How Many People Share Our World?

[shashankac655]

most typical person of those 7 billion

 

[dipungal]

Her statement does not advocate that, no. Benefit of the doubt suggests she was simply speaking matter-of-factly.

However, that does not mean she won't subsequently offer her opinion explicitly.

Factly? We do not know what population the Earth is capable of supporting, do we?

 

[shashankac655]

It might be unacceptable or too harsh but I think cutting down on humanitarian missions and funding to poor nations might bring our global population to the level that we can sustain.

what do you mean ,how can that help?
One of the reasons why poor people have more children especially in the third world countries is because there ,the infant mortality rates are high due to lack of basic health care,so people tend to have more children as an insurance policy.There are also other reasons like they will keep having children until they get a male child(women/girl-child are severely discriminated).
If the living conditions improve and education is in place then people will have less children and that can bring down birth rates.

 

[dipungal]

The OP link was just about numbers, but this one is much more meaningful:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15445092

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15368276

BBC had a great news special on Africa and its agriculture. If Africa can get to 80% efficiency in agriculture as compared to the industrialized countries it can feed the world.

 

[leroyjenkens]

If you want to reduce the population growth rate, then you need to attack the root of the problem. Education indirectly reduces birthrates. Get everyone smarter and the problem will fix itself.

 

[GregJ]

Wow, were are already up to 7 billion?

Someone needs to invent a food replicator like on Star Trek and we'll be fine.

"Earl grey, hot" :)

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

If you want to reduce the population growth rate, then you need to attack the root of the problem. Education indirectly reduces birthrates. Get everyone smarter and the problem will fix itself.

Actually, I think the root of the problem lies elsewhere.

 

[1mmorta1]

The US isn't the one with the population growth problem. Its the industrial countries...
Lets hope they stabalize soon.

Or maybe we should hope that they don't, and we are forced to populate the solar system...

 

[1mmorta1]

Wow, were are already up to 7 billion?

Someone needs to invent a food replicator like on Star Trek and we'll be fine.

"Earl grey, hot" :)

Actually, the UN count seems to be a little off. They have a lot more people living in California than the US Census does.

 

[rootX]

what do you mean ,how can that help?

If you don't control the population artificially (that is not aiding poor countries to sustain population that they otherwise cannot), population will decrease to the desired level. So, every country will have number of people that it is capable of supporting. I also support education because that doesn't fall under artificial means of controlling population.

One of the reasons why poor people have more children especially in the third world countries is because there ,the infant mortality rates are high due to lack of basic health care,so people tend to have more children as an insurance policy.

That doesn't tell why they have high population growth rate. Population growth rate accounts for the deaths:

The average annual percent change in the population, resulting from a surplus (or deficit) of births over deaths and the balance of migrants entering and leaving a country.

from cia.

There are also other reasons like they will keep having children until they get a male child(women/girl-child are severely discriminated).

Yes, those other reasons explain why they tend to how more children. Mortality rate is not the main reason.

 

[DoggerDan]

The US isn't the one with the population growth problem. Its the industrial countries...

How about the recently industrialized countries?

Nature has a way of finding its own balance. Regardless of the species, when it comes to population, that usually involves a sizable minority of them suffering from starvation and disease. Given significant changes in the environment, that minority can rise to a majority.

 

[dipungal]

Personally, I don't see how anyone dares to advocate any kind of population limitations without first maximizing the efficiency of resource-utilization. Anyone is free to have as few children as they want, but what right do they have to suggest other people have less kids?

 

[shashankac655]

If you don't control the population artificially (that is not aiding poor countries to sustain population that they otherwise cannot), population will decrease to the desired level. So, every country will have number of people that it is capable of supporting. I also support education because that doesn't fall under artificial means of controlling population.


That doesn't tell why they have high population growth rate. Population growth rate accounts for the deaths:
from cia.


Yes, those other reasons explain why they tend to how more children. Mortality rate is not the main reason.

No, actually it doesn't work that way. That aid is not aid that is meant to increase the population or sustain it, it just about not letting them starve to death.You yourself said that education can help ,remember that the poor people don't have education so whether or not you give them aid ,whether or not they have what it takes to raise a lot of children ,they will have children ,since they are uneducated they don't educate their children as well , they don't know the importance of education.

Why is it that only poor countries have high birth rates? because poor people don't know that they have to provide education and all other facilities to their children,a middle class family won't have so many children because they know that it very difficult and expensive to provide education and other things to their children.
I know this because i am from a country which faces these problems ,i read some where that every year in the world ,8 million children die from diseases which are preventable(2 million in India),mostly north India which has the poorest states,majority of the India's population growth comes from these poor states,some other states are near replacement fertility.

“More than 300 million Indians earn less than US $1 everyday and about 130 million people are jobless.” The people, who have to struggle to make two ends meet produce more children because more children mean more earning hands.Also, due to poverty, the infant mortality rate among such families is higher due to the lack of facilities like food and medical resources. Thus, they produce more children assuming that not all of them would be able to survive.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

This web page has a graph showing that there are an estimated 950 million malnourished people in the world in 2010.
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm"
The graph also shows an estimated 875 malnourished people in 1969. Am I reading it correctly? But the population was much different in 1969. Here is a web page with a graph that shows the world population in 1969 to be 3.6 billion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_history.svg"
In other words, there are 3.4 billion more people now than 42 years ago, nearly double, but hardly any increase in estimated hunger. What do you make of it? Does it mean anything at all?

 

[Evo]

This web page has a graph showing that there are an estimated 950 million malnourished people in the world in 2010.
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm"
The graph also shows an estimated 875 malnourished people in 1969. Am I reading it correctly? But the population was much different in 1969. Here is a web page with a graph that shows the world population in 1969 to be 3.6 billion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_history.svg"
In other words, there are 3.4 billion more people now than 42 years ago, nearly double, but hardly any increase in estimated hunger. What do you make of it? Does it mean anything at all?

Because we're feeding them.

The ability of the world to feed itself has improved dramatically over the last three decades. Intensive agriculture and new crop varieties have fueled steadily increasing per capita food production. Decreasing world food prices have made food more available to a greater number of people. In 1975, approximately one in three people in developing countries was underfed; today, the number of underfed has dropped to onein five.

The long-term sustainability of this progress, however, is increasingly at risk. Advances in major crop yields, such as wheat and rice, have slowed. The intensive use of land and water, which brought major production increases, now brings growing environmental costs. And most significantly, world population continues to grow at the rate of nearly 100 million people per year--mostly in the developing world.

Though millions have benefited from the world's agricultural progress, the
distribution of global food supplies is very uneven, with hunger still prevalent in someregions of the world, particularly South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

The challenge of world hunger in the 1990s is real: 800 million people are chronically undernourished. More than 180 million children around the world are severely underweight. 13 million people die every year from hunger and related causes (mostly children under age 5). An estimated 35 million people "at risk" needed 4.5 million tons of emergency food assistance in 1994. Most hunger is still found in rural areas--large regions of persistent poverty, such as the Horn of Africa, where development has failed and fragile ecosystems and civil strife combine to keep hunger alive. Rapid urbanization has also drawn growing numbers of rural poor who have little or no access to jobs and are therefore unable to feed their families.

page 7 http://www.usaid.gov/policy/ads/200/foodsec/foodsec.pdf

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Because we're feeding them.

As long as we continue to feed them, they will continue to have babies. Since I find it morally objectionable to prevent them from having babies, would it be ok if we stop feeding them? That will certainly ease my conscience.

 

[dipungal]

This web page has a graph showing that there are an estimated 950 million malnourished people in the world in 2010.
http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm"
The graph also shows an estimated 875 malnourished people in 1969. Am I reading it correctly? But the population was much different in 1969. Here is a web page with a graph that shows the world population in 1969 to be 3.6 billion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_population_history.svg"
In other words, there are 3.4 billion more people now than 42 years ago, nearly double, but hardly any increase in estimated hunger. What do you make of it? Does it mean anything at all?

Dig a little deeper. You'll be tapping into the heart of population concerns: greed . . . or possibly naive materialistic consumerism.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

Dig a little deeper. You'll be tapping into the heart of population concerns: greed . . . or possibly naive materialistic consumerism.

That thought had occurred to me. We're into the third century of this crisis if you start counting with Malthus. The solutions seem worse than the problem.

 

[DoggerDan]

Personally, I don't see how anyone dares to advocate any kind of population limitations without first maximizing the efficiency of resource-utilization. Anyone is free to have as few children as they want, but what right do they have to suggest other people have less kids?

From a practical standpoint, maximizing efficiency only to worry about limiting population when we're reaching the limit puts billions of people into vary precarious positions. Think of how much nicer our world would be without overcrowding!

On the other hand, I believe children are a real blessing, and do not like the idea of depriving parents of that blessing. Nevertheless, how much blessing do parents need?

 

[DaveC426913]

Think of how much nicer our world would be without overcrowding!

Overcrowding? A tiny fraction of the Earth's surface is populated.

 

[Evo]

Overcrowding? A tiny fraction of the Earth's surface is populated.

But the places people have to live for work, food, etc... are mostly overcrowded. Sure, you can try living in the Gobi desert.

 

[gravenewworld]

Sometimes it makes me wonder if we should really be doing research on trying to cure things like cancer, slow aging, and solving other diseases. Maybe it is just nature's way of containing population.

 

[DaveC426913]

But the places people have to live for work, food, etc... are mostly overcrowded. Sure, you can try living in the Gobi desert.

That's the point of dioungal's 'efficient resource utilization' comment:

I don't see how anyone dares to advocate any kind of population limitations without first maximizing the efficiency of resource-utilization

We crowd into cities because it's convenient not because we've run out of room. There is a lot of the world that is way more liveable than the Gobi desert with some care and attention.

 

[Evo]

That's the point of dioungal's 'efficient resource utilization' comment:



We crowd into cities because it's convenient not because we've run out of room. There is a lot of the world that is way more liveable than the Gobi desert with some care and attention.

But space isn't the problem, it's the ability to financially and economically sustain people. how are people going to get money if they can't find a job? We can't employ the people alre4ady here, how can we keep adding to the list of unemployed?

 

[wolram]

It's not the US but the third world countries that concern me. I doubt you can put any kind of caps on them.

caps would not work, one needs a stopcock.

 

[DaveC426913]

caps would not work, one needs a stopcock.

A statement that equally applies to the overpopulation solution too.

 

[dipungal]

But the places people have to live for work, food, etc... are mostly overcrowded. Sure, you can try living in the Gobi desert.

There are many more resources on this planet than we know. Don't discount the resourcefulness of man.

 

[dipungal]

From a practical standpoint, maximizing efficiency only to worry about limiting population when we're reaching the limit puts billions of people into vary precarious positions. Think of how much nicer our world would be without overcrowding!

That's if you actually believe in the overpopulation myth.

On the other hand, I believe children are a real blessing, and do not like the idea of depriving parents of that blessing. Nevertheless, how much blessing do parents need?

The structure of your question makes it look as if children were a problem.

 

[Evo]

There are many more resources on this planet than we know. Don't discount the resourcefulness of man.

People are unemployed and it's getting worse, it's not a matter of "resources". It's not a matter of space. OY.

 

[DoggerDan]

Overcrowding? A tiny fraction of the Earth's surface is populated.

True. So what's your opinion on Earth's limit, assuming we stick to land-based farming and stop raping the oceans of fish? Sorry, but as a diver I'm well away of just how far down our fisheries are doing these days.

What I don't know is how our ocean hauls compare to that produced on land. If a minor amount, we could cut back on fish and still survive. If it's huge, then how do you propose to seriously increase land production to cover the difference? One thing we can't do is continue fishing the way we do. We've over-reached the oceans ability to produce for more than a decade, and if we dig too deep, we'll have more than a handful of lean years during which we will have no choice but to allow the oceans to recover.

But the places people have to live for work, food, etc... are mostly overcrowded. Sure, you can try living in the Gobi desert.

Lol, is that the only other option? I don't think so. You do bring up a good point, though, and that's most humans tend to congregate rather than spread out. A lot of that has to do with the fact humans tend to somewhat specialize, which requires trading with others i.e living close by those with whom they trade. For someone who's a jack of all trades, they can live further out. Still, things like medical care require some regular contact.