Earth is too crowded for Utopia

[Dead_Parrot]

The global population is higher than the Earth can sustain, argues the Director of the British Antarctic Survey in the first of a series of environmental opinion pieces on the BBC News website entitled The Green Room. Solving environmental problems such as climate change is going to be impossible without tackling the issue, he says.

"Ten thousand delegates attended the recent Montreal Summit on the control of carbon emissions "beyond Kyoto".

That's a lot of people! The conference organisation must have been daunting; and just imagine arranging the hotel accommodation and restaurant facilities and dealing with the additional human-generated waste.

Imagine the carbon and nitrogen emissions from the associated air travel!"

;) Sounds like you, aztc... more at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4584572.stm

[marmar]

1. Humankind...steamrolling toward its own demise...

And about 5 percent of that global population controls the vast majority of the already limited resources.

:grr:

[Warpy]

2. HIV will take care of much of the population

and bird flu, if it hits, will take care of many of those left over.

Mother Earth has nasty ways of dealing with species that turn into problems.

[Massacure]

4. HIV can be prevented. Bird Flu cannot.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Humans burn fossil fuels..... sort of.... 25,000 btu's by some estimate

if you multiply that by the number of people on earth... that's alot of heat....

[filthyrichkleptocrat]

5. The Malthusians just can't shake that doomy gloomy think!

The Worldwide Standard of Living since 1800
Richard A. Easterlin

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2000, vol. 14, issue 1, pages 7-26

Abstract: By many measures a revolution in living conditions is sweeping the world. Most people today are better fed, clothed, and house than their predecessors two centuries ago. They are healthier, live longer, and are better educated. Women's lives are less centered on reproduction, and political democracy has gained a foothold. Current international differences in a number of standard of living indicators are significantly correlated. Historically, however, these improvements often started at quite different times, suggesting that the determinants of change in different aspects of the standard of living are varied.


Don't worry, the Europeans stopped having babies decades ago.

[Dead_Parrot]

6. Eh?

So, the collapse of our biosphere due to overpopulation is OK, so long as you've got two shirts?

[filthyrichkleptocrat]

7. This bioshere has been supporting life for almost 4 billion years.

This is a tough old bioshere, not some pitiful little wimpy thing you can collapse.

[Massacure]

8. Humans don't collapse the biosphere. The biosphere collapses the human

population.

[filthyrichkleptocrat]

11. The climate will remain unstable, as it always has.

We humans will adapt as necessary and populations will fluctuate accordingly no matter what clumbsy interventions our corrupt politicians decide to impose upon us. I'd hate to see those who know whats best for us to inflict a cure that's worse than the disease, however. Politicians murdered almost two hundred million people in just the past century, applied political power is the most well proven of the various dangers to humanity we face.

[Dead_Parrot]

9. I wouldn't call 90%+ extinction rates...

...which Earth has had in the past without our help - indicative of something "tough". "Good at revovery", maybe, but not tough. There's a difference.

[Boomer]

12. We're new kids on the block

Calling us a tough species is a bit premature considering we've been around less than a million years. If homo sapiens can weather the next 20 or thirty million years, then we can claim to have some staying power.

But I have to admit to having some serious doubts on that score.

Just lately I've been reading up on the great diaspora of humans out of Africa (as background to the Genographic Project). What struck me anew was the sense of our isolation. We're the only remaining species out of many lines of hominids, all of which have faded away for reasons unknown. The optimistic view of this outcome is that we are some special creature, able to survive and thrive in the adverse circumstances that destroyed our close relations.

Or, conversely, it might be a warning that hominids just aren't a very good evolutionary solution to survival pressure and that we're simply the last stubborn remnant of what will ultimately prove to be a dead end.

Unfortunately, no one on DU is going to be around long enough to find out.

[Dead_Parrot]

13. Some interesting points...

First off, we certainly have a long along way to go before we can be considered before are considered a success in evolutionary terms. The Nautilus and Horseshoe crab were around when we were experimenting with bearing live young...

The same can be said of human intelligence. Life has been around for around four billion years, the wheel for around seven thousand. We could be be described as an experiment to see if being smart is a good idea, or if nature should stick to big teeth and claws. No other animal has developed the sort of intelligence we now have, and it may be the whole thing is a bad idea.

That we replaced Homo neanderthalensis and the others, may be a case of us just being more prolific and violent: I'm read a few reports that conclude, based on brain cavity size, that Neanderthal man was smarter than we are: certainly if you look at colonisation during the last few centuries, it's the western europeans than come out on top. Not because of any mental superiority, just a tendancy towards organised violence.

Finally, we have the question of our future. Evolution will continue to act, and a million years from now it's probable that we will no longer be homo sapiens but some other unnamed homo...

[Hope springs eternal]

18. I totally disagree

First off, look at dinosaurs. Raptors were intelliegnt, close-knit animals while T-Rexes were big, isolated animals. Raptors were far more "successful" in their evolution than T-rexes. Ants are the ultimate Communist society, and they've never gone away. Lions hold their own while Tigers are falling away. Difference? Group planning. Ditto for pack dogs too.


Being intelligent and helpful/sharing with our own species has proven to be the most successful element of survival. Roaches are big communial animals, and hence they continue to thrive and spread.



Besides, Intellegence ensures our dominion. Blacks were just as violent as whites way back when. Whites just had the brains to capitalize on their fortunes.


So yes, being kind and intelligent works. Big teeth and claws only work until you encounter someone with bigger teeth and claws. But group work saves the day.

[Dead_Parrot]

19. You missed my point

- and reading back, I didn't emphasize it enough - that we have a very different intelligence to other animals. I'd agree that a great many animals are capable of what, historically, we would class as "human" behavoir - communication, tool-using, cooperation and compassion. But none of them has shown any inclination to build a gothic cathedral, orbtal reserch station, or the DVD collection of "I Love Lucy": That we have gone from poking at grubs with a stick to the video iPod in half a million years is something no other species can even come close too.

So whilst being slightly smarter and more organised than your prey (or that which preys on you) seems to be tried, tested and approved, being smart enough to turn your planet into a toxic soup while you're still living on it is new and dangerous ground.

[blindpig]

14. An excess of adaptability?

Perhaps our downfall is that we've been too adaptable. For hundreds of thousand years humans survived as hunter gathers nicely. Our numbers were low by the standards of agricultural societies but in line with those of a predatory species. Our stone age technology advanced slowly but did advance. Then, no doubt cued by environmental changes, different groups of humans adopted agriculture to cope with those changes. Some groups, those with superior availability of potential food crops, found that the greater numbers allowed by agriculture gave greater advantage in inter-group conflict and here we are. Just because we could do it doesn't mean that was necessarily good for us.

It has been argued that throughout history hunter gathers have been healthier than agricultural peasantry. That the ruling class of farming societies have usually been healthier and more robust than the peasants is also noted, no surprise to this leftie. Happiness of course cannot be discerned but I know what looks better to me.

Looks like some of us took a wrong turn when we took up the plow and have dragged the whole species along with them. Obviously we can't go back but would do well to take stock of what we have been and essentially still are on the scale of evolution. Trying to live with Nature, as a part of Nature, would be a very good start to accepting our Pleistocene heritage.

[Boomer]

15. We are now incredibly vulnerable to disaster

I've often thought our species was doomed the moment we adopted agriculture. It has been both our strength and our greatest weakness.

As you noted, agriculture promoted population growth at the expense of health. It also leads to the overuse of local resources -- whether that be arable land or minerals or oil -- and thus the need to move out and conquer new lands. This boom-and-bust cycle has brought down mighty empires and continues to plague us to this day. Currently the U.S., China and many other countries are facing droughts in key agricultural areas because of overuse of water resources. And there are alarming indications that we have completely fished out the world's oceans.

We're dancing on a knife edge. The complex industrial technology developed within the last few hundred years has enabled record yields in agricultural productivity, and our vast distribution networks have spread that largesse around the world, spurring a massive species population growth. But complex systems are easily disrupted and the result is disaster. Countries which are torn by civil war are also inevitably cursed with famine because chaos has destroyed the system of agriculture and distribution. Conversely, when the transportation system is working well, it can facilitate the transmission of disease (such as the arrival of the plague as new trade routes moved toward the West).

Hunter and gatherering groups could follow their food resources, live in relative isolation, and have basic survival skills for gleaning a living off the land. Your average urban dweller doesn't even know what roots to eat, much less how to hunt and kill game with hand-made weapons. And our youngest generations of city-dwellers barely recognize food that doesn't come in a micro-waveable container.

By abandoning basic agricultural skills, not to mention hunting and gathering skills, the average contemporary human is only capable of surviving in a highly mechanized, organized society. If that society is seriously disrupted by natural disasters, political chaos or the loss of key resources, those individuals will die off by the millions.

Meanwhile, the population of self-sustaining indigenous peoples is dwindling every day, to dangerously low numbers in regions under tremendous environmental stress. They are the most likely to survive diasters with global impact (such as a super volcanic eruption or meteor collisio or severe climate change), but their ability to do so has been compromised by the intrusion of industrial nations.

I'd say our odds of surviving as a species are lower now than they ever have been before. Who stands the better chance of surviving a global disaster? Ten thousand hunter and gatherers spread around the globe, poised to take quick advantage of any remaining food niche, or some 5 billion people highly dependent on petroleum-based agriculture and distribution?

[phantom power]

16. On the other hand...

if we lost 99.9% of our species to some disaster (or, more likely, a combination of disasters), that would still leave 6.5 million humans.

[Grover_Cleveland]

21. Pollution goes down as a country becomes richer.

Pollution peaks when the average income reaches about $6,000. At that point, people have their basic needs of food and housing met, so they are now rich enough to care about the environment. The richer the country gets, the cleaner it becomes.

Poor people burn wood and dung for fuel. That's very polluting.

As they become richer, they switch to coal and oil. That's dirty, but not as dirty.

As they become even more rich, they swicth to even cleaner fuels, such as natural gas, wind, and, if they're smart, nuclear.

This is a trend that happens in countries all over the world.

Please do not ingore the relationship between wealth and environmental protection.

[Grover_Cleveland]

22. Anyone can be wrong in making a prediction.

But when their predicitions fail to come true, they can be divided into two groups:

Those who try to figure out why they were wrong, and learn from their mistakes.

and

Those who refuse to learn.

Malthus eventually admitted he was wrong, and learned from his mistakes.

The pessimists from the past 40 years (Club of Rome, Paul Ehrlich, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, etc.), however, don't seem interested in learning why they were wrong.

If all we did was "consume" resources, then Ehrlich would have been right.

But the truth is that we don't "consume" anything, because the total quantity of mass/energy is fixed.

Instead, we use technology to make things better. But we never really "consume" anything.

[ladjf]

10. And the human race is too stupid.

[opihimoimoi]

17. We see IT Coming But Cling to DENIAL////arrogant denial///self interest

[Grover_Cleveland]

20. Utopia is not possible.

Regardless of how big or small the population is, utopia is not possible.

Making the population smaller certainly won't bring about utopia. In the past, the earth had 3 billion people, and there was no utopia. Before that, it had 1 billion people, and there was no utopia.

Even with the current 6.5 billion people, I don't see there being any actual physical shortage of resources.

We have enough uranium to last for the next 5 billion years:

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html

We can desalinize water for 53 cents per cubic meter. That's 1/5 penny per gallon. 2/3 of the earth is covered in water, to an average depth of 2 miles. There is PLENTY of water:

http://www.ejpress.org/article/4873

In countries that use modern agricultural technology, and where the government doesn't harass farmers and steal their land, there's plenty of food.

The paper and lumber industries plant more trees than they cut down. Trees are a renewable resource. It is impossible to run out of trees.

The earth is full of rocks for building materials. We can never run out of rocks.

The world has many problems: political problems, wars, corruption, stolen elections, etc.

But an actual physical lack of physical resources is not one of those problems.

There are enough physical resources for every person to have a first world standard of living.

The political problems, the wars, the corruption, etc. are real problems. I don't know how to solve those problems. However, I do know that reducing the number of people is NOT going to solve those problems.

[blindpig]

24. "There are enough physical resources....."

Wise heads beg to differ. At least ten years age EO Wilson stated that it would take 3 1/2 Earths to give the population of this planet an American middle class life style. Other experts agree to varying degrees.

I noticed you didn't mention oil as not being a matter of concern, which was wise. Indeed, where will the petrochemicals which fertilize the fields of these unfettered farmers come from? How will they get to the fields?

There is also the matter of the rest of life on this planet which your rosy predictions ignore. While trees can be replanted a tree plantation is little more biologically diverse than a corn field. Does biodiversity not matter?

[Grover_Cleveland]

23. Japan's population got smaller last year.

But it doesn't look as if anyone in Japan is celebrating over it:

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/12/26/japan.population.reut