5 ms·

Overpopulation isn't that of a big problem as the politics make it seem.

by Mimick 11y ago

trymas 11y ago
Why (I am serious, as IMHO today's global population is too big)?
- anunderachiever 11y ago
  If you place all 7.3 billion people onto an area of the size of Austria, every one has more than 11m² to their own. Of course this illustration is a simplification but it brings the world population back to perspective.
  - tgb 11y ago
    This is obviously not at all the concern that people have regarding overpopulation.
  - anonyfox 11y ago
    And you need space to plant stuff to feed everyone. Can 11m² be enough to feed an average person through the whole year?
    - iofj 11y ago
      The rest of Europe has more than enough farmland to provide for 7 billion people, calorie-wise. If we were to learn how to farm on the open sea, back of the envelope calculations tell me we should easily be able to multiply today's population by 10^4 or more. If there is a problem, it's water. On the plus side, water is the easiest to recycle by far, the only limit we're close to hitting in some locations is the amount of water that's recycled for free by the weather. Also, we have skyscrapers. The 11m2 area per person is ground-level area. If you have 10-storey skyscrapers on average, 120m2 for every family on average should be easy, and allow for population to increase 5 fold without exceeding available space in Austria.
  - trymas 11y ago
    But problem is resource consumption, no? It's a complete speculation, because I can't cite this, but isn't Earth not capable of sustaining 7+ billion people? Exponential population growth brings even greater exponential rise of greenhouse effect, oil consumption, deforestation, etc. IMHO it is the main problem of overpopulation.
    - UK-AL 11y ago
      Nobody knows what its capable of sustaining. There's stuff like using resources more efficiently, recycling etc. We aren't good at these things yet, consumption could go a lot higher with improvements to those.
      - TeMPOraL 11y ago
        > We aren't good at these things yet, consumption could go a lot higher with improvements to those. That's an Malthusianism[0] right here. Why recycling and increased efficiency themselves aren't a solution? Because people will increase their consumption to offset all the gains. C.f.: "Why are even some affluent parts of the world running out of fresh water? Because if they weren’t, they’d keep watering their lawns until they were." [0] - http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=418 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=418
        UK-AL 11y ago
        Increasing consumption isn't necessary a bad thing.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Hans Rosling has a documentary about it, check it out via Google, it's on youtube of vimeo or something. It's not so much that overpopulation isn't an issue, of course it is (that's why it's called 'over' population), but rather that the trend line is that population growth is very rapidly slowing, that people tend to overestimate population growth, are unaware of big population centres that are shrinking, that the average worldwide children per woman rate is < 2.5 (used to be > 5 just 50 years ago) and that population will likely decline after we add a few billion more. That's not to say that it isn't an issue, but traditionally we held some really weird views about overpopulation. Basically we looked at this graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Population_curve.svg/550px-Population_curve.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Po... and extrapolated the exponential growth, and ended up with scenarios of doom, war etc. Food shortages for example are consistently predicted, but food production growth has outstripped population growth substantially and food security is better than any time in the past (yet far from perfect). Obviously there are huge sustainability concerns, but the biggest source is our level of consumption levels and patterns, not our population numbers, which comes in second.
  - iofj 11y ago
    I think the issue is much more what will happen to the world's numbers before the population numbers decline (IF indeed EVERY ethnic groups starts reducing numbers. God help us all if there is one that doesn't) Numbers of fanatically religious people will double, relatively speaking. Mostly Catholics and Muslims. This is under the assumption that the current rates of conversions remain roughly the same. Trouble is, people turn atheist, don't have kids, and die out, the number of atheists we have today is a historical anomaly resulting from the baby boom. In other words, that effect will stop. This likely will have policy implications. People in cities are growing FAR slower than people in rural settings. That means that it isn't just atheists that will drop, but everything you associate with city living will lessen. Most city populations are essentially replaced with fresh people from rural settings every 60 years or so (meaning that the number of new rural people in the city at year+60 is larger than the number of people in the city). Numbers of black people and asian people (not Chinese) will grow a hell of a lot more than the other groups. Africa should have 3-4 times more people than today at least before it stabilizes. Same goes for some countries in Asia. This of course also means that Europe is going to look back to today's Syrian "refugee crisis" and wonder why people were worried about a mere 1 million people per year. Truth of the matter is that there isn't much any political movement in either Europe or America can do. So it doesn't even really matter.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  It's mostly a resource allocation problem the last time I checked at least with regard to food. We make plenty of it, but we're terrible at allocating it. Water? I think that one is definitely in shortage with regard to potable water. And other resources are more easily managed like metals and other materials that go into electronics we use everywhere (I'm thinking mostly medical, educational, and communications here). Other than water, I think the only real problem with the current and projected populations is energy. It's not cheap to get oil. And we use it in everything. So, it's really a matter of time before the question of energy makes the rest of the abundance we have useless. No cheap oil means no cheap way to ship food to markets. So, I'm split on how to see the problem as it is. I think Malthus is going to get the last laugh on all of us.

Overpopulation isn't that of a big problem as the politics make it seem.

by Mimick 11y ago

Overpopulation isn't that of a big problem as the politics make it seem.

trymas 11y ago

Why (I am serious, as IMHO today's global population is too big)?

anunderachiever 11y ago
If you place all 7.3 billion people onto an area of the size of Austria, every one has more than 11m² to their own. Of course this illustration is a simplification but it brings the world population back to perspective.
- tgb 11y ago
  This is obviously not at all the concern that people have regarding overpopulation.
- anonyfox 11y ago
  And you need space to plant stuff to feed everyone. Can 11m² be enough to feed an average person through the whole year?
  - iofj 11y ago
    The rest of Europe has more than enough farmland to provide for 7 billion people, calorie-wise. If we were to learn how to farm on the open sea, back of the envelope calculations tell me we should easily be able to multiply today's population by 10^4 or more. If there is a problem, it's water. On the plus side, water is the easiest to recycle by far, the only limit we're close to hitting in some locations is the amount of water that's recycled for free by the weather. Also, we have skyscrapers. The 11m2 area per person is ground-level area. If you have 10-storey skyscrapers on average, 120m2 for every family on average should be easy, and allow for population to increase 5 fold without exceeding available space in Austria.
- trymas 11y ago
  But problem is resource consumption, no? It's a complete speculation, because I can't cite this, but isn't Earth not capable of sustaining 7+ billion people? Exponential population growth brings even greater exponential rise of greenhouse effect, oil consumption, deforestation, etc. IMHO it is the main problem of overpopulation.
  - UK-AL 11y ago
    Nobody knows what its capable of sustaining. There's stuff like using resources more efficiently, recycling etc. We aren't good at these things yet, consumption could go a lot higher with improvements to those.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      > We aren't good at these things yet, consumption could go a lot higher with improvements to those. That's an Malthusianism[0] right here. Why recycling and increased efficiency themselves aren't a solution? Because people will increase their consumption to offset all the gains. C.f.: "Why are even some affluent parts of the world running out of fresh water? Because if they weren’t, they’d keep watering their lawns until they were." [0] - http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=418 http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=418
      - UK-AL 11y ago
        Increasing consumption isn't necessary a bad thing.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Hans Rosling has a documentary about it, check it out via Google, it's on youtube of vimeo or something. It's not so much that overpopulation isn't an issue, of course it is (that's why it's called 'over' population), but rather that the trend line is that population growth is very rapidly slowing, that people tend to overestimate population growth, are unaware of big population centres that are shrinking, that the average worldwide children per woman rate is < 2.5 (used to be > 5 just 50 years ago) and that population will likely decline after we add a few billion more. That's not to say that it isn't an issue, but traditionally we held some really weird views about overpopulation. Basically we looked at this graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Population_curve.svg/550px-Population_curve.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Po... and extrapolated the exponential growth, and ended up with scenarios of doom, war etc. Food shortages for example are consistently predicted, but food production growth has outstripped population growth substantially and food security is better than any time in the past (yet far from perfect). Obviously there are huge sustainability concerns, but the biggest source is our level of consumption levels and patterns, not our population numbers, which comes in second.
- iofj 11y ago
  I think the issue is much more what will happen to the world's numbers before the population numbers decline (IF indeed EVERY ethnic groups starts reducing numbers. God help us all if there is one that doesn't) Numbers of fanatically religious people will double, relatively speaking. Mostly Catholics and Muslims. This is under the assumption that the current rates of conversions remain roughly the same. Trouble is, people turn atheist, don't have kids, and die out, the number of atheists we have today is a historical anomaly resulting from the baby boom. In other words, that effect will stop. This likely will have policy implications. People in cities are growing FAR slower than people in rural settings. That means that it isn't just atheists that will drop, but everything you associate with city living will lessen. Most city populations are essentially replaced with fresh people from rural settings every 60 years or so (meaning that the number of new rural people in the city at year+60 is larger than the number of people in the city). Numbers of black people and asian people (not Chinese) will grow a hell of a lot more than the other groups. Africa should have 3-4 times more people than today at least before it stabilizes. Same goes for some countries in Asia. This of course also means that Europe is going to look back to today's Syrian "refugee crisis" and wonder why people were worried about a mere 1 million people per year. Truth of the matter is that there isn't much any political movement in either Europe or America can do. So it doesn't even really matter.
norea-armozel 11y ago
It's mostly a resource allocation problem the last time I checked at least with regard to food. We make plenty of it, but we're terrible at allocating it. Water? I think that one is definitely in shortage with regard to potable water. And other resources are more easily managed like metals and other materials that go into electronics we use everywhere (I'm thinking mostly medical, educational, and communications here). Other than water, I think the only real problem with the current and projected populations is energy. It's not cheap to get oil. And we use it in everything. So, it's really a matter of time before the question of energy makes the rest of the abundance we have useless. No cheap oil means no cheap way to ship food to markets. So, I'm split on how to see the problem as it is. I think Malthus is going to get the last laugh on all of us.