Does Our Planet Have Too Many People?

[marmar]

from Comment is Free-Guardian UK, via AlterNet:



Does Our Planet Have Too Many People?

By Madeleine Bunting, Comment Is Free. Posted September 12, 2007.


Reducing consumption is imperative, but it's pointless to cut out meat and cars while having lots of children.


It's the one issue no environmentalist organisation wants to talk about. Population. Thirty years ago, when international concern first began to mobilize about the planet's future, it was the pre-eminent question, but now you're hard put to get a straight answer. Does the UK need population management? Does the world need it?

This is one of those issues that is regarded by many privately as common sense but rarely gets a public airing. Of the environmental organizations I managed to contact, all acknowledged that it was frequently brought up by the public in meetings and letters. Yet all said they did not campaign on the subject and had no position on it. It seems that there is a worrying disconnect between a generally accepted consensus among those who shape the national conversation about the environment and their audiences, who either are much less certain or believe that, if the planet's resources are being grossly depleted, there are just too many of us about.

Too many people. That is certainly the impression from studying the maps published this week by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which chart how fast the areas of the country undisturbed by urban development, roads or other noise are disappearing. Since the 60s, whole chunks of England have been broken up into small fragments, absorbed into a dense network of towns, cities and major roads.

The maps reinforce what people experience. You try getting away from it all in England, and you are tangled in traffic jams, shoe-horned into campsites, followed by the whine of motor-bikes and the roar of traffic even up on the hills. We live in a crowded island - a truth that it has become unacceptable to acknowledge because of the unpleasant associations it brings with it.

But England is now the second most densely populated country in Europe, after Belgium, and at current rates of increase it could be second only to Bangladesh in the world by 2074. There are those who argue that there's no need for alarm, and that we can concentrate development in brownfield sites to accommodate all the millions of extra homes needed. But how many more people can you squeeze into cities that already seem to be choking under the weight of their population density - the buses and trains packed, the streets clogged and the parks on a Sunday afternoon teeming with people. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/62157/

[valerief]

1. I wonder who says to "go forth and multiply?" Hmm, sounds like a bad idea. nt

[Kolesar]

15. Environmentalists are pro-abortion because they want abortions as a means of reducing the population

Former Senator Mike Dewine, R-Ohio, actually said that. Dewine lost more than the environmentalists' votes in the last election.

[valerief]

19. Whereas Republicans seem to want the non-maintenance of

infrastructure to reduce the population (think Katrina and Mn. bridge collapse).

Oh, yeah, and their ever-lovin' war. That's doing a super job of population reduction between the deaths and depleted uranium impending deaths.

[mainegreen]

2. Yes, yes I think we do.

I see no reason why we need to sit a carrying capacity. Or when we run out of resources, beyond it.
Seems a bit daft to me.
Fortunately birth rates are falling.
Sadly, life expectancy is dropping.

[groovedaddy]

3. Yes, there are too many of us

and we're taxing the hell out of the planet.
Major studies done on world hunger in the late 70s - early 80s indicated that raising standards of living - access to medical care, birth control, education, good jobs - leads to lower birth rates.
Countries in Europe actually have negative population growth rates.
Poverty drives the population explosion more than any other single factor.

[CGrantt57]

4. The problem with carrying capacity...

is you don't know you've reached it, until about 1/3 of your population dies off.

So, if 10 billion is the carrying capacity of the earth for humans, we'll only discover that after we reach a population of about 15 billion.

Now, what the hell are we gonna do with 5 billion corpses?

That, perhaps, is a better question. Corpses, especially in highly populated areas, breed disease. So, it's possible that because of our corpses, we could actually lose 1/2 of our population after we reach carrying capacity.

Food for thought. :popcorn:



Regards,

[GliderGuider]

8. We're already well into overshoot

The uniquely human aspect of this overshoot is that we've masked its effects through the use of the one-time gift of fossil fuels. There's plenty of evidence that the underlying carrying capacity has eroded (a sure signal of overshoot) - look at the climate (droughts and floods), the death of the oceans, falling global soil fertility and fresh water reserves. The effects of that degradation would otherwise already have been apparent, but we've been able to keep going to the ecobank and withdrawing fossil fuels to increase both our consumption and our numbers.

The Earth's carrying capacity has been eroded by about 30% at this point, relative to the pre-industrial era. The carrying capacity without the help of fossil fuels was about 1.5 billion (that was the immediate pre-industrial population). The implication is that once the fossil fuels are gone the "naked" earth will be able to support one third fewer humans than that: about a billion of us.

The human population will begin to fall from its peak of just over 7 billion as the oil and natural gas start to deplete within the next ten to fifteen years. Our population will stabilize at the sustainable level of 1 billion when the oil and gas effectively run out, by the end of the century.

[Totally Committed]

5. Yes.

TC

[MannyGoldstein]

6. I Don't Think So.

The rate of increase in population is dropping sharply. It's currently estimated that world population will peak around 2070 at 9 Billion, then decline.

As people become more secure, they stop seeing children as an asset for getting food, so they start having fewer children.

I believe that we have plenty of capacity to feed everyone without harming the environment - if we do it the right way.

[The2ndWheel]

7. Does it matter?

What could you do about it? Well, there would be things that could be done, but whatever we do, it won't be a perfect solution. There will be consequences if we have more or fewer people.

Anything done would need to be done voluntarily, period. You can't force it. You can, but then we create even more problems. As we've seen already, the whole world must become capitalist, or else they fall behind, and then we have to go in to change both their economic and social systems, because we think it's best for them, and we also need their blood, sweat, and tears to keep our engines going. Then you've got China, which does everything it does, including their "successful" one child policy(just over 1 billion people, instead of 4 billion), and of course their cheap labor pool, which is all that keeps our economy growing(if it still is).

So it really ends up not making a difference if we have too much of anything. To do anything that anyone(left/right, rich/poor, etc/etc) wants to get done, we need more of everything. You can't build roads if you don't have the money. You can't fund this or that research if you don't have the money. You can't build enough bombs if you don't have the money. You can't fund education if you don't have the money. You can't make a fortune running a church if you don't have the money. You can't run social security if you don't have the money. You're not getting a job if there aren't more people spending more money. We can't stop having more. We won't stop having more. We will make more even if we have to force it down your throat. More people need to become part of the dominant system, whether they want to or not, because it would crumble if people had a choice. We can't stop. We can't force ourselves to stop. It's growth or bust. We need more people, consumption, everything. Until every inch of the planet works for us(the project of civilization), and only us, we cannot rest. That, or we'll die trying.

[NotGivingUp]

9. Yes, far too many people. But this is one problem our government IS taking care of...

They just keep going around to different countries killing millions of people. Problem solved.

[GliderGuider]

10. The problem is billions of people, not millions.

Wars can deal with millions of people, but only Mother Nature has the muscle to drop our numbers by multiple billions. Even WWII only killed 10 million extra people a year, and then only for six years. Even thermonuclear wars lack the planetary-scale effects needed to really reduce our population. A good-sized thermonuclear war could crack our civilization, though, which would give famine and disease the entry point they need to finish the job...

[HamdenRice]

11. Yes, but the problem is being taken care of

There are too many people in the sense that the current and projected numbers are not optimal for us or the environment. On the other hand, recent demographic projections are that population growth is plummeting world wide, and as Manny pointed out above, it is projected to plateau at 9 billion and then decline, without us having reached any sort of "overshoot" or have exceeded the "carrying capacity." See this post:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1316087&mesg_id=1316087

Provided equitable development, distributing contraception, enhancing women's rights, and ensuring food security are likely to cause population growth to decline even faster.

For a follow up discussion, see this thread, including the subthread beginning at post 9:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x306700#306729

Some countries are going to have to figure out how to manage zero population growth and population decline. The policies of countries like Russia that seek to manage population growth decline by encouraging a re-start of population growth, are misguided.

The problem is what we consume and how we consume, and how what we consume is distributed -- not how many of us there are:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x111533

[TreasonousBastard]

12. I've thought so for years...

since each new human life will require food, housing, shelter, and some sort of work to pay for all this. This puts more strain on the planet's resources.

Like so many things, there is no clear or good answer out there.

[GliderGuider]

13. Carrying capacity losses will affect different parts of the world in different ways

It's helpful to think of human carrying capacity as coming in two forms, food and social, where "social" includes things like shelter from the elements, medical services, sanitation services, protection from lethal threats etc. The part of the global carrying capacity related to food is pretty fixed on a per-capita basis (say 2000 to 3000 calories per day), while the social part varies all over the map depending on the wealth of the nation. Both these loose groupings will be affected by energy decline, but in different ways.

The earth's "food" carrying capacity has been declining significantly ever since WWII, as soil fertility declined (now down world-wide by perhaps 30%), we depleted the fresh water and we ate the contents of the oceans. Essentially we have been in overshoot but have been insulated from the negative consequences by the use of oil and gas, particularly in agriculture. As the oil and gas available to a nation decline, it will be increasingly exposed to the effects of the eroded underlying carrying capacity.

In addition, an increasingly volatile climate over the next two decades and after will limit harvests due to droughts and flooding. This can be viewed as yet another reduction in carrying capacity.

This leads to the question of where the effects will be felt most.

Rich nations (i.e. the OECD) will be OK for quite a while because they have a lot of discretionary GDP that can be reallocated to the food sector as prices rise. The increasing cost of fertilizer will be absorbed into rising food prices, which we will forgo other spending to pay, for instance.

The poorest nations will be outbid first in the energy/food marketplace because they have very little discretionary GDP. On the other hand, some nations like those in Africa may be insulated to a degree because their agriculture is not yet as energy-intensive as ours. They will still be hit harder than us, though.

The nations I think will take the hardest hit are those in a band between these two extremes. They are nations whose agriculture has been remade in the modern industrial energy-intensive model, but who do not have the discretionary GDP to redirect towards that sector as oil and gas supplies fall and prices rise. They will be the hardest hit overall - China, Pakistan and India are obvious examples, along with much of Southeast Asia.

As oil and gas prices rise, there will be an increasing energy disparity between the rich nations and the poor ones. As the agriculture in the poorer nations is hit first, famine will make inroads into the population. These are typically the nations with higher fertility rates, and the increases in mortality will offset their population growth. The rich nations are already at or below replacement rates, so the fact that their better energy position will not result in a further population drop won't really affect the overall decline rate. The basic decline rate will be set by famine in underdeveloped countries.

On the social side, similar considerations will hold - all the supports I mentioned are energy intensive, and will be more affordable in rich low-fertility nations. To make matters worse, the drop in medical and sanitation services will hit those nations that are already weakened by poverty and hunger, and the death tolls will be exaggerated as a result. Unlike their small advantage in agricultural production the nations at the bottom of the scale will have no protection, as energy is a fundamental requirement for the maintenance of these social services.

One final note: fertility reductions will not turn the tide. Even if we could reduce net births world-wide to 0 over the next 40 years we would only stabilize the population at 9 billion in 2050. This is far too high and far too late to avoid the effects of energy decline. Mortality increases are the only mechanism that will actually reduce the population.

[madrchsod]

14. yes

there will be a correction by the end of this century.

[daa]

16. Too many repugs with hummers and SUVs

[suziedemocrat]

17. I think we're getting over-populated, BUT I have seen a lot of articles complaining

about the problems associated with an "aging population." It seems we can't win. If the population decreases, at least for a while they population will be older, and that will create economic stress, or so I have read.

[stuntcat]

18. yes but

we'll go straight to Hell for implying that Humans are animals who's population doubling in less than half a century could have any bad effect on our little planet :eyes: now we better watch out for the flying Bibles.

There is nothing natural about our packed cities and sprawling suburbs, and nothing good about the forests we're clearing and millions of tons of trash we're making and pumping into the air. Most people can't even begin to care about the mass-extinction we're bringing on animals.. mere animals, not as important as god-like Humans :eyes: People are fooling themselves if they think there's anything good about how we live. Every 1st-worlder is responsible for tons of filth.. and to carry it even further than this I can't imagine giving my baby the next 85-90 years. It's gonna be a nasty stinkfest, mark my word. I already don't exactly appreciate having to witness it but my mom didn't know any better, I was born in a county full of flat-Earthers.

(I'm in VHEMT so I've heard every human-centered argument over the past few years so if anyone feels like fighting me about this give it a shot but all you will do is make me more sure :hi: )