World Population

Great Debates
41

UncleBeer wrote:

I can’t speak for China, but yes, Atlanta had a serious water shortage this summer. Perhaps we do have a different definition of serious. No one died, but several towns in outlying areas came close to exhausting their water supplies. Carrollton, for one, there were others. The Hayes State Prison ran out of water, and the City of Summerville had to make an emergency link to a different water system. In Atlanta itself, the reservoir known as Lake Lanier reached its lowest levels ever, IIRC.

The states of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have been locked in litigation for years over the rights to the limited water resources they share.

There has been talk of stopping barge traffic to Columbus, Georgia in the future, to retain more water in Atlanta’s reservoirs upstream.

Now take these present-day problems, and assume Atlanta continues its current rate of growth. There simply is not enough water to go around if the population doubles again. Atlanta, unlike many northern and midwestern cities, does not have a big slow-flowing river nearby. What we have is one relatively small river (the Chattahoochee), and the ability to tap into a couple of other small rivers north of here.

So yes, Atlanta has suprisingly few water resources, and it has serious water problems.

Desalinization plants may work, one day (and in fact, I have a thread going on that topic in the GQ forum). Piping water inland to a city with Atlanta’s altitude would seem to present a technological challenge, to put it mildly. I hope you’re right, though.

42

Here’s that desalinization thread.

Speaking of water problems, don’t get me started on the depletion of aquifers in the midwest.

43

Oops. Here’s the link to the desalinization thread.

44

Mr. Z. responds to wevets: *“All those people have to be supplied with fresh & clean water, food, housing, health care, waste disposal, energy, employment”

HEalth care? Employment? My God, man, those aren’t neccesities! […]

Water, shelter, food. Those are the needs, and all are renewable, inexhaustable and ubiquitous. *

What are you talking about? Of course there are places that don’t have enough water or shelter or food—they are not ubiquitous. Of course there are places where the supply of water or food or shelter can be insufficient for the population—they are not inexhaustible.

(And by the way, the OP was asking if there might be a population problem. I don’t think that merely having enough water, shelter, and food to keep everyone alive is the same thing as “not having any problem.”)

Recall also that alleviating shortages when they do occur requires additional resources. Desalinization plants are indeed terrific, but they don’t come for free.

Mind you, I’m not a pessimist about global overpopulation, and I agree that we are not likely to see global cataclysms on that account. But I think that we in the developed world are going to end up changing a number of things that we’re currently doing, and that we may indeed run into some unfortunate environmental and social consequences if we delay those changes too long. Technology may indeed solve all our problems but it sure won’t happen automatically.

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World population projections, 1995-2150.

46

I never said the solutions would be cheap, but then how do you put a price on the survival of the human race? The question here is, “does the world have a population problem?” I take that to mean, are we running out of the basic resources necessary to sustain human life.

I’m sure this very question has been pondered for many, many years. But since we’re still here, obviously the only rational answer is, “No, population isn’t a problem.” The reason we’re still here is that people have, over the entire history of civilization, invented and adpated technology to fit their needs. And there’s absolutely no reason to believe innovation is going to come to a grinding halt. In fact, it’s typically argued that technology expands geometrically.

47

Kimstu writes:

Nothing comes for free; even living a HFG life-style requires getting up in the morning and grubbing for roots.

Asking, “Why should we use this method when that one is so much cheaper?” is a legitimate (although not unanswerable) question. Asking, “Why should we spend any money at all?” is not. (Given the current state of Atlanta’s water supply – I greatly doubt if the citizens go down to the river to drink – we may well ask what the cost of that was, and if “natural” is to be redefined to mean, “anything that happened before I was born and that I didn’t have to pay for”.)

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UB: *The question here is, “does the world have a population problem?” I take that to mean, are we running out of the basic resources necessary to sustain human life. *

Okay, but if you don’t consider anything less grave than the actual failure of the earth’s resources to sustain human life to be a “problem” in this context, then we don’t have enough common ground to maintain a debate.

technology expands geometrically

What exactly do you mean by that?

49

How much energy does a desalinization plant consume to desalinate 1 gallon of water? Is it low enough to power it with a roof-sized solar collector, or do we have to burn petroleum?

50

tracer asks:

Well, I don’t have that information. Since Santa Barbara was ready to produce water at $2,000/acre-foot (one acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons), I suspect that the answer is “a trivial amount”.

I also suspect that there a considerable economy of scale involved here. I very much doubt that potable water can be provided by desalinization (or any other means) for a single household at anything like the cost per gallon that it can be for city, state, or nation.

51

First of all, it is clear that there is no need to hope for disasters and disease to keep down population levels. Population growth is leveling off. In many European countries the population level is falling.

What is the simplest way to slow population growth? Gender equality. If you are worried about overpopulation, the simplest, most effective, and most moral thing you can do to lower population levels is to work for gender equality in the third world. This has the added benefit of being desirable for its own sake, as well as preventing unwanted pregnancies.

Also…the US does not really have a water shortage. What we have is irrational water pricing policies. Industry and agriculture get water at waaaay below cost, and they consume something like 90% of the water. Household use is a pittance, and most of that is washing and watering the lawn. We have plenty of water for people to drink.

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lemur said

Amen! give women control over thei reproduction…YES YES YES!

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I agree with Kimstu’s assessment of UncleBeer’s definition of “population problem”. I would define it as any situation where people’s needs are not adequately being met, or the enviroment is being threatened, due to the number of people present or the potential for such problems to exist in the future due to the projected growth rate. Overpopulation doesn’t have to exist on a global scale or not at all. Overpopulation and underpopulation can exist side-by-side geographically or even class-wise if there are barriers or bottlenecks interrupting the flow of economic resources into the areas where they are needed.

No, we aren’t running out of resources as we speak and no, the Earth as a whole is not overpopulated, just parts of it.

Technology, UncleBeer, provides hope that some of the future problems can be alleviated, but hope is not the same a guarentee. We shouldn’t gamble with the fate of the Earth that miraculous technology will somehow save the day.

You seem to be acknowledging that there will be a problem in the future, but if you know there will be a problem later, it means you have a problem right now. If we’re still talking about desalinization, the “price” will be in resources like energy, not monetary uits on someone’s ledger.

It’s intersting that many of thoses who deny that population is a problem that can’t be solved with a little redistribution of wealth and/or big government programs are the same consevatives who wouldn’t tolerate such things. (not neccessarily you, UB, but many people)

Of course, these are the folks who are dead-set against family planning, which is where this discussion ought to be going. I agree with tomndeb in that birth control should not be imposed on anyone, but it should be made available and strongly encouraged. But there are powerful groups and cutural forces that need to be turned around on this issue, like the Catholic church, the Islamic culture, and the Republican party. These folks often portray making birth control available to be the same as imposing it.

I agree with those who maintain that raising living standards leads to lower birth rates, but this glosses over the cultural shift that needs to take place in raising the social status of women and allowing contraceptives.

All types of solutions should be pursued, but bear in mind that solutions take time, and during that time, the numbers are increasing.

54

Kimstu said

so the homo homo sapiens of 30,000 years ago demanded "health care? Damn, I am going ot cancel my subscription to “Archeology Today”. They missed out on the Cro Magnon HMO’s.

As for “employment”, I doubt that subsistence famers ever said that they were “self employed.”

Feel free to provide historical cites.

“the intsy bintsy socialist crawled up the chat room walls…”

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It certainly could and probably will; I’m rather an optimist on that point. The question is how many and how much people have to suffer before a technological solution is achieved.

Successful experiments in population growth? Please excuse me if I misunderstand your statement, but you’re not implying that successful population growth in the past implies successful population growth in the future? Isn’t that the fallacy of extrapolating beyond the range of your data set? If human populations have successfully grown to 6 billion, how does that demonstrate that they can successfully grow beyond 6 billion? Obviously a carrying capacity exists at some point, and saying that we haven’t hit it yet does not demonstrate that we will not hit it in the future. Incidentally, I should mention that I do not believe the world will have a big problem sustaining 9 billion people. The problem is one of quality and endurance: I want a society that can sustain its people well, and for thousands of years. The smaller the world population, the easier it will be to do that.

What I don’t understand is the assumption that a technological solution will be found eliminates the need to plan for the future. I don’t see what’s wrong with planning to build the bridge and gathering the materials to build it before we reach the river. Procrastination, whether at an individual level or the level of a society, has few advantages.

I fail to see the advantages of filling the world with unemployed, diseased masses. Since we can provide these things, why shouldn’t one of our goals be to keep our population at a size where providing these things is possible? Why should filling the world with sheer numbers of human beings be a goal over filling the world with fewer humans in much better individual condition? I’m sure there are those who would choose to live the same sort of life humans thousands of years ago lived, but I really don’t think there are that many who would give up an opportunity for modern life to do it.

Like sqweels, I agree with Kimstu’s characterization of the nature of the ‘population’ problem.

56

Population growth is slowing for the rich, industrialized countries, but it’s rapidly increasing in other countries. I used to have a link for info on this, but this is all I could find now…
from http://www.popin.org/6billion/b1.htm

Depends where you live. Here in the sprawl of the Northeast U.S., water shortages are a big issue. Ditto for Southern California.

57

Curiously, though, Phobos, that link itself states that population growth is slowing for the undeveoped as well as the developed world. Perhaps you had something else in mind?

58

d’oh! :o
drat…where was that other link I had?

59

Mr. Z. replied to me: *`Also, of course they had the concept of “health care” before 1900, although they tended to call it something like “public hygiene” instead. Viewing some form of medical care for the whole of society as a “necessity” of civilized life is hardly an exclusively 20th-century idea.’

so the homo homo sapiens of 30,000 years ago demanded "health care? Damn, I am going ot cancel my subscription to “Archeology Today”. They missed out on the Cro Magnon HMO’s. *

Wow, Mr. Z., that is an absolutely jaw-dropping leap of illogic, even for you. Let’s recap:

  • You said, “HEalth care? Employment? My God, man, those aren’t neccesities! IF they were then mankind would not have been able to hold out until the 20th century. I doubt that those words even existed prior to the early 1900’s.”
  • I pointed out that the concept of “health care”—that is, some form of universally available medical treatment—as a social necessity does indeed predate the early 1900’s.
  • You then suggest that I am implying the ridiculous conclusion that there must have been HMO’s 30,000 years ago? What on earth are you thinking?

You then said:

*I doubt more than 10% of the world was “employed” prior to 1900. […] As for “employment”, I doubt that subsistence famers ever said that they were “self employed.” Feel free to provide historical cites. *

Gladly. From Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776):

So obviously the use of “employment” to mean “working for one’s living” was in use well before 1900, and of course well over 10% of the world—damn near all of it, in fact—has been “employed” in that way throughout the history of the human race.

What I think you may have been muddleheadedly trying to get at was the statement that prior to 1900, less than 10% of the population was “employed” in the sense of working for wages in currency rather than for subsistence or wages in kind. This is probably somewhat closer to being true, although I’d be inclined to put the breaking of the 10% barrier closer to 1600 or 1700 than to 1900. See the Britannica site on the history of the organization of work for more details, although without statistical summaries.

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Glad to see you agian Kimstu. A statement that all people need health care and “employment” is simply incorrect. I doubt that the poster of said statement was referring to subsistence farming. Mainly because one can’t "provide this. Usually when people make such statements, they are talking about the creation of “jobs” meaning employment in the modern sense of working for someone and receiving monetary remuneration.

But more to the point, “employment” is not a basic human need. Even a muddleheaded moron like me can see that employment is a means to obtain the necesities of life and not the actual necesity itself.

Second, while busily insulting me, you failed to demonstrate how health care is a necesity. It’s nice, but I doubt I would perish withing a year had I none.

Now go away or I will taunt you a second time!