On February 08 2011 17:01 MrRicewife wrote: Read the national geographic that came out yesterday instead of speculating stuff. There is a huge article (it's front page too) explaining why the problem is poverty and the way we consume, not over population.
Do you have a link? Unfortunately not everyone can subscribe.
I find it hard to believe that the number of people isn't a problem though. Of course if everyone lived like wild animals and died at 15 we wouldn't be overpopulated, but since we try to improve our lives we put massive stress on the environment. There is only a certain extent to which we can be "green" while also enjoying modern comforts. Hopefully we will get better at that anyway.
I looked up the article and read it. Here's the link.
I don't see how "the problem is poverty and the way we consume" from that article, the poverty could just as easily be caused by overpopulation itself. The two are generally inter-correlated. The article does make a point to mention that the author believes reducing poverty will help, but only in that reducing poverty will aid in reducing overpopulation. Overpopulation is still the problem at hand. It also mentions that in some destitute villages in India, child bearing is a method of gaining social standing. The opposite should be true, if only those people were educated.
This type of discussion makes me furious over those who are opposed to abortion. I commend those who get abortions for not adding to the problem. So many people see child bearing as something that just happens, without really thinking about it they just do it as many times as they want. Most educated people are only bearing replacement numbers, which is great. I'm not necessarily against government imposed restrictions on the amount of children a couple can have (2, obviously). But with proper education that doesn't have to happen, as shown by the fact that it is already less than or equal to that in America and Europe.
On February 09 2011 07:45 Meta wrote: I don't see how "the problem is poverty and the way we consume" from that article, the poverty could just as easily be caused by overpopulation itself. The two are generally inter-correlated. The article does make a point to mention that the author believes reducing poverty will help, but only in that reducing poverty will aid in reducing overpopulation. Overpopulation is still the problem at hand. It also mentions that in some destitute villages in India, child bearing is a method of gaining social standing. The opposite should be true, if only those people were educated.
This type of discussion makes me furious over those who are opposed to abortion. I commend those who get abortions for not adding to the problem. So many people see child bearing as something that just happens, without really thinking about it they just do it as many times as they want. Most educated people are only bearing replacement numbers, which is great. I'm not necessarily against government imposed restrictions on the amount of children a couple can have (2, obviously). But with proper education that doesn't have to happen, as shown by the fact that it is already less than or equal to that in America and Europe.
Something I have hard time finding numbers on (in the western world) is if people are getting 2 children as expected. Or many people are skipping/leaving it too late and thus other families get the children to spare to make up for the figures.
Many European countries are in population decline only combated by immigration and the fact that many immigration families have more children than the country norm after they have emigrated. Advising abortion in a country that is getting a population even more elderly each year and that has a too low birth rate isn't good. Give birth and give it up for adoption instead.
A solution to the population problem in Europe would be to change who takes care of children. Say we manage to lower the average first child back below 18 years of age. Then the couple's parents take care of the child since they are at an age when their careers are often stable and no longer in school. This way the impact of having a child is smaller on the ones having them (at worst retaking a year at school), while ensuring more stable family environments. It doesn't seem likely to happen though.
Something interesting that might occur is that the western world gets so low populations that countries with population explosions get enough clout to force immigration. Say a country like Russia continues its population decline while its neighbours increase, how would they hold the border? Same case as the USA/Mexico deal.
Growth of population is directly linked to the levels of poverty in a country, that is true, but there is a more obvious link - healthcare and the quality of healthcare available.
Looking at Western countries, for which we have far greater levels of data, we can look at the birth rates over the past few hundred years. We find that there were a lot of babies being born to families, but at the same time, relatively few of them were surviving to adulthood, or even their first few years. There were so many complications which meant the chances of the child dying at an early stage in their life was very high - poor natal care, rampant disease, poor cleanliness and medical knowledge etc. If you had a child, it seemed it was more likely to die than to live. But people needed children to carry on the family business, or to help with earning power, so how do you combat this? Have a ton of babies. People were having a lot of babies because they were trying to beat the odds.
Carry this into the modern age. The last time a generation really had a lot of children was probably about the 50s-60s - the post-war generation. Here was a time when lots of people were having children, just like their parents, their grandparents, all those generations before them. But a lot of these children were surviving into adulthood, leaving a lot of people with families of 6,7,8 children. I'm sure everyone here knows a family like this. What changed? Healthcare. There was a better knowledge of disease, and a lot of new ways of preventing and treating it. Women suddenly weren't dying of simple factors relating to childbirth, babies were getting better care as soon as they were born, while mothers were told that maybe that last pint of ale isn't so good for the child, and please put out that cigar. We now expect children to survive - death in childbirth is a much rarer thing. As people get to access better healthcare, they are more likely to have children which survive. This means people start to have fewer children - we don't tend to pay attention to moralising crusades which tell us that it's better for the world if we only have one or two children. We pay attention to our wallets. It's a lot cheaper to have one or two children than it is to have 6 - imagine trying to hold down a job and care for them, or the healthcare bills, or sending them to college.
Of course, this level of healthcare really is only prevalent in the developed West. We have great healthcare (unless you listen to FOX, in which case Obama is ruining it and Britain has death squads....). In 'third world' countries, the level of healthcare is much lower, and access to that healthcare is limited by a number of factors - lack of money, lack of resources, warfare etc. So people are still following the 'beat the odds' system - have a ton of kids and hope enough of them survive to take care of you. But healthcare is not non-existent in these countries. There is a number of basic things that can be done to increase the chances of both the child and the mother surviving childbirth - boiling water, simple hygeine etc. Which means that more of these children are surviving. Millions of children which would have otherwise died from disease, poor sanitation, lack of knowledge, are surviving. These children are mouths to feed, are taking up space, are inflating the population. As basic knowledge of hygeine and healthcare spreads around the world, the population is rising because these children are living where they would have otherwise died. As the levels of healthcare rise across the world, and access to that healthcare becomes easier, more children can survive the arduous task of being born.
Likely as the population continues to rise and people start to realise their children are more likely to live (and that they will have to feed those children) the population growth will slow, then stabilise. The same thing that happened to us will happen in 'third world' countries. Eventually one or two children will be the norm across the world, not just in the West.
So there you have it. It's not a lack of knowledge about sex, or pregnancy, or a conspiracy to take over our countries. Medical science is to blame. If we could all just stop knowing how to keep our children and child-bearing mothers alive, we would be fine!
On February 08 2011 17:01 MrRicewife wrote: Read the national geographic that came out yesterday instead of speculating stuff. There is a huge article (it's front page too) explaining why the problem is poverty and the way we consume, not over population.
Do you have a link? Unfortunately not everyone can subscribe.
I find it hard to believe that the number of people isn't a problem though. Of course if everyone lived like wild animals and died at 15 we wouldn't be overpopulated, but since we try to improve our lives we put massive stress on the environment. There is only a certain extent to which we can be "green" while also enjoying modern comforts. Hopefully we will get better at that anyway.
I looked up the article and read it. Here's the link.
I don't see how "the problem is poverty and the way we consume" from that article, the poverty could just as easily be caused by overpopulation itself. The two are generally inter-correlated. The article does make a point to mention that the author believes reducing poverty will help, but only in that reducing poverty will aid in reducing overpopulation. Overpopulation is still the problem at hand. It also mentions that in some destitute villages in India, child bearing is a method of gaining social standing. The opposite should be true, if only those people were educated.
This type of discussion makes me furious over those who are opposed to abortion. I commend those who get abortions for not adding to the problem. So many people see child bearing as something that just happens, without really thinking about it they just do it as many times as they want. Most educated people are only bearing replacement numbers, which is great. I'm not necessarily against government imposed restrictions on the amount of children a couple can have (2, obviously). But with proper education that doesn't have to happen, as shown by the fact that it is already less than or equal to that in America and Europe.
So are you also furious over those who are opposed to capital punishment, are you also furious over those who are opposed to death camps?
Or more specifically are you opposed to those parents who beat their own children to death? Because that is (generally) why people who oppose abortion oppose it, because they see it as murder.
If you don't oppose killing people as a method of solving the population problem, then the problem is VERY easy to solve, start up death camps for internal population control & weaponize our smallpox for external population control. ................. sorry for the diversion, but that had to be answered
Basically if society has costs from an additional person, the parents should bear that cost. They already do in many cases, and that is shown in the fact that fertility is declining in DevelopING countries as well as developed ones.
i heard a lot of people yell for education here. this might be helping fighting overpopulation. it also leads to (for me) one of the saddest facts of life: the more stupid people are, the more children they have. this applies especially for more developed countries. people who go to college often have 1 maybe 0 kids, while a lot unemployed people have a lot of children. and are (in Germany at least) rewarded with more money.
and this will continue to be so, because people with more responsibilities in their jobs tend to not have the time or will to deal with a grand family at home.
stupid people carry on their gens, smart people die out, thus totally contradicting evolution. the share of smart people will decrease more and more. sure there will be some geniuses, but the number will get lower and lower. i think about it every now and then. and it makes me sad. mankind gets (more) dumb...
Actually 3rd world countries don't actually contribute to overpopulation, more affirmed countries contribute to overpopulation.
Even if people in say Ivory Coast were giving birth to 5 children the mortality rate is much higher so its basically 0.
While in established countries even people giving birth to 2 children is creating more people, because mortality is lower(better living conditions, better health care, etc...)
Plus the way mortality is measured is year by year, or 10 years at most. The right way to measure mortality is on a 100 years period. Did in 100 years more people die or more people were born?
So to me its more the failed system of calculating mortality, rather then anything else. As long as the myth exists that 3rd world countries are contributing to the overpopulation things are never going to change.
I'd what is more worrying is the way we consume things and the way we don't recycle.
Lets take mmother nature for example. Grass grows, deer eats grass, deer shits making grass grow again, bear eats deer, deer bones left, wolf's eats most of the leftovers and most of the bones, birds and other small animals clean up the rest. All these carnivorous shit, shit is used as food by various insects(fly's, beetles, etc...) the leftovers are degraded by bacteria and that is it. The cycle repeats itself and nothing goes to waste.
While we humans eat, throw, burn as garbage. make object, use, throw as garbage, burn or bury as garbage.
There were some numbers that only 0.2% in the whole world stuff that is recycled. So that leaves 99.8% stuff that would take thousands of years to degrade on itself.
On February 09 2011 13:48 thehitman wrote: Actually 3rd world countries don't actually contribute to overpopulation, more affirmed countries contribute to overpopulation. .
Incorrect.
Any country where women have less than 2 children on average over their life will decline in population, no matter how good medical care is.. it can't get mortality to Less than 0%.
And most population growth in the 20th century was in developing countries, and most of the population growth in the 21st century will be in developing countries.
On February 09 2011 13:48 thehitman wrote: Actually 3rd world countries don't actually contribute to overpopulation, more affirmed countries contribute to overpopulation.
Even if people in say Ivory Coast were giving birth to 5 children the mortality rate is much higher so its basically 0.
While in established countries even people giving birth to 2 children is creating more people, because mortality is lower(better living conditions, better health care, etc...)
So to me its more the failed system of calculating mortality, rather then anything else. As long as the myth exists that 3rd world countries are contributing to the overpopulation things are never going to change.
You....uh........didn't quite read my post, did you?
As Krikkitone says, developing countries will show the biggest population increase over the next century, as they possess adequate medical resources to keep the kids alive but haven't quite gotten rid of the older mentality of 'I'll be having a crap-ton of kids to make sure some of them survive long enough to care for my old age'.
On February 09 2011 08:34 Bibdy wrote: Overpopulation or not, the world's only getting dumber because smart people are choosing to have less kids, while dumb people continue to have more.
Also, I see a lot of this 'it'll peak at 9 billion, and then drop. Do the math' kind of responses in this thread.
Care to jot down the math and/or reasoning for those of us without the time and raw numbers at our disposal?
Myself and jstar posted links to articles and videos that support the 9 billion figure on pages 1 and 2. The numbers come from estimates from the UN and other organizations who have a lot more expertise in this area than anyone on this board.
If you don't want to spend the time to watch/read the links though, here's the short answer: Population growth in first world economies is traditionally very low or negative. Over the past 50 years, this trend has become apparent in emerging nations as well. In short, richer nations = more access to education and healthcare = few children = lower population growth.
The current forecasts estimate that population growth will cease somewhere around 2050 at around 9 billion. At that point, it is expected to begin to decrease.
It's interesting that a lot of the posters in this thread are basically using Malthus' arguments which are HORRIBLY inaccurate as he failed to predict the effects of technological advancement on both population growth and food production.
Edit: I thought about this for a second and decided to add another thought. Instead of worrying about overpopulation, people should be more concerned about the effects of negative population growth on a global scale. All estimates say this WILL happen within our lifetimes. Many of the decisions we make in society are based on the assumption that population will grow. A persistent decrease in population introduces a number of problems without easy solutions. We're already seeing these issues to some degree as countries struggle to support a growing number of aging citizens with fewer younger workers. Currently, these numbers are offset by immigration...what is the solution when the problem is no longer a regional one?
On February 08 2011 17:33 jstar wrote: Overpopulation is a myth.
I double checked the math, it's true.
The population of the earth is going to peak in 30 years, then start declining. Then everyone would start freaking out.
Problems about poverty and world hunger is another issue, not due to "overpopulation".
Why would population magically start to decline in 30 years?
That vid just says "it's not true lol, just a myth guys" without providing any evidence whatsoever.
There are sources for everything.
Here's one of them:
According to the U.N. Population Database, the world's population in 2010 will be 6,908,688,000. The landmass of Texas is 268,820 sq mi (7,494,271,488,000 sq ft).
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.
As for why the population will decline in 30 years:
According to the U.N. Population Database, using the historically accurate low variant projection, the Earth's population will only add another billion people or so over the next thirty years, peaking around 8.02 billion people in the year 2040, and then it will begin to decline. Check their online database.
I think you miss the point. The problem does not stem from the availability of living space, there is clearly plenty of that. The problems occur when you attempt to provide people with a certain standard of living. Higher standards require far more resources, a thing that our planet has a finite supply of. For example only certain areas are fertile enough to grow crops, almost all nations hit peak oil in the 80s since then production has been tailing off in the major oil exporting nations, and fresh water is becoming more of a priority especially for areas such as California or any desert environment.
It is finite resources not a lack of living space that has everyone worried about such unchecked population growth.
I think too many people here watched Idiocracy and took it seriously. The idea that 'smart genes' die out and 'stupid genes' continue is absolutely inane. Intelligence is not a simple issue and many of the people that are sometimes called 'stupid' are actually quite intelligent in certain specific ways but are not educated. This all assumes that intelligence is primarily genetic, but that is not clear at all. Clearly some people are just freakishly smart and really capable at certain tasks without much effort or training. I think the inclination to resort to biological determinism to explain this is premature, but is certainly a narrative that is appealing to those who want to see themselves as naturally superior rather than, perhaps, somewhat lucky. For centuries in Europe only a very small number of people were considered 'intelligent' or 'educated' while the vast majority were peasant farmers of some sort. Some of those peasants had descendants who became wealthy, powerful nobles or highly educated men, yet it is likely that they themselves were as ignorant and uneducated as one could be with the only schooling be a limited exposure to some Church based indoctrination.
At any rate, the issue of disparate birth rates in different areas of the world is very closely correlated with the education level of women. Educated women are likely more career oriented so they have a specific set of goals outside of child rearing that might be deterred if they were to get pregnant. They are also taught from an early age about birth control and contraception, which may seem like a silly thing to note, but it's nevertheless very easy for capable and clever people to believe really insane things if the circumstances are right. If you are really concerned with population levels, the best way to address them would probably be to help alleviate the poverty, ignorance and unequal nature of gender relations in a lot of these high birth rate areas of the world, but how exactly to do that is somewhat unclear and most more 'liberal' attempts to do that have ended up in political and cultural disaster.
Population is a double edged sword here in India. As pointed out , poverty and illiteracy contributed a lot to the the same, but the spread of education and awareness has helped checked this trend now.
Better lifestyle and more opportunities are available in urban towns which is encouraging people from villages to migrate there rapidly. This is causing an enormous strain on the standing infra in major cities like Mumbai/Delhi etc (Like the NYC /Londons of West). But the heartening fact to note is the growth rate of pop has been declining..
Humans are the scum of the earth, seriously. What kind of race desecrates the ecosystem that has given so much to them. There's no species on the planet in all of history that has made the earth as despicable as it is. Human's are so fuckin narcissistic, we're already thinking about finding other planets to live on because the earth is being fucked and desecrated by us humans. Sorry for the rant. And no I am not saying I'm not one of these humans.
On February 09 2011 08:34 Bibdy wrote: Overpopulation or not, the world's only getting dumber because smart people are choosing to have less kids, while dumb people continue to have more.
Also, I see a lot of this 'it'll peak at 9 billion, and then drop. Do the math' kind of responses in this thread.
Care to jot down the math and/or reasoning for those of us without the time and raw numbers at our disposal?
Myself and jstar posted links to articles and videos that support the 9 billion figure on pages 1 and 2. The numbers come from estimates from the UN and other organizations who have a lot more expertise in this area than anyone on this board.
If you don't want to spend the time to watch/read the links though, here's the short answer: Population growth in first world economies is traditionally very low or negative. Over the past 50 years, this trend has become apparent in emerging nations as well. In short, richer nations = more access to education and healthcare = few children = lower population growth.
The current forecasts estimate that population growth will cease somewhere around 2050 at around 9 billion. At that point, it is expected to begin to decrease.
It's interesting that a lot of the posters in this thread are basically using Malthus' arguments which are HORRIBLY inaccurate as he failed to predict the effects of technological advancement on both population growth and food production.
Edit: I thought about this for a second and decided to add another thought. Instead of worrying about overpopulation, people should be more concerned about the effects of negative population growth on a global scale. All estimates say this WILL happen within our lifetimes. Many of the decisions we make in society are based on the assumption that population will grow. A persistent decrease in population introduces a number of problems without easy solutions. We're already seeing these issues to some degree as countries struggle to support a growing number of aging citizens with fewer younger workers. Currently, these numbers are offset by immigration...what is the solution when the problem is no longer a regional one?
Well as social security begins to decline people will start having to take care of their parents/rely on their kids. So they start going back to the earlier model... Kids as your retirement plan. I agree it will be problematic, but I expect population long term to fluctuate/stabilize. Especially because people that think it is a good idea to have more kids can transmit that idea onto their children.
If the population starts declining, people will react and just pump out more kids. I'm not sure how or why people would think that will ever become a problem. The species isn't as functionally retarded as the Dodo to cause its own extinction through a slow bleed like that. We're much better at causing our own extinction through other kinds of slow bleeds (environment, war etc.).
On February 10 2011 09:59 Bibdy wrote: If the population starts declining, people will react and just pump out more kids. I'm not sure how or why people would think that will ever become a problem. The species isn't as functionally retarded as the Dodo to cause its own extinction through a slow bleed like that. We're much better at causing our own extinction through other kinds of slow bleeds (environment, war etc.).
um... usually the population increases dramatically because of wars... example: baby boomers. and environment... i guess natural disasters and such, but im pretty sure more people die of old age then a natural disaster.
EPT
i think about it every now and then. and it makes me sad. mankind gets (more) dumb...
