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While I don't think the world is overpopulated quite yet, a billion people are being added every 12-14 years and there's little reason to think this will change for a long time. The population growth rate isn't shrinking as slowly as was once believed. It's no longer exponential growth but it's still robust linear growth. In terms of absolute numbers the world's population isn't growing any more slowly because even though fertility is down the total number of people is up.
I see no humane way to slow down the growth. I think unfortunately we will just have to adapt to overpopulation by consuming less and getting more serious about colonizing space. The only way to actually curb the population growth would be by stripping people of their basic human rights and killing and forcibly sterilizing people en masse.
Mother Nature provides and Mother Nature taketh away. At some point there will be mass depopulation brought on by a super bug, volcano, meteor strike etc.
I think that if we humans can't get a handle on our population growth, nature will. And it won't be pretty.
I also see the economic malaise as being a symptom of overpopulation. There are far more people than there are suitable places for many of them in the world economy.
Lol "overpopulation"
Everyone in the world can fit in Texas with 1000 sq ft per person.
When everyone of them takes a dump all at once? I don't know what the tipping point is but we have a finite amount resources on this planet with fresh water being the main concern followed closely by food production.
So what? Can you grow enough food to feed each person in that 1000 sq ft? Actually you need 7500 square feet per person to grow enough food to feed one person. This assumes no land degradation such as soil erosion/degraded soils, and it assumes adequate water supplies. And this is just the absolute bare minimums, this doesn't account for land needed to grow cotton for clothing, mining to make metal tools to allow the farming of the land, etc. I'm sure you'll find when you add up all those additional requirements, the amount of land would be 10 times that amount.
The United States currently throws out as much food as we consume. Same with Western Europe and the more advanced Latin America countries. And Australia and New Zealand, etc...Most people in those countries already eat more than they need. Start doing the math. We could easily feed 3 meals a day to another billion people with current food supplies. Easily. It's getting around oppressive governments to get food to these people that is the problem.
Anyway, the guy was just pointing out that it is possible to put in the world's population in Texas. Not sure what you are talking about. The other land outside Texas is available for use.
Look at geological surveys. In the United States we currently use more farmland than ever before. We also grow more food per sq foot. This means more food than ever as our population is bigger than ever. We also have more space than ever. Look at Census data. They have a thing were they calculate the number of rooms per person per household. It's at record high right now. People have more living space now than at any time in history, despite our growing population.
And people live longer than ever before too. This proves our environment is in good shape and that there is plenty of food and water. All while the earth is supporting a record number of people. Otherwise, we'd be dying younger, not living longer. Only reason anyone cannot get adequate food, water or medicine is because of their government.
I'll put it this way, everything that the overpopulation doomsayers preach (starvation, wars, water shortages, resource depletion, environmental degradation) has been proven wrong. Human beings and the environment are better off now than ever before with more people. It's not even debatable.
While I don't think the world is overpopulated quite yet, a billion people are being added every 12-14 years and there's little reason to think this will change for a long time. The population growth rate isn't shrinking as slowly as was once believed. It's no longer exponential growth but it's still robust linear growth. In terms of absolute numbers the world's population isn't growing any more slowly because even though fertility is down the total number of people is up.
I see no humane way to slow down the growth. I think unfortunately we will just have to adapt to overpopulation by consuming less and getting more serious about colonizing space. The only way to actually curb the population growth would be by stripping people of their basic human rights and killing and forcibly sterilizing people en masse.
There is no overpopulation so you don't need to fix a problem that doesn't exist.
"In Italy, there are more deaths than births every year. In Japan, people buy more adult diapers than diapers for babies. China’s population will get very old and then rapidly contract. By 2050, one out of every 4 of its citizens will be over the age of 65. The United Nations projects that by the year 2100, Poland will have lost one-quarter of its population. Thirty years ago, Iran’s fertility rate was 6.5. Two generations later it has rapidly declined to 1.88. Around the world populations are contracting. The US would be on the verge of shrinking, too, if it wasn’t for Hispanic immigrants. But, their fertility patterns become more like the US native population after the first generation arrives. Governments around the world have tried some very interesting incentives to get people to have more children but most have been unsuccessful. People just don’t want more kids and the more education they have, the less likely they are to have them."
Read: What To Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster by Jonathan V Last
While I don't think the world is overpopulated quite yet, a billion people are being added every 12-14 years and there's little reason to think this will change for a long time. The population growth rate isn't shrinking as slowly as was once believed. It's no longer exponential growth but it's still robust linear growth. In terms of absolute numbers the world's population isn't growing any more slowly because even though fertility is down the total number of people is up.
I see no humane way to slow down the growth. I think unfortunately we will just have to adapt to overpopulation by consuming less and getting more serious about colonizing space. The only way to actually curb the population growth would be by stripping people of their basic human rights and killing and forcibly sterilizing people en masse.
over population is not a problem. Isn't close to being a problem. Will probably never be a problem. I don't understand people who immediately jump to forced sterilization and killing as if we don't have plenty of examples of nations whose populations were growing rapidly, but aren't any longer.
The population can be reduced below carrying capacity by having couple self limit to two or less children and in time the population will decline. IMHO the primary reason for large families in many economically underdeveloped countries with a high infant and child mortality rates is the parents are trying to make certain somebody has the responsibility for taking care of them when they get old.
In a developed country with very low mortality rates until elderly, the parents are assured, and Social Security is a large part of this security, that they will have somebody to care for them when they get old and feeble. Even the childless have this assurance. This is why our country would, if we had not opened our borders to nearly unlimited immigration legal or not, has topped at about 270 million in the 1980's and been steadily dropping ever since.
This would have been an economic positive for the fewer children in each generation since but have created some problems for an economy mired in the paradigm of never ending growth for the wealth of a few at the expense of the many. With ever fewer potential workers the owners would have had to pay more for the same number of workers and possibly a lot more for fewer workers. There would have been a natural redistribution of wealth from the few to the many and that, for the few, is intolerable.
Thus, instead of having a distributed prosperity, we now have a greater gap in prosperity between the owners and the workers since the late 1800’s. Eventually this will also be unsustainable as resources are depleted and a mass market disappears and the masses will not have the money to spend on the mass produced products and the owners lose their income due to a massive collapse in sales. Eventually the underpaid remaining workers will run out of credit as well.
What will work in the long run is a world of constant or slowly declining population with more emphasis on health care, personal services, recreation and non consumptive use. Instead of mass production turning ever scarcer and more expensive mass production we will see dedicated small scale custom manufacturing for more specialized markets.
On the social level I would hope to see a slow decline of religion that controls people with the magic of belief instead of the rationality of observation and thoughtful discussion. Admittedly this is a faint hope because many people have a strong desire for the security of irrational “belief” instead of the insecurity of rationality. This will possibly render the entire idea of a sustainable population growing in evenly distributed wealth instead of an unsustainable over population manipulated by the preachers for the benefit of their churches and the hyper wealthy.
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There's no humane way to solve overpopulation
