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On February 08 2011 18:56 cursor wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2011 18:41 spkim1 wrote:On February 08 2011 18:33 Ethic wrote: Population only increases by multiples if each couple has 3 or more children. Most couples only have 1 or 2 children in this century... Yes, and nonetheless population growth is known to be exponential at present, according to reliable statistics and data. What is your point in paraphrasing a part of what I said in the OP ? Edit: What do you mean by "most couples" ? Are you taking a sample that leaves out most of the African continent, South Asia, and South America ? its because people dont just die right after they have 2 kids. for example, my wifes grandma and grandpa had 2 kids, who each went and had 2 kids. There are now 2+2+4= 8 people. They are all still alive and counted as people. Basically, there is a piling up effect, because people usually have kids when they are 20-30 but live for 70+ years. Hence, the amount of time between people being created is much sorter than the amount of time that people live. By the time people die, they are usually around the Great Grandparent age... and soon after, if another 2 come... you're already growing again. 2+4+8= 14. (this is assuming the original 2 have already died)
Ahem, not quite. What you are describing is a short term effect of longevity, which is easily and fastly superceded by the exponential decrease of population if the fertility rate stays at 1.4 for a couple of generations. Longterm replacement fertility is necessarily higher than 2 (given that gender cannot be handpicked and people cannot be ordered to interbreed)..
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Educate the people, stop big birth rates.
Simple.
There is a direct coelation between analphabetism and the birth rates of a country...
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Children provide income for the family. Most children start to work way earlier then we do. They provide for their parents when they are to old to work. All the family stays in the village or town.
So families with smaller number of children are poorer then those with many.
+social status from having many children.
So on a family scale it is benificial to have many children. On a bigger scale it is dissastrous.
The population crises has been postponed time and time again by technological advances in agriculture. I think it will catch up to us and there will be famine, riots and political instabillity.
More crops are needed for biofeul. Climatechange. Draughts floods storms Erosion More strained food logisticsn Political tesion due to overpop landclaims waterclaims
I see no upside to further growth. Other factors in play will boost the negative effects of overpopulation
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drop from 7 bil to 3 billion and focusing on better conditions and education for the 3 would be better for humanity and the world as a whole, but it won't happen :/
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Developing countries have higher death rates and worse medical care than developed countries and that is why they have more than two children per family. Also it was already stated that in a mainly agricultural society it is always good to have one more worker on the fields.
If the natural resources start running short it will be felt everywhere. Wars have already been started entirely because of the need for resources (like USA's war on Iraq).
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On February 08 2011 20:27 despite wrote: Developing countries have higher death rates and worse medical care than developed countries and that is why they have more than two children per family.
What I think you mean to say is that developing countries come from an era with a high deathrate among children to an era with a low deathrate among children. This in turn cause the same number of sexual intercourses over a full life to result in more children than it did before. Again it is this change that has lead to the invention of contraceptives in developed countries.
As for the causes of this change, the most dominant two would probably be something like; Sanitation and pure drinking water. Population growth is nothing unheard of. It is a natural response to a changed way of living.
It is not entirely unlike one of our ancestors picking up a stick and using it for the first time to defend against predators. That also drastically changed the human population(If that ancestor can be called human).
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On February 08 2011 20:00 vordhosbn wrote:Show nested quote + India: India is land locked, a lot of the land is owned by land barons, and because mechanical capital is expensive relative to human capital, laborers are preferred.
Have you ever looked at a map?
Land locked was the wrong word. What I should have said was land rights are locked.
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Is over population really a concern? The U.S. and all of western Europe all have essentially a 0 growth rate whereas 50 years ago they had a very high growth rate. As a country becomes more developed the people just stop having lots of children for some reason.
Even countries such as Brazil, China, Indonesia, and India have seen dramatically lower population growth rates than 50 years ago. I feel like in another 50 years we will see the peak population of the planet, but it's leveling off.
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There are many factors for population growth, some of these factors affects a group of people more than others, for example:
Instinct of survival: When people are afraid of their survival instincs kick in and the answer is to have more kids in an attempt to preserve the species, who are the people having a lot of children in developed countries?, at least in Latin America it's always the poor people, being poor is not a good condition, it brings sickness and a lot of stress, people feel under pressure to survive, even when it's against logic having more kids when you are in such a situation it just happends. A more equal society tends to reduce this from happening, Cuba the only second world country in Latin America is the one with the lowest birth rate (please, I beg you do not quote Fox News into it's a protest against the communist regime).
Religion: Certain religions like derivated forms of Islam or protestants, in their traditions signal that couples need to have a lot of kids for the good of their nations. One of my neighbors had 6 kids 'because of his religion', he says it demands 12 kids but because it's too much he decided to at least achieve half of what it demands. Population grow in India is atributed heavily to this.
Grow in global GDP: People now can have kids while having means to sustain them, child mortality have been reduced by a lot, when there is abundance grows. This is tied to inequality of course... having the means to sustain the kids and to properly sustain them are two different things, in more equal societies grow should be closer to 0%.
In ancient Rome, Ceasar Auguste demanded the ruling class to have more kids because their grow was low in comparison to the gallics, some people say it is because their living conditions were much better than the later, sort of like what is happening in Europe today, the instinct to preserve the species isn't there because there is no danger of that happening any time soon...
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On February 08 2011 20:27 Fa1nT wrote: drop from 7 bil to 3 billion and focusing on better conditions and education for the 3 would be better for humanity and the world as a whole, but it won't happen :/
And who would decide who could live? And what would happen with parents getting too many children?
There is no easy way turning back and reducing population, there is either the option to expand to other planets, for which the technology already exists, though it would cost about as much as the US is in debt, probably more, including some lost lives... or have a big war which kills half the population.
I'm still in favour of expanding, yes, it's risky for people, it's expensive, but hell... it would solve so many problems.... oh, and it's definatly cool :p
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On February 08 2011 18:02 teh_longinator wrote: I mean, look at the vegetables now... there's nowhere near the amount of nutrition in them that there used to be, because we have to use less land to grow more... This is the opposite of the truth.
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Rhode Island, 50, 1545 sq mi, 4002 sq km. 1545 (sq mi) = 43,072,128,000 sq feet Latest official current world population estimate, for mid-year 2010, is estimated at 6,852,472,823 43,072,128,000 / 6,852,472,823 = 6.28563281 sqr(6.28563281) = 2.50711643
Conclusion: If you give everyone in the world their own 2.5ft x 2.5ft box, you can fit them all in the small state of Rhode Island. If you think the world is over populated... then move.
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So, divide 7,494,271,488,000 sq ft by 6,908,688,000 people, and you get 1084.76 sq ft/person. That's approximately a 33' x 33' plot of land for every person on the planet, enough space for a town house. The area seems low, but not as low as I thought. 33' x 33' ~= 100m^2 ~= 85kg rice ~= half years food for one person That is using Belgium's cereal yield, Zimbabwe would only make 3kg with the same area.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.YLD.CREL.KG
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On February 08 2011 20:02 Fa1nT wrote:
But that's too "intrusive on human rights herpity derpity". Get so mad when I see people with 5+ kids and they are supported on welfare and shit.
Do you get mad at old people and the disabled as well because they are on welfare and shit? You can blame poor people for overpopulating the world but its the rich people that are using a disproportionate amount of resources. A family with a good income is going to leave a far far bigger carbon footprint than 5 homeless guys.
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Hey don't worry we have a thousand years to colonize another planet (Tau Ceti or Mars since they found frozen water there) according to Stephen Hawking but first the 1% of the wealthiest population on Earth will live in luxurious condos on the moon away from most of humanity lol :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population <---
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Relax guys , with the fed printing all that funny money that will push the price of food beyond most people soon.Thats what caused the Egyptians to go over the edge.$10 for an average loaf coming within a year to the US.
Relax we're in Australia China and America will screw each other over and no-one gives a fuck about Australia because we have nothing any body wants in the middle of a war. EDIT: except vast reserves of iron ore, bauxite and uranium...shit.
Also Oil , natural gas and GOLD. Govt needs to start investing more in missile technology and scrap those useless collins class submarines. Also i would buy some nukes off the US .Most would disagree with me there , still i don't think you can underestimate the threat from China.
Like i said before what will happen , China is building a massive stockpile of resources , the mining industry here is in a bubble with manufacturing , services and construction all shrinking over the past 6 months (source : forexfactory.com ).Suddenly China will stop buying resources , the value of those mineral companies will collapse and China will buy them all up for cheap.
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On February 08 2011 20:27 Fa1nT wrote: drop from 7 bil to 3 billion and focusing on better conditions and education for the 3 would be better for humanity and the world as a whole, but it won't happen :/ And just how would you get rid off 4 billion people? Send them out to space? Nuke a couple of continents?
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Are you asking why there is overpopulation especially among poorer countries?
There are two main reasons that come to my mind and they're clearly stated in most articles about this subject.
1. Those in poor countries cannot afford to actually go do things. No electronics or internet to keep them entertained, so guess what happens in the 2-5 hours they're up while there is no light in their country, but they're not tired yet? They fuck. Very simple it is how the pass the time. Not read my candle light, not watch the TV, they don't have those luxuries. They fuck.
2. Lack of intelligence. Even if they had a book they usually can't read well. They can't get a decent job to afford a TV because of their lacking. Just how it goes.
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