Not nearly good enough. That would almost immediately translate into serious political and social tensions that can only result in homocidal or even genocidal violence.
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Optimum Human Population, your thoughts
- Thread starter bobhikes
- Start date
And it is well-supported by politicians worldwide, with very few exceptions, when framed as some form of conquest, proud rebellion, or the perennial favorite: "making our country strong(er) (again)".
Way too late for that, unless by "draconian" you mean government-sponsored violence.
One of the aspects of being several times over the optimal number and so clueless about what to do is that the draconian consequences will assert themselves no matter what. We are left with the decision of whether and how to channel them.
I've read through all your reply's and what do you offer for a solution. You are good at criticizing but that won't solve the problems. Can you provide a suggested solution.
As to technological advancements I wasn't thinking about medical. I was thinking about agricultural advances, transportation and energy. If these weren't improved nature would have been able to balance the population already.
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I believe that if we get to ZPG - NOW!! - we can all have enough water and food, and then we have to start - in an orderly fashion folks - reducing down to that 2 billion mark.
On the sci-fi end of things, all of the remotely terra-formable territory in the Solar system (Mars, some moons), don't give us much relief in the face of exponential population growth. While it would be nice if we didn't have all of our eggs in one planetary basket, for the foreseeable future we simply have to reduce our population.
Significant social reform is the only way. Aiming for less wasteful lifestyles, more social encouragement of less numerous families with more spread emotional and financial support, and making it the rule to have two children at the very most.
As that would take decades to make noticeable effect even if kept up without reversals, in the meantime we would need quick development and wide acceptance of considerably more socialistic lifestyles.
That would make the sustainable number considerably lower and hasten the crisis mounting somewhat, but otherwise it would make little difference, don't you think?
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
It didn't actually work, though; we definitely see a correlation between population increase and war, but what we don't see is a corresponding reduction of population pressure. Overburdening of resources causes violence, but violence doesn't resolve the burden. I'm thinking of some specific examples of known cultural sequences that I am familiar with, those of population centers in 13th c. Utah and the 9th c. Yucatan; in both cases, there was a sharp increase in both population and violence for several centuries, but did these did nothing to actually check the population growth; that only happened, again in both cases, when an ecological crisis forced a change in settlement patterns and thus strategy of life.
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Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
That, I think, is a myth. It sounds logical, but when you look at actual population demographics in history, there's no simple pattern to follow like Malthus imagined - no ceiling that people hit and then sit at. Rather, prosperity walks a complicated balance between what is being exploited and when and how; we see wild differences in quality of life even between places that, on the face of it, seem very similar in base potential.
Ultimately, how many people you live next to is less important than how you are all managing your lifestyle. Sure, we can all think of cases where dense urbanization had disastrous effects, but then many of the nicest places to live on the planet are also dense urban areas. We can all imagine a bucolic rolling countryside where everyone provides happily for themselves, but then some of the worst places in the world to live right now are thinly populated, rich farmland that nevertheless got in the way of politics or pollution. There's no "magic number", we can adjust both population and productivity when needed, or change our strategy altogether. Only imagination and political willpower are true constraints in our ability to live on a given landscape.
Well, those things plus the more absolute limit of available water. But we're not near any kind of limit on that front, at least not as a planet. Within geopolitical constraints such as national borders, yes. But that has to do more with our inability to adapt to changing circumstances without violence than any global shortage of water. That remains constant over time, whatever its current, rapidly changing, global distribution.
As a person who strongly believe in Malthusianism as serious, consistent and still valid economic theory, I have never seen a single economist capable of disproving this theory with valid scientific arguments.
Besides, Malthusianism is simply based upon a mathematical model that proves that population can't grow forever, and there are lots of mathematical problems that confirm it, among which a very famous one is this:
Wheat and chessboard problem - Wikipedia
Leaving economy and maths aside, for a moment, what scares me the most is that humans' mindset has definitively lost its intimate spiritual relationship with nature.
If man hadn't lost this precious relationship, he would still understand that his duty as intelligent, rational and so therefore spiritual being is to preserve Earth and to remain a discreet presence on this planet.
On the contrary the human species is not a discrete presence. It's a presence that has been destroying hundreds of ecosystems within the last 2000 years. Signs are evident; even today, I figure that out, reading Latin sources describing how rich Europe was in natural resources such as animal and plant species that went extinct many centuries ago because of intense farming, fishing and hunting.
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I've researched the water and topsoil questions a fair bit. Your understanding is radically different than mine, where did you get your math data on this topic?
psychoslice
Veteran Member
Well i did my share from not having kids.
Jonathan Ainsley Bain
Logical Positivist
But for every news bulletin that tells us the narrative of human suffering (war, poverty) caused by over-population,
there should at least be the corresponding narrative telling us that the cause of such is conceptually easy to understand.
But instead, Psychology is lost in narcissism and careerist jargon-centered psycho-babble obsesses with its own perversion.
VioletVortex
Well-Known Member
About 4 billion.
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
Not sure which part of my post you are referring to, but population studies have long been relevant to my research as an anthropologist and archaeologist. Demography did not stop in 1798; people still study it. We don't have to rely on the armchair postulations of long-dead racists to tell us when, where, and how population growth occurs or what fundamentally causes food shortages. This has not stopped a wicked little school of Neo-Malthusians, true, but they are driven by ideology and models based on ideology, not empiricism based on scientific observation. It is telling that you think this is a matter to be resolved by "math". Math is only useful to the social scientist when it is based on observed data. Neo-Malthusian "projections" are usually philosophy under guise of statistical manipulation; if your read critically, it's not hard to find the part where they interjected their philosophy into the mix, defining variables based on what is "reasonable to expect" rather than what is culled from the field.
Consider the following reading list for starters:
Critiquing Malthus and Overpopulation Theory
http://www.biw.kuleuven.be/aee/clo/idessa_files/boserup1965.pdf
Galor, O., & Weil, D. (2000). Population, Technology and Growth: From Malthusian Stagnation to the Demographic Transition and Beyond. American Economic Review. 90.4, 806-828.
Massimo, L. (2001). A Concise History of World Population, 5th ed. Blackwell.
Misselhorn, Alison A. "What drives food insecurity in southern Africa? A meta-analysis of household economy studies." Global environmental change 15.1 (2005): 33-43.
Clover, Jenny. "Food security in sub-saharan Africa: feature." African security review 12.1 (2003): 5-15.
Montgomery, M., et al (2000). Paredes E: Measuring living standards with proxy variables. Demography. 37, 155-74.
United Nations (2000). World Urbanization Prospects: The 1999 Revision. New York. Sales No. E.01.XIII.II.
http://www.biw.kuleuven.be/aee/clo/idessa_files/boserup1965.pdf
Galor, O., & Weil, D. (2000). Population, Technology and Growth: From Malthusian Stagnation to the Demographic Transition and Beyond. American Economic Review. 90.4, 806-828.
Massimo, L. (2001). A Concise History of World Population, 5th ed. Blackwell.
Misselhorn, Alison A. "What drives food insecurity in southern Africa? A meta-analysis of household economy studies." Global environmental change 15.1 (2005): 33-43.
Clover, Jenny. "Food security in sub-saharan Africa: feature." African security review 12.1 (2003): 5-15.
Montgomery, M., et al (2000). Paredes E: Measuring living standards with proxy variables. Demography. 37, 155-74.
United Nations (2000). World Urbanization Prospects: The 1999 Revision. New York. Sales No. E.01.XIII.II.
EXACTLY !! Scientists have observed that our fresh water aquifers are being depleted at rates many times the rate of replenishment. Scientists have measured that mono-culture farming is causing the erosion of topsoil far faster than it is naturally regenerated. Scientists have measured the sizes of the world's fisheries and can calculate how long they will last at current rates of depletion. And so on...
It really isn't harder than observation and math. We simply cannot sustainably feed even 7 billion people, let alone 10 billion or more.
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
And yet, only one of us cited our sources.
And I find it interesting that when challenged on empirical grounds, even you start talking about actual, specific causes of resource shortage - unsustainable aquifer exploitation, monocropping, commercial fishery depletion - rather than the vague and unhelpful red herring of population growth.
Fair Enough:
John Robbins: Diet for a New America
John Robbins: Food Revolution
Population size is not a red herring. A healthy adult human being has some absolute minimum dietary needs. Take those needs and multiply by X billion. The math can be done and has been done.
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
John Robbins is a nice guy but not, in fact, a scientist.
I gave you a "meta-citation". He includes extensive citations in his books. For example, in one of hundreds of citations Robbins says:
"The California Agricultural Extension says that it takes 5214 gallons of fresh water to produce a pound of beef." (page 236, Food Revolution)
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
And beef production, in your opinion, is driven primarily by the consumption needs of the third world urban poor? How much beef does the "overpopulation" eat, relative to the wealthy but slim population of their neocolonial masters? Do those who eat most of the beef need the beef to survive, or do they want the beef for wealth marking and gustatory appeal?