There are 6 to 7 billion of us now? That many of anything is surety for pollution.
A good old fashioned uncurable disease that wipes out 98% of us would be the best thing ever to come along for humanity.
The earth is rebelling and man is tilting at windmills with all these EPA “bandaids”.
It is “population” folks…and there is no end in sight. I will pass on soon. I believe however, that the next 100 years will bring on an amazing “crunch” that will begin a great decline in population worldwide.
Umm, owlafaye, you seem to be a little ignorant of the facts. That’s OK, you came to the right place.
The idea that ‘there is no end in sight’ and your predictions that " the next 100 years will bring on an amazing “crunch” that will begin a great decline in population worldwide" are amazingly reminiscent of the Ehrlich and co. predictions of the 60s - 80s. Of course like all of Ehrlich’s predcitions this one has ben proven wrong.
The global census shows that population growth is slowing very rapidly.
More importantly there is an end in sight. According to all forecasts within only 50 years the world population will reach a maximum of about 9 billion. Thereafter it will begin to fall very rapidly.
There will be no crunch. There will be a steady and controllable decine in human popultion brought on by greater choices being available through improved standards of living.
I find this interesting. Can you tell me what’s considered a good estimate for the world population and its first two or three derivatives? Or some search terms that I can use to find this? I tried looking for “the global census” but nothing popped out at me.
I have read this sort of thing often enough it makes me want to bungee jump using piano wire. I keep hearing people talk about how great it would be for most of the human population to be killed off, but nobody ever wants to volunteer himself and his family to start things off.
A decline in population would be welcome, but I’d rather see it happen by a lowering of birth rate rather than mass death and misery.
RR
Overpopulation is one of those obnoxious myths that permeates pop-environmentalism. While certainly true that very dense areas like parts of India and China should probably be considered overpopulated, the vast majority of land in the world is underutilized. And none of this takes into account the possibility of sea colonies, moon bases, and other cool stuff that may occur in the next few hundred (or even few dozen) years.
This article give a good brief summary, as well as sources for more detailed information on global population and projected growth. The UN reports are freely available via the UN website, if you can be bothered looking.
Ahh, but Ehrlich was ambitious. His baseless scaremongering was a little more melodramatic. He predicted that starvation would have reduced the world’s population down to 1.5 billion by 1985.
I think we can say time has proved him wrong.
Same ‘next X years will bring on th crunch’, same ‘dramatic decline due to overpopulation’ predictions. Different timeframe. Same basis. Same credibility.