Should we be concerned about our population size?

[Suicidesoldier#1]

Nah; technological development will deal with any of the problems, and industrialized populations tend to stabilize; the U.S.'s population went from 180 million to 320 million from 1960 to 2000, and now it's actually gone down slightly.

Once we get a point where we are more or less developed everywhere the population will stabilize and be easy to take care of. If fusion/thorium takes off, we may get a whole lot of things other than just a normal life as we have it today. ninja

[Suicidesoldier#1]

Brothern

Captain_Shinzo

Should the idea of human overpopulation concern us now?

Yes. If every person in the world were to consume as much resources as the average American does, we'd need 5 Earths. However that's not the worst of it, because the human population is on a trend of increasing to 9 billion by 2050.

Eh, so?

[Brothern]

Suicidesoldier#1

Brothern

Captain_Shinzo

Should the idea of human overpopulation concern us now?

Yes. If every person in the world were to consume as much resources as the average American does, we'd need 5 Earths. However that's not the worst of it, because the human population is on a trend of increasing to 9 billion by 2050.

Eh, so?

Nuclear capabilities.

[Suicidesoldier#1]

Brothern

Suicidesoldier#1

Brothern

Captain_Shinzo

Should the idea of human overpopulation concern us now?

Yes. If every person in the world were to consume as much resources as the average American does, we'd need 5 Earths. However that's not the worst of it, because the human population is on a trend of increasing to 9 billion by 2050.

Eh, so?

Nuclear capabilities.

Um... Kay.

[Brothern]

Suicidesoldier#1

Um... Kay.

The Earth's population is not slowing. It's accelerating. We're entirely relying on the hope that some gracious future consortium of world leaders are going lay down all their differences, and collectively share technology and resources. How the hell is that going to happen, when we can't even talk to each other today?

I have high, high doubts that there is going to be this graceful dip into population stability. No, humans are probably going to smash into resource-limits in a very unpleasant manner. That coupled with starving mouths, historical tensions and the capacity for destruction is going to cause a heck of a lot of political tension and maybe some bumping/bruising.

That is, unless we're able to foresee this and structure the technology and development in a manner that is able to ease us into that population stability. That's not "no worries, everything's going to fix itself," but a very solid "let's plan for the future so we don't screw it up."

[a happy whale]

Captain_Shinzo

If you do believe overpopulation should be a concern for the human race as a whole currently, what are your thoughts on how we should control human population? How do you believe the global population would react to your idea?

Sex Ed in areas where there is a high rate of unplanned pregnancies giving out condoms, birth control pills. I think that is a good place to start population control.

[Suicidesoldier#1]

Brothern

Suicidesoldier#1

Um... Kay.

The Earth's population is not slowing. It's accelerating. We're entirely relying on the hope that some gracious future consortium of world leaders are going lay down all their differences, and collectively share technology and resources. How the hell is that going to happen, when we can't even talk to each other today?

I have high, high doubts that there is going to be this graceful dip into population stability. No, humans are probably going to smash into resource-limits in a very unpleasant manner. That coupled with starving mouths, historical tensions and the capacity for destruction is going to cause a heck of a lot of political tension and maybe some bumping/bruising.

That is, unless we're able to foresee this and structure the technology and development in a manner that is able to ease us into that population stability. That's not "no worries, everything's going to fix itself," but a very solid "let's plan for the future so we don't screw it up."

Current population increases have been very high, but estimates on an exponential curve line don't necessarily reflect reality. We know that as industrialized countries develop, their populations sky rocket; afterwords though, they stabilize, meaning the population isn't going to increase forever. Furthermore, there's a limit to industrialization; once everyone has electricity, the gap has been filled. In addition, when newer technology becomes commonplace, the efficiency tends to be higher. Coal plants in China have about 1-2% efficiency, where in the U.S. our 50 year old coal plants have over 30%. Taxes make putting in new ones unnecessarily expensive, but they can be 2-3 times more efficient with relatively little difficulty.

We don't have to collectively share resources and technology to get to a better society, we're doing fine now and we aren't collectively sharing everything. This technology will develop on it's own, and by the time population sizes become a considerable problem, dozens up dozens of years in the future, we'll have already achieved it. The whole world doesn't need to come together to make Thorium or fusion power a reality, just a handful of scientists.


But, in any case, we have the means to make things better right now. Europe almost entirely uses diesel; it's over twice as efficient in the average engine, as the average American care gets 21 mpg, and the average European gets about 42. And not all of Europe purely uses diesel. The same exact refineries can turn crude into into diesel or gasoline, but in the U.S. diesel is discouraged and taxxed, for no real reason, by the green party. The fear used to be that it had more of other pollutants, like sulfur or would create smog; with a catalytic converter, that's really not as big of a deal, and with modern electronically controlled fuel injectors, we can do WAY better.

With modern coal plants, we could reduce the consumption by 2-3 times the amount, and absorb practically all the exhaust with algae. All of our coal plants are over 50 years old, mostly due to arbitrary taxes by the green party. While at first this seems great, no new coal plants, this more or less cements the old infrastructure in place. It's been counter productive, sadly.


CANDU reactors are cheaper and don't need the same level of refinery as typical light water uranium reactors; even now, about 60-70% of the costs are in the downpayment of the reactor and largely in interest, so we could cut out a sizable chunk of the cost just by paying for it with the government and having no interest. Uranium power already provides about 20.9% of the electricity within the U.S.; it wouldn't be too hard to make it 100%, and thus have close to no carbon emissions. Uranium waste is over rated, and the chance of a melt down is minimal, and with CANDU reactors impossible. All we'd have to do is put in new ones, remove the taxes, and then buy them in bulk with U.S. tax moneysz, essentially subsidizing them, to element interest, and electricity would be 3-5 times cheaper. There's thousands of years of uranium, easy, and potentially hundreds of thousands of Thorium. Thorium could be used practically tomorrow if we wanted, and 10-20 years isn't so difficult.

Once the U.S. does it, the rest of the world will follow suit or buy it from us. It's not really the end of the world to run out of fossil fuels.


Things are already on a path for resolving the issues; with the rising cost of gasoline and other fossil fuels people already want to switch over. Alternatives are looking better, and with public education comes a better understanding of them; 50 years ago, the U.S. basically subsidized coal. Today, it wouldn't be impossible to subsidize some new form of electricity, eliminating at the very least interest payments to banks by the company, which would have increased the prices drastically.

Most of the world is talking. The U.S. is allied with Europe, most of Africa and South America, and India. Russia and China are a little crazy right now, but China works well enough with us to do business. If there's anything we'd all come together to do, it would be to secure energy. In fact, they're already working together on Fusion and such. I'm not saying do nothing or resolve all of our political differences, I'm just saying technological capabilities are already sufficiently advanced and by the time overpopulation becomes a problem, say 50-100 years by now, we'll have increased our capabilities, to a point, where it wouldn't matter if our populations did reach those levels. You claim 9 billion as if it's some kind of magical number of evil, but what makes it so bad anyways? When it's based on the maximum estimate anyways. The U.N.'s minimum estimate is actually negative, and claims that is more likely. What is more likely to happen is for everything to settle out, based on improved technologies, and end to industrial expansion, and a stabilization of the population from improved birth control, medical care, and more efficient technology. We're at a rate of rapid development at the moment. You've got places like the U.S., fairly technologically advanced, and places like Africa, where over half the population doesn't even have electricity. Then you have places like India, where those with electricity and those without live side by side. But the thing is, there's a limit to where they become industrialized; when they do become industrialized, they'll have less kids, as they'll be more educated and the initial boom due to improved medical care will even out. But there's a limit. We aren't going to keep having countries gain significantly amounts of people who are suddenly on electricity forever.

[low iq 111]

no we can get energy from the sun

[Loreneth]

Quite. We need to start shrinking in numbers before we really go tits up as a society. We're destroying our world by expanding so much and our societal system is collapsing in on itself because there's too many people that need a job. There's only so many jobs you can possible create before the costs start to become too high.

[Divine_Malevolence]

We're legit ******** if we let our numbers keep growing. The only limiting factors that exist for a lifeform that don't take the form of predators are the types of limiting factors that only reveal themselves when you're already ********, and we're already having trouble finding things for everybody to do.

But, really, we're never going to fix that if nobody ever takes over the world and has the balls to put population control into place. But nobody's going to do that, 'cause all of the major powers are kind of hilariously pathetic.

[Wraith of Azrael]

Not really....

Development has a tendency of significantly reducing fertility rates within a country.

A large number of areas (I'd say most maybe) have a very low birth rate.

The absolute vast majority of population growth is actually found in Africa.



Any country under 2.1 by the way (so below green) is actually experiencing negative birth rates. The only reason those countries are even continuing to grow is due to immigration but some are actually shrinking.

The main issue is really technological development.

We need better more sustainable technology.

That's about it...

[King Halloween]

My major is Environmental Science and we have discovered that the root of most of our environmental (can't speak for economical) stem from the fact that the Earth is overpopulated. Overpopulation affects food, water supply, air quality, oil and gas amongst other things.

Overpopulation also ultimately infringes upon our personal freedoms as we see more restrictions on travelling, what we can do with our land, and water consumption (in some states).

That doesn't even touch on the social impacts of our growing population nor the ramifications for other species.

Solution? No idea that is humane.

[pinchot]

glad to see an environmental science major on here. i'm a wildlife biologist myself and during my school time we've had extensive discussions on population statistics.

technically, we as humans, should have hit carrying capacity years ago. we can thank technology for delaying that, however, despite our current advances, the planet simply does not have enough resources to supply us. the major issue is not food surprisingly, it's water. we've found that is we stop wasting food as we have been, we can feed ourselves... but we cannot keep ourselves hydrated.

what does this mean? value your water now. reduce your use if possible. wars may soon be waged over fresh drinking water. there is no humane way to allow us to keep expanding unless we start finding ways to convert sea water into drinking water at a faster rate than occurs naturally. even then, we have so many horrible habits that we'd still be causing new problems for ourselves. (added edit: and every time we try to find a 'green solution' we often create new problems. solar panel farms are frying migrating bird populations. wind farms are collapsing the lungs of migrating bats and birds that experience draw to them. electric cars are produced through very damaging means. electricity is not always clean energy.)

what can we do? not much really. many scientists in my field have come to terms with: humans will not change to save the planet. so rather than trying to stop it, we're trying to deal with it and manage it for the best outcome. the best outcome, however, still means continuing this mass extinction.

fun fact: did you know we're in the sixth mass extinction, right now?

that aside... have any of you played with population curves before? have you seen what happens to a species that goes dramatically over it's carrying capacity? well, here is a simple graph of what is called an 'overshoot'.



now, that's a gradual overshoot. if you were to apply this to the human race we'd probably be about two times higher than that curve. what does that mean? well, it means that when we finally crash, we will crash HARD and the planet will have a hard time recovering as we've destroyed our old carrying capacity.

solution? i got none. unless we can start a Capture-Spay-Neuter-Release program for certain human beings, there isn't much hope. people will keep breeding until we just cannot take care of ourselves. in a world were i ruled i'd probably make a universal one-child law with occasional special permits.

good news? science isn't always perfected... technology is always changing in the face of desperation... we could be wrong... technology could once again save our baby-making asses.

[X of Castigation]

Captain_Shinzo

Avgvsto

No.

Solid point.

You asked a yes or no question. He answered satisfactorily.

[The Cat Band Fairy]

The human population does need to decrease, the way that we're currently using resources isn't sustainable, and not enough countries (mainly due to many not being economically developed or giving two craps) are contributing to using future renewable energies, the only problem is, if we don't start investing in renewable energies now, we won't have any energy from fossil fuels to get it kickstarted.
There's also the issue of space, economic instability, a lack of community in pretty much everywhere apart from villages, most likely causing more depression. While this may not sound true, crime is easier in densely populated areas as well, as nobody knows eachother, someone carrying a TV out into a van across the road could be just some random dude, not a neighbor.
Obviously with the population still growing, as competition for resources across different nations increases, so will war, and violence, eventually leading to a gradual collapse of democracy.
The best way to go about decreasing the human population in an ethical way is to reduce the birth rate, which could be done in quite a few ways, such as discouraging so many new mothers by not offering so much child support, I know girls younger than me (some as young as 16) who have now had children, and they see it as "a full time job" and just stay at home with them all day and get drunk at the weekends. This isn't how it should be at all, especially at this point in time.