Argument For Population Control

[XIX]

I'm not saying I agree, but the most reasonable argument goes something like this:

1) Planet Earth can only handle so many inhabitants. Fact.
2) Some say that we surpassed that number a long time ago, that we can hardly fit one billion people on this planet, Others on the other end of the spectrum insist that we are nowhere near the Earth's capacity, that we can handle a population of 100 billion or more.
3) However, Earth's upper limit is not important within the context of this debate. We currently have a population growth rate of approximately 1.2%. At this rate, Earth's population will eclipse 100 billion in approximately 225 years, and will double every 59 years thereafter.
4) Therefore, Earth's population growth rate must eventually come to approximate zero in order to sustain life on a long-term basis.

The argument usually goes downhill after this, as they accuse the other side of the debate of being uneducated, or worse. But be that as it may, there are a few decent points here. I'm not saying that I agree, but I am saying that these arguments keep me up at night once in a while.

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='XIX' timestamp='1300064493' post='2220550']
I'm not saying I agree, but the most reasonable argument goes something like this:

1) Planet Earth can only handle so many inhabitants. Fact.
2) Some say that we surpassed that number a long time ago, that we can hardly fit one billion people on this planet, Others on the other end of the spectrum insist that we are nowhere near the Earth's capacity, that we can handle a population of 100 billion or more.
3) However, Earth's upper limit is not important within the context of this debate. We currently have a population growth rate of approximately 1.2%. At this rate, Earth's population will eclipse 100 billion in approximately 225 years, and will double every 59 years thereafter.
4) Therefore, Earth's population growth rate must eventually come to approximate zero in order to sustain life on a long-term basis.

The argument usually goes downhill after this, as they accuse the other side of the debate of being uneducated, or worse. But be that as it may, there are a few decent points here. I'm not saying that I agree, but I am saying that these arguments keep me up at night once in a while.
[/quote]

Population growth rates are not static.

At any rate, don't stay up worrying about it: WWIII is on its way. Or perhaps another plague.

~Sternhauser

Edited March 14, 2011 by Sternhauser

[havok579257]

there are an insane amount of almost uninhabited land on the world that population control arguement is stupid. look how much of canada is uninhabited. until humans cover 99% of the land masses excluding north/south poles, then any talk of population control is moot.

[dairygirl4u2c]

i doubt all inhabitable land is very agriculturally useful. which is what it all comes down to. i'm sure there are ways of producing vitamins and minerals supplements without all that land, though, so what i just said might not be totally accurate. they do say that a person could live off just vitamin and mineral supplements, but that there's always going to be something lacking. i'm not sure if that lack would be so detrimental that a person would be malnourished to a signifiant extent. if land isn't the bottomline, i'm not sure what the supply capacity is.
i do know china kills their kids, i suppose under the name of population control. maybe they need to find a way to get their population on other land so that they dont have to do that sorta stuff. (you'd think this would be a bigger issue per protests etc, given they kill live babies, much worse than abortion. it is a foreign land though, and it is a strong power that will do whatever it wants. but still)

if at the end of the day we have to engage in population control, it's no the end of the world. even catholics could do their NFP if they have to. it's not at the end of the day wrong to consider that population control might be needed. see, if it's not wrong for catholics to do NFP if their economics require it, i dont see how thinking something would be needed on a bigger picture would be wrong.
a valid question is when the government starts to say who needs to procreate and who doesn't etc... whether that's something the gov should do. i say, the macroecon should be dictated by the micro, and vise versa. i dont see why it can't be done this way? there would be stragglers scraggler like in china if they just let people reproduce at will, or in africa as there already are. but it could be done at the will of the people. /// it's an intersting question whether the government would intervene if the straggler scraggler situation was so bad it was a matter of public policy to limit reproduction by government fiat.

[mod]Profanity. -dUSt[/mod] there the limits are effectively limitless.

Edited March 15, 2011 by dUSt

[Nihil Obstat]

I think that seasteading should be considered a bit of an untapped frontier.

[CatherineM]

I think nature has a way of taking care of population issues with famine and plague.

[AudreyGrace]

I'm taking a Global Environment course through a local college, and population problems are what we discuss and read journals on half the time. For the U.S., the average number of kids per household is around 1.7, a lot lower than people think. At our rate right now, America can sustain itself. It's a matter of who's using more resources than others. For example, if you calculate your eco-footprint (theres websites for that), you'll see that the amount of resources we use are astronomical in comparison to other parts of the world. When I did the survey, I found out that if everyone lived the way I do, we would need 5.3 earths to support everyone. However, that is not the case. There are others who live with barely anything. Some are suffering, some are content with it (cultural differences). When it all boils down to it, we have the resources to sustain a growing population-if, that is, consumers like us who use way more resources than often necessary learn to cut down a bit.


Not to mention that for a few decades, people have been throwing around the same argument that we're gonna overpopulate the earth and all our resources will run out once we reach a certain population benchmark. Obviously, that hasn't happened, and we've surpassed multiple benchmarks a number of times. Even though food growth is linear and population growth is exponential, human intellect has and always will continue to provide new ways for living in a sustainable way. However, a lot of that "green" technology leads to an increased amount of resource use. Jevons Paradox. Pretty interesting stuff if you care to look into it.

So maybe we should just ditch our huge and unnecessary homes, hummers, and bottled water (in places with perfectly fine tap water). America itself isn't having a huge problem in regards to sustaining a population. Really, the problem is some people living extravagantly while others live in extreme poverty. Population number in itself is not the problem, at least in most areas of the world, but it's rather about how we live and use our resources.

[Didacus]

Few interesting and telling facts;

Excluding Russia, the most densily populated continent in the world is Europe. How many people starve in Europe?

India, thesecond most populated country in the world has 2 of its 5 largest exports being food products.


Overpopulationis far more a problem of distribution of wealth than a problem of too many people. Ir you take away the first world style of living, the world can hold many times the corrent population. Those who believe the world is overpopulated fail to mentionthat the 'world is overpopulated if you expect everyone to live at the level of the average american'.

[Didacus]

Oh, and if you project the population growth using current tendencies the likelyhoodis that the earth's population will actually decline in the next 15 years.

Japan, Russia and Germany's population have already started to decline each year.
Italy, China and several others are on theverge of doingthe same - including the Quebec people.

[AudreyGrace]

[quote name='Didacus' timestamp='1300073142' post='2220583']
Overpopulationis far more a problem of distribution of wealth than a problem of too many people. Ir you take away the first world style of living, the world can hold many times the corrent population. Those who believe the world is overpopulated fail to mentionthat the 'world is overpopulated if you expect everyone to live at the level of the average american'.
[/quote]

Yes. This.

[dairygirl4u2c]

estimated peak population of about 9.22 billion in 2075[1].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Forecast

[Jesus_lol]

[quote name='havok579257' timestamp='1300066624' post='2220557']
there are an insane amount of almost uninhabited land on the world that population control arguement is stupid. look how much of canada is uninhabited. until humans cover 99% of the land masses excluding north/south poles, then any talk of population control is moot.
[/quote]

If you want to live in Nunavut, be my guest.

[AudreyGrace]

[quote name='Jesus_lol' timestamp='1300079677' post='2220596']
If you want to live in Nunavut, be my guest.
[/quote]




I hear Antarctica's nice this time of year.

[Nihil Obstat]

[quote name='AudreyGrace' timestamp='1300145484' post='2220748']


I hear Antarctica's nice this time of year.
[/quote]
Wrong side. The Arctic is Canada's. Antarctica is the south pole.

[Didacus]

[quote name='dairygirl4u2c' timestamp='1300075167' post='2220586']
estimated peak population of about 9.22 billion in 2075[1].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Forecast
[/quote]
The popular belief is seldom the truth, nor even the most accurate one.

It is a low level scandal that in the past decade estimates of birth rates in muslims countries were simply estimated, and purposely inflated. In fact the most densily and poor populated areas of the world are never counted, they are simply estimated in 'ball park figures', and this includes Brasil, India and China. Much of the population data is purely political.