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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/21/2008 5:58:39 PM | How many of you think that humanity is a plague on mankind. Eventually the human population will become so great that we will eradicate all other life on the planet. Eventually, this leads to the inevitable conclusion that we will have no income of food leading to the eventual starvation of our population. When this occurs - it is likely that the human race will result to cannibilism for sustenance within society. This new order of humanistic rules will indefinatly cause anarchy within the populace. The possibility that normal peasents will be used as breeding material at the age of 13 and get killed at a slaughter house and fed to humans at the age of 25 is great. Breeding is the sole cause to create food for the rich and powerful of the populace able to afford feeding stock.
Any opinion? | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/21/2008 6:13:40 PM | | Well either that or global warming, or multitude of other problems that are aproaching ... but it's not likely for few more generations ... what can we really do about it ... very little ... maybe prolong it for another generation but ultimately it will all end | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/21/2008 6:18:38 PM | If food is at a premium, why on Earth would you waste the 10-1 to 100-1 that you have to in growing humans to "term" for slaughter?
You could feed 10-100 times as many people with the food itself. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/21/2008 6:19:54 PM | | I think China is an excellent foreshadowing of what happens in over crowded populations... The government steps in and starts telling people they can only have 1 child... or worse... you need a license to have children. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/21/2008 6:29:15 PM | How many of you think that humanity is a plague on mankind. Eventually the human population will become so great that we will eradicate all other life on the planet. Eventually, this leads to the inevitable conclusion that we will have no income of food leading to the eventual starvation of our population. When this occurs - it is likely that the human race will result to cannibilism for sustenance within society. This new order of humanistic rules will indefinatly cause anarchy within the populace. The possibility that normal peasents will be used as breeding material at the age of 13 and get killed at a slaughter house and fed to humans at the age of 25 is great. Breeding is the sole cause to create food for the rich and powerful of the populace able to afford feeding stock.
Any opinion?
Expecting life to imitate art? A lot of science fiction in this topic. You covered Solent Green, Logan's Run and The Time Machine all in one paragraph.
I agree that overpopulation is a serious problem but I think there just might be some less radical solutions. Like the one mentioned by LightStorm for instance.
It should be noted that cannibalism has been resorted to in extreme conditions within China in the past. However as social policy they mellowed somewhat in dealing with the problem. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/21/2008 6:52:26 PM | I was looking at this the other day. Most human areas in Europe and North America are ridiculously underpopulated. The most populated country in the world is Macau, with 18,196 people per square kilometre. The UK has only 246 people per square kilometre. The USA has only 31 people per square kiometre, and is 180th out of 241 countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density
In other words, if every person in the United States was cloned another 7 times, multiplying the whole population of the USA by 8, and bringing them to a massive 2.4 billion people, well over double the population of China, it would still be no more populous than the UK, which is not overpopulated at all. The UK has lots of land, and there is only a problem in the inner cities, because everyone is moving to the big cities for more money. So there really isn't a problem with overpopulation in the USA at all.
I also looked at how quickly the UK and the USA would rise. If you consider births - deaths only, and don't take into account the rise due to immigration, then it would take the UK 115,524.88 to double in population. So there is not really much of a genuine problem in the UK. If you consider the USA, it would take 11,728.73 to double the population. But since the USA has room for 8 times the people as the UK, and has only been going for 232 years, this is about 50 times the entire history of the USA. It you consider the massive advances in science and technology in this time, we should be able to travel to settle everyone on Earth on other planets way before then, and we wouldn't even need to.
However, if you consider immigration figures as well, then you end up concluding that it will only take 250 years for the UK to double in size, and it will only take 78 years for the USA to double in size as well.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uk.html
But it is not practical to consider immigration as population increase, because these are people who already existed, and simply came from somewhere else.
There are also a good few countries with a population decrease.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_pop_gro_rat-people-population-growth-rate&int=-1
I suspect that a lot of the discussion of overpopulation is simply hyped up.
One reason may be to get us more worried, so we will buy more insurance or generally buy more things before everyone else gets them. This is a common practice in PR, to ensure that news programmes report news that hypes us up to emotionally make choices that benefit the companies paying them. One example is that while I was contracting at a PR company, a very popular life insurance company in the UK paid them a lot of money to get all the news stations to read out a script that cervical cancer rates were going up, which was deliberately drafted to make people want to buy life insurance as a result. This was common practice in this agency every single day, to actually make the news, and even the very words that were read out on every news station in the country. So if you have heard of overpopulation in the news, please understand that everything you see and hear on the news is pure advertising. It is just advertising that happens to be true as well, but broadcast in a way that makes you reach a deliberately planned conclusion. It's mass manipulation.
Another reason may be that people are simply in a state of panic, because most people in our countries are expecting science to solve every problem we have, and scientists have been talking about eugenics as a means of population control for many years, but don't seem to have any other ideas on how to control populations. Eugenics is also a valuable tool for science, because it is a scientific means of experimentation on human genetics, and represents a way of making humans better by using science. However, most people I know hate the idea of forcing anyone poor, or disabled to not be allowed to have children. So science has not had its way in this regard. However, if this overpopulation scare continues for much longer, I suspect that you will soon see birthing licenses on who will be allowed to have children. The rich will obviously always get a licence. Most poor people will obviously not. People like Dawkins will obviously get a licence. Future Einsteins will not, because they will display Aspergers-like symptoms in early childhood, which will obviously be considered non-preferential, and so they will be sterilised or even aborted before we can see their genius.
There are problems with overpopulation in very poor countries. But that will not change by what we do here.
But there is not a real problem with overpopulation in your country, or in mine. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 7:33:16 AM | Verzen, you have a very bleak view of the future and the human race there. Personally, I don't think it will come to that. Probably some superbug we created will have had its chance to pare down the population long before we start eating each other.
Either that or we'll start to pare down our population growth. You know, developed countries actually have lower to almost stagnant birth rates. Has something to do with affluence creating comfortable conditions and confidence which allows for smaller family sizes. Hmm, maybe if we in the affluent nations do more to help the developing and poor nations, that would benefit everyone. Just a thought. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 8:05:37 AM | Scorpio,
Does the UK feed itself? Or does it import food from the USA and other less densly populated places?
A more percise question might be, how many square meters of agriculturally suitable land does it take to feed the average person? (And I know this is different from region to region, but think of the UK or the US as an example)
Then beyond that, what percent of the agriculturally suitable land, that is not used for other purposes, is used for agriculture?
And as populations increase what percent of the agriculturally suitable land will be used for other purposes?
How much more efficient can we get producing food? | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 8:54:40 AM | Just a few quick corrections scorpiomover.
The UK has an aging population. That means that there are now less than 2 children born for every couple, causing the pouplation sizr to decline.
If it were not for imigration, the UK would be screwed. It is only because of imigration that our population is now growing, and without imigrants we would only be able to support our economy for ten years before thre was not enough of a working population to prop up the unemployed population.
Also, population density is not the only important factor here. We also have to consider the avaliabilty of food and the space required to produce our resourses. as its is, Britain currently only produces around 10% of the food it needs to feed its population. If we were to suffer another crisses like the one we had durring world war two, then we would not be ale to support the population, even with rationioning. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 9:09:00 AM | I agree with Scorpiomover, the threat of current population growth is significant, more or less depending on geographic location, but not necessarily as tragic as the OP suggests - and I believe the elite emphasis on population growth has more to do with depletion economics where you need a constantly growing pool of cheap labor and demand to sustain growth, and in this, I believe institutional religion is largely in collusion, and always has been.
The tragedy here is in that this is an unsustainable situation, there are logical limits to growth, both economic and biological, and the fears expressed in the OP might seem less alarmist if we were to suffer a sudden environmental, agricultural, or even transportation crisis. Depletion economics is already becoming cannibalistic in many respects, the use of child and forced labor starving out of indigenous populations or even outright genocide to secure disputed resources, or even simply to avoid paying royalties on mineral rights is not at all an uncommon practice, see Kosovo, Rwanda, and multinational corporate practices, in Africa particularly, Barrick Gold, etc., but also in Indonesia and other places - the depletion of Indian watersheds is a recipe for environmental disaster, that is not theoretical, but a matter of time.
In America even, we have allowed and fostered an incarceration for profit system to evolve that is in some ways genocidal, and cannibalistic at best.
Treating humans as economic commodities has never been successful economically, outside an small economic elite able to insulate itself from the consequences, and this has historically been a temporary thing at best even for them.
We really need to start focusing on sustainable economics, in energy, agriculture, etc., green technologies such as biointensive farming, renewable energy and cradle to cradle manufacturing (all googleable) - currently the emphasis is on capital growth and accumulation, and this has led to some very diseconomic practices, hostile to sustainable economics and which threaten disastrous consequences for even the current balance. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 10:25:52 AM | Violence is likely to erupt but that same violence would reduce the population so it wouldn't be a permanent switch in society and likely one of the shorter lived periods.
The majority of the earth's surface remains unpopulated so I don't think it's time to hit the alarm just yet. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 11:43:11 AM | RE msg 12 by Bright1Raziel:
Just a few quick corrections scorpiomover. No problem.
The UK has an aging population. That means that there are now less than 2 children born for every couple, causing the pouplation sizr to decline. I am well aware of that. I used to think so too. But then I decided to look for some figures on this. If you check the site I cited from the CIA, you'd see that in the last year, there was a birth rate of 10.65 per thousand, and a death rate of 10.05 per thousand. Now, unless suddenly lots and lots of people all start dying off simultaneously, rising the death rate to 100 times what it was, then the population is still increasing, even with no immigration at all.
So let's look at some more actual stats:
The following data is taken from the United Nations Population
Division.
http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=2
United Kingdom
Population by five-year age group and sex (thousands)
2000
------------
Age Total
------------
0-4 3544
5-9 3772
10-14 3884
15-19 3612
20-24 3524
25-29 3903
30-34 4572
35-39 4623
40-44 4072
45-49 3691
50-54 4099
55-59 3247
60-64 2836
65-69 2592
70-74 2352
75-79 1974
80-84 1291
85-89 727
90-94 295
95-99 70
100+ 9
------------ http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=187650
You can go to the UN site and get the data again, but it really shows the same distributions. The population is roughly 6% until 30, then rises sharply to almost 8%, then slowly falls to under 6% in the late 50s, then slowly decreases all the way to 0.02% for those 100+. I also used to believe the whole thing about an aging population. But these numbers aren't showing this at all. Are the UN lying? If so, why?
So if you look at the above data, I just cannot substantiate this. What is true, is that in places like Glasgow, where the dying before 60 is very common, that they have a much smaller aging population than Londoners. But overall, there just isn't that many people living to 100 yet, and the figures do show that more people are born than die.
If it were not for imigration, the UK would be screwed. It is only because of imigration that our population is now growing, and without imigrants we would only be able to support our economy for ten years before thre was not enough of a working population to prop up the unemployed population. Have you considered the cost to the infrastructure of new immigration? If you bring in more people, you need more houses, more cars, more roads, more schools, more teachers to teach at those schools, more doctors, more nurses, more hospitals, more everyone. The cost of bringing in new immigrants must take into account these costs. Housing costs alone means a cost of £250,000 for a family of 4, where 2 are adults and 2 are children, and then 99% of the adult's net wages will go towards the children, and most of the taxes will also go towards paying for their schooling, and other related expenses covered by the government. Even if they are 4 adults in the same house, at that rate, you are still talking about £62,500 in extra expenses just for the new housing required for them. Then when you consider the other expenses, this will increase a LOT. Then you have to realise that a lot of the taxes they pay will go towards the services they use already. So that bit that is left, will have to pay for the costs of building new housing, and for the other expenses in expanding the infrastructure, and then the tiny bit that is left, will go towards the unemployment figures. I think it will be 20 years before they pay off the cost of absorbing them in the first place. By that point, they definitely will have kids, and so now their extra money will easily go towards the costs of more kids and then some.
Also, population density is not the only important factor here. We also have to consider the avaliabilty of food and the space required to produce our resourses. as its is, Britain currently only produces around 10% of the food it needs to feed its population. If we were to suffer another crisses like the one we had durring world war two, then we would not be ale to support the population, even with rationioning. Britain produces goods and services that we sell, and buy food with that. If that wasn't true, then we would have been in massive debt each year, and would have had to declare bankruptcy 30 years ago.
In the subject of population growth, unless someone sits down and does the Maths properly, we are likely to just be just suggesting solutions at will, without calculating the actual effects of those solutions, and of how to implement them in a way that generates us benefits. Doing the Maths is no different than doing the accounts in a business. It's the only way to avoid making lots of sales, and still making a big loss.
We cannot afford to rely on science in this respect, because science is likely to need to do experiments that work on the same time-frames that we are facing, and so would lead to results that are only available after they are too late to be used. We need something that can calculate results ahead of the time-frames we are facing, and that is what Maths is very, very good at. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 12:26:20 PM | My problem with your agrument Scorpio is that you are using the UK as some sort of example that can be generalized the world over when you are ignoring FOOD.
I think you say in your first post that if the US pop. gets cloned 7x, that would be fine, no problem. Trouble is, I don't think the UK is self sufficient in terms of FOOD. So to say the US can have a density similar to the UK does not make sense to me. I imagine much of the food the UK consumes comes from the US. As the density of the US increases, that means less food for the UK.
I understand trade, but, if all the areas of the world that are "ridiculously underpopulated" become sufficiently populated, then where does the food come from? | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 12:37:01 PM | okay guys .... first off ... population density on a national basis is absurd and totally valueless in this discussion.
there is a reason most of the earth's surface isn't populated.
it doesn't support a population.
the majority of people are in cities
cities are the disease on this planet
they eat all the resources, cause heat and light and air pollution
don't even try to feed themselves
and spread disease rapidly.
when the population becomes too great
the cities will implode and violent uprisings and disease will quickly thin the population
we won't destroy all life on this planet but will thin it out drastically
leaving scavengers and small predators.
the earth will bounce back after we are gone
then in 4 billion years approximately it will be swallowed by the sun as it expands in its cooling red giant phase.
I not worried though
I've got my space | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 3:29:51 PM | RE msg 16 by WhiteWaterRogue:
My problem with your agrument Scorpio is that you are using the UK as some sort of example that can be generalized the world over when you are ignoring FOOD.
I think you say in your first post that if the US pop. gets cloned 7x, that would be fine, no problem. Trouble is, I don't think the UK is self sufficient in terms of FOOD. So to say the US can have a density similar to the UK does not make sense to me. I imagine much of the food the UK consumes comes from the US. As the density of the US increases, that means less food for the UK. I was pointing out that things are NOT so over-populated as people make out and that things that people take for granted as being true, are not that accurate, when you examine the figures, and you run the numbers using Maths. I cannot make a generalisation that if the US increases in population, that the UK will run out of food, because we haven't been running out of food for the last 50 years, and if we ARE getting most of our food from the US, then we would have been getting most of our food for the last 50 years as well, and so we would be facing severe food shortages already.
I understand trade, but, if all the areas of the world that are "ridiculously underpopulated" become sufficiently populated, then where does the food come from? We are going to run out of food way before that. The sahara is growing massively each year, due to things like intensified farming. Amazonian tribes are fishing their local food stocks to extinction, in order to turn a profit. They are also illegally hunting the Cayman to extinction, because the Cayman is not worth much as illegal stocks, but it is one of the few ways that these people can make a living. But what is interesting is that in the Amazon, there are projects going that are making sales of animals like the Cayman legal to local tribes, provided they record how much they take of each species and stay within quotas set by scientists that ensure that stocks don't deplete below renewable levels. Oddly enough, these projects have turned tribes that were living on the edge of starvation, to become very happy and very well-fed.
What seems to be clear to me, is that we have plenty of resources to support everyone, but we mismanage it, and so we end up in food crises, just the same way financial lending was not controlled to stay within reasonable limits, that led to the current credit crisis, and which led to the current financial meltdown. We wouldn't be in the bind we are now, if banks and lending companies had been required to not lend to anyone more than they could reasonably be expected to pay back. But they were given a free hand, because we have a free market. So they lent too much, and most of us could not pay it back, and so the banks had lent a lot of money that they could not really expect to get back. The same thing is happening with replenishable stocks. We are taking so much of those farming and fishing stocks, that it is very difficult to keep re-using that farming land and those fishing stocks.
If we manage our food supplies effectively, then we probably won't run out of food, for centuries, and maybe millennia.
Also, what I was attempting to show was that countries with decent food and living for all, tend to have very low population growth. But it seems that countries with high levels of poverty have lots of children, and so our issues with high levels of population growth are related to how we manage our food supplies. In the last 10 years, Britain had mountains of butter, and other food supplies, that were far in excess of what we could use, and could have been used to help feed poorer countries, to bring them to a level where they would not longer be having 20 kids per family.
Right now, we are just in a very inefficient system. That inefficiency is driving us to take very impulsive actions, that make things worse. So we have to look at the figures, and come out with a realistic plan, so just a "quick fix" solution, and the reality is that any form of population control is just an easy answer that few of us have actually thought through.
WE HAVE TO CHECK OUT THE MATHS! IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO GET A REAL SOLUTION! | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 3:54:21 PM | our planet is already overpopulated, but thats not the scary thing, its the human instinct of greed and power that is scary. Once the planet is overpopulated and peole take control you have exactly what we have today. we wouldnt have the area to grow "safe" food for everyone if the population keeps growing.
where is the farm land going to come from? You cant take land from farming to make room for more suburban areas, then you have less farming. yes there are lots of areas that are not being used, but i believe with the trees it is serving a purpose to clean out the air, or should we remove the trees to make more room? for more people. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 5:12:38 PM | The richer a society the fewer children it has......mainly because women in said society choose to have a life away from child rearing.
This should point towards a solution to overpopulation.......Increase the living standards of everyone.
Ah!, but then we have the problem of over consumption of dwindling resources which will, in itself curtail the population.
If we do continue down the path we're on, the problem for a growning population won't be how to generate the food supply but to find the energy(oil/gas/electricity) and water sustainably.
So what's gonna happen when Americans can't drive their Hummers any more because China it using more Oil?............WAR!........If you doubt it then you're naive.
The trouble with WAR is that it doesn't really kill that many of the population and even if we get rid of about 1billion through WAR and subsequent death through disease/starvation we can generate a billion more within 10 years or so then we're back to where we started..
Nature WILL curtail the human population all by itself, especially if we keep on distroying our very eco system the way we are so I wouldn't worry that much about living in an overcrowded world........I'd be more worried about living in a less crowded one.
Check out this thread for a solution to ALL the worlds problems.
http://forums.plentyoffish.com/datingPosts11059231.aspx | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/22/2008 6:33:43 PM | | Mother nature always prevails. Not suprising that as soon as we cured virtually every disease we had a few curve balls thrown to us. Sometimes she likes to have fun and swat us with mega disasters,sometimes we help with war . We dont even know how many people really died in ww2. Its been awhile,we are overdo for a good one. Then there are the countries that curtail it with genocide. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/23/2008 1:36:17 PM | Instead of urban sprawl, we should be buiding more skyscrapers for human habitation, rather than as office buildings.
The land saved can be used for agriculture.
Lots of building designs have the two in mind. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/23/2008 2:18:49 PM | When overpopulation becomes an issue then a plague will reduce the population to an equlibrium.
I think the plague of man kind will be when some crazy countries, that don't know how to manage there own people, start making an impact on the world stage. The USA can only hold on to power for so long. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/23/2008 3:05:46 PM | Most population growth is in countries that can't feed or take care of the population they already have. Sounds cruel and I will catch a lot flack for this, but it is why I don't care for sending aid to "developing" countries.
Most first world or even second countries have zero or less population growth. Immigration is way causes there populations numbers to expand. | |
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| The threat of Overpopulation
Posted: 10/23/2008 3:12:00 PM | Most first world or even second countries have zero or less population growth. Immigration is way causes there populations numbers to expand.Most first world or even second countries have zero or less population growth. Immigration is way causes there populations numbers to expand.
Check out the size of the families of recent immigrants too. It must take a generation or two for the micro nuclear family concept to take root. | |
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