Population Growth

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T0Mi
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Re: Population Growth

Post by T0Mi »

Really, we all should take greater care about what we write (and more time to read what others have to say). Don't poke on Adamo so much. ;-)
I'm sure he has been in a -really- bad mood and shortly after posting felt sorry.

A few posts earlier, someone subliminally suggested we should simply kill unwanted persons (prisoners), because they were worthless 'latinos' and foreign 'aliens'. I was shocked, and even more so, because noone actually made a comment about it. I was even starting to think it is somewhat secretly accepted.

While it's great we discuss 'touchy' matters, with all it's negetive side-effects that are so common around other places, reminding us this could well be a not-at-all-cuddly forum, it's amazing that within many people here, although we are scattered all around the globe, there still is a common sense that could well be called a "global order".

One day, when asked where they come from, people will answer: "from earth".

Let's keep it up this way.
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Jan
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Jan »

Agreed. Well said, Sir! :)
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Maven »

T0Mi wrote:Really, we all should take greater care about what we write (and more time to read what others have to say). Don't poke on Adamo so much. ;-)
I'm sure he has been in a -really- bad mood and shortly after posting felt sorry.

A few posts earlier, someone subliminally suggested we should simply kill unwanted persons (prisoners), because they were worthless 'latinos' and foreign 'aliens'. I was shocked, and even more so, because noone actually made a comment about it. I was even starting to think it is somewhat secretly accepted.
Worthless is one thing. Worthless implies zero worth. There are actually people who contribute NEGATIVE worth to the world. They give nothing, and take much. Sorry my post was so racist, it's just the fact for that particular prison. Killing all the criminals may be a bit over the top, but do you have a better solution? Deporting them doesn't work. Reforming them doesn't work. Currently they're just keeping them locked up so as to make sure they do as little damage as possible. But they're a HUGE drain on the rest of the people who actually contribute positively to the world.

Some of them have a huge net deficit in terms of net worth. How do you rationalize keeping serial killers alive? Or mass murderers? Someone who takes the lives of ten people certainly deserves to have their one life taken, don't you think? Why do we spend millions of dollars keeping them alive, and separating them from the general public so they can't take even more lives? Wouldn't it be simpler and better in every way just to apply the "eye for an eye" sort of justice?

Not so long ago, capital punishment was generally acceptable. Not so much any more. I'm not really sure why. I expect some of it is propaganda like movies like "The Green Mile" that publish instances where innocent people have been convicted. I believe that happens, unfortunately. Rarely, but I think it happens. However, I believe the bigger problem is murderers who are released and go on to kill other innocents.

If the goal is to minimize innocent death and suffering, capital punishment is a no-brainer.

It seems if overpopulation is really a problem, we should use the resources the best way possible. Surely eliminating the worst resource sinks and applying those resources to make the world better for contributing members would be a good idea. Housing one criminal in a penitentiary in Western United States costs more than an orphanage in Haiti needs to house 100 children. Surely 100 innocent children are more deserving than one criminal?

But that's only the tip of a greater iceberg. There are many examples of greater wastes of resources. The opulence that we saw in Saddam Hussein's palaces was very disturbing. How is it that a man so evil controlled so many resources, and had so little regard for human life? There are an awful lot of things going on in the world that if we knew about them, we'd say "That just isn't right."
T0Mi wrote: One day, when asked where they come from, people will answer: "from earth".
Ah. That's the real answer to the overpopulation problem, don't you think? Expanding to other planets. Especially once we get to the point where we can terraform and build our own planets.
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Bit
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Bit »

beowuuf wrote:Unless I missed previous posts (just read the latest) wasn't he just saying taking kids away from abusive families and putting them into foster care?
I came a lot of times to that conclusion - but just look what happens today in schools.
That's not a solution, that's a reason for the problems...
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Sophia »

Maven wrote:Surely eliminating the worst resource sinks and applying those resources to make the world better for contributing members would be a good idea. Housing one criminal in a penitentiary in Western United States costs more than an orphanage in Haiti needs to house 100 children. Surely 100 innocent children are more deserving than one criminal?
Unfortunately, capital punishment itself is a massive resource sink. The legal costs involved in capital cases are much greater, both in the initial trial and in the large number of appeals that will invariably result. Comparisons of the costs, adding up everything-- that is, the entire cost to house a prisoner for life without parole-- still end up being cheaper than going through all of the legal hoops required to impose the death penalty. From a purely economic standpoint, it's cheaper to lock them up and throw away the key.

Of course, these increased costs are nearly all bureaucratic. So, is the answer to remove some of the hoops? I'm not philosophically opposed to capital punishment, but I still generally oppose it, due to more practical concerns. What you've discussed seems fine in an ideal system, but even in the "free and democratic" Western world, where justice is more-or-less just, there are still biased lawyers and judges, politicians with agendas, and as long as humans are human, there will always be mistakes made. With that in mind, making it easier to put someone to death, the one conviction that cannot ever be overturned, just doesn't seem to me to be the prudent or wise thing to do. Someone who is wrongly incarcerated for a period of time has had years of their life and freedom taken away from them, but they are still alive and can still do something with the rest of their lives. Had they been put to death wrongly, there's nothing anyone can do.
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Roquen »

Other than moral and economic issues of capital punishment, there other huge concerns: a truly "fair" system, which IMHO will never exist and perhaps more importantly..."What's the remedy for when 'mistakes' occur"? Answer: none possible. The true point of legal systems is to enforce the common set of rules of behavior a given society chooses and to remove individuals which break those rules for some deemed period of time.
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T0Mi
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Re: Population Growth

Post by T0Mi »

Keep in mind, English is not my native language and I have to use simple words to make myself clear.
It also takes a lot of time to write these things down, but I do think it is time well invested.

It's all very simple, yet complicated.
So much easier to reach a goal by joining "the dark side of the force", than to take the long and steep path of the "right way".

Too many deers in the woods? Shoot them! Need workers you don't have to pay? Go get some slaves! Too many criminals? Lower the circumstances a death sentence can be spoken and have a drumhead trial! Too little room and resources for your people? Go to war! Need a scapegoat people can project their anger on? Blame the jews!

The list is endless, and I've deliberatly mixed what we already have (if only partial) overcome with things we still havn't.
The reason we can communicate here and now using modern devices is the outcome of people trying to do exactly that.

I understand your anger, I feel the same, but don't let the anger be your guide. The answer is yet so simple:
by trying to solve the problem the same way the problem is caused, we ain't doing any better than the evil we try to overcome.

And if we fail in trying, horribly fail, then we did at least that: try.
You may solve the problem by simply pulling the roots out, but the plant will die.
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(EDIT: and I just hate talking this way. I will now go to the chat, rename myself to T0PHUS and be all like GIANT STRAPON MOPHUS DOES TIGGY DILDO.)
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Maven »

Roquen wrote:Other than moral and economic issues of capital punishment, there other huge concerns: a truly "fair" system, which IMHO will never exist and perhaps more importantly..."What's the remedy for when 'mistakes' occur"? Answer: none possible. The true point of legal systems is to enforce the common set of rules of behavior a given society chooses and to remove individuals which break those rules for some deemed period of time.
Well, fairness is overrated. A truly fair system would punish murderers with their own murder, torturers with their own torture, rapists with their own rape, and robbers with their own robbery. Well, even that wouldn't be entirely fair, but that is about as fair as we could get.

But it wouldn't be right.

The true point of the legal system should be to try to protect innocent people from having bad things happen to them. But that's impossible. You can't protect everyone from every bad possibility. So you have to decide which "acceptable loss" you're going to go with. Some people would rather protect the convicted criminals (who might be there by 'mistake'). Other people would rather try to minimize innocent victims. Our current system leans toward protecting the convicts.
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Zyx »

Maven wrote:A truly fair system would punish murderers with their own murder, torturers with their own torture, rapists with their own rape, and robbers with their own robbery. Well, even that wouldn't be entirely fair, but that is about as fair as we could get.
I really don't think fairness is about punishment. I would rather imagine healing, repairing, growing, bettering, compensating, teaching, learning, respecting, loving, etc. (we're talking about a truly fair system, so why not?).
Hit hard or harder the criminals and they'll worsen; people will live with fear of them - and of the law. Teach them what I said and they'll become full, civic, fair, humane citizens; people will accept them back.
Maven wrote:Our current system leans toward protecting the convicts.
Are you talking about a specific, country or the western world? In France or Argentina - and most western countries I've had a glimpse -, the society is vindicative, there is no true reinsertion; jails are inhumane.
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Joramun »

Maven wrote:There are other issues as well. The entire issue of overpopulation is massively un-politically correct. Climate change will never have much of an impact. Fact is,
Ok, beside the "fact" I disagree with some of what you assert, climate change is an indirect consequence of population growth. And it will have consequences.
In the 16th century, forest were barely enough to sustain consumption in Europe, and it was still mainly for cooking and heating fires.
Coal "saved" European forest (in Japan, it was the Shogunate that saved forests by enforcing conservation laws) but at the price of starting the current situation: a society that relies on polluting means to strive (and CO2 emission is pollution).
Population control in ancient Japan was not done by samurais (they were merely mercenaries and bodiguards) but by father strangling the unwanted babies with their foot. In ancient Rome, they were simply dumped in a garbage pits.
Also, killing murder convicts is beside the point. Would that make any difference ? Wars, assassinations and death penalty have been the norm for the last 15000 years, and it didn't make any difference: we are 6 billions, and it's not because we stopped doing those things (World War rings a bell ? Gulag ? Holocaust ?).

The problem is simple: as long as food production/life expectancy increases, global population will increase.
The one and only one parameter that can change the trend is the average number of birth per woman.
It is below 2 in most European countries, Russia, China, Japan, and maybe others. Their population still increases because of a delay effect and life expectancy increase, but they will eventually stabilize.
On the other hand, countries with very high population growth happen to have the lowest carbon emission and pollute less, by head and in absolute numbers. Besides, their pollution is mainly caused by western firms coming and exploiting the resources in unsustainable ways, or in trading wood, furs, etc. so that local people are lead to unsustainable behaviors in order to enhance their life for a short term.
Additionally food trade sustains a higher population than the local environment could cope alone. Then people start to hack&burn forest, dig the ground, erode or pollute the soil, exploit their country in an unstainable way (since their food doesn't come from it, it's ok) and grow in population. Then when they have depleted their resources, their society collapses. That's what happened in Rwanda in a schocking way, that's what happening to Africa as a whole and in some Latin american countries and Asia/Pacific countries.

So what's the real problem ? The real problem is a bad mix: worthless resource management by local governments (and corruption), irresponsible capitalism, and lack of birth regulation.

Am I definetly against trade, or a filthy communist ? No. I guess a regulated world trade would be the best. Planned economy doesn't work that well. But I am disillusioned: politics follow money, not people, because the possibility of a violent uprising is low. And money comes from banks, big companies and other short-term interest lobbies.
In the very place a reasonable capitalism could be born, Europe, the European commission is at the hands of the most dogmatic ultra-capitalist in the world, which apply the free-trade idea to every little aspect of society.

I doubt, but I still hope.
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Maven »

Joramun wrote: Also, killing murder convicts is beside the point. Would that make any difference?
Good point. I think killing convicts isn't the answer, but if we could figure out a way to reduce the number of new criminals, the totals would go down as the old ones die off of natural causes. Education seems to be the biggest possibility. Reducing poverty next.
Joramun wrote: The one and only one parameter that can change the trend is the average number of birth per woman.
I think I almost agree with this. At least I agree that if we could affect the number of births per woman it would help the problem. I don't think we could affect that directly (Who wants to pass a law limiting births and then actually enforce it?) But we might be able to work on some indirect stuff. Education seems to have the biggest effect. That would be possible. Reducing poverty also has an effect. That could be possible if we could get around idiotic governments that intercept aid and such. Hmmm... These things sound familiar. There might be other things as well.
Joramun wrote: Additionally food trade sustains a higher population than the local environment could cope alone.
So you're saying if we eliminated food trade the populations would starve and that would solve the problem?

Hmmm...
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Re: Population Growth

Post by dayday2008 »

:o WOW! Thats some can of worms you opened here Gambit. I presume thats as intense as it gets on these forums?

I must stress that i've been thinking of so many radical ideas and opinions to add to this topic that dont think I could deal with getting to invlolved so i'll keep it simple.

Is it not the responsibillity of: a mother and father to decide how many children they can support?
a nation to decide how many citizens it can sustain?
mankind to decide if it wants to live in peace?
the Earth and it's nature to decide in the end?

I'm sorry if that sounds like a load of bollocks but its the best I could do.
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Re: Population Growth

Post by oh_brother »

Yes, the ideal would be if the average birth rate fell the world over without any external influences like shortage of resources or enforced family planning.

And of course only the average has to fall. As we have seen even in this forum there is a huge variety between what people want - some want large families, some small, some want none - and that is among people who are all from pretty similar backgrounds and education levels. So there should be room for everyone (in my very optimistic world view).

Interestingly possibly the biggest contributor to population growth is a single scientific discovery. The Haber process for producing ammonia allowed huge increases in food production. Within a few years of the initial discovery the population growth became exponential (see the graphs at the end of this link).

So really we should blame Germany for the population explosion. Perhaps we should ban Trantor as a symbolic gesture? (I think I have been on the forums long enough to make that joke now :D ).
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Jan »

Good point with the Haber-Bosch process, OhBrother, indeed! A huge and very important invention! However, it was definitely not the only and very likely not the most important factor causing the demographic revolution and population growth - the simultaneous growth of use of artificial nitrogen fertilisers and of population is actually a "confluence" of two important factors, both parts of a wider modernisation trends in the 19th and 20th centuries. As I pointed out above, the population growth was not influenced only by the growth of food production, but also (and very, if not more importantly) by the improvements in medicine, hygiene and sanitation. Whereas the famines were "only" catastrophic events of a short-period importance, the extremely high rates of children mortality due to lack of hygiene and medical care were chronic for most of the history of man kind before the 19th century. Lack of food could be handled with imports - the UK being the prime example (the UK was importing more food than producing it even at the end of the 19th century!). Anyway, the artificial fertilisers were really crucial, I agree. :)
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Chaos-Shaman »

Maven wrote:There are other issues as well. The entire issue of overpopulation is massively un-politically correct. Climate change will never have much of an impact. Fact is, global warming is already on the decline and has been for a few years. Not that it would have much impact anyway. Population trends are seriously affected by racial, cultural, and religious factors as well. Latino areas in the US have a huge influx in population growth. I understand France has a negative population growth, but recent growth in the Muslim areas might have some impact on that. Historically, Mormons and Catholics and such have been the big family forces in the West, but I think their impact is going to be tiny compared to the upcoming Muslim factor.

I totally agree with Jan, that we can make plenty of food, but the political issues are the problem. There's an 86 year-old farmer that lives down the road from where I live that farms 155 acres by himself. He hires help during harvest time, but other than that, he does it all. He spends most of his time running and fixing the machinery, but fact is that it is not unusual. The 160 acres next door grew a bumper crop of wheat this year. Other than the irrigation pivot, which was automatic, we saw machinery rarely. He did hire 4 or 5 Mexicans to come in one day and pull the weeds that were taller than the wheat. And harvest was two days of combines and dump trucks. He came out with the tractor to disk and plant, and had a sprayer driving around a couple of times. Everything else was delivered through the irrigation system. It's pretty slick.

Problem with Urbanization is that the orchards get cut down to make room for the housing complex. Farming doesn't pay. A few years ago, Al Gore spoke to the Future Farmers of America. He told them to go get other jobs. Farming in United States was on the way out. It's cheaper to import veggies from South America than to grow them.

Fact is, our priorities are not consistent. We waste billions of dollars on our prison system. The prison on the other side of the state where my ex-nephew-in-law worked spent an average of $27,000 per year on each inmate. Over two-thirds of the inmates were Latino, and an awful lot of them were illegal aliens. There are many good families living around here that would be ecstatic to work HARD for $27,000 a year. Why do we spend resources saving the lives of people that have serious negative impact on the world? Two people die of e-coli poisoning and we outlaw tomatoes. One person gets an allergy and we require the airline to spend I-don't-even-know-how-much to provide a nut-free zone. We see legislation designed to remove guns from everyone except police and military. Yet we still allow people to drive around in cars, which kill MANY TIMES more people than ...

Not that it would help much. Fact is, people die. They just do. I'm planning on dying some day. Everyone dies. If they don't die from automobile accidents or being murdered, they'll die from diabetes or cancer. And if we cure cancer, they'll die of heart disease. And if we cure heart disease, they'll die of Alzheimer's. And if we cure everything, they'll still die of old age. It's a Sisyphic battle that we can never win.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but maybe the values are arbitrary. In semi-ancient Japan, the Samurai didn't seem to be too particular about killing people that made negative impact on society. Maybe that's how they dealt with over-population on their tiny island. Only the most honorable (theoretically) survived. There are still places where Genocide is the rule. Maybe we need a good pandemic to kill half of us off. That might help.
wow, that's the best explanation ever, well thought, i agree with the exception of genocide.
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Chaos-Shaman »

i wouldn't worry about population too much, or the climate either, time has a way with natural events that will create or prevent something that will in the end change everything. killing prisoners would not solve anything, we all make mistakes, and how can a prisoner learn from their mistake if their hung, and lastly, there will always be innocents who will be convicted and the law can be bent. the internet has got everyone to complain all together, making it seem worse than what it is, the climate is going to change as change is the only constant.
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Re: Population Growth

Post by oh_brother »

@Jan: ah, okay, that makes sense. Not much benefit of having extra food if child mortality is still holding growth back. Although we surely could not feed the 6 billion people on the planet without artificial fertilizers? So we could not have our current population without it, even with improvements in health?

Maybe chemists like to overstate the benefit of the Haber process, just to sound more important!
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Jan »

oh_brother wrote:Although we surely could not feed the 6 billion people on the planet without artificial fertilizers? So we could not have our current population without it, even with improvements in health?
Honestly, I don't know. There are so many "ifs" and so many complex relations and long-term consequences and lack of reliable global data that it's really hard to say. You should probably make scenarios to answer it.

What we know is that we wouldn't be able to produce so much food in developed countries as we do now without artificial fertilisers. Of course, there are ways of "natural" nitrogen fixation for instance (leguminous plants), and of increasing the long-term soil productivity / yields (smart crop rotation - e.g. the "Norfolk" rotation scheme), but current yields are simply higher than anything that can be achieved in a "natural" way.

On the other hand, there are still large reserves in developing countries. They don't use much artificial fertilisers, of course, and there are large tracts of land mis-used, under-used or un-used at all. What if we cut all the tropical forests and used this land for agriculture? What if we started large-scale irrigation projects in semi-arid areas? The tropical areas have much higher natural productivity than the temperate zone, so the food could be produced there and exported to developed countries. In theory, the World can... I mean could... produce enough food without artificial ferilisers.
Well, not taking into account the environmental consequences of that, of course... You just have to choose - you can invest into intensification (fertilisers, chemical plant protection) and thus increase yields on currently used land and thus save the forests; or you can cut the forests and start farming there, and then you wouldn't need chemicals. A Catch 22, isn't it?

However, my point is that any of the ways depends on energy - on large external energy inputs to agriculture. Production of artificial fertilisers, global transport of food - this is all dependent of energy. Once we loose the sources of cheap fossil energy, we will be in really big troubles.
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Maven »

Here's a link to a YouTube video that changed my opinion on this subject in a major way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkp ... 0D&index=1

It's an 8-part series, but the important subjects are covered in the first two parts. There are a lot of other political issues covered as well, but the relevant part for me was the math on exponential growth v.s. finite resources. Population growth can't be sustained. If we don't (or can't) figure out how to slow it down, nature will, and we might not like how it turns out. Even colonizing new planets is only a temporary fix, unless we can figure out how to travel faster than light.
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Joramun »

Well, the common argument is that developed nations seem to stop growing in population at some point, see Japan, and most of Northern and Eastern Europe.
However, seeing the density at which it may stop, this doesn't mean population won't go over-the-top (if it still hasn't).

Colonizing new planets IS NOT A FIX.
1) Sending a few guys will not relieve the situation on Earth
2) Sending a few millions is not a relief either, and is not technically feasible
3) Any margin is always taken: think of a gas, that always takes all the available space: new 'room' (food supply, etc.) will trigger growth until the next equilibrium/frontier is reached

But this misses a point: though I'm not an advocate of growth, it turns out technology is "intensifying" in term of value vs. material & energy used. So we could well be on the verge of a new model of economic growth without material use growth: heavy recycling + renewable energies + depollution. However, my personal opinion is that it's too far away and we won't bridge the gap, i.e a massive breakdown (including war, local collapses and starvation, but these already happen all the time, so what ? ) will occur in-between.
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Jan
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Jan »

Maven wrote:There are a lot of other political issues covered as well, but the relevant part for me was the math on exponential growth v.s. finite resources. Population growth can't be sustained. If we don't (or can't) figure out how to slow it down, nature will, and we might not like how it turns out. Even colonizing new planets is only a temporary fix, unless we can figure out how to travel faster than light.
I didn't watch the video, but - with all the respect - what you write is in a contradiction with any serious scientific findings. I think I've already mentioned it before, but the population growth is not exponential, but follows the "S-curve", i.e. slow growth - fast ("exponential") growth - slow or no growth (or even decline). It's simply the "demographic revolution". It's just that the developed countries entered it during the 18th and 19th centuries and it's over here now, whereas various developing nations are currently in the process or have barely entered it. All serious scientific scenarios show that the population of Earth should stabilise somewhere between 10 and 15 bil. people. But I think I've already said that above.

Of course, in many developing countries the population growth is a problem, it leads to a huge and increasing pressure on environment and sources (land, water, etc.) and can lead to serious things like political or social unrest or even wars and military clashes (with Nigeria and many other African countries as good examples). And of course, we should do what we can to help the local people solve their problems (humanitarian aid, regional development, etc.). But forget any Malthusian catastrophic scenarios on a global scale. If a global catastrophe comes, it wouldn't be caused by population growth, but by global mis-management of resources, ignorance to environmental laws and sustainable growth practices, or general human stupidity.
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Re: Population Growth

Post by Zyx »

You should watch the video Jan. What you say is covered.
From what I remember - I saw it long ago -, any growth based on consumption of finite resource WILL BE slowed and stopped, that's a mathematical fact. Without self control and planing for sustainability, the natural regulation of this growth will be painful and disruptive.
Note that the same logic applies to any kind of resource consumption, not only vital space.
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