overpopulation, serious political and economical problems

John Galaor

Sorry, Thomas:
Reply to post #100
You said,
<<I don't buy into the assumption that war, famine or disease have anything but a very minor effect on human population growth.>>

I meant you were referring to Malthus's theory and my former reply was in relation to this idea. Now, I think you were contemplating mostly the XIX and XX Centuries. If you look at the former 200 years Malthus seemed to be in error. The population in this recent period has grown rather high at and average of 0.9% for the whole planet. This outstanding phenomenon has been possible thanks to increasing amounts of fossil fuels consumption. Never, in any previous period in history the men has burned so huge quantities of fuels. And this is quite evident, even for someone not an expert in history like me.

But even, if you were not obfuscated by whole perspective of the planet population, you can check if some revolutionary wars had any thing to do, with a previous exaggerated growth of the population. I am thinking in the Revolution of Mexico in the 20's of the XX century. Also, have a look at wars in countries like Nicaragua, and el Salvador. Look at the statistics of population.
Even in 18 Century, the French Revolution has to have some relation with a famine some previous years earlier. The Napoleonic wars can be explained as a trouble of excess population not solved with a single revolution. Even some of the wars in Europa in the last quarter of 19 century can be explained as the result of a problem with hunger. Even, the growth in population present some troubles when too many people in his twenties found problems to get a job.

If you look at the depression of 1929, you can see that even the I WW was unable to solve the problem of excessive population. That is ten years later, the previous problem of lack of employment was not yet solved. All the surviving soldiers were back at home and most of them had troubles to find a job. This can be a rational explanation for IIWW.
The trouble is a little disguised as an economic crisis. Then the analysis can get a little blurred and the eyes have problems to see clear.

Some crisis can be considered as a problem of excessive financial capital. It has grown so fast and so big, that it cannot find a proper place to win more profits. For the crucial idea behind financial capital is the vocation is has to earn more profits. Then, investing a little part of it in the same country, with the same population, do not give up any yield. This is the main reason for a crisis. Then, a wrong solution before any crisis is to lend money to some people to buy things overvalued. Then, when the crisis blows up, a lot of people is enslaved to the banks to pay back their debt. Then, with the news of the crisis, those that have some earnings have fear to spend most of this money. Then, the commerce has shrunk to a third of the previous level, before the crisis.

All this has the same root, exponential growth. This growth, either of human beings, sheep or even profits, can not last very long. For it can cause serious problems.
John Galaor
.

ikos9lives

Be careful what you wish for. After decades of struggling to contain the global population explosion that emerged from the healthcare revolution of the 20th century, the world confronts an unfamiliar crisis: rapidly decreasing birthrates and declining life spans that might set back the progress of human development.

Edit: Religious link deleted by mentor

John Galaor

I do not share this concept of yours. I had paid a close attention to your site in Catholic Education, etc.
Well, you had touch a raw never here. I had commented often about the rate of growth, average growth of the last 200 years. And it is 0.9% a year. Someone had replied to me, this is a "normal growth". It is not.

The population of the planet, between year Zero and the present, had multiplied by 30.43 That means an average growth of 0,17% year. Then 0,9% is not normal.
If it were normal, for such a long period of time, how much would have multiplied the population of the planet?
Let me see, 1.009^2010=66 millions. It would had multiplied by 66 millions, not by 30. And this is quite a huge multiplication.
If that growth during more than two thousand years would had occurred, the present population would had been,
66 millions*230 millions= 1,5 (10^16)
This number can be read 15,180 trillion people. (more than 15 thousand trillion people)
That is more or less the amount squared meters in the solid surface of the planet. it includes all deserts, Siberia, Greenland, and the Antarctic.
It means, we would have 100 people per square meter, or 10 people per square feet. This planet would be pretty crowded.

Then the Holy Spirit of the Catholic Church, it seems that did not studied Maths at school. I advice the Holly Spirit to take a course in Maths.

A totally different question is that due to the scarcity or energy resources, the leaders of the planet would get rather nervous. And perhaps, a global thermonuclear war would erase off the planet all this mess of overpopulation.
Someone had said that the average life-span of an industrial civilization is not more than 200 years. Perhaps this Duncan was too pessimistic, and the life span of a civilization would be as long as 250 years.
Yours,
John Galaor.

ikos9lives

Can The Entire World Population Fit Within The Boundries of Texas?

LEGEND

1 Acre = 43,560 Square Feet

1 Square Mile = 640 Acres or 27,878,400 Square Feet (640 x 43,560)

——————–

World Population = 6,276,000,000 people

State of Texas = 268,601 Square Miles or 171,904,640 Acres (268,601 x 640) or 7,488,166,118,400 Square Feet (268,601 x 640 x 43,560)

———————-

Average Size 2-Story Home with 3-4 Bedrooms = 1,500 to 2,400 Square Feet (Thus 750 - 1,200 Square Feet is Needed on the Ground Floor).

This home would fit 5-6 people per house comfortably!

Therefore 150-240 (750 to 1,200/ 5 people per household) Square Feet of Ground Space Per Person is needed to fit 5-6 people comfortably in a 2-story home in the state of Texas.

——————–

State of Texas = 7,488,166,118,400 Square Feet/ 6,276,000,000 people in the world = 1,193 Square Feet Per Person is available for the entire world’s population to live in the state of Texas.

As noted above only 150-240 Square Feet of Ground Space is needed per person to fit 5-6 people comfortably in a 2-story home in the state of Texas!!!

——————

You can double check my math!

Siv

I am coming in real late to this discussion ... its a favourite topic of mine, so let me post anyway :)

Overpopulation is a problem ... in pockets. In many rural areas of third world countries for e.g. And it needs to be addressed there.

In the developed world and in most of the urban/educated class of developing countries, its not that much of a problem. Of course countries like India and China have a problem right now, but birth rates have dwindled. Women are getting educated and prefer to limit themselves to 2 children.

The problem is a new one - with dwindling birth rates and the fact that birth rates were higher in the past many generations, we have a lot of old people. Lifespans have increased, but many old people are also hanging on, despite multiple illnesses, because medical care keeps them hanging on. An exit policy sounds cruel (and I personally admit I will never be able to stomach one for my own parents) but needs to be thought of. Else we may have a world where there are mostly old people, esp when are children are older. Or when their children (if they decide to have children) grow up.

John Galaor

Let me see. I use metric system.
Well, the state of Texas is what I call a peri-desert; a near desert. Only on places not far from the sea there is enough rainfall in a year. En temperatures are horrible during the summer.
Well, a sq mile is about 2.56 million sq. meters.
And not going as far, as Texas, I don't like Texas, we have the seven billion people of the planet nearly can be put into a sq mile.
Let me see. 7,000 million/2,56 million= 2,734 persons per sq.meter, using a sq. mile.
This is a little crowded, but if you take as much as 2,734 sq miles, you have one person per sq. meter.
And this 2,734 sq miles are just (216914/2,734=0,01) you only need the 1% of the surface of Texas to put a person of this planet into a sq. meter.
That is, a person per 10 sq. foot. It is not that bad. You have the rest of planet empty.

The problem is that no many people would like to live in the desert of Texas.

Real state is not the real problem when we speak of actual overpopulation. The main problem is the energy. Not yet for us, not yet at present, but in the near future.
If you look into this link
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/pe...on-growth-rate
you will find that the most poor nations of the planet are growing at rate far higher than 2% a year.
# 1 Maldives: 5.566% 2008
# 2 United Arab Emirates: 3.833% 2008
# 3 Liberia: 3.661% 2008
# 4 Uganda: 3.603% 2008
# 5 Kuwait: 3.591% 2008
# 6 Mayotte: 3.465% 2008
# 7 Yemen: 3.46% 2008
# 8 Burundi: 3.443% 2008
# 9 Gaza Strip: 3.422% 2008
# 10 Congo, Democratic Republic of the: 3.236% 2008
# 11 Ethiopia: 3.212% 2008
# 12 Oman: 3.19% 2008
# 13 Macau: 3.148% 2008
# 14 São Tomé and Príncipe: 3.116% 2008
# 15 Burkina Faso: 3.109% 2008
# 16 Benin: 3.01% 2008
# 17 Madagascar: 3.005% 2008
# 18 Niger: 2.878% 2008
# 19 Western Sahara: 2.868% 2008
# 20 Mauritania: 2.852% 2008
etc.

Then I am fed up of hearing that we are to blame for the hunger in the world.
John Galaor

John Galaor

Overpopulation is a problem, mostly in the most poor countries.
And it is also a problem, because we do not even dare to speak aloud of it.
John Galaor

Hoku

Many of you are saying that western civilizations don't have a population problem and that, once "developing" cultures industrialize, like us, their problems will dissappear, too. Think about this:

The only reason population becomes a problem is because Earth's resources are finite and it's sustainability fragile. If you don't think that the US, for example, has a problem towards this end, chew on this - "If the current population of all humans lived at US standards, we'd need another 4 Earths to sustain us". http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/20...encequestions1

Fresh water is one of our greatest resources - and it's threatened. You may think Africa and Asia have the population problems, not us, but African's only use about 186 cubic meters of water annually. North Americans use 1,280.
http://www.aboutmyplanet.com/environ...earth-sustain/

The first and simplest step in solving this problem is to stop fertility treatments. If a couple can't have a child of their own, they can adopt one of the hundreds of thousands of children needing a loving home in their country alone. In under 40 years, the number of births from fertility treatments exceeds the population of Nevada and Wyoming combined. That's nearing 4,000,000 people on this planet that nature did not intend to be here. Is this worthy of a nobel prize?

John Galaor

it looks as if we, at present, in developing countries, we have not a problem of overpopulation. But it is an illusion. We have at present problems in some parts of US, with the exhaustion of water. We had been pumping out water on wells till they are now dry. Some other wells, have their water levels deeper from year to year. I am not going to comment the exhaustion of soil, of some minerals.

But the most danger is ahead, when the oil would start to get scarcer and expansive. So far, all the cries of alarm had been premature, and the prediction failed to realized. It is the same concept, as the exhaustion of oil. Since XIX century, many people were crying wolf about oil-wells getting dry. And they were wrong. Then, I can be wrong again this time. But it is only logical that oil would end one day, if not in 40 years, in 60.
This would be dramatic for an economy so spendthrift. Then, we will see at last, that we even are too many mouths in this land. I am not counting on the millions of hungry people that would want to enter into the US and Europe. This it would be a scary moment.
John Galaor
.

mheslep

Lets consider what 'threatened' means and where it applies. Fresh water is not threatened in developed countries in the life and death sense that it is in the developing world. The US has a lot of water resource to use, on average, so why not use it? In places where water is less plentiful, like Phoenix, people use much less, roughly 960 cubic meters annually (2151 Mgal/day / 3M people), Tuscon 500 cubic meters / yr / person. Water is not consumed like the energy in fossile fuels; we get it back with some attention to water treatment.

I'm missing a step in your logic. You chose not to propose eliminating, say, golf courses due to water usage but instead the elimination of more developed world people. Even a brief scan of the thread above shows that the population of many developed countries is already declining, or would be if not for immigration. How do you go from there to saying the population in these countries needs to be decreased faster? Killing off everyone in Nevada won't provide any more water to Africa, though it would likely reduce innovative water treatment technology much needed in Africa with which Nevadans are very familiar.

Nature did not intend? By that same logic nature did not intend the modern infant mortality the developed world enjoys of 5-7 deaths in 1000 infants. Instead try 200-400 in 1000 without modern medicine thwarting the desires of nature. Then write off 1 in 6 women dying in childbirth. If the logic is to be coolly distilled down to only what is required to reduce the population without regard to any other sentiments, why not propose stripping all single parents of their infants and donating them to two parent families where statistics show they are more likely to be productive members of society?
Were you referring to this year's prize in medicine?
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/m...aureates/2010/

Hoku

By the time water is threatened for us in the life or death sense, it'll be to late. It may not be "life or death" in the US at the moment, but it is threatened and we need to take seriously where we're headed. Maybe you don't care about people in Africa or Asia, but you can at least look at their water problems as a sign of where we're headed. http://news.discovery.com/earth/grou...rrigation.html Even if no other part of the US is having drought conditions, which most of us are, then the conditions in the central US, where most of our food comes from, should be concerning enough. Loosing that single region would be devistating for the entire country. The point that you're missing here is that we are living unsustainably. It's a problem that's catching up with us. You seem to be fixated on the water problem. Water is only one example of the problems of overpopulation. Our population is overfishing the ocean. Our population needs more cows (thus more greenhouse gasses) than the atmosphere can digest. Our "developed world" is aggrivating climate change in many ways. Not every resource can be recycled but we keep pumping through them anyway and at the expense of deforestation and other habitat loss. Our population is a problem. Western countries may have more water but our overall environmental footprint is enormous - and we've got ugly shoes. There are plenty of innocent children born to "developed world people" that need compassion, love and a chance for a happy family. We don't need fertility interventions and we don't need more people than we are already pumping out.Nature intends life to die. There is a balance that must be maintained and there is something to be said for natural selection. Those that are strong enough to survive keep the evolution of our species strong. That's what we call "selection pressure". Our medical interventions are eliminating these selection pressures and the process of natural selection. Instead, we are breeding for relaxed selection. We are breeding ourselves dependant on technology and unfit for nature. What will this mean for us should anything happen to the technologies that keep our "devolving" species alive?

hamster143

They are overpumping that aquifer because it's cheap and easy. Not because there's no other source of water available. Water is abundant, it's just not in the right place. Mississippi River dumps 300 million acre-feet of fresh water into the ocean every year. Combined with rainfall, one half of that amount would be sufficient to irrigate 75 million acres of corn fields. 75 million acres of corn fiels will produce 300 million tons of corn, which will meet caloric requirements of 1.5 billion people (with a 'b') for a year. Can we do that? Is it within the realm of feasibility to build a channel and some pumps that would take half of the water currently wasted in the ocean, route it to Texas and Iowa, and use it for irrigation? Sure it is. But why bother, when there's such a nice aquifer right here under our feet?

http://www.physicsforums.com/showpos...9&postcount=36

You're contradicting yourself. We either need natural selection, in which case population controls be damned, let everyone survive and duke it out in a World War Three. Or we don't, in which case we can either impose population controls or try to figure out how to provide decent quality of life to all people.

Evo

Hamster, the deforestation of the rainforest is done to grow crops for exportation.

http://library.thinkquest.org/26993/amazon.htm

There are more examples, but I'm busy.

hamster143

Key word: "pasture".

Pasture is an extremely inefficient way to raise cattle, in terms of land use. Corn fed animals require one tenth of the land area compared to pasture fed cattle. (In Brazil, even less, because they should be able to get two harvests a year consistently.) But when you have dirt cheap forests to cut down and the government does not give a damn about protecting the environment, of course it's easier to take the pasture route.

And, of course, eating beef is an inefficient way to nourish yourself, compared with vegetarian diet. (and even with eating chicken!) Some simple tariffs and taxes on beef would have solved this "problem" quite easily.

Once again, irresponsible development trumps overpopulation.

Evo

And where are they going to grow this corn in a tropical rainforest?

hamster143

They can cut down one tenth of the forest and use the land to grow corn (or something else more suited to their climate & soil), instead of cutting it all and turning it into grasslands.

Out of curiosity, try to calculate how much land is _really_ needed, using modern agricultural technologies, to allow all 7 billion people on the planet to eat as much beef as Americans. You can find important numbers on page 7 of this document

http://www.whybiotech.com/resources/...rResources.pdf

Evo

No, show me the research papers for growing corn the in amazon.

You don't know what the cattle in the amazon are fed do you? You think they are all grass fed, don't you? Come on hamster, you should know to look these things up first.