Overpopulation

I don't know about you, Kandahar, but I would rather not have the need to biochemically engineer the food that I eat.
And you honestly think it's called 'maximum capacity' because we will reach that number and stay at that number?
The world will shake us off, and it is people like you that are going to let that happen.

Peace, and smarten up.

 

And you keep mentioning that I say resource distribution problem.
The countries whose populations are growing rapidly are those that are suffering, and will continue to suffer, from the lack of resources.

I actually believe overpopulation is the cause, either directly or indirectly, of most of the worlds problems.

 

The ignorance, and willful blindness expressed in some of the posts is truly stunning. I never cease to be amazed at the oblivious optimism shown by those that don't have a clue about the actual stats. We passed sustainable population levels decades ago, and know what.........we never stopped growing. The oceans are empty, deserts are growing, old growth forests are just about totally gone. Other species are going extinct daily. What gives?


There is a site called exitmundi that describes the many different possible means of our mutual demise, and overpopulation is one.

If Asia and Africa are overpopulated, and we're underpopulated, then the solution is clear. We need a huge relocation effort. Maybe bring a couple hundred million people from each continent to the Americas and maybe we could find a nice balance.

 

One more thing.
Our resources are finite. not infinite.
Everything that happens on a small scale, also happens on a large scale.
Take the case of Easter Island. It is believed that to move the Moai, they used numerous trees to roll them. They also used to wood to make boats and fires.
Soon the island was barren, and the inhabitants died out.
http://www.netaxs.com/~trance/rapanui.html
Peace

 

That's your choice I suppose, but those of us who enjoy reaping the benefits of science and technology will have access to much healthier foods in the coming years than we have today.

Genetically modified foods will eventually be much cheaper and easier to produce than non-GM foods, and will help feed the world's poorest people. How can anyone view that as a bad thing?

Let me make sure I understand your view correctly: Once we hit a certain magic number of people, we're all going to suddenly die? Or did I misinterpret you somehow?

 

That's a problem of economics, not resources. More people also means a higher gross national product, which buys more food. You can't honestly believe that population alone will deprive us of resources. The United States has 300 million people. The Dem. Rep. of Congo only has 60 million. Which has a higher standard of living?

Did you consider the CAUSE of an increasing population? Lower death rates! That's a hallmark of a high standard of living. If the population were increasing because the birth rate suddenly spiked in the past century with no accompanying advances in technology, you might have a point. But the population is increasing BECAUSE of our medical, agricultural, and industrial technology, and will continue to do so for a few more decades.

 

Those problems are not caused by overpopulation. Both those problems AND overpopulation are caused by advances in our technology.

My point exactly. There's plenty of room and resources for everyone; it's just a question of distribution. The United States (lower 48 states) has an area of 1.8 billion acres. If we assume that the average family size is 4 people, all 1.5 billion families of the world could fit comfortably in the United States with plenty of room to spare.

Barring that, there's plenty of unpopulated land in Canada and Russia...but the population in both of those countries is SHRINKING.

 

That's your choice I suppose, but those of us who enjoy reaping the benefits of science and technology will have access to much healthier foods in the coming years than we have today.
.

Genetically modified foods will eventually be much cheaper and easier to produce than non-GM foods, and will help feed the world's poorest people. How can anyone view that as a bad thing?
.
More people also means a higher gross national product, which buys more food. You can't honestly believe that population alone will deprive us of resources. The United States has 300 million people. The Dem. Rep. of Congo only has 60 million. Which has a higher standard of living?
Kandahar

Yuck!
I think that the idea that frankenfoods will bring us healthier foods than the ones that are not genetic engineered is hopeful, wishful, fantasy.
If only we could grow food in soil that is as nutrient rich as our grandparents had. The soil is empty of all but a skeletal vestige of minerals. The food we will have can only be as healthy as the elements it consists of, and the vast majority of those elements are depleted to nil in most farms. Potassium, Nitrogen, Phosphorus. That is what we get now, 3 out of 60+ that used to be in our veggies. Mmmmmmmmmm good.
And regarding famine, there has never yet been a time when it was not possible to feed the starving, without GM foods. There has just not been the will.
Finally, your belief that our population alone will not deprive us of resources, well, that totally defies my sense of logic. Of course it will, it has done so, it is doing so, and it will continue to do so, until this last remnants of the thin skim of organic biomass leftovers are consumed by us. And it won't be long.
imho.

 

The point is that alternatives to traditional methods of food production do exist, and will become more available in the near future. They will be able to feed the poor, because I'm sure you agree that "frankenfoods" as you call them are better than no food at all.

So you agree then that it's not overpopulation responsible for food shortages, it's the governments of the world.

Most resources that we use are renewable, and most nonrenewable resources will be phased out as new technology becomes available. You say that our population already deprives us of resources. Really? Then why is it that a very densely populated, resource-poor country like Japan can provide all of its citizens with plenty of food, whereas a very sparsely populated, resource-rich country like the Congo cannot? There are obviously lots of factors at work here. Population doesn't even make the top ten.

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb072804.shtml

 

It just may be that GMFoods will be the mechanism by which we end up with no food at all. The laboratory designed seeds that produce plants that cannot reproduce is a potential way, if it gets out of control.

I don't blame governments, I blame you and me. We cannot blame the governments, as they are put in power by us, and stay there by doing what we want them to. We are the governments.
As for the Congo/Japan query, I have my own personal opinions on the whys and wherefors, but am just not up to getting into it right now. I will say that Japan needs to import food, they are not selfsustaining foodwise, and that the Congo, if it had not had Western counsel regarding what to grow, could easily be self sufficient in its food production. Sadly, many developing nations were told that mono culture, the production of a few key export crops, instead of polyculture, was the best way to go. I would say that in some cases the advice was more like a command by the colonial nations representatives to do so, I would say that, but I won't.

 

Can you make fertilizer and pesticide with a wind turbine or a solar cell? No. You need oil. Cheap, plentiful oil. Without that, we have no fertilizer and pesticide (critical to our food production, which ravages the soil and, being monocultures, is vulnerable to pests), and without those, we do not have enough food. Already world food production has fallen below the need.

And fusion is a fantasy...maybe it will work a little, but there is no way it can meet demand. Right now it is very far from even being a workable system to produce energy (it uses too much energy to make the energy); we'll need a few miracles to be able to get a fusion system up and running in the 10-30 years left of oil we have left, and I'm sorry to say, it ain't gonna happen.

And it still doesn't solve the food problem. You can't make fertilizer with fusion.

You are willingly ignorant.

 

Kandahar, If you think every country in the world should have the same standard of living as the united states, you are more ignorant than I thought.

 

Kandahar is Anthropocentric. HAHAHA

Peace

 

Here is my opinion on overpopulation:

Clearly the United States does not have an overpopulation problem in the sense that it is able produce more then enough food to support the people and has the infrastructure necessary to support the needs of the people (electricity, plumbing, education, and ect). But in my view the United States still has an overpopulation problem in that it does not have the natural resources needed to sustain its population and it does not have an effective way of getting rid of waist and polution. If the population was reduced by a thousand fold, energy concerns, pollution concerns, and suburban sprawl would essentially disappear. So what do you do about it? I don’t think there is much you can do unless your ok governmental control on reproductive rights.

Some third world courtiers do have population problems, of course. But that is a different subject.

 

I don't know enough about the production of those things to answer your question, so I'll just offer this quote from Arthur C. Clarke: "New ideas pass through three periods - It can't be done; It probably can be done, but it's not worth doing; I knew it was a good idea all along!"

Even as the world population has exploded dramatically over the past 50 years, starvation has decreased.

I again refer you to the above quote. And 30 years is a LONG time, technologically speaking. With the accelerating pace of technology, the next 30 years will most likely see as much change as the last 300. Many technologists (Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge, to name a couple) think that nuclear fusion will become a reality around 2025-2030.

I love you too.

 

I'm not passing any judgment on whether or not everyone SHOULD have the same standard of living as the United States. My point is that there are enough resources in this world that it would be possible.

 

What?! where would those be found? If your right, I must not be nearly rich enough. anyway, even if we did have the resources, i dont think thats where the biggest part of the problem is. We keep pushing hundereds of species of the edge every day, and nature will cease to exist as we know it(Or just cease). We are dependant on nature over everything else, and humanity needs to come to relize soon that we are a part of the enviroment and in no way above it, or its just gonna be to late. We came from the common slime that every thing else that walks or grows did. what gives us the right to live any differently?

Peace, as usual.

 

Obviously you don't know what you're talking about.

 

The world's farmers produce 4.5 pounds of grain alone per person per day. If another billion people were suddenly added to the world population with no accompanying increase in food supply, there would STILL be enough food for everyone. There is PLENTY of food to go around, it's simply a question of distribution. 840 million people are malnourished, while unimaginable amounts of food go to waste.

As for land area, I've already mentioned that you could fit the entire world in the lower 48 states and still allow each family an acre of land. You could also fit the entire world in Texas and the population density would be no greater than that of Paris. This would leave the rest of the planet's surface for other things such as producing even more food. Obviously I'm not advocating actually doing that, but it does illustrate the amount of open space available on this planet.

To BlackGuard: Here you can read two articles debating the merits of GM food aid to third-world nations. But one thing that both writers agree on though is that the world produces enough food for everyone: http://www.foodfirst.org/media/opeds/2000/9-enough.html

 

Concerning resource production, resource distribution, and world population, the following website has a rich amount of information for any questions you might have:

http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/