General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGross Overpopulation Is One Issue That Is Suicide For Any Politician To Address. We Are In Crisis.
It is a given our population uses more resources in a year than the earth can replenish. We are down the planets yearly creation of resources are used up by August. And we are at 7 billion an counting. There is no way that 9 billion people can live on this planet as projected.
We can already see the unequal distribution of resources with refugee and starvation problems. The growing portion of our ecosphere grows by the day. And global warming is boing to make everything worse. The only sure thing about this crisis is that if the human race does not address the problem the earth will. Mother nature has a way of taking care of things.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)fuck it up too.
Towlie
(5,328 posts)RKP5637
(67,112 posts)Response to RKP5637 (Reply #1)
Duppers This message was self-deleted by its author.
democratisphere
(17,235 posts)Humans will be deported back to Earth without due process.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)
roamer65
(36,747 posts)Mandated global one child policy. Now.
Either we do it or the Earth solves the problem for us.
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)
Callmecrazy
(3,065 posts)
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)roamer65
(36,747 posts)And cash payouts to anyone who adheres to the law.
Financial incentives and disincentives can work wonders.
Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)How does that work?
The problem isn’t in the US. Our birth rates are declining and if it wasn’t for immigration we would be losing population.
Are you proposing some sort of new colonialism where we go take over the developing world and impose our rules on them?
roamer65
(36,747 posts)Now that you bring it up. I am absolutely in favor of one.
A world government could implement some serious and beneficial birth control policies.
brooklynite
(94,728 posts)The Western Democracy model is a minority representation in the world today.
roamer65
(36,747 posts)Raygun was right about one thing. If we are ever facing a menace from beyond Earth, it will happen very quickly.
Codeine
(25,586 posts)Jesus fucking Christ
roamer65
(36,747 posts)Go look it up.
He’s right on that point. We would drop our petty differences and unify as one single race. The human race.
Codeine
(25,586 posts)It’s a stupid notion put forward by a stupid man.
roamer65
(36,747 posts)Like a broken clock being right twice a day.
Codeine
(25,586 posts)Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)
defacto7
(13,485 posts)Except among the religious ie. Catholics, Mormons, Evangelicals and Dominionists, RW back woods extremists... They are the untouchable tunnel vision non-thinkers.
The Genealogist
(4,723 posts)Something like 6-7 children in an average family these days, according to figures I have encountered in my genealogical work.
lunasun
(21,646 posts)
Calculating
(2,957 posts)It's a terrible solution and would cause lots of issues, but unless we do it nothing will matter. The world can't take an infinitely growing population, and all the talk of expanding to space and such is pure silliness.
dalton99a
(81,578 posts)And there are too many people fucking
Takket
(21,625 posts)
Mosby
(16,350 posts)Should governments tell people how many kids they should have?
And take away or "dispose" of the extras?
That's not a world I want to live in.
Here's an idea, maybe we could find ways to encourage developing countries to educate their citizens better and help them create a middle class.
roamer65
(36,747 posts)They will be needed as population growth decelerates rapidly.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,361 posts)2: free abortion for the whole world (though that won't be that necessary if 1 is implemented properly)
3: raise education standards in the developing world. Give all women the chance of meaningful paid work.
4: consider incentives to have just one child. Such as, for instance, funding an old age pension for one child (or twin) couples, so that they don't say "who will look after us when we're old?" And yes, stop the funding if they give birth again.
roamer65
(36,747 posts)
Empower the world’s women and it will happen.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Especially empowering and educating women. That seems to be the best remedy for controlling fertility, along with free contraception and abortion (but women need to be educated and empowered to make use of those things).
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Yet as it turns out, there many people who refuse to see the obvious for what it is.
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)In Western nations, population growth is at a sustainable pace. Population growth tends to stabilize is advanced economies.
In the developing world, it's a different story. A combination of improved health care and high birth rats mean ballooning populations.
One can hope that as the economies of nations like China and India mature, their population growth rates will stabilize at sustainable levels.
Scruffy1
(3,256 posts)Historically birth rates have been related to economic and health care advances. They just tend to lag by a generation or so. The invention of chilhood vaccinations led to huge population growth which fueled the the European immigration to America. My Swedish ,Irish and German ancestors were all part of this great migration simply because half of children didn't die from childhood diseases. These trends always lag by a generation or so. When I grew up I knew families of 10-17 children, but this is rare now. Mexicicos birth rate has been staedily declining by about .5% per year. projecting toadays birth rates into the future is risky at best.
I don't think of it as a population problem as a distribution and sustainabilty problem. We need to find more effecient ways of using our resources like water and agricultural land, get rid of oil and coal and reengineer our cities awy from automobiles, which are a disaster from their use of their use of space alone. Yeah, I grew up a motorhead, but now I realize the car needs to go the way of the buffalo. This planet could easily support 7 billion in relative comfort with the technology available now and do it in a sustainable manner.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)have more options. You are right in stating that population stabilizes in advanced economies, but the empowerment of women is the reason why.
This is what needs to happen in developing nations. More education, employment, birth control and empowerment for females. As long as power is concentrated in the hands of men the population explosion will continue.
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)That's what advanced economies tend towards, but thanks for making it explicit.
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)The population growth now is mainly in Africa and they have plenty of land and resources to support it. They could use help with technology of course, mainly water and irrigation to cope with our gift of global warming, but apart from that they would probably do better with less of our aid than more as we're in the habit of selling them expensive weapons.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,361 posts)Most of north, east and west Africa is already in deficit (a shade of red), and so is South Africa. It's only central Africa that has significant excess carrying capacity. Plus South America, and Australia and the Arctic countries.
And those equatorial areas could get bad with global warming. The trend for Africa:
http://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/countryTrends?type=BCtot,EFCtot&cn=2000
Use overtook capacity for the continent as a whole around 2009 (the world crossed over around 1970).
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)Only the Maghreb, SA, and tiny Djibouti are red. Most of the continent is NOT red:
http://data.footprintnetwork.org/#/
muriel_volestrangler
(101,361 posts)and many more. And that's the current situation - population growth is high in many of those countries.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)In nations where women are oppressed, population growth is out of control. This should be a major goal of the UN and first world countries - to educate and empower women in 2nd and 3rd world countries and to provide birth control. Educated women tend to raise educated children and it has a long term impact on the future health and prosperity of a society.
roamer65
(36,747 posts)
meadowlander
(4,402 posts)In every nation where women have control over their own sexuality and reproduction, birth rates are dropping below the replacement rate.
This is doubly so in countries where women are educated, can throw off the shackles of superstition and can choose a career for themselves.
The One Child Policy in China doesn't really work in addition to being a gross human rights violation. The rich can get around it by buying the rights to have a second child. The poor are forced to get abortions or they have additional unregistered kids that then can't access the education system. I remember walking down a street in Shanghai and seeing a group of mothers talking to each other in a park and as soon as they heard a siren in the distance they all tore off in different directions with their strollers. Being born should not be a crime, and criminalising birth just creates a class of "illegals" within your own country who don't have the opportunity to access any services and grow up to be beggars and thieves.
It also means that young girls who want to have more than one child basically throw themselves at every foreigner they see because they represent their only chance. This results in a lot of unhappy marriages.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)I know a professor at Tongji University, Shanghai, who, after having one child, had her tubes tied. Even tho it was her decision, so as to not deal with b.c., she didn't like having to do so. She asked me why I had only one child and I laid it on the line: there are too many damn people for the planet to support. I told her the Chinese gov't's policy would help save the planet and that all countries should adopt the policy. She should've known that. She offended by my, and my hub's, disagreeable bluntness. I guess she thought we would be sympathetic.
Yes, I know Chinese women are quite traditional in wanting more than one child but my point is that, even in China, abortions are avoidable.
I cannot stress enough the fact that we face a much bigger crisis than unhappy marriages and denying women who want more children.
Wake up.
Currently on CNN:
Marine scientist predicts ecological collapse
https://cnn.com/interactive/2018/08/world/great-barrier-reef/
meadowlander
(4,402 posts)And that's what you will have to do. That's what they do do in China. They also hunt down women who have too many children and take the extra ones away to give to rich barren couples as a punishment. Perhaps that context was on your acquaintance's mind when she responded to your "disagreeable bluntness".
More state control of womens' bodies is not an acceptable solution. Nor is it a necessary one. Birth rates are already dropping in every developing country below the replacement rate. There are also a growing number of people choosing not to have any children at all. What is needed is education and opportunity for women.
We can keep climate change under 2 degrees if we make a committed switch to renewable energy. This is already underway. More people are eating locally, committing not to buy anything unnecessary, choosing to live where they can walk or cycle to work, etc. I do all of these things and have chosen not to have children so I don't actually need to "wake up" thank you very much.
And if we're actually at the stage of runaway climate change we're stuffed anyway and within the next generation or two, whether we have one kid or fifteen.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)As an across-the-board policy TO AVOID ABORTIONS.
You said "Whether we have one kid or fifteen."
How SELFISH can you be?!! You don't care if children die of mass starvation or methane poisoning? I guess you think it is more important for parents to have all the children they want than to save lives. That's quite apparent to me.
Every person that is born is going to have a carbon footprint simply by eating and living and that contributes to the ecologically collapse when the population becomes critically large. It taxes the resources of the planet no matter how conservative you are. Obviously, you don't believe that either. You've not read much about GCC. You've heard of James Hansen, former NASA scientist? Start there.
And, btw, my "acquaintance" in Shanghai is a friend whom I just got an email from.
Good bye.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)lunasun
(21,646 posts)Lee-Lee
(6,324 posts)Birth rates in the US are declining and we are moving in the right direction.
It’s the developing world that is the issue, with birth rates sharply rising and often eclipsing the ability of the country to sustain.
I don’t know how any politician could come up with any plan for us to change that.
Towlie
(5,328 posts)
dumbcat
(2,120 posts)Really? Given by whom?
Besides which, the problem is self correcting by Nature.
SWBTATTReg
(22,166 posts)They said the same thing 30 years, that we've be already long dead and gone years before now, due to over-population.
It is knocking on the door (Mother Nature) but it hasn't happened yet. After all, creatures in the past created all of the oxygen we breath today. I give the human race a little more credit in pushing these so called limits on overpopulation beyond these so called existing limits. Better knowledge, technologies, and just plain common sense (mostly good hopefully) will allow us to overcome these limits...and take destiny into our hands. The collective good of all Americans (ALL of us) has enabled us to move beyond a lot of old barriers...we question outlandish religious beliefs such as one showing that the rapture would happen in 1844, etc.
Sure there's going to be those who believe that climate change is not real, and so forth. But these numbers are getting smaller and smaller, as more evidence piles up proving that climate change is real. For republicans and their supporters, it is getting harder and harder to come up w/ anything proving that climate change is not
real and happening. Common sense and actual evidence will actual force us to change...logic never seems to win in some cases, especially w/ political nuts in power.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)"Besides which, the problem is self correcting by Nature.
Seriously, you don't care if people die of starvation???
dumbcat
(2,120 posts)I am not responsible for your mistaken inferences.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)By whom?
By dozens of climate scientists.
dumbcat
(2,120 posts)that I don't care if people die of starvation.
"Seriously, you don't care if people die of starvation???"
Duppers
(28,127 posts)Nature sure will - it'll kill most all of us. I thought that's what you meant.
dumbcat
(2,120 posts)I merely made a statement of consequence. I gave no indication of sentiment. You made the inference.
"Seriously, you don't care if people die of starvation???"
No biggie. Have a nice day.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)A "besides" usually indicates something doesn't matter that much.
I'll let others decide for themselves if anyone is still reading this.
dumbcat
(2,120 posts)I want everybody in the world to starve. That'll fix that ol' climate change alright!
roamer65
(36,747 posts)It’s becoming a sinking ship where the lifeboats are becoming smaller and less numerous by the day.
Revanchist
(1,375 posts)I'm being serious here. Our life expectancy has doubled in the last 100 years. The argument of having less children will only result in an overburdened society where they are struggling to support the elderly, look at Japan for an example of this. If you really want to get rid of excess population the most logical way but the least moral solution is to forget all the scientific advancements we have made, no more insulin, cancer treatments, vaccinations, or triple bypass surgeries. Have a few major wars with Civil War era medical care. Go back to old farming techniques and starve out a good portion of the population. Or, you can just impose a maximum age and euthanize every one who survives to that age.
roamer65
(36,747 posts)If it wasn’t for modern science, I would have died at 47 or 48. Right around the average life expectancy of the year 1900.
shanny
(6,709 posts)was an "average". Of all the people born, their average age at death was 47-48. The fact that a whole bunch of them died in infancy skewed that average. If you survived childhood, though, you were only a little less likely to live into your 60s/70s or even older than we are now.
FDR's bean counters took that into account when planning SS; look it up (the rightwing frames it the other way all the time--we're living so much longer!--doesn't make it true or make SS unsustainable in this day and age of increasing lifespans. The important statistic is how long the average person who reaches 65 lives after that).
Also too, only rich people are living substantially longer at this point; for lower class Americans, average life expectancy is declining.
Yupster
(14,308 posts)isn't making us live any longer?
All those people with stents, diabetic pumps, pacemakers, ... They aren't making any statistical difference?
What a waste of money then.
shanny
(6,709 posts)What's worse, I believe something like half of what Medicare spends on each patient is spent in the last 6 months of life.
Our whole health care system is a racket.
metalbot
(1,058 posts)That Medicare spends half of what it spends on a patient in the last 6 months of life seems pretty normal to me. Preventative care is cheap - it's the "I'm dying, please let's find ways to do a triple bypass" or "I've got aggressive cancer, let's hit it with expensive chemo" that costs money.
I don't need (or want) expensive health care when I'm healthy - I want it when I'm sick!
shanny
(6,709 posts)That is, I prefer to accept the inevitable over spending a fortune trying to stave it off for a couple of months. I've watched friends and family endure the latter and it only prolonged the agony, of which there was plenty to begin with. Poisoning my aged self in the hope of curing cancer, and just hoping that the cancer dies (or retreats) first is not the way I plan to check out, thank you very much.
NutmegYankee
(16,201 posts)The maximum Human life expectancy has remained fairly constant over the last few millennia. The average has changed upwards due to dramatic drops in childhood mortality. That said, if you were an adult in ancient times, you still likely would reach a miserable 70 years old. There is substantial skeletal remains demonstrating this. In addition, literature through that time period also indicates that survival into at least the 60s was fairly common if you made it into adulthood.
GulfCoast66
(11,949 posts)The founders of the country make the point.
Their ages of death roughly approximate ours.
If course they often died from things we would not now such as gangrene or food poisoning. But they also were more active and had less stress.
Thekaspervote
(32,793 posts)when you show up with cancer or diabetes? I think we can have technology and reduce population. The answers are already starring us in the face
Revanchist
(1,375 posts)My wife and dog are dead and once my parents and MIL are gone and don't need my help anymore I really don't care what happens to me. No children so no one to really care if I die from natural causes or by my own hand.
meadowlander
(4,402 posts)Educate women, lift up societies, get the birth rate to about the replacement rate but also start looking at how we can start taking some of the pressure off the Earth by opening up new frontiers. It also reduces the risk that the whole species could go extinct if the Earth was swallowed by a black hole or was hit by a massive asteroid or subject to a plague, etc.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)If we colonize in this star system and Earth gets swallowed by a black hole, all of the star system goes with it. So colonization within the star system would be futile.
The nearest star system that can maybe support life or has life is around 3.6 light years away (around 20 trillion miles). To get there involved traveling across around 3 light years of interstellar space. Our farthest traveling spacecraft just reached interstellar space outside the solar system, after something like 40 years of travel, traversing interstellar space at that rate would take something like 3,600 years.
Venus sits in the Sun's star system inhabital zone with Mars and Earth. Could it be that Venus developed intelligent life hundreds of millions of years before Earth and it did to that planet what we are doing to Earth? Venus is said to have an atmosphere of Carbon Oxides and sulfuric acid. But, if we choke the Earth with carbon oxides as we are doing, then the acids released in the air by volcanic eruptions potentially concentrate in the atmosphere, after a while, we become another Venus (not that any of us have to worry, our species and every other will long be dead by then).
In essence, we solve our planet's problems, or we accept that everything here will die.
meadowlander
(4,402 posts)We should do both. But we should at least be making a start on colonisation.
Colonising Mars won't stop a black hole but it would diversify enough that a meteor or plague that wiped out humanity on Earth wouldn't eradicate the species. We could also work on ships/space stations that could support life for a long period of time which would allow us to spread out quite a bit even if we didn't find another inhabitable planet for a long time.
The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step. We have the technology to start taking that first step and we should be purposefully dedicating resources to prepare us for the second one.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)meadowlander
(4,402 posts)If we can learn how to control or at least modulate our own climate that will be useful if and when we need to terraform other planets.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)Not.Gonna.Happen.
We simply don't have that much time left nor the technology.
Don't believe me? Read James Hansen, former NASA scientist, and others' works.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)How did Alan Grayson say it? 
Revanchist
(1,375 posts)The answer isn't as simple as just have less kids, because frankly, someone is going to have to take care of all the old people, especially with the doubling of the rates dementia and other age related diseases. Take my situation for example, my mother-in-law had two children, her son and my wife and one grandchild from her son who divorced decades ago. Both of her children and her grandchild are gone so I'm basically helping to support her by working around 50 hours in the store she owns to take the pressure off of her. I'm an only child so if something major happens to my parents I'll have to decide what to do since they live several states away and I can't physically be in two places at once. Luckily I own a house with a spare bedroom so I can move them here if they ever so desire but then, without a support structure of other siblings and the state our nation's long-term healthcare system is (you need to go broke before the government will offer any real assistance) my options are limited. Now to see a real world example of how this is effecting a country google Japan and aging population.
For this reason a simple answer of one child per couple as some people have suggested is not a working solution, not every couple will have a child, couples may have abortions until the have a child of the sex they want (see China) and there won't be enough of a population to take care of all the old people
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/15/dementia-towns-japan-ageing-population
Now while science is the culprit of our problem, it might also be the solution. Personally, I think autism and and dementia research need precedent over other diseases. Cancer might kill you, but the ones I mentioned can require years if not decades of medical care before death occurs.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)Anything's better than limiting the number of children born, right?
I am sorry for your situation but you can keep your nihilistic solutions to yourself. And here I thought we Democrats were compassionate and empathetic.
OxQQme
(2,550 posts)Patriarchy - it's best propaganda. "Go forth and multiply."
theaocp
(4,244 posts)JCanete
(5,272 posts)population up to 2050, and then start to decline.
The US, China and India(again if I recall), are all having less babies than would sustain or increase the population levels. Which seems to be a result of the advent of two-income family structures, and possibly some level of empowerment and higher education/opportunities that that entails for women in the workforce. There's probably an ugly element to this too that is about the cost of having and supporting a child.
Tragically, places with very high mortality rates, or rather, very low life expectancy levels, do have high birth rates, and while they represent a humanitarian crisis, for which the US and Europe in particular deserve a lot of the blame(in my opinion), I'm not sure that that current condition is resulting in much of a population spike.
That said, global warming is going to reduce land-mass, and disrupt food supplies, destroy crops, etc. and we've already killed over 50 percent of ocean species...and land that we either pave over or kill from misuse doesn't simply come back and become farmable, and the increase of the luxury of eating meat in places like china is not just a contributor to global warming but is a vastly inefficient return on the land that we farm for food.
So I would not disagree that we're in a crisis when it comes to overpopulation, but without massive loss of human life to some sort of man-made or natural disaster, we've still got decades before we peak.
Yupster
(14,308 posts)Last edited Sun Aug 26, 2018, 01:49 AM - Edit history (1)
I'm just now listening to Dr. Dambisa Moyo on PBS. She said by 2075, 40 % of the world's population will live in Africa. That will be a monumental challenge to the world.
on edit it's cspan not pbs.
JCanete
(5,272 posts)quickly with a sudden baby boom.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/2015-report.html&ved=2ahUKEwja2q_vl4rdAhWmjlQKHfALC5gQFjABegQICxAF&usg=AOvVaw309d6rQ0Lk9W0MekGygWzd&cshid=1535268389494
Doodley
(9,126 posts)roamer65
(36,747 posts)Every new human born desires a more carbon intensive lifestyle.
Less humans, smaller carbon footprint.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)Yes, absolutely!
Captain Stern
(2,201 posts)...if they are running for office in a country that is almost overpopulated.
And, that isn't us.
raccoon
(31,120 posts)Captain Stern
(2,201 posts)You can make a good argument that we use too much of the world's resources, but you can't make a good argument for our country being overpopulated.
Those are two different things.
If a politician here made world population control an issue, unfortunately there would be a lot of people that would sign on....especially since a huge portion of that growth is happening in Africa. Can you think of any politicians here who might be in favor of curbing African population growth? I think I can.
Now, if a politician here wanted to commit political suicide, he/she should tackle the other issue that you raised. They should make it part of their policy to force us to consume less stuff.
If they did that, their campaign would be over fast....no matter what letter they had next to their name.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)Too many Christian Fundamentalists do not believe in population control anywhere or will they even tolerate it being discussed. Idiots, all of them.
Captain Stern
(2,201 posts)Not about them being idiots.
But, I'm sure most of them are fine with population control in other places. They just aren't fine with controlling their population.
raccoon
(31,120 posts)The first world citizens are using a hell of a lot more resources than those of the third world.
Maybe they could consider using less resources? Of course that ain’t going to happen.
gulliver
(13,195 posts)We could easily handle a rising population curve if we simply respected the planet's carrying capacity and changed human behavior. We could reduce per capita ecological impact dramatically and rapidly given political will. Unfortunately, those who follow Republicanism are stuck in the past. They don't know that clean and sustainable living is really a road to many more (and much better) jobs.
Even with zero population growth or population reduction we would still be exceeding the planet's carrying capacity and ruining it absent a simple, obvious focus on sustainability.
AlexSFCA
(6,139 posts)human race has been quite effective in exterminating itself through wars. The population issue is mostly due to organized religions, particularly islam and christianity. We need to be fighting against this evil every step of the way to secularize the world. Both at its core promote inequality and hatred epecially against women.
former9thward
(32,080 posts)Of the nearly 3 billion that live in those two countries how many are followers of Islam and Christianity? How many are followers of other religions or no religion?
AlexSFCA
(6,139 posts)precisely due to lack or religion; abortion is essentially mandatory in many cases in China.
former9thward
(32,080 posts)Is that what you salute? The killing of female babies? Which is what happened. That is the solution? Sick ...
AlexSFCA
(6,139 posts)but please do not refer to fetuses as ‘babies’.
former9thward
(32,080 posts)It has been well documented when females have been born in China they are left to die. That is why currently there is such an inbalance with males and females in China among the younger generation. That is what your policy leads to. Shame!
Callado119
(171 posts)I usually find when people say “there are too many people, we need to reduce population”. What they really mean is that there are too many of those “other people”, usually black and brown people. Here’s an idea, we only have control over ourselves and our own actions, so if you really want to reduce population, start and end there...
Duppers
(28,127 posts)Tiggeroshii
(11,088 posts)In countries where income is higher, overpopulation is no issue. As socioeconomics improve in developing countries, people have less children. That is historically the trend and if we address peoples' socioeconomic basic needs we are also addressing overpopulation.
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/12/12/16766872/overpopulation-exaggerated-concern-climate-change-world-population
Duppers
(28,127 posts)Yeah and this agricultural economist, Mr. Lyman Stone, is not an expert on greenhouse gas emissions and global climate change. I doubt he has an advanced degree.
He writes for The Federalist, the RW publication.
Currently on CNN:
Marine scientist predicts ecological collapse
https://cnn.com/interactive/2018/08/world/great-barrier-reef/
Tiggeroshii
(11,088 posts)Globally, the United Nations estimates that the number of humans populating the planet in 2100 will range from as few as 6.2 billion—almost a billion less than today—to as many as 15.8 billion on the high end. Meanwhile, other researchers confirm the likelihood of world population levels flattening out and starting to decline by 2100 according to the lower UN estimate. To wit, the Austria-based International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) recently unveiled research showing that if the world stabilizes at a fertility rate comparable to that of many European nations today (roughly 1.5), the global human population will be only half of what it is today by the year 2200, and only one-seventh by 2300.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-overpopulation-still-an-issue-of-concern/
defacto7
(13,485 posts)There are solutions among the thinking. But what about the religious baby factories who could care less about logical reality. Their ideologies dictate their procreation activities where the quiver must be full, and damn the planet since only the afterlife matters and god is going to blow it to smithereens anyway.
The oligarchs using the extremists of the world already have their age old answer... cull humanity to a controllable few. I say cull the oligarchs so we can get on with rebuilding a civil society and returning to a natural planet where reason and reality prevail.
Workable answers seem so distant...
hunter
(38,327 posts)... right?
raccoon
(31,120 posts)Mosby
(16,350 posts)Number three is India.
Number four is Russia.
The US is at number 2, we also have the world's largest economy and are the world's largest customer. We are number two due to greenhouse gas emissions, China leads the world in carbon monoxide, sulfates and particulates.
Devil Child
(2,728 posts)One of the baddies fixed everything with a snap of his fingers.
icaria
(97 posts)The last US president to give a speech about the population problem was Richard Nixon. Then along came the religious right.
Several years ago I read an article by an environmentalist from Japan who said the best thing you can do for the environment is to commit suicide. I guess that's technically true.
I remember seeing a disney cartoon in the 1960's where Scrooge McDuck said the US was overpopulated (then approaching 200 million). And it does really seem much more crowded now. And there's a kind of structural lost underclass who have nothing to do - nothing to hope for. The refuse of capitalism...
And here come the robots!
JCMach1
(27,572 posts)And keep the State out of it...
I thought that was one of the things we valued as Dems.
Doesn't mean we can't create population limiting policies,l however let's please keep reproductive freedom off the table.
Too many Malthusians here... Seriously, WTF
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Or were you just making those up, and *this* is finally the *real* problem (to be supplanted next week by something another crises?).
Derp, man. Serious, serious derp.
Calculating
(2,957 posts)This world simply isn't fit to hold more than a few billion of us. If it isn't climate changing doing us in, it will just be some other issue like resource scarcity/lack of water/other environmental degradation. Almost all of our environmental problems are due to this root issue. You think climate change would be an issue if the world only had 500 million people spread across it? You think things like drought, desertification, etc would be issues? No, we could basically live in luxury with more than plenty of resources for everyone indefinitely if we could sustain a population at that level. Not only that, but the value of each individual life would go up. Right now, life is cheap. We barely even feel bad anymore on news of hundreds/thousands dying in 3rd world countries. That's what happens when we've reached a point where LESS IS MORE in regard to the human population. More humans is no longer a good thing for the world.
IMO we've reached a so called 'great filter' at this point. It's a test which will determine whether humans are worthy of continuing to advance and eventually exploring out from our planet, or whether we'll crowd ourselves out and fall into decay like a population of rats in a cage. Passing this test will require us to do one of the hardest things our species has ever been faced with, which is to go AGAINST our core reproductive instincts. No other species has ever been faced with this dilemma. Suddenly following our most basic urge to reproduce has become a bad thing which directly threatens the continuation of our civilization. We also need to figure out how to keep the economy going in a NEGATIVE growth society, which is another very complicated issue.
Personally I have no kids, nor do I really want them at this time, so I guess I have no stakes in the outcome of this game. Whether we pass this test or not is largely just a matter of intrigue to me. I'd like to see something encouraging for a change, but so far I see little which gives me hope for the future of humanity. The population just keeps going up and up, and organizations like the Catholic church STILL can't seem to get on board with contraception. On the bright side, I guess you could say that there's no greater privilege than to see the end of the world begin and possibly occur in your own lifespan. To know that you might be one of the most privileged generations in history, who lived with all the wonders of modern life, and yet lived before those same wonders critically damaged the world we live in. What a special time to be alive.
haele
(12,676 posts)We're already seeing climate change refugees becoming pariah. They can't go back, their economies won't support them.
Unfortunately, politicians and those all so serious "businesspeople", like most of us worker bees, also believe that what happens elsewhere won't eventually sweep over them like a wave.
There's no frontier, no "undiscovered country" for excess people to go disappear to.
We're already at the lifeboat stage.
And I'm afraid that "leaders" are perfectly willing to let war and famine be the method to ruthlessly handle excess population.
It doesn't matter if the next Einstein, Feynman, or Mozart lives in sub-Saharan Africa, Nepal, or even in rural Iowa. They don't care about benefits to the future, they care about their own here and now.
If labled as an untermensch, any child, any parent, will just get eliminated as being one of "those worthless peasants" - a valueless eater - without a chance to benefit the world with skill or talent.
I know my granddaughters are worth nothing to those who currently own the resources to make the world a better place, if they were willing to sacrifice a bit and actually think beyond their bank statements. It's tribal, and because we aren't rich, we're "the other".
Haele
