overpopulation

That would suck. We will become overpopulated and have famen.

 

Dude no one is advocating those measures, China is not that extreme, it does allow 1-2 children/couple. But really, does one need to have 8 kids?

One method is with the aid dollars we already give to undeveloped nations, to award them to couples who commit to having less than 3 kids.
Retirement/pension funds replaces the need in first world nations to have many kids and third world nations need similar financial incentives.

One region in India has just implemented a program to set up trust funds for poorer couples that commit to less than 3 kids and the trust fund is largest for families whose only child is a daughter, to stave off the larger fetocide numbers of girls.

 

Thats a good idea. India has way more men than women.

 

I voted yes, but wanted to vote no too. While some areas are really overpopulated and dense, there is lots of space in this world. Africa, Canada, Russia, Asia..lots and lots of space.

But, if we do get overpopulated to an extreme, I'm sure we'll have another Black Death-ish plauge that will hit us in the next 300 years, and will wipe out millions upon millions.

 

here's a link to what I mentioned http://www.asiansexgazette.com/asg/south_asia/southasia04news55.htm.

And now China has it's own version http://www.asiansexgazette.com/asg/china/china01news91.htm

 

Kris, just because there's space doesn't mean human's should take all of it and leave none for other species. There is also the issue of resource and waste management and meeting Kyoto targets will be a challenge with a larger population.

Cities are also faced with mounting bills as the population outgrows the existing infrastructure.

With modern medicine I doubt that any pestilence will make a dent in the population.

A large population of people who are already warring over land and resources will drain budgets all over the world. That will be one of the consequences of unmanageable growth --> rising public debt on a global scale.

 

Excessive population growth is not spread out evenly over the earth.
The west is not experiencing explosive growth but shrinkage.
Islamic lands are having a population boom.
In China, population growth has been cut back by the one child policy.
In Africa the horrific aids epidemic is cutting back population growth.

These are diferent problems with diferent solutions.

The paradox for the west is fighting disease in the 3rd world then hoping that the birth rate levels off.

 

look at it this way. the more people on this planet now, then if/when plaetary catastriphy happens then we are more likely to continue to exsist and not be extinct.

 

Right now, there are 6 billion humans on Earth and the Earth can COMFORTABLY sustain 13 billion and we wont reach that figure for a long time. As many people have said here birth rates in most western cultures are already beginning to slow it's just the tip of the iceberg. we're gonna be fine

 

you're clearly an optimist. ignorance is bliss approach?

13 billion is approaching much faster than you can imagine.... especially if you only think there are SIX billion now... check the facts again, bro!

 

by 2011 more people will be alive on earth than have ever died........


that worry anyone but me?

 

I would recommend you do the same. No serious sociologists expect the population acceleration of the 20th century to continue on through the rest of history. Yes, the population is still increasing...but the RATE of increase peaked in 1971 and has been declining ever since. The majority of estimates I've seen (with some outliers on both sides) believe that the world population will level off between 9-12 billion people, sometime in the middle of the 21st century.

 

That's not true, that's just a myth. While it's difficult to estimate the exact number of people who have ever lived, many historians and sociologists have given numbers between 100 billion and 500 billion. Even taking the conservative number, that still means that only about 6% of the people who have ever lived are alive now.

 

I don't think over population is a problem yet, except for countries like China or India. (Some countries don't reproduce fast enough) However if things continue to go the way that they do the population could get out of control and there are studies that show how fast the population is growing and how much the earth is able to take

 

I think everything stems back to evolution and biology. Like what LSDseeker had to say about the European nations having fewer and fewer children, there's a reason for that, and I think it's evolutionary. I see the 3rd world nations as being least evolved, where as the European and Western Civilizations as being most highly evolved or most highly concious. As the "conciousness" of all humans on earth increases or becomes more civilized "concious evolution" will for the first time in earths history start to rule over unconsious/instinctive/animal evolution. Did that make any sense. I think of things like hybrid cars, wave generated electricity and smaller families. I personally can't join hands with those bible thumpers who shout supposed "End of Time" profecies. Evolution got us this far, it might take a turn, but fat chance it's going to leave us in the dust any time soon. Maybe I've lost my mind, keep dropping LSD yea baby, that's evolution. Please tell me what you think.

 

I've heard 106 billion in several places...never heard anything like 500 billion. The lower number makes more sense, considering the population really only started to expand 150 years ago or so. Before that it was much lower, under a billion, and even that was higher than before. http://www.efn.org/~patrickb/grf.jpg

 

of course

 

I do not doubt there are huge open wide spaces all over the earth, but can you honestly see, when over populations gets more serious that nations such as the US will openly let people into these open spaces from the third world? Here in the UK, over population isn't a huge problem yet but I do worry for the beautiful contryside which is unfortuantely been taken away and destroyed to make way for more buildings/housing/business/moneymaking enterprises. We have the space, but do we want to lose the space?
Peace and love Michael x

 

the thing is mass impact

it's not the physical density, it's not just the space the individual takes up


talking about overpopulation as an urban problem is absurd


each person takes x acres of farm land, y acres of landfill (more for richer nations) you cannot tell how overpopulated the world is by looking at a city, it's not possible


unfortunatly people aren't educated as to this and they think that overpopulation is a personal space problem

it's a food problem

it's a water problem, the water cycle is only so quick, water can only be purified at such a rate.....

a city is actually very effiecient, you are bringing mass water to one place instead of moving it to hundreds of places and all of your food and water is coming and going to one place


if you had one enourmous metropolis which housed the entire population of the earth (somewhere cold, the urban heat bubble would already make it unbearably hot, may as well cut it as much as possible) you could form an enourmous water collection grid, as well as farming and other activities elsewhere all to support this one place, it would dreadfully simplify logistics and you could reduce driving and frankly the city dwellers could probably get away with no driving at all



of course this wouldn't work, too many people would be asked to give up power, you would also need to work out how to get all the poor people there.....

oh well... it'd be more effiecient anyway....

 

the natural answer to over population = death

the logical solution to overpopulation = liberating women

yes people, even in the 21st century we still have equality issues.