Here’s a question that is rather sticky…
The question is simple: Do you think that there is a population problem in the world? And if you do, what should be done about it?
I personally think that there is, but I’m not decisive on a solution.
Well, according to the U.N., the rate of population growth has been slowing over the last couple of decades, and world population is expected to peak at around 9-and-a-half billion people in the middle of the 21st century.
I’m not worried.
I’m with Tracer. I think there is enough space for several billion more people, just as long as they decide to live in unpopulated areas that are far away from LA.
I think certain countries need to do way more to slow their demographic growth and that the international community should begin to talk about what we would all consider a number we would want.
You might feel there is room for plenty more, but if all the people in the rest of the world used energy and resources at the rate Americans do you might change your tune. I do not think the world today can support American lifestyle for the entire world population… so there is space, provided the thrid world people stay the way they are.
The population problem is already beginning to be a serious problem and, because we are humans, we will do nothing until it gets really bad and then we will begin to think about it.
The US has a low density compared to most other countries and even here you can begin to see problems. At this rate, pretty soon southern California will be importing water from Alaska.
You’ve got to be kidding. I strongly reccomend reading P.J.O’Rourke’s “All the Trouble in the World” for some actual figures on the subject. We are not even close to being overpopulated. At the population density of Manhatten, the entire population on the planet could fit in an area the size of what used to be Yugoslavia. Not that I would want to, but it gives some idea of the nature of the situation. If you like I can provide some figures from the book.
Oh, sure, we have enuf place to PUT more folks, but do we have enuf food, or water (in the right places), enuf clean air, enuf raw materials, enuf energy. Right now, we have shortages of all these thing- mainly becuase the supply is in the wrong place as the demand, but it will only get worse.
We don’t have a population problem, we have a distribution and management problem.
However, I think sailor’s hit on something… that there’s not enough energy/resources to go around if everything became a homogenous mix overnight. However, I have no doubt that some sort of equilibrium will be reached, as 3rd-Worlders become more and more developed.
I’ve got to disagree with you there, SPOOFE. There are actually more than enough resources to go around, and 3rd world countries are getting a greater and greater amount all the time. Health figures such as average lifespans are climbing all the time, while others such as infant mortality figures are also dropping fast. I believe that if abortion figures are taken into account, many 3rd world countries have lower infant mortality figures than the US.
You also have to remember that the US government subsidize farmers a lot of money to destroy crops they produced. That’s right, destroy food.
No, it’s not an overpopulation problem, per se, but rather an environmental problem. All people can have enough to eat (provided that the powers that be do not prevent the proper distribution of food.) But if the earth’s billions all become industrialized, as is gradually the case with China’s billion+, the ensuing environmental damage may well destroy the food chain that we are discussing to begin with.
It is, of course, very difficult to explain to up-and-coming industrial societies such as China to quit producing and purchasing cars, etc., to save the rest of the world, while the citizens of already industrialized nations live a life of relative luxury.
got too many already. the more people the higher probability of dumb mistakes. the US broadcasts Dallas all over the world, good idea, breed dissatisfaction all over the world. the crackpot leaders get to HONESTLY blame the US for being more responsible for global warming than anyone else. when the oil does run out and everyone is affected, who gets the blame for wasting it on SUVs.
Dal Timgar
No, there is not a population problem in the world. It is to be noted that, as recently as 1993, the U.N. projection for world population was 6.7 billion. That fertility has and continues to decline is in some part, dal_timgar’s disparaging remarks notwithstanding, due to the availability of cheap TVs receiving broadcasts of yupscale dramas that include young and beautiful adults, but seldom children (as an exercise, figure what the crude birth rate of the Dallas characters must be).
As sailor and TheThill point out, we often have a serious mismatch between where the resources are, and where the population is. If southern California needs to import water from Alaska, the logical move for Californians would seem to be to move to Alaska; alas, this is often not an option.
(Those of the Teeming Thousands who live in southern California are invited to explain why they think migration to Alaska would or would not be a good idea.)
A good deal of the “problem” is the point that we have reached on the Maslovian hierarchy of values. No longer having to worry (for a few decades, at least) where their next meal will be coming from (they’re “rich enough”), many Westerners have chosen to embrace a life-style that concentrates on non-material goods, such as pseudo-environmental values (although, to steal a phrase from James Blish, they couldn’t distinguish a value from a Chinese onion). The spoiled urbanites of the West also often act childishly, demanding “solutions” to real or perceived problems that require no effort or sacrifice on their part (often pointing to the past, and conveniently forgetting that the people of that time were as insensitive towards their environment as any today, but merely were too impotent to affect it, would they or not). Finally, the enovironment-altering projects of the past have long since been paid for (the Owens Valley aqueduct is nearly a century old!), and the time and expense needed to do such things is telescoped into nothingness by the short-sighted.
BWAHAhahahah!!!
Is there a population problem? Definitely.
Are there enough resources to support a substantial increase in population? Definitely.
Will the utilization of those resources “destroy the earth?” No, but at some point, the entire biomass of the earth would be devoted towards sustaining our species.
Is the enslavement of all other species okay? You figure it out.
Are there solutions to the population problem? Sure, random killings are one option, although there are others.
If all the people in the third world were using energy and resorces at the rate of the people in America, you bet we’d have a problem. You think gas is expensive now? What do you think would happen if demand increased exponentially?
Someone do the math. Take the energy consumption of the USA and extrapolate for the rest of the world. Now tell me where it’s coming from. Or tell me why we should think it is right to deny others the standard of living we enjoy.
I think one mistake most of you are making is assuming is that technology will stagnate. Do the posters who say were going to run out of fuel and other resources have so little faith in the progress of science (and the inventiveness of man) that you think these are actually going to be problems in the future? Will population growth outstrip the ability of science to acommodate an increased population? It’s my opinion, and about 13,000 years if civilization’s, that technolgy progresses rapidly enough to offset population growth. So, no, I do not think we have a problem with the number of people now, nor will we in the forseeable future.
According to the DoE energy profile for 1997 (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/sep/us/frame.html), total U.S. energy consumption for that year was 94.1 quadrillion BTU (quads). The U.S. Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/intfile1-1.txt) gives an estimate of 267,784,000 Americans for 1 July 1997. That gives, if I haven’t hopelessly screwed up the arithmetic, an energy usage of 3.51x10[sup]8[/sup] BTU/person in the U.S. The world population in that year was about 5.9 billion, according to the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs (the U.N. Food and Agriculture population databases appear to be seriously wedged). Thus, had the entire population of the world consumed energy at the same rate as the U.S., 2,074 quads would have been needed.
Now, I will make the pessimistic (and obviously untrue) assumption that no energy was produced outside the U.S. in 1997 (in terms of magnitude, that’s probably not too far off; I wouldn’t bet that non-U.S. energy production/consumption amounted to more than 275-300 quads). Therefore, about 1,980 additional quads would be needed worldwide.
Current stats would indicate that the world’s population will plateau long before we are devoting all our biomass to sustaining our species. Most talk on the subject is nothing more than scare-mongering. For example I read that one pseudo-environmentalist group found out that the CIA had been monitoring ground temperatures via satellite for the whole planet, for the last 20 years, looking for nuke tests and such. This group demanded the figures and somehow manged to get them, only to find that the average temps worldwide had actually dropped by 3 degrees over that time. 99% of the environmental damage said to be caused by man is a myth, plain and simple. But I’m sure that wont stop the tree huggers.
As P.J. O’Rourke once wrote “Everyone wants to save the world, but no one wants to do the dishes.”
Is this a IMHO thread?
Anyway, IMHO, I think there is an over-population problem (but maybe this is a bias due to my living in the crowded Northeast U.S.). There should be no argument that the world’s resources are limited. Sure, we can find more resources and better manage the ones we have already, but at some point we’re bound to run up against pollution problems (to be healthy ourselves, we need a healthy environment). And then there’s the food web. As we continue to edge out more species to extinction as we take up more land, we just don’t know which are the critical species to the food web that, when gone, will have far-reaching consequences that will bite us in the butt.
Maybe it’s more of an over-population-problem-considering-our-current-technology-&-lifestyle type thing. If we consumed less, then there would be more to go around. But humans seem to like consuming resources. 
My utopian solution? Self restraint (such as having no more than 2 children so the population growth levels out & acting respectfully of the environment that supports us) & technology improvements (such as better agriculture & less polluting technologies). No evil governments needed or wanted.
Environmental-spoutings aside, my point is that we should acknowledge that there are many unknowns (e.g., How many people can the world support? What species are critical to the food web? What technological advancements will we actually make? How much pollution can we stand? ), and because of that, I think we should proceed cautiously and rationally. Either we plan ahead, or nature will come down hard on us. (I don’t mean to anthropomorphize.)
P.J. O’Rourke is funny & intelligent but he’s not a scientific resource.
Update after a break caused, in part, by the necessity that I occasionally do some remunerative work.
Earlier, I gave a pessimistic estimate that 1,980 quads would be needed to bring the rest of the world up to U.S. standards of energy usage. For the sake of simplicity of calculation, I will assume that this energy is represented by nuclear-generated electricity.
In 1997, nuclear-generated electricity amounted to 6.68 quads in the U.S. Worldwide, then, we would need to provide about 297 times this amount. As of 1 January 1999, nuclear generating capacity in the U.S. amounted to 13% of 687 GW, or about 89.1 GW; thus, it would be necessary to construct about 297 * 89.1 = 26,525 GW of generating capacity. I believe that the price of building nuclear-generated electric capacity has ranged up to $5/installed watt (Anthracite, despite her obvious concentration on coal-fired generation, may have solider information on this), so that the total capital cost of so providing would be about USD 5.3x10[sup]12[/sup] (of course, various expedients, such as shooting Greenpeacers out of hand, might reduce this amount by a factor of two).
Nuclear-generated electricity in the U.S. cost about USD 0.02152/kW·hr (1 kW·hr = 3798 BTU). Therefore, the on-going cost of providing this much electricity would be USD 1.12x10[sup]13[/sup] annually (costs of distribution are not included). Presumably this includes an amortization of the capital costs, although my sources don’t explicitly say so. It also includes a charge of USD 0.001/kW·hr for disposal of high-level waste.
Now, it is a good bet that, if the huddled masses were using energy at the same rate as the U.S., they would be, to within a half-order of magnitude, as wealthy as Americans. The U.S. GDP in 1997 was USD 9.6x10[sup]12[/sup]. This gives per capita production of USD 35,000. Taking this figure for per capita world product, if energy were being used at the American rate, gives a hypothetical gross world product of USD 2.1x10[sup]14[/sup]; energy costs would be about 5.3% of this.
We see tht a ramp-up is needed, but the thing does not appear to be inherently impossible or unaffordable.