How To Make Earth's Population Sustainable?

[Tsyal Makto]

Now I chose the thread title carefully because I don't want this to come off like a radical population-control topic. Just hear me out...

We are approaching 7 billion people on this planet. We are over it's current carrying capacity, and if we do not change our way of life, we are headed for trouble. This is obviously quite a touching issue, because population control in a lot of people's minds means strict one-child laws, forced sterilization, and forced abortion. Obviously going down that road would lead to just as many problems as we currently face. So my two questions are...

- How do we curb population growth? Obviously Fortress or Starship Troopers style population control would be pretty bad, so how do we get people to voluntarily reduce the number of children they have?

- If we can't get the population to decrease, how can we increase the planet's carrying capacity? How do we support billions of people, while still leaving room for Mother Nature's other creatures?

[Sovereign]

In my opinion, it's all a question of energy. With sufficient (clean) energy we can grow all the food and desalinate all the water we need. We would also have the energy to build whatever structures we needed.

[Spock]

Socialism, and a concerted effort from humanity in order to advance technology. This way we could inhabit other planets and spread the population out over the milky way galaxy. Maybe 2 billion per planet?

[Woodsprite]

Socialism is a nice even way to kill everyone off. Overpopulation is one of the most dangerous lies to date. You can fit the entire earth's population in the county of Jacksonville, Florida and they'd still be able to move around. Sure, the big cities are crowded, but if you don't like the city, move! The earth is a vast place. Some'd say, "Only 3% is habitable." Nice point, but the average human brain uses 3% of its capacity; are we all imbeciles?

Sorry if I'm being zealous about this, but we've got some crazy people out there. I know you, Tsyal, don't want simple population control like what the Chinese have, I understand your point. But the people currently in power don't care. I've written extensively on this before.

"In order to stabilize world population we must eliminate 350,000 people per day."

--Jacques Cousteau, Demanding Accountability, United Nations Development Fund for Women, 1994; pp. 84-85

"People are the cause of all the problems; we have too many of them; we need to get rid of some of them, and this [ban of DDT] is as good a way as any."

--Charles Wurster, Environmental Defence Fund

"...must either reduce the earth's human population to 1 billion or reduce the standard of living to an agrarian 'peasant' status."

--Convention on Biological Diversity signed by the United States in New York, June 4, 1993; announced on the Platform for the United Nations urban-ecological summit held in Istabul, Turkey; June 1996

"The world has cancer, and the cancer is man."

--Alan Gregg, Mankind at the Turning Point, 1974

"A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal."

--Ted Turner, CNN

"If I could be reincarnated, I would wish to return to Earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels."

--Prince Philip, President-World Wildlife Fund

7 miles north of Elberton, Georgia on Highway 77, 100 yards off the road on the right are the Georgia Guidstones, which were erected on March 22, 1980, by the Masonic Lodge. The stones are full of Masonic symbols. On these stones are the "Ten Commandments of the New Age." On one part of it it reads, "AUTHOR: R. C. CHRISTIAN (A PSEUDONYM)" Under this is written, "SPONSORS: A SMALL GROUP OF AMERICANS WHO SEEK THE AGE OF REASON." Here's where it gets a little creepy. The first "commandment" states, "MAINTAIN HUMANITY UNDER 500,000,000 IN PERPETUAL BALANCE WITH NATURE."

[ZenitYerkes]

The problem with overpopulation is not the people, it's their mouths. Think on how many acres of harvesting zones you need to feed a city.

We can keep living the way we do because there are poor countries that don't take the same resources as us, because if everybody had the same life standards as we have, we would be having now a nuclear war for the last clean water or food remaining on Earth.

And please, don't take it with socialism or any other ideology. Ideas don't kill. People who want to take all the power yes.

[Grif]

I'm still waiting for the next plague... I have mixed feelings about that

[Tsyal Makto]

Originally Posted by ZenitYerkes

We can keep living the way we do because there are poor countries that don't take the same resources as us, because if everybody had the same life standards as we have, we would be having now a nuclear war for the last clean water or food remaining on Earth.

We're going to be reaching that point, though, as third world countries continue to develop.

Is there a way to bioengineer crops to have higher calorie counts, so people need to consume less of them to get the same nutritional benefit?

Grif - I hope it doesn't get to that, but I fear if we do not take action now, it will. Nature is a self regulating system, and if we step too far out of line, we're going to get hell for it.

[Spock]

I don't have the energy to debate this issue for about the 10th time in as many weeks.

Over and out.

[Anima]

Eat less meat. That would make the food last for about 10 times more people and at the same time reduce the pollution and the use of fossil fuels and water:

Environmental effects of meat production - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

GoVeg.com // Meat and the Environment // Wasted Resources // Energy

Meat vs. Grain & Vegetable Production - Energy Consumer - extension.usu.edu

The Greener Grass: Energy and Meat

[Fosus]

Originally Posted by Woodsprite

...Nice point, but the average human brain uses 3% of its capacity..

That's just simply not true. Average human brain uses 100% of it's capacity and this is not the thing wrong in your post.

As for the original question, I think it's going to happen automatically. While overpopulating the Earth, we are at the same time polluting the air. Global Warming will eventually come to the point that certain parts of the planet will turn into desert, and people living in those areas will die..

[Woodsprite]

Originally Posted by Fosus

That's just simply not true. Average human brain uses 100% of it's capacity and this is not the thing wrong in your post.

..Um, no. I know what you're thinking, and that's not what I meant.

The brain usage throughout our lives is 100%. Absolutely. That's concerning mechanical use. By capacity I meant the full potential of our brain storage capacity, as in the volume used to store information is maximum 3%, and that's going waay far off a limb. I was wrong, I admit: the full storage is far less than 3%. Some scientists say it's only 0.01-0.1% you use to store information in one given lifetime. In other words, if we were to live 1000 years, we would probably end up using about... say, 13-14% of our information storage. That's my guess. No one truly knows the full storage capacity. Oldest recorded death was 122 years, and calculated out he used (assuming he took in information at a constant rate) about 64 petabytes of information, and he still had a LOT more to go, probably.

Originally Posted by Fosus

While overpopulating the Earth, we are at the same time polluting the air. Global Warming will eventually come to the point that certain parts of the planet will turn into desert, and people living in those areas will die..

Mmm... I'll just let this one slide like I did the "am I losing it?" thread. That's for another long, long, LONG.... discussion.

[PunkMaister]

Originally Posted by Spock

Socialism, and a concerted effort from humanity in order to advance technology. This way we could inhabit other planets and spread the population out over the milky way galaxy. Maybe 2 billion per planet?

Yeah right a system that has failed time and time again and that has caused more environmental damage wherever it has sprung than any capitalist country, get real!


Anyway currently the overpopulation problem is a problem that lies on the developing world or third world and the industrialized developed world where birth rates have dropped dramatically in siome countries beyond what anyone would consider acceptable levels in fact.

[Sonoran Na'vi]

I agree with those that say we must consider the use of resources in our analysis of over-population. Holding everything else equal, the size of a population appears to be a problem when the amount of resources available are no longer sufficient to support the population.

[Fosus]

Originally Posted by PunkMaister

Yeah right a system that has failed time and time again and that has caused more environmental damage wherever it has sprung than any capitalist country, get real!

In a way, Na'vi are communists. The idea itself is very awesome, It just doesn't work thanks to human nature...

[Human No More]

Technically, they are neither. There's no capitalism, certainly, but equally, there is definitely free will, individualism and personal ownership of things.