7 ms·

I reckon we're 20 years away from the overpopulation problem reaching the same level of media attention as the consequent global warming problem does now. The f

by genwin 12y ago

I reckon we're 20 years away from the overpopulation problem reaching the same level of media attention as the consequent global warming problem does now. The former is still a taboo topic. In the meantime expect things to get way worse. There's plenty of river water available in the US West for a lesser population, which can be attained through attrition. Downvotes predictable, tech solves everything, more people is always better, there's nothing to see here, please move along.

josephschmoe 12y ago
The U.S. fertility rate is 1.880. We are only experiencing a population increase currently because our total population was so much lower 80 years ago. Our fertility rate went below 2.0 in 1994, so we'll see noticeable natural decreases in population in the second half of the century unless life expectancy increases by more than 20 years.
- genwin 12y ago
  Local < 2 fertility rates are swamped by global > 2 rates. Overpopulation is a global problem affecting the US, same as global warming. The US is fast growing in population.
  - bequanna 12y ago
    >The US is fast growing in population. No. Google: 'US births per woman'. In the US, that is ~1.7. 2.1 is considered the replacement rate in developed countries. After that, check out: 'world births per woman' Currently (2011) @ 2.41 down from 2.67 in 2000, 3.23 in 1990. Do you expect this trend to suddenly flatten or reverse? In the future, longer life expectancy will likely have a larger impact on population numbers than birth rates. In specific developed countries, I would also expect immigration to be part a large part of growth.
    - bane 12y ago
      The U.S. population growth rate is ~.75% per year. Even though the fertility rate is lower than some other industrialized countries, the immigration rate is very high. Global average population growth rate is 1.1%.
    - aurelian 12y ago
      The US population grew by almost 10%, over 27 million, between 2000 to 2010.
      - shakethemonkey 12y ago
        Yes, but not from the birth rate. The US receives well over 1M immigrants per year[1] [1] http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/2005/09/2005-immigration-trends-01.png http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/2005/09/2005-immigration-tr...
  - CapitalistCartr 12y ago
    This is completely wrong. World population is about 7.2 billion people and growth is slowing. The UN projects it will peak at about 9.1 billion in about 2050, then decline slightly. And the US population isn't fast growing, its projected to reach 438 million by 2050. Most of the US growth will be immigration, which is completely under our control. As for being swamped, lately, in spite of the recent economic downturn, global population growth rates have been lessening by more than demographers expected. All of this can be read with a cursory Google search. My numbers are from the UN, US Census Dept., and Pew Research.
    - kourt 12y ago
      immigration, which is completely under our control. And yet media reports consistently imply that restricting immigration is both impossible and unethical.
    - genwin 12y ago
      > And the US population isn't fast growing, its projected to reach 438 million by 2050. That's fast growing to me.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    No they aren't. Global population is levelling off faster than people anticiapted and is likely to plateau at 9b in 2050 - a lot of people, to be sure, but far from the Malthusian scenario you seem to be suggesting.
Shivetya 12y ago
We are not suffering an overpopulation problem and we are far far from one world wide, so much land is locked up by governments and not used that we can continue growing for a long time, combine that with the incredible waste of food the occurs, if not water, we just need to change our management. The water issues the West face are because of decades of mismanagement by the Bureau of Reclamation and at state levels has distorted water usage. The amount of farm land in California that only exists because of inordinately cheap water has resulted in too many water intensive farms not sucking dry the water table. The fix is simple but not popular, start charging for water what it costs to deliver there. Building dams and supporting infrastructure to deliver water is not cheap, nor is their maintenance. So charge appropriate amounts for it. Yeah, some farms are going to revert back to grasslands and maybe even forest over the long term. The farms themselves will simply move to where water is more readily available and cheaper. That is how things should work, but the government distorted this with water that was so cheap it encouraged the problem that exist.
- mullingitover 12y ago
  > The fix is simple but not popular, start charging for water what it costs to deliver there. I think articially cheap farming is the whole idea. We subsidize our agriculture market to make us competitive as an exporter (note that we howl in protest when other countries artificially prop up their export businesses, e.g. cheap Chinese steel).
  - deciplex 12y ago
    It's justified for agriculture. Famine sucks, and relying on trade with other nations to feed your people is a losing proposition as well.
    - nickff 12y ago
      >"relying on trade with other nations to feed your people is a losing proposition..." Please explain the rationale behind this argument; the substance of your reasoning is not clear from this statement.
mjmahone17 12y ago
There's also plenty of water available in the US West if there wasn't so much water-intensive agriculture in arid regions (Yuma, Imperial Valley, etc), which uses 80% of the river.
- genwin 12y ago
  Why not focus on the root cause instead of workarounds?
  - lutorm 12y ago
    How is "water intensive farming in arid areas" not a root cause?
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Because quite often in such cases, focusing on the real root cause would mean reducing population to 10% and basically rolling back the Industrial Revolution - which is not going to happen, so we're stuck with workarounds if we want to move forward.
    - deciplex 12y ago
      In this case it would just mean that various agribusinesses in the area would have to shut down, after decades of being artificially propped up by subsidized water. Naturally, a corporation has more political muscle than a reservoir, so it is likely the water will continue to be subsidized until there isn't any left, and the subsequent economic collapse will be blamed on immigrants.
    - ak217 12y ago
      You are mistaken about industrial and development water use in the US West. Agricultural water use in California exceeds urban water use by a factor of almost 4x, and exceeds industrial use (broadly defined, minus agricultural industry) by at least 16x. Agriculture is the elephant in the room. Residential water use (lawns!) is a distant second. Everything else is a very distant third. Source: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_211EHChapter2R.pdf http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_211EHChapter2R.pdf
fchollet 12y ago
It is impossible to talk about overpopulation without defining some context first. - what lifestyle do you want for your population? - what processes do you have in place to achieve this lifestyle? It is often mentioned that the US lifestyle cannot be sustained for 7 billion people and that therefore Earth has an overpopulation problem. Of course, given how insanely wasteful the US lifestyle and its underlying processes are, this is ridiculous. The problem lies not with the number of people, but with waste, mismanagement, and general consumerist insanity. Worth noting is that Japan has ten times the population density of the US (while having a mostly inhabitable country due to its mountainous geography) while sustaining higher levels of comforts for its citizens than the US. One glaring difference is that Japan recycles most of its trash. In the US, everything is disposable and essentially no recycling ever occurs. The same level of complete waste applies to water management, energy management, and so on.
- genwin 12y ago
  Good points. The lifestyle I'd want for my kids would be more resources available per kid (whether they use them or not) and less effort expended to attain a resource, not the current situation where there are ever less resources that are ever more expensive in today's dollars to attain. For example if they want wild salmon for dinner I'd like the rivers to be teeming with salmon, like they used to, and for a salmon to always cost $1 in today's dollars, instead of $15 a pound today and $30 a decade from now and so on. And yes I'd like everything to be recyclable and recycled to the maximum extent, whatever is needed to keep the good life sustainable until the Sun becomes a red giant.
cscurmudgeon 12y ago
Would you rather scores of others die than give up on irrational habits like eating beef? Would you rather be counted amount the attrition?
- wyager 12y ago
  >Would you rather scores of others die than give up on irrational habits like eating beef? That's a completely false dichotomy. There's nothing irrational about eating beef from a resource standpoint. For example, if we were to allow the Market to act efficiently (which we might not (which would actually be irrational, from my standpoint)), the resource requirements of raising beef would 100% guaranteed make it impractically expensive to eat, and there would be no issue. As it stands, beef is already rising in cost much faster than other forms of meat! See http://www.buedelmeatup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chart-retail-meat-prices.gif http://www.buedelmeatup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chart...
- Spooky23 12y ago
  Beef isn't irrational. Ranching in Nevada probably is. It's a market problem. Because of the way water rights were allocated, it's cheap to do wacky things like farm the desert. You can very easily farm beef cattle in places where water is abundant... Places like New York, Kentucky, etc, just not at the scale as on massive plots of empty land.
  - cscurmudgeon 12y ago
    Pasting mmanfrin's comment: It's specifically Beef that is the massive drain. Chicken/Pork/other meats are magnitudes of orders more water-conscious per calorie. (Pork uses 75% less, and is yet the most wasteful of water outside of cows/bovine)[1]. Beef is astoundingly wasteful of water. You could take an hour-long shower and it would use about the same amount of water needed for a pound of beef. [2] and [3]. [1] http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-wat.. http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-wat.... [2] http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.f.. http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.f.... [3] http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real.. http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8117761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8117761

by genwin 12y ago

josephschmoe 12y ago

The U.S. fertility rate is 1.880. We are only experiencing a population increase currently because our total population was so much lower 80 years ago. Our fertility rate went below 2.0 in 1994, so we'll see noticeable natural decreases in population in the second half of the century unless life expectancy increases by more than 20 years.

genwin 12y ago
Local < 2 fertility rates are swamped by global > 2 rates. Overpopulation is a global problem affecting the US, same as global warming. The US is fast growing in population.
- bequanna 12y ago
  >The US is fast growing in population. No. Google: 'US births per woman'. In the US, that is ~1.7. 2.1 is considered the replacement rate in developed countries. After that, check out: 'world births per woman' Currently (2011) @ 2.41 down from 2.67 in 2000, 3.23 in 1990. Do you expect this trend to suddenly flatten or reverse? In the future, longer life expectancy will likely have a larger impact on population numbers than birth rates. In specific developed countries, I would also expect immigration to be part a large part of growth.
  - bane 12y ago
    The U.S. population growth rate is ~.75% per year. Even though the fertility rate is lower than some other industrialized countries, the immigration rate is very high. Global average population growth rate is 1.1%.
  - aurelian 12y ago
    The US population grew by almost 10%, over 27 million, between 2000 to 2010.
    - shakethemonkey 12y ago
      Yes, but not from the birth rate. The US receives well over 1M immigrants per year[1] [1] http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/2005/09/2005-immigration-trends-01.png http://www.pewhispanic.org/files/2005/09/2005-immigration-tr...
- CapitalistCartr 12y ago
  This is completely wrong. World population is about 7.2 billion people and growth is slowing. The UN projects it will peak at about 9.1 billion in about 2050, then decline slightly. And the US population isn't fast growing, its projected to reach 438 million by 2050. Most of the US growth will be immigration, which is completely under our control. As for being swamped, lately, in spite of the recent economic downturn, global population growth rates have been lessening by more than demographers expected. All of this can be read with a cursory Google search. My numbers are from the UN, US Census Dept., and Pew Research.
  - kourt 12y ago
    immigration, which is completely under our control. And yet media reports consistently imply that restricting immigration is both impossible and unethical.
  - genwin 12y ago
    > And the US population isn't fast growing, its projected to reach 438 million by 2050. That's fast growing to me.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  No they aren't. Global population is levelling off faster than people anticiapted and is likely to plateau at 9b in 2050 - a lot of people, to be sure, but far from the Malthusian scenario you seem to be suggesting.

Shivetya 12y ago

We are not suffering an overpopulation problem and we are far far from one world wide, so much land is locked up by governments and not used that we can continue growing for a long time, combine that with the incredible waste of food the occurs, if not water, we just need to change our management. The water issues the West face are because of decades of mismanagement by the Bureau of Reclamation and at state levels has distorted water usage. The amount of farm land in California that only exists because of inordinately cheap water has resulted in too many water intensive farms not sucking dry the water table. The fix is simple but not popular, start charging for water what it costs to deliver there. Building dams and supporting infrastructure to deliver water is not cheap, nor is their maintenance. So charge appropriate amounts for it. Yeah, some farms are going to revert back to grasslands and maybe even forest over the long term. The farms themselves will simply move to where water is more readily available and cheaper. That is how things should work, but the government distorted this with water that was so cheap it encouraged the problem that exist.

mullingitover 12y ago
> The fix is simple but not popular, start charging for water what it costs to deliver there. I think articially cheap farming is the whole idea. We subsidize our agriculture market to make us competitive as an exporter (note that we howl in protest when other countries artificially prop up their export businesses, e.g. cheap Chinese steel).
- deciplex 12y ago
  It's justified for agriculture. Famine sucks, and relying on trade with other nations to feed your people is a losing proposition as well.
  - nickff 12y ago
    >"relying on trade with other nations to feed your people is a losing proposition..." Please explain the rationale behind this argument; the substance of your reasoning is not clear from this statement.

mjmahone17 12y ago

There's also plenty of water available in the US West if there wasn't so much water-intensive agriculture in arid regions (Yuma, Imperial Valley, etc), which uses 80% of the river.

genwin 12y ago
Why not focus on the root cause instead of workarounds?
- lutorm 12y ago
  How is "water intensive farming in arid areas" not a root cause?
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Because quite often in such cases, focusing on the real root cause would mean reducing population to 10% and basically rolling back the Industrial Revolution - which is not going to happen, so we're stuck with workarounds if we want to move forward.
  - deciplex 12y ago
    In this case it would just mean that various agribusinesses in the area would have to shut down, after decades of being artificially propped up by subsidized water. Naturally, a corporation has more political muscle than a reservoir, so it is likely the water will continue to be subsidized until there isn't any left, and the subsequent economic collapse will be blamed on immigrants.
  - ak217 12y ago
    You are mistaken about industrial and development water use in the US West. Agricultural water use in California exceeds urban water use by a factor of almost 4x, and exceeds industrial use (broadly defined, minus agricultural industry) by at least 16x. Agriculture is the elephant in the room. Residential water use (lawns!) is a distant second. Everything else is a very distant third. Source: http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_211EHChapter2R.pdf http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_211EHChapter2R.pdf

fchollet 12y ago

It is impossible to talk about overpopulation without defining some context first. - what lifestyle do you want for your population? - what processes do you have in place to achieve this lifestyle? It is often mentioned that the US lifestyle cannot be sustained for 7 billion people and that therefore Earth has an overpopulation problem. Of course, given how insanely wasteful the US lifestyle and its underlying processes are, this is ridiculous. The problem lies not with the number of people, but with waste, mismanagement, and general consumerist insanity. Worth noting is that Japan has ten times the population density of the US (while having a mostly inhabitable country due to its mountainous geography) while sustaining higher levels of comforts for its citizens than the US. One glaring difference is that Japan recycles most of its trash. In the US, everything is disposable and essentially no recycling ever occurs. The same level of complete waste applies to water management, energy management, and so on.

genwin 12y ago
Good points. The lifestyle I'd want for my kids would be more resources available per kid (whether they use them or not) and less effort expended to attain a resource, not the current situation where there are ever less resources that are ever more expensive in today's dollars to attain. For example if they want wild salmon for dinner I'd like the rivers to be teeming with salmon, like they used to, and for a salmon to always cost $1 in today's dollars, instead of $15 a pound today and $30 a decade from now and so on. And yes I'd like everything to be recyclable and recycled to the maximum extent, whatever is needed to keep the good life sustainable until the Sun becomes a red giant.

cscurmudgeon 12y ago

Would you rather scores of others die than give up on irrational habits like eating beef? Would you rather be counted amount the attrition?

wyager 12y ago
>Would you rather scores of others die than give up on irrational habits like eating beef? That's a completely false dichotomy. There's nothing irrational about eating beef from a resource standpoint. For example, if we were to allow the Market to act efficiently (which we might not (which would actually be irrational, from my standpoint)), the resource requirements of raising beef would 100% guaranteed make it impractically expensive to eat, and there would be no issue. As it stands, beef is already rising in cost much faster than other forms of meat! See http://www.buedelmeatup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chart-retail-meat-prices.gif http://www.buedelmeatup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/chart...
Spooky23 12y ago
Beef isn't irrational. Ranching in Nevada probably is. It's a market problem. Because of the way water rights were allocated, it's cheap to do wacky things like farm the desert. You can very easily farm beef cattle in places where water is abundant... Places like New York, Kentucky, etc, just not at the scale as on massive plots of empty land.
- cscurmudgeon 12y ago
  Pasting mmanfrin's comment: It's specifically Beef that is the massive drain. Chicken/Pork/other meats are magnitudes of orders more water-conscious per calorie. (Pork uses 75% less, and is yet the most wasteful of water outside of cows/bovine)[1]. Beef is astoundingly wasteful of water. You could take an hour-long shower and it would use about the same amount of water needed for a pound of beef. [2] and [3]. [1] http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-wat.. http://gracelinks.org/blog/1143/beef-the-king-of-the-big-wat.... [2] http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.f.. http://www.wsscwater.com/home/jsp/content/water-usagechart.f.... [3] http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real.. http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real.... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8117761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8117761