged, so they have even higher population density in the cites than the facts show but are still quite "green" and have a great economy.
At what point will we have gone green enough? What is the target we are aiming for?
April 14, 2009 04:25 AM
You have a point about the fact refuted. I'm sorry but I can't change it back to comment. I tried. I really apologize.
The target as vague as it sounds is sustainability. And right now, the way things are going is unsustainable because we require more than there is. And what there is is limited.
On Japan. They are very efficient. It's true. It's amazing. But they're not even that green. I was there on a college trip in an exchange with the University of Tokyo. We went to pick up trash at the foot of Mt Fuji. They explained to us that for some people paying to get their trash picked costs too much and so they just dump it. It was a side of Japan people never see.
I do think we can take a cue from them and forget about the sprawling yard and start building vertically.
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The target as vague as it sounds is sustainability. And right now, the way things are going is unsustainable because we require more than there is. And what there is is limited.
On Japan. They are very efficient. It's true. It's amazing. But they're not even that green. I was there on a college trip in an exchange with the University of Tokyo. We went to pick up trash at the foot of Mt Fuji. They explained to us that for some people paying to get their trash picked costs too much and so they just dump it. It was a side of Japan people never see.
I do think we can take a cue from them and forget about the sprawling yard and start building vertically.
April 14, 2009 04:31 AM
srgothard, do you think that Japan's present problems are a result of population pressure or something else?
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April 14, 2009 11:13 AM
@morriss003, can you be more specific about what present problem you are referring to?
I know that for a time, Japan had major pollution problems, causing all sorts of ailments, especially among the elderly. Now they have highly sophisticated mandatory recycling programs, and something like 97% of their trash is recycled.
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I know that for a time, Japan had major pollution problems, causing all sorts of ailments, especially among the elderly. Now they have highly sophisticated mandatory recycling programs, and something like 97% of their trash is recycled.
April 14, 2009 03:09 PM
There is a problem with your statistics: the population of Monaco, for example, is not limited to their own country's resources for survival - quite to the contrary, the country is a heavy importer of all kinds of goods. If they would really depend exclusively on their own country's capacity only, they would indeed be starving.
This means, if the Earth as a whole was as densely populated as Monaco, we would have to get our resources from outer space, other planets, other dimensions..? some place out of THIS world.
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This means, if the Earth as a whole was as densely populated as Monaco, we would have to get our resources from outer space, other planets, other dimensions..? some place out of THIS world.
April 14, 2009 07:54 AM
The system is in a negative feedback loop. The population will self correct if the environment gets too crowded. We can't get away from the law of unintended consequences. So don't worry about it. It's a big problem. But Earth is a big planet. Really big. People say: "It's a small world." I say: "I wouldn't want to paint it."
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April 14, 2009 08:59 AM
A future of overpopulation is one of a number of hoary old objections to progress and longer, healthier lives. It has been raised over and over again throughout recent history, but like all other Malthusian concepts, it was wrong then, and it's just as wrong now. Common Malthusianism - the idea that a given resource (such as living space or food) will run out in the future based upon extrapolation of present trends - stems from fundamental misunderstandings about economics, human action and change. We create change in response to our environment; our self-interest leads us to constantly strive at the creation of new resources where old resources are becoming scarce and expensive. This is the path to profit for the individual - and progress for all. One needs a certain amount of willful blindness to avoid seeing the process in action now and in recent history. The ideas of Malthus were just as wrong as the ideas of those who warn of overpopulation today, and for just the same reasons. The simple answers to any claim of overpopulation with increasing longevity are much as follows:
1) Population growth declines and reverses with increasing wealth, longevity and technological progress:
Decelerating population growth appears to be an inevitable result of growing wealth. Early on in a country's developmental curve, children can be regarded as 'producer goods' (as economists would say). Parents put their children to work on the farm to generate food and revenue. Very little effort is put into caring for the child: no expensive health plans, special classes, trips to Disneyland, X-Men action figures, or mounting phone bills. As we become wealthier, children become 'consumer goods'. That is, we look on them more and more as little people to be enjoyed and pampered and educated, not beasts of burden to help keep the family alive. We spend thousands o dollars on children to keep them healthy, entertain them, and educate them. We come to prefer fewer children to a vast mob of little ones. This preference seems to be reinforced by changing tastes resulting from improved education.
2) It is self-evident from even a few back of the envelope calculations that the Earth can support tens of billions in comfort using the technology of today - and never mind the rest of the solar system once the cost of getting into orbit has been sufficiently reduced.
So it turns out that if 5% of the United States were converted into urban area with a population density of 6,000/km2, and 45% were converted into suburban area with a population density of 2,000/km2, with the remaining 50% left for rural area, parks, and farms, there would be enough room for 3 billion in the urban areas, and 9 billion in the suburban areas, for a total population of 12 billion. This is in the US alone. This scheme could be extended to the other countries and continents for a total population of around 100 billion. Everything between the Arctic and Antarctic circles are potential targets for colonization. This is about 130,000,000 km2 of land area (the circumpolar regions have about 20,000,000 km2 of land).
3) What some presently view as "overpopulation" is more accurately described as crushing poverty amidst the potential for plenty and resources left unused. This is the result of despotism, corruption, economic ignorance, short-sighted greed and the inhumanity of man unto man - it is not a matter of counting heads.
Here, then, is a short guide for kleptocrats and egalitarians who want to keep their countries poor. All of these policies have stood the test of time as techniques for creating and maintaining poverty. The list is by no means exhaustive, but it will give would-be political leaders a good idea of how to start their countries on the road to ruin.
Malthusianism and cries of overpopulation in the face of a future of healthy life extension are forms of relinquishment. It is a call for death and suffering to continue on a massive scale; a certain type of person prefers any present horror to the uncertainty of change. Fortunately, such people have usually been swept aside in the past by the urge of the many to better their lives, one step at a time. May that long continue to be the case.
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April 14, 2009 07:12 PM
Overpopulation occurs when a population's density exceeds the capacity of the environment to supply the health requirements of an individual, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. This is a HUGE problem. The worst-case scenario for people experiencing overpopulation, according to Lawrence Smith, president of the Population Institute, is a lack of fresh, clean water. Third world war will be fought for WATER! "If the water goes, the species goes," he said.
Mother Nature will manage it, but do want to leave it to Mother Nature? Do we want people to die due to HUNGER or LACK OF WATER or DECEASE OUTBREAKS?
"That sounds kind of alarmist," Smith conceded, "considering there's water all around us, but 97 percent plus is saltwater, and the freshwater that we use to sustain ourselves is just native to 3 percent. ... So the accessibility of water, the competition for water, the availability of water is going to be a major, major threat," he said, noting world population growth estimates at more than 9 billion people by 2050.
Nine billion is an exceptional amount of people, considering the world's population only reached 1 billion in 1830, according to the Population Institute, a nonprofit organization that works to fund population and family planning programs around the world.
By 1999, world population reached 6 billion, and in the relatively short time between 2007 and 2050, there could be roughly 2.4 billion more people on Earth needing clean water, space and other natural resources from their environment in order to survive.
Governments facing overpopulation will also struggle to manage waste, said Allen. "Handling your waste and the public health consequences of not handling it well is the biggest problem that will be faced in rapidly growing urban areas in the developing world." When London, England, faced a population boom in the 1850s, for example, its infrastructure was not prepared for the excess waste, which resulted in Cholera outbreaks.
"Huge outbreaks," said Allen. "Fifty-thousand people dying over the summer. That's the kind of thing that in the developed world we no longer have problems with, but in the developing world are very, very real."
Smith said that 97 percent of world population growth between now and 2050 will occur in the developing world, where governments face serious economic and social challenges.
"I would say most of this is in sub-Saharan Africa, where by every other health indicator, they rank at the bottom," Smith said. "This growth rate is taking place despite the high levels of HIV and AIDS and tuberculosis and malaria."
Health care -- and the lack of it -- is also a factor in the rising populations in developing countries, according to Stan Bernstein, United Nations Population Fund senior policy adviser.
"We've seen a global trend of people wanting smaller families, but in the poorer settings that's not quite the case yet," Bernstein said. "And it's certainly not the case within countries that the poor not have access to the kinds of services that the wealthy avail themselves of."
Globally, Bernstein said the poorest fifth of people in countries with rapid population growth have twice as many children, on average, as the wealthy people in those same countries.
Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/09/25/overpopulation.overview/index.ht...
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