So because our ancestors made mistakes during history you’re saying that those third world countries that didn’t actually develop when we were doing so(And to date show no signs of doing so inspite of massive aid and education from the first world over many decades)that we should simply sit back and do nothing?
In spite of the fact that when they swamp the lifeboat we too will drown.
If a man commits murder then you dont hang his son, and if people did things when I wasn’t even alive or for that matter KNOW anyone who knew anyone who was alive at that time then sorry but you most certainly aren’t going to lay some sort of guilt trip on me for their actions.
Apologists with dubious moral excuses for the fecklessness of the third world aren’t doing them any favours,their populations are suffering and dying RIGHT NOW in huge numbers and its going to get worse .
So far on this board it seems that we should excuse Global Overpopulation because…
We’re not dead yet so obviously we’re never going to die.
We’ve had problems in the past(admittedly completely different ones and ones that are not of this order) but we solved them.
[Note no actual solutions are offered but no doubt something will come up )
Having billions of more uneducated starving mouths will mean a lot more people are potentially trying to solve the problem so if we all think really,reallly hard…
All we have to do is think of a magical way to get plentiful,cheap power because no ones ever actually tried to achieve this goal over the last century…
And now because our ancestors in olden times weren’t Green Saints,let alone politically correct we just have to turn a blind eye to those guilty of ignorance,greed,selfishness and stupidity in the twenty first century because somehow we might be seen to be apportioning responsibility for peoples own actions and that might hurt their feelings.
If the man sitting next to you on the plunging airliner appears to be relaxed and unworried its not because he knows something that you dont,its because hes completely clueless as to about how much danger he really is in.
Way to go. A straw man and ignorance all in one sentence.
The argument was not “because of the mistakes of our ancestors, let’s do nothing”. The argument was just one of perspective.
The problem the world faces is not one of overpopulation itself – a couple of billion more subsistence farmers is not good for the planet but it’s hardly armageddon either. The problem is that the developing world is developing. And people across much of the world are achieving an increasingly Western way of life. This is the problem.
Phrasing the problem this way should make people like you and I realise we’re part of the problem. That our way of life is not sustainable. We’ve just got away with it for a long time because only a minority of people live this way.
But I can tell that you prefer to blame it all on those bloody freeloaders in the third world.
As for the assertion that the third world is not developing despite our aid – it’s nonsense. Much of the third world is developing economically at a tremendous pace, and as I said, this is part of the problem. Remember ‘The Third World’ includes India, the middle east, central and south america and south-east asia.
Of course, there are some areas of the world not developing, mostly in Africa. There are a number of vicious circles at play here that make it hard for the poorest countries to raise themselves up. If you actually want to know why the poorest are stagnating I recommend The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier.
IMO if the world had a smaller population then it has today with reasonable technological advancement(Not the nonsensical abundant cheap energy wishful thinking that some people consider to be a future foregone conclusion) then not only would we in the West be able to maintain our present lifestyle but those who live in what is now the Third World would be able to achieve this standard of living as well.
And before moving on can I just state that my position is not just population reduction for “Them” but for everyone, us included.
Of course I could follow your recomendation and read Paul Colliers book and may well do so, but I could also visit many of these Third World nations quite often and see first hand what is going on rather then gain my impressions filtered second hand from someone who may or may not have their own axe to grind.
Honesty time,I’ve already done so and hopefully will continue to do so for some some time to come.
Its all too apparent that a major amount of Third World problems aren’t caused by god, or bad luck or lack of agricultural/other resources or even by the wicked West but are very,very much self induced and seriously looking to prevent future problems is one of the most wide spread failings.
I’m not going to derail the thread by relating the various lack of foresight that are contributing to their non achievement but I will give a couple of examples that are relevant.
You see plaintive appeals for starving Africans and how desperate their plight is but they dont explain why there are so many children around.
You’re starving to death,cant feed even yourself adequately so what do you do?
Have some more children,thats what you do and hope that someone else will save your sorry backside.
In East Africa its quite common form families to have up to a dozen children,I know I’ve seen them.
And yes that is feckless in my book.
A CNN item some months back about poor families putting up shanty towns in an area of outstanding natural beauty in a nature reserve in Mexico.(Incidentally polluting the area with their rubbish that they just discarded where ever they happened to be standing at the time and putting wild life at risk)
The reporter was careful to point out that they really had no choice but to encroach on the reserve because they were desperate and indeed I honestly felt a strong sympathy with them as they told of their harrowing existance,always on the edge of starvation and with no running water etc…
Until it showed the interior of their shack with the six children,one of them a babe in arms and the mother was pregnant AGAIN.
Do you think that their lives and that of their children would have been improved by,if they absaloutley HAD to have kids of course,if they 'd only had two children instead of the number that they actually had?
I do.
Thats not the World Economic situation at work or blaming your woes conveniently on third persons whos lifestyles you envy or the the Great Big Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Its showing the normal common sense of supposedly normal adult people with the restraint that most people consider normal.
But thinking about world population going down is no more realistic than saying cold fusion will be sorted within a year.
Why not just make changes to our lifestyle?
I’m no eco-nut but there’s lots of scope for more efficient use of resources. And let’s not forget that we’re going to have to move away from oil soon, even if the developing world wasn’t developing.
You’re saying you have visited third world countries? May I ask when, and in what context?
Where to begin?
Firstly, bear in mind that Africa is still a fairly sparsely-populated continent.
Secondly, having many children can make sense in some cases. It means potentially more income / labour later, particularly as the parents are growing older. And infant mortality is very high in those poorer countries, so you may have several children expecting some to die (yeah, that would be a pretty dark thing to think, but this is the kind of reality that people in certain parts of the world face daily, and they may develop a difference sense of life and death to you or I).
Thirdly, a large part of problem has to do with lack of access to contraceptives and education, particularly for women. Effectively they don’t even know they have a choice about having children.
Much earlier in this thread the question was asked of whether I, and others here, agree with what certain christian groups are doing in the third world; discouraging (or at least not promoting) contraceptives. Let me make it clear: I don’t. It’s vital that people in the third world are aware of and have a choice in having children, beyond the “solution” of abstaining.
In the First World families are getting smaller and populations would be going down but unfortunately immigrants,legal and otherwise are more then making up for this in Britain at least.
In an official census a few years it was found that though the native population had gone down in size due to smaller families the total population had risen by approx eight percent as I recall from fifty five million to sixty million.
Now that is just the figures of those who filled the forms in,the legal immigrants, though the Home Office has admitted that illegal immigration is rife and that they have no idea of how many illegals are in the country so the figure is definitely higher and almost certainly much higher.
But that doesn’t discredit the underlying ethos that theoretically it IS possible to reduce population as opposed to just reduce the rate of population rise.
Another example of this is Chinas one child only policy is which is not only directly reducing their numbers,but with the gender imbalance caused by everyone preferring to have a male child there should be a further knock on effect.
But we ARE changing our lifestyles,low energy lighting,recycling,higher mpg cars and now a push for electric cars,little by little we’re making the effort but that isn’t going to compensate for a further three Billion and rising mouths on the Earth.
I have been visiting Third World countries quite extensiveyl(Aswell as First World countries) for the last three and half decades, mostly working but a not inconsiderable amount of time as an independant traveller.
If a significant percentage of the population is not getting enough to eat or drink then sparsely populated or not the area is still overpopulated.
A million people living in the Kalahari desert say would be a different proposition from a million people living besides N.Americas Great Lakes.
In the last five thousand years humans have walked on the moon,invented the computer,learned the laws of Physics,medecine etc. and yet there are still cultures who s idea of providing for their old age is to scatter gun children in the hope that some of them will survive to adulthood and maybe be able to provide for them.
And thats it,thats the sum total of their contribution to their idea of being responsible for themselves,let alone their children.
I dont think that it would be a bad idea for the First World to change their aid from its present "pourng it down the drain format"to providing old age pensions to Third Worlders who commit to having only two children or less during their fertile years but unfortunately it would be unenforcible.
While I completely agree that some religious institutions are being completely irresponsible with their attitude to controlling population size they are not the only culprits,anyone who is complacent about Global population growth or refuses to admit that there is a problem that will soon be of crisis proportions is equally culpable.
Unfortunately the apologists and deniers seem to vanish from sight when the inevitable finally happens.
This just illustrates my point. China’s population is not growing appreciably. Nonetheless there is a problem.
China is becoming more wealthy. The Chinese are living increasingly Western lives. The planet cannot cope with this number of people living anything like Westerners.
The increase in China’s GDP is far more significant w.r.t. pollution, commodity scarcity etc than an increase in population of a very poor country.
Still a way to go though in reducing our emissions. And from these stats, may I suggest a reduction in the population of the United States would be very beneficial to the planet.
And of course most of the world’s oil is exported to the Kalahari. :rolleyes:
If more people are born than the land and/or economy can support, one of two things will happen: the people will starve (and hence population will reach an equilibrium) or be fed with international aid.
The current situation is a bit of both: we send aid, but not enough to prevent all people from starving. This is a tragedy, but the third world’s people are hardly “swamping our lifeboat”. They live simple lives and die, we continue to use all the resources we want, end of story.
There was a time when much of the European population was uneducated and superstitious and relied upon the arabic nations, and indirectly the ancient greeks, for much of their knowledge of the world. People of that time lived simple subsistence lives and the idea of “scatter gunning” children may have seemed a sensible strategy: note how densely-populated countries like England are.
In any case, even in the West, how many people understand how computers work, the physics behind landing a man on the moon etc? If you’re going to advocate a cull, I suggest a cull of the willfully ignorant.
And what would that solve? If our payments are equivalent to giving aid I don’t see particularly what it buys us. Less overfarming perhaps. And…?
You make it sound like you’ve been proved right in the past. Care to elaborate?
As I’ve said in previous posts I am not advocating population reduction for “Them” and not “Us”,I believe that we should all reduce our populations if at all possible,the U.S.the U.K.,Europe .everywhere.
The Kalahari desert was simply an example of a terrain that cannot sustain a large population,substitute Antartica,the Sahara or gobi deserts if you wish.
The populations of the Third World are NOT reaching equilibrium as a result of deaths by starvation Indias is still rising seriously and I’ve no doubt that this also true in other areas of the TW(Brazil maybe?Mexico?SE Asia?)
I dont wish to derail this thread but off of the top of my head two issues that I recall being vehemently opposed on at the time by the “Everyone knows” and “It stands to reason brigade” was the toppling of the Shah of Iran and his replacement by Ayatollah Khomeni.(I think it was Oxford Students Union who voted Khomeni "Man of the Year"or somesuch.)
Also the take over of the then Rhodesia,the now Zimbabwe by Zanu/Zapu
guerrillas or using a more accurate description,terrorists.
You’d be hard pressed today to find anyone who admits to having supported the Ayatollahs or Mugabe and his ilk today and even if they’re challenged directly its likel;y that you’ll get the particulary sickening defence of “Oh but we were only young then”
I.E. your youthful play politics ultimately ended up in the deaths,imprisonment and torture of a hell of a lot of people(and its still continuing as we speak)but you were young then,and you got bored with the subject plus you’re a little embarassed about it now so it doesn’t really matter.
And I just know in my heart that most of those in denial about the seriousness of the Global population increase will be doing the same thing when it is out of control.
I never claimed that they were reaching equilibrium. I said that ultimately if more people are being born than the land and economy can support then an equilibrium will be reached between starvation and births. I’m sure that there’s enough farmland in India to support its current population (although of course, many starve / are malnourished already, due to income inequality).
Anyway, the important thing in my post was my point: That if the third world is just a big bunch of people breeding and starving, as you seem to imagine, What’s the problem from the developed world’s point of view? Why should we care, other than morally?
A bunch more poor people on the planet won’t make a huge difference to the issues of climate change, peak oil and general commodity scarcity.
What I’m saying, again, is that the developing world developing is the issue; if the poor were staying poor they wouldn’t really affect us. Of course, I would never deny progress to any society so we have to think of ways that the world can get wealthier and be more ecologically responsible.
Oh, I thought you were saying you’ve been proved right about some issue related to the population debate.
Of course popular opinion can be wrong on certain things. I’m waiting for the whole MMR / autism nonsense to play out, so I can see if the celebs will ultimately admit their ignorance and irresponsibility.
But it can also be right.
But hang on though: aren’t you arguing the popular line? For years the line about “overpopulation is the biggest threat we face” has been touted; it’s only recently it’s taken a back seat to the climate change crisis. And your opinions about the third world certainly seem like the popular line to me.
Large numbers of third world people ARE affecting the planet even without the desire to emulate the life style of the first world,the slashing and burning of the Amazon Rain Forest affects the world as a whole even if you dont take into account the destruction of habitat and the likely extinction of as yet and now never to be known species.
Desertification as a result of subsistance farmers on the edges of the Sahara desert IS affecting the worlds climate.
Explosive fishing in S.E. asia(That is throwing grenades or other explosives into the sea and then picking up all the stunned and dead fish floating on the surface)is destroying coral reefs.
And they’re all drinking non replaceable fossil water.
I dont base my opinions on whether they’re populist or elitist,I dont believe in Creationism for example and am not a Holocaust denier, I totally agree with you on MMR .
I seriously hope that I am completely and utterly wrong on this issue but would rather that until I AM proved to be wrong that we at least try to save the Earth from the Marching Morons .
Each new species extinction,each new species put on the At risk of Extinction list,each habitat lost,every rise in CO2 emissions,every famine and drought caused by Man made climate change,floods in Bangla Desh caused by deforestation of the Himalayan foothills all are another nail in our coffin.
I am no hand woven muesli wearing tree hugger but I truly believe that we’re on our last chance now, if we dont use it then effectively we’re dead, along with most of the Global environment.
Population is not the problem. Advanced farming techniques/technology can be exported and effectively employed. There will aways be enough food and fresh water for everyone as long as there is political will for the building of proper infrastructure (dams, irrigation, cisterns, etc), these two commodities can be properly manged.
As for the environment, it’s quite obvious that the only way to fix the coming future environmental problems is for all the current developed nations to stop “raping the environment.” It’s really stupid to worry about how future abstract populations (from the developing world even) might “rape the environment” when you, yourself, are currently raping away…
Fix your own damn drug problem before you start to worry about the future, drug problems of the others. Jeez… It gets even more stupid when when you realize that funding the creation of technologies and global environmental programs to fix your problem, permanently fixes this problem for everyone else too!
In the end, I say let the developing world breed (it’s not like you can stop it), they are/were not the ones who have been causing like 99.999% of all carbon emissions for the last hundred years.
You seem to be under the impression that all soils can be converted to high yield arable farming,no doubt by huge amounts of nitrogeon fixing fertiliser(Which as I’ve alluded to upthread poses serious pollution concerns from run off,this is not a potential problem its a very real problem that is happening now).
I was watching an interview of a lecturer from an agricultural college in Bangor,Wales who was at a previous Royal Agricultural Show(Shown on The Rural Channel several days ago) and the scientist made two statements that stuck in my mind.
Some solis just aren’t suitable for Arable farming.
Even with all of our advances in agricultural technology/soil science etc. there WILL be food shortages in the near future.
Your “solutions” to Global Overpopulation seem to be based on unfounded wishful thinking,there ISN’T any magical abundant cheap energy,and no matter how much effort,time and money that scientists are putting into the quest for it even as we speak there does not appear to be a solution to this problem appearing on the horizon.
When the Fossil Water supplies are used up they will not be replaced.
You can drill deep as you like but if theres no water there then you wont be able to pump it up.
You can build all the infrastructure you like dams,cisterns,irrigation etc. but if there aren’t the rains to replenish supplies then you might just as well whistle at the moon for all the good your construction work will do.
The Aral Sea has lost seventy five percent of its volume since 1960 I believe, due to diverting the water from the rivers supplying it for agricultural production.
So no the actual (as opposed to some sort of magical desalination plant that only uses magical cheap abundant energy) amount of fresh water that is acessable to us IS finite in quantity.
Your statement that there will always be enough food and water for everyone just so long as there is the political will to supply it has no basis in reality,not now,not ever.
And you dont give one single actual solution to the approaching crisis,just vague unsubstantiated hopes and palliatives of the sort people give to reassure children.
“Dont worry everything is going to be alright,something will turn up,I just KNOW it”
The problem is you dont.
Famines,poor quality of life,pollution and environmental destruction are only the symptons of the worlds disease .
The disease is Overpopulation and that can only be treated with actions not wishful thinking.
And apportioning blame for history contributes not one iota of a solution to something that is happening right now.
That’s a non-sequitur. Of course there will be food shortages in the near future (there are clearly localised food shortages now) but the cause is not that some land is unsuitable for farming. I’m sure any back of the envelope calculation of usable open land over world population (even the future 9bn people) will show that there’s plenty of land to feed everyone.
Of course, huge tracts of farmland is not a great scenario for the planet. One thing that would be helpful in the short term is to promote more efficient agriculture e.g. not raising cattle, which is very inefficient from a resources per calorie produced pov.
Also I’m all for exploring GM. I think we need to think about how we can ensure safety rather than just a blanket ban because of certain people’s biases.
Nuclear power is pretty abundant and cheap per kilowatt, especially if governments didn’t have to waste so much money fighting public opposition.
And that’s just fission, practical nuclear fusion would essentially mean unlimited energy (I doubt fusion will be practical for power production in the near future. I’m just debating your point that there ISN’T any magical abundant cheap energy).
Most of the groundwater being used in the third world is not like this. Most groundwater supplies are replenished by rainwater.
Of course, it’s true to say that for most wells water is used faster than it’s being replenished. But it’s also true to say that there are a great many untapped groundwater sources in the third world, due to the poverty of the region. And it’s also true to say that one of the big threats for regions such as Africa is the projected decrease in precipitation thanks to climate change.
So I dispute that it’s as simple as “this is a population problem”.
The Aral Sea is an environmental catastrophe, for sure, but doesn’t really have a bearing on the usable water issue, since it was always salty. So now, instead of water flowing into the sea and becoming useless, we catch it on-route and use it in agriculture.
Well actually desalination has grown massively in recent years, and most plants use some sort of osmosis membrane, and the efficiency of such membranes has increased a great deal. Most of these plants use osmosis as well as distillation of course, but with efficiency going up all the time the energy input is getting to be less and less of a problem. Many desalination plants receive their energy input from the waste heat from energy production anyway (energy that otherwise would be unused).
Remember, the middle east is technically part of the third world, and desalination is making impressive progress there. A single facility in saudi arabia produces 300 million cubic metres of water per year.
I’m not saying that such a facility is likely to be built in Somalia tomorrow, merely pointing out the flaw in statements like “So no the actual () amount of fresh water that is acessable to us IS finite in quantity”.
People aren’t a disease. And more people does not intrinsically result in the problems you’re listing. Of course, it probably does for people with a Western standard of living.
Any other animal that had spread into some many habitats,in such large numbers,causing as many species extinctions and detrimental effects on the environment would be described as a plague(As in Locusts)or an infestation.
People themselves aren’t a disease but Overpopulation is.
Twelve boxes are just physical things but the amount twelve is mathematics (If that makes any sense to you,I’ve almost confused myself here.)
See the UN Food and Agriculture Organization GAEZ study to understand just how colossally and stupendously wrong you are about the availability of arable land. The study shows clearly that here is more unused rainfed arable land in Africa than farmed rainfed arable land in Europe. There is more unused rainfed arable land in South America than used rainfed arable land in North America. There is enough unused rainfed arable land in the Sudan to feed every single person in Africa.
When you come back and admit you were wrong, we can move on to demolishing your second point. The problem is not the absence of arable land, we have plenty of that. It is the presence of human stupidity in all of its forms …
Lust4Life asked for previous higher estimates of the population. As recently as 1970, the prevailing belief was that by 2000, there would be over 7 billion:
So only 30 years ago, the 2000 population was overestimated by about 18%, a not inconsequential amount.
So what? Nothing you say here appears to contradict Lust4Life’s actual assertion, namely, that some soils aren’t suitable for arable farming.
In fact, the very organization whose site you linked to agrees with Lust4Life on that claim:
In other words: Yes, Lust4Life is right that some soils aren’t suitable for arable farming. In fact, most of the global land surface isn’t suitable for arable farming.
I am baffled as to why you would regard this claim as even mildly controversial, much less as “colossally and stupendously wrong”.
The point is, Lust4life was saying that because not all land is suitable for agriculture: “Even with all of our advances in agricultural technology/soil science etc. there WILL be food shortages in the near future”, something which simply doesn’t follow.
Was he? I thought he was quoting “a lecturer from an agricultural college” as having made two individual “statements that stuck in [his] mind”:
I didn’t get the impression that Lust4Life was arguing (or that the lecturer he quoted was arguing) that the second statement necessarily followed from the first.
I think you may tend to remember the overstated estimates better because they were more dramatic or got more airplay, but I’m not sure that that demonstrates that population predictions were “chronically” overstated.
You’ve got me there. I guess I didn’t read that post carefully enough.
Or maybe I didn’t parse it correctly because those two statements made independently are pretty pointless:
“Some solis just aren’t suitable for Arable farming” - No shit, Sherlock
“Even with all of our advances in agricultural technology/soil science etc. there WILL be food shortages in the near future.” - There are already localised food shortages. It’s obvious that there will be some in the near future. Not because the technological progress will be insufficient but simply because of poverty.
So what? Nothing you say here appears to contradict Lust4Life’s actual assertion, namely, that some soils aren’t suitable for arable farming.
