Population Growth

[Gambit37]

If population expansion continues in the same way it did over the last 100 years, the world simply can't support that many people. We should be looking at limiting numbers instead of keep expanding the population uncontrollably.

Discuss

[Zyx]

We should be looking at limiting numbers instead of keep expanding the population uncontrollably.

I am excused if I breed serial killers then.

Honnestly I'll try to raise a good person. There aren't enough good persons and that's even more important than overpopulation.

[Gambit37]

I'm not saying that people shouldn't have children: of course, everyone has the right to children.

Logically however, we've seen what the population explosion has done to this planet. We can barely feed the people who are already here and those in poorer countries are the ones who suffer most. While it's entirely natural to want to have children, it's a fairly inward looking view and as a global society we should be looking more outward at the effects our personal choices have on the world.

The population in 1800 was around 1 billion, in 1900 it was less than 2 billion, and in 2000 about 6 billion. Today it's about 6.8 billion. By 2050 it'll be more than 9 billion. That's a 900% increase in 250 years -- which is completely unsustainable as we are already seeing.

Tomi is right to a certain degree that population growth is actually slowing down, relative to 10 or 20 years ago. There *are* fewer babies being born when calculated against the size of the population. But the population still increases because the population is so much more massive than it was 100 years ago.

Of course, with such a large aging population, the delicate balance of births vs. deaths is very different from 150 years ago (before modern medicine) when the infant mortality rate was much higher. We're having fewer children who live longer and longer. Maybe in the end this means things will eventually balance out again?

Interestingly, the chart shown here (http://www.geohive.com/earth/his_history3.aspx) has predictions up to 2050 -- and clearly the growth rate (according to current trends) is slowing down significantly.

[Adamo]

Total amount of people on earth started rapidly growing since circa XVI - XVII century because of civilization progress.
I don`t think earth is overpopulated - earth could maintain about 50 bln people, if it was managed well (take a Holland, which has a great density along with the great farming). And take a look at Russia, the biggest country on the world - it could easily mantain 1 bln - or even a lot more than a China - but is badly managed, so there is a minimal growth. Generally, great growth is in poor countries like Ethiophia or Haiti. Since India started getting rich in 90s, the growth rate slowly going down (don`t remember exactly, but I think there is 3.5-4.0 children on a women, which in 60s or 70s it was about 6.0-7.0. Same for the China - people in growing countries want to have more children, but the richest the country is, they want lesser family (China had hard restrictions, but it didn`t work in the villages). So if we want to stop great growth rate in poor countries, we should help them economically.

It`s not a problem of amount of people in the country, but well managing. There are a lot more Chinese than 40 years ago, but the country is developing very well and has no famine, as it was before.

Other question is global warming (or generally climate changes) - if the climat will really change much, that might cause serious disasters and food shortages. If climat had changed very much, that could mean a gigantic shortages and famine, no matter the technologies we have, because we depend on farming. You might help trying to predict it on your home computer: http://climateprediction.net/ Ok. I know predicting the climate on the earth is tremendously hard, but scientists at least tries to do that. Climateprediction project is currently on a development stage and we may help to make some progress.

[Jan]

Don't forget that you have large regional variations of this. The timing of the "demographic revolution" that causes the growth of population is significantly different - it's over in Western countries, but has barely started in many African countries.

The "Demographic revolution" has 4 phases. In phase one (before) you have high both natality and mortality, so there's almost no population growth. In phase two mortality decreases (hygiene, medicine, etc.), so the population increases significantly (lower mortality than natality). In phase three natality starts to decrease (changing behaviour, life values, etc.), so the population growth stabilises and than decreases, and in the fourth phase (after) both natality and mortality are low, so the population increase is negligible or the population even decreases. The population growth follows the so-called "S-curve" (low - high - low).

In developing countries, the population is growing rapidly, with more than 4 children per woman. There's higher mortality in the West (mostly infant mortality), but the population growth is significant - they are in the phase two or three.

In Western countries, we have between 1.5 and 2.5 children per woman (2.1 is the lowest sustainable rate), because the demographic revolution has already ended. Most Western populations are dying off. Well, this might be a "scientific" reason to have children, if anybody needs it.

Most scientist say that the developing countries will undergo the same trend as the developed, and they'll get to phase four. But who knows? The decreasing natality in phase three and four is largly dependent on culture and behaviour.

EDIT: And about nourishment of growing population: Western countries have large surpluses of food production. We dump our food and the biggest problem of our agriculture is how to produce less! Western agriculture is too productive, too effective! The US or the EU solely would be able to nourish the whole World even if it had 10 billion of inhab.! So it's not about producing enough - it's about distributing the production too everybody! And that's a different story - it's not a question of technology, but of politics and economy.

On the other hand, it's all based on using fossil fuels (tractors and othe machines, production of fertilisers and other chemicals, processing industry), so once we exhaust fossil fuels and other energy sources... we'll have a problem!

[Roquen]

Don't forget meat consumption. Maintaining veggie eaters is easier. I'm not giving up my meat though!

[Jan]

You're absolutely right! It takes 7 to 10 Joules of energy of plant biomass to produce 1 Joul of energy in the form of meat (depends on animal species).

But this still wouldn't solve the problem of agriculture in developed countries. The main problem is that agriculture is ineffective in energy terms - it consumes more energy (in the form of fuels, fertilisers, chemicals etc.) than it produces. In the most productive agricultural systems like in the US you need 2 or more Joules of external energy to produce 1 Joul in the form of food; in some cases the "effectiveness" of agriculture goes bellow 20 % (you need 5 Joules to produce 1). So the whole agriculture is heavily dependent on external energy sources and works as an "energy sink".

This is a huge difference when compared to pre-industrial agriculture, where the agriculture was the main source of energy. For instance, the energy output / input ratio was up to 10/1 in Central Europe one or two centuries ago (you produce 10 Joules of energy per 1 Joule of energy input).

[ian_scho]

Wow man - why don't they teach this stuff at school. Those are thought provoking numbers Jan - thanks!

[Sophia]

Obviously the real solution is fusion powered tractors.

[Bit]

Climate, wars, vanishing resources and new flus will keep that under control.

[Jan]

Wow man - why don't they teach this stuff at school. Those are thought provoking numbers Jan - thanks!

Hey, I teach it! And if you want some Spain-specific figures, here we go:

"In Spain, the relation between energy inputs into the agricultural sector and energy incorporated in all agricultural products fell from 1 : 6.9 to 1 : 0.75 from 1950 to 1977." (Martinez-Alier, J., 1987. Ecological Economics. Energy, Environment and Society. Basil Blackwell, Oxford)

[Bit]

That already looks like fusion powered tractors!

[Des]

Nuclear holocaust will save us (Survivors is on tonight in the UK, the remake of the classis 70s post-apocalypse drama)

[Parallax]

Climate, wars, vanishing resources and new flus will keep that under control.

On the other hand peace, stability, renewable energies, advances in medical science (and science in general) and conservation make matters worse.

So what are we to do when everything we think of as 'bad' goes toward solving the problem while what we think of as 'good' compounds it? And remember, if we don't choose between war, eugenics, disease, natural disasters and other unpalatable options, sooner or later the choice will be imposed on us by outside factors. Runaway growth cannot, by definition, be sustained.

Fortunately, there is one direction that does not end in really bad things happening: Urbanization. A larger fraction of the global population currently lives in cities than did even 20 years ago, and the proportion is set to increase for the foreseeable future. The good thing is: cities are population sinks. In the countryside, an extra child is an extra pair of arms to help on the farm. In the city, it's an extra mouth to feed. Studies show that, as populations urbanize, they control their own rate of reproduction, even before the increase in economic indicators sets in. In other words, lower birth rates are not a product of increased affluence or westernization, they are a product of urbanization, verified from Lagos to Calcutta to Mexico City.

It takes fewer and fewer people to produce the food we eat. Already the US produces more food every year than the entire world needs. Production rates are not the problem in the agricultural industry, the problem for farmers is earning a living wage off their production because there is so much excess. However, as farms close down and rural populations move to cities, we stand a good chance of seeing a stabilization in global population when rural areas get close to depleted. When the food-producer-to-total-population ratio stabilizes, we will then see a global decline of the total world population while maintaining the optimal rural-to-total population ratio.

At least that's my optimistic take on the subject.

[Gambit37]

Already the US produces more food every year than the entire world needs.

Is this verifiable? I know that the US produces much more food than it needs, but more than the world needs? Please provide sources.

[Maven]

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.

[Bit]

[Duckman]

There have always been wars and anarchies, if situation get's outta hand that's what will sooner or later take care of it. There's no need to urbanise... there are enough urban idiots already. Actually countryside could take more people, it has been lived on thinner and thinner during the last fife decades.

Al Gore, if he said that farming is not worthy to be a job, has not thinked twice. EVERY country which does not have an excellent hunting or fishing skills as a skill for every man has to be independant on farming. If war comes and the country has no farms for itself, it's doomed. History has shown that the risk of war is ALWAYS present, and the less you prepare for it, the more likely it strikes.

[Adamo]

Here are the facts:

1. Population in each country (world - 6,790,062,216 - July 2009 est.):
https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... 9rank.html?

2. Population growth rate (world - 1.167% - 2009 est.):
https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... 2rank.html?

3. Life expectancy at birth (world - 66.57 years - 2009 est.):
https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... 2rank.html?

4. Total fertility rate (world - 2.58 children born/woman - 2009 est.):
https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... 7rank.html?

Take a look especially at 4 (Total fertility rate). You`ll see, that first 30 countries are also poorest and has not only demographical problem, but all of them has some similarities: are involved with conflicts, rebellions, has no health care system, no real educational system (most of them), they`re extremally currupted, has no army, police, in other words - they are not real countries (they are not governed by any real power - people are ruled by local warlords).
OK, there are some exceptions, but the tendency is general.

[PaulH]

Fact is, global warming is already on the decline and has been for a few years.

Over a few years, the average yearly global temp has remained the same or slightly dropped. But the general trend is for higher and higher average temps.

Not that it would have much impact anyway

That depends on your views on how much impact CO2 is having. Without greenhouse gasses (actually a poor term for the process) the Earth would be a lot cooler, of the order of 33C. CO2 is estimated by many sources to contribute 4-8% of that 33C at current levels. That is quite significant - even at the lower bounds is a contribution of 1.4 degrees. If we assume a linear relationship, and 4%, then a doubling of C02 in the atmosphere will produce a contribution of 2.8 degrees, or 1.4 more than now. However is is not linear so we can expect an lower increase.

The point is that raising C02 will make the planet warmer than it would be regardless of other processes. It is a contributory element. We understand short term cycles quite well (solar output, El Nino), long term processes (orbits) and outlieing events (volcanic dust, which often shows a relative dip). CO2 simply takes the temperature graph plot and shifts it all up slightly.

So the question is: is their another effect we do not know about that could be countering this, or reinforcing this, and how significant will the outcomes be? The IPCC estimate the average global temperature will rise by 1-6 degrees by a doubling of C02. I assume this is above a projected, level mean if CO2 was stable. 6 degrees can be shown to be impossible with our knowledge of the physics of Co2. With my reading I estimate more likely to be of the order of 2 degrees. That could be signifcant to some.

[Maven]

Thank you for those links, Adamo. It looks like there are even more complicating issues that I had thought. The press here in the United States has made a big deal over the recent earthquake in Haiti, stressing how they are the "poorest country in the western hemisphere". I would have expected them to be higher on the lists based on economic issues alone. I do know of some of the issues there. My wife has a friend that runs an orphanage in Haiti, and many of the children there are not really even orphans. Often, mothers who don't know how or don't care enough to not get pregnant don't have the means to care for children, and they end up at the orphanage. He does what he can to give them a life. They get food and clothing and shelter (well, until yesterday, when the shelter was pretty much flattened by the earthquake) and even tries to get them schooling. And some of them get adopted, but not nearly enough. That's the real tragedy of overpopulation--the quality of life of those at the bottom.

Even so, compared to conditions throughout history, we're in pretty good shape. Even in the poorest country in the western hemisphere, life is better than in past centuries. And you and I are in the top percent of a percent in quality of life compared to everyone in the earth's history. Just based on the fact that we have access to a computer on the internet, have enough education to read and write here, and have enough free time to even do this. We're spoiled.

The Earth tends to even out the population a little bit from time to time. The tsunami a couple years back killed a lot of people. The earthquake yesterday killed a bunch. Didn't really make much of a dent in the big picture, though. I don't think that's going to be the answer to the problem.

So what is?

I'm not sure I agree that "everyone has a right to have children". What about the children's rights? Shouldn't children have a right to have decent parents? When you go to parenting classes, they tell you a lot of parents are sadly unprepared for parenthood. You have to get training and get a license in most countries to even drive a car, for goodness sake. The only thing you need to become a parent these days is a sex partner. Maybe instead of Sex Education, we should implement "Parent Education" in elementary school. And make it mandatory in High School.

[Gambit37]

Some good points there Maven.

What about the children's rights? Shouldn't children have a right to have decent parents?

I would say in theory yes, however: being unborn and having no say in the matter, it's rather moot!

The only thing you need to become a parent these days is a sex partner.

You don't even need that anymore!

[Adamo]

I would say in theory yes, however: being unborn and having no say in the matter, it's rather moot!

Gambit, pathologies are (mostly) inheredited. I think one should get certificate for having children, and pathological people (like alcoholics, sadists etc.) should be compulsorly sterilized (no, I`m not a fascist). This is cruel, but necessarly; keeping people in jails is also cruel, but nobody discuss with that.

Otherwise it ends up like in this movie:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074252/

[Gambit37]

Huh? That's not my point at all: If you are going to be conceived, you have no say in the matter -- it's going to happen regardless of whether your parents will be good parents. And assuming that after your conception you then grow to be a full baby and are then born, your birth has just added 1 more person to the population. Pathology has nothing to do with this.

Regardless, your subsequent view is nonsense. My father was an alcoholic, you're saying he should have been sterilised and not allowed to have children? He became an alcoholic after he had children (frankly, I don't blame him, but that's a whole other story). Honestly, you're talking a load of rubbish.

[Zyx]

keeping people in jails is also cruel, but nobody discuss with that.

Not with you, apparently, but I'm sure somewhere somebody is concerned with this way of dealing with the problem.

[Adamo]

Sorry about that post Gambit, I didn`t mean it to be offensive. My father was alcoholic too - I`m not going to come his way. I think these methods can be applied in strictly specified situations, but on the other side, not too rarely. In Poland there are a lot of families who has >8 children, parents drink all their life, doesn`t work, doesn`t care about them and.. do another children. They`re giving a new lifes, creating new human beings! THEY, not God! People, who doesn`t care about anything. They doesn`t even want them, they doesn`t love them, they beat them all the time, but won`t use any contraceptives either - even if it was given for free. What future will these kids has? Most of them will end up on a streets, jails etc. I don`t know how it looks like in Britain, but in Poland there are thousands of kids hardly beaten by their parents, some even to death; but only when it dies, it`s getting loud in media - every time I turn on the TV I heard about these things and I`m slowly getting enough of this situation. But what about kids that are everyday beaten, but not to death? There are thousands of them and media doesn`t care about that, until one will die - then there`s noise. What I meant about heredity of pathologies: the best example is a situation of gypsies gettos in Slovakia - they live in extreme poverty, typical family has 8 kids, from most of whitch won`t even finish elementary school, not to mention that they raise in a hunger. A lot of them will die young, but their parents doesn`t care - because it`s not a problem to do YET MORE children. These kids are excluded from normal life from the beginning and has no perspectives for their future. I`m not saying EVERYONE will slide; some might set up normal family, find a legal job.. but STATISTICALLY these kids end up in a street or so. These are of course extreme situations, but in Poland there are a lot of families like that too. Then we NEED to take away kids from their parents (if they`re strongly beaten, or carelesness - like hungry, for example) and put them in "substitute families" (* I don`t know how to say it in english), but nothing will replace normal family and loving parents. As I`m agains the abortion, that`s the only way to stop it.

[Jan]

I haven't been here for a few hours, and I'm kind of shaken. Adamo, are you talking about forced sterilisation? That's simply unacceptable for me! During communism, thousands of Czech Roma (gipsy) women were forcibly sterilised, and I think that this was a serious crime against humanity. You're too close to eugenics, I think. This is something that I stronly oppose, but I'd better not talk about it any further and hope this topic will kind of disappear from these forums.

PS One of my grandfathers was a very strong alcoholic (he died of that, I remember his last years, he was just lying in bed, his face was almost blue, he couldn't move, before that he had used to beat his wife - my grandmother - and had sometimes spent the whole week in the pub). My father - his son - is a strict abstinent and one of the most kind, caring and modest men I know.

[beowuuf]

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?

[Jan]

I think one should get certificate for having children, and pathological people (like alcoholics, sadists etc.) should be compulsorly sterilized

[beowuuf]

Ah, missed that