In just one decade we went from 5 to 6 billion people on the planet. What is the limit that this planet can sustain without degredation to the environment?
Brille
“Wet Floor” sign does not mean do it.
3 billion
Nah, we were degrading the environment back when there were only 1.5 billion of us.
Tom~
How did we ruin the planet when we were 1.5 billion - 1492, other than kill each other? Seriously though, that was the pre industrial age and very few, if any, pollutants.
Brille
“Wet Floor” sign does not mean do it.
My guess is we could support 12 billion people if we were doing things right. This would mean heavy recycling - not plastics, but regrowing timber, and replenishing any other natural resources we can do that to. It would mean feeding everyone instead of having people starve in some countries while other governments pay farmers to destroy good crops. It would mean more reliance on solar power the world over, and it would mean more urban areas with less cars and more effecient public transportation. Of course we will never get our shit together enough to do even 1/10th of these things well, yet alone the hundreds of things that I’m not mentioning, but ultimately, that is as much our fault as over-population is.
Yer pal,
Satan
Heck, just how much are we degrading the environment right now? Probably a heck of a lot less than the green alarmists would like to believe.
(And for a totally biased, but still popular-with-me, view on the subject, go to http://www.ecotrop.org/ .)
Quick-N-Dirty Aviation: Trading altitude for airspeed since 1992.
12 billion? We don’t have enough WATER for 7 billion. Nah, that doesn’t sound like something humans want to find out about. When I even conjure the image of 12 billion I also think about Solient Green. “Ok, on the menu tonight we have hpstrdufuz l’orange” Now, that’s scary.
Brille
“Wet Floor” sign does not mean do it.
John John:
It was a joke, Cyb.
OTOH, long before 1492 Europeans had already wiped out (brought to extinction) a large number of species, (heck, the Romans wiped out the European lion to supply their games), and had eliminated the majority of their hardwood forests. Much of the Iraqi desert was originally a significant portion of the “Fertile Crescent” that turned to desert because of salinity poisoning due to irrigation. The desert of Afghanistan was also once a lush semi-forested region before irrigation and excessive goat-tending destroyed the vegetaion that held it together. (Goats browse of trees and shrubs, unlike sheep that eat grass.) The Mayan civilization most likely collapsed because it could not feed itself after its practices of swithen (to use a cross-cultural term) destroyed the fertility of its soil, allowing only rain forest/jungle to survive in that climate.
So, while I had simply intended a smart aleck remark, my comment was not without foundation.
Tom~
So maybe the question should be, How many people do we need to figure out how to take care of the environment.
[SterlingNorth’s comment: The above was ment to be smartalecky]
Does anyone foresee a time when Governments say, as they now do in China, do not have more than one child per couple? Should we disallow tax exemptions for large families?
Brille
“Wet Floor” sign does not mean do it.
Well since China has already done that I guess the answer is yes. Maybe India will be next. The US has not grown that greatly AFAIK in the last several years. We seem to do a good job of killing ourselves with smoking, drinking, heart attacks, etc.
If China has 1 Billion people, and we can figure that probably gender is split 50/50 and probably a majority of those people will marry and have one child. Then after just a few years you have added half a billion more people. Since the children of today will likely have children before their parents die, then probably in the next 20 years or so China will increase to 1.25 billion or more even with the one child per family.
We are all doomed. The world is going to get so heavy with all these people that it will through off its rotation. Especially if all the people in both China and India were to climb on a chair and jump off at the same time.
Stop the insanity.
Jeffery
I think we’re off our rotation already.
The one child per couple is designed to be in line with date rate so there would be no sizable increase, if any. Each nation has different doubling times. India is probably the shortest.
There are so many things to considered with over population, such as predicted, if rates stay the same, i.e.,jobs, land, water.
Brille
“Wet Floor” sign does not mean do it.
Oh lord…time to try and remember that population class I took for the econ degree. (And the associated thesis…)
Short answer: no one knows what an increasing population will do to the environment. One school of thought (Malthus) says we’ll overuse resources. Another school (Julian Simon) says with each new birth, we have the chance to have someone who will grow up and discover a BETTER way to utilize resources.
Personally, I think where we need to concentrate is not as much in the First World nations, but in the Third World. the problems of rapid population growth and environmental issues are worse there…most areas don’t have the technologies needed to help themselves. Or the women aren’t educated enough to know about how to control family size.
And one final thought…I am VERY opposed to a plan like China’s where it’s limited to one child per family. And Jeffrey, I know your post was semi-sarcastic, but I have to address something. As the one-child policy continues, China will become increasingly MALE. Female infanticide is still common, because it is more prestigious to have a boy.
DATE RATE? NO, NO, NO, DEATH RATE!! Looking in the mirror, duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Brille
Well Falcon, then China will solve its own problem if it becomes increasingly male. If there are no females to breed with then the population cannot grow. Problem solved.
Jeffery
I might add that the noble American Indian (whom we have idealized because of well-earned colonial guilt) totally screwed up the American forests by slash-and-burn agriculture. A lot of the U.S. deserts were lush forests 1,000 years ago or so.
By the way, native American tribes were whalin’ the tar out of each other before the Europeans got here to do it wholesale–let’s face it, ALL people are pretty much dreadful.
Oh yeah, Jeffrey…GREAT idea. Maybe I should restate. Admittedly, China will see a negative growth rate in the coming years. However, I don’t think expanding their policy to other countries is worth it. Sorry, maybe I just like being alive too much to think that someone would kill me when I was born just for being a girl. 
The growing population isn’t always a problem. Europe is loosing people. Italy in particular.
There has to be a time when growing up in office skyscrapers and taking field trips to see the sky gets to be too much. Most importantly, we is going to feed 12 Billion people? Functions can be Exponential but I don’t think human population can be for long. I suspect it will slow down and reach a hell of a lot of people but only over a greater and greater amount of time. Remember, more people can breed more, but I think the density of populations lends itself to increased consequences from natural disasters. When is the last time 40,000 people died in American from a flood? In Bangladesh it happens all the time.
Hell, if you want to see REAL wholesale environmental destruction, haul your buns back to 3 billion years ago. A selfish, monstrously overpopulating group of critters called Cyanobacteria emitted a highly toxic gas as part of their digestion process. This deadly gas literally burned alive almost every organism it touched, causing a world-wide holocaust that resulted in the greatest mass extinction the Earth has ever known.
The noxious gas they spewed forth was Oxygen.
Quick-N-Dirty Aviation: Trading altitude for airspeed since 1992.
Just a semi-side note:
It’s highly unlikely that India would ever institute a one child per family law. The vast majority of Indians are Hindu, and in the Hindu religion, one’s son must perform certain rituals at one’s death in order to ensure a good passage into the next life/reincarnation–whatever. I’m a bit vague on the specifics of the religious beliefs, but the bottom line is that if one doesn’t have a son to perform the necessary rituals, one’s afterlife is a bit precarious. Generally speaking, Hindu people take their religion quite seriously and not having a son would be a major problem.
Moreover, because many children don’t live to adulthood, people find it safer to have, like the Royals, an heir and a spare (or 2 or 3).
“I think it would be a great idea” Mohandas Ghandi’s answer when asked what he thought of Western civilization