Optimum Human Population, your thoughts

[bobhikes]

A solution would be to sensitize those countries with the highest birth rates, through the UN. If those countries don't prosper and control their demographics, the situation will remain unchanged.


The problem is not births, it's the birth rate and the growth rate of a population. The population of Europe, America and Australia is not growing that fast. Just think that Europe, which has always been the most populated continent in the world since ancient times, had a population of 414 million in 1940. Now it's 740 million (considering also the massive immigration from the South of the world). In the US,which was pretty empty in the Middle Ages, had a population of 132 million in 1940, now it's 304 million.
So, if we became 7 billion that fast, it didn't depend on Westerners, whose population growth rates are sustainable.
Also the rare presence of big families in America and in Europe counterbalance childless families, which are becoming the majority in countries like Greece, Switzerland, Russia, Italy.
I will have to say it's also something ethnographic. There are ethnic groups which are much more prolific than others.

I would disagree majorly with it being ethnographic. It is a class epidemic. The poor classes of the world have the over population problems even in the richest countries and its easy to see why.

If you don't have a job that gives you 8 more hours to think of sex and possibly have it.
If you don't have money to go shopping, the movies or just out that gives you more time to think of sex or have it.
If you don't have money to buy birth control medicine
If you don't have money you can't afford education
In some countries having more kids can give you more workers
In some countries having more kids is a financial boost to the very poor.

It doesn't matter the ethnicity of these people it is all about the finances.

 

[Daemon Sophic]

Excellent topic that needs to be addressed by the world at large.
Thank you @bobhikes not only for the OP, but for post #23 inresponse to @Luca85 post #21 above. Well said.

This is a topic that needs extensive exposure, more than any other topic, just about.
But to suggest that the optimum population is much less than what it currently is
would be to suggest somehow lowering the population. And that is potentially
such a nasty situation that it MUST be a less than optimum answer.

The only really viable answer is global government with heavy taxes on the 3rd child.
That itself is problematic enough without suggesting a target population size as well.

It would seem that many of you have the same issue in thinking that this is a problem which should be solved within the week or within the year.
It is not.
This is a problem that we should strive to resolve within decades or at most one century. Education of women and population control is the key. Creating global social and economic climates where such discussions are more easily excepted and the ancient traditionalist ideals of having big families are illuminated.

"Go forth, multiply, and conquer the Earth"......OK. Been there, done that. Now what?

 

[Revoltingest]

Eliminating 5 billion already living people can only be accomplished through mass murder.

Serial murder would work too.

 

[bobhikes]

After thinking on this a day. I believe Female empowerment would be the best world solution. The nations with the lowest birth rate other than money all have a higher Male to Female power ratio. Giving Females the ability to achieve any goal and to have a valid life without marriage would dramatically reduce the birth rate.

We can see this in the current Birth Rates of nations by comparing it to women's rights.

 

[icehorse]

This is a problem that we should strive to resolve within decades or at most one century.

Bingo! (nothing draconian need be implemented)

I think that a couple with no kids by the age of 55 ought to get a huge retirement benefit. And couples with only one kid should get a moderately sized benefit.

 

[Auggxv]

From Wilkapedia

The optimal world population has been estimated by a team co-authored by Paul R. Ehrlich.[6] End-targets in this estimation included:

• Decent wealth and resources to everyone
• Basic human rights to everyone
• Preservation of cultural diversity
• Allowance of intellectual, artistic, and technological creativity
• Preservation of biodiversity

Based on this, the estimation of optimum population was to be roughly around 1.5 billion to 2 billion people.

I was thinking that maybe some of our current problems are due to overpopulation and that technology advances are actually hurting us by not allowing human deaths. Curious as to what others think and what if anything should be done.

I be replying and posting my thoughts as I gather them.

The earth is overpopulated with a gene pool that has over the process of time been bred out. It is going to get nothing but worse and worse
till they destroy each other. People's behavior will get crazier and crazier.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

There's no need to have authoritarian or totalitarian penalties. Just increase access to education and careers to women and children the world over. I don't know why people want to come up with nasty, inhumane "solutions" to enforce on people.

 

[Politesse]

From Malthus' proposed genocide of the Irish to modern pushes against the so-called third world, the "overpopulation" craze has always been a thin disguise for aggression against the poor. There's no problem overpopulation causes that couldn't be alleviated by improving people's lot in general, but it's easier to insist that social problems belong solely to that class of people who are least able to affect them. Complaining directly about the resource use or greed on the part of the poor wouldn't make sense, so they instead on the only kind of wealth the poor actually are allowed to have -- their children. All backed by deeply questionable "science", of course.

 

[icehorse]

From Malthus' proposed genocide of the Irish to modern pushes against the so-called third world, the "overpopulation" craze has always been a thin disguise for aggression against the poor. There's no problem overpopulation causes that couldn't be alleviated by improving people's lot in general, but it's easier to insist that social problems belong solely to that class of people who are least able to affect them. Complaining directly about the resource use or greed on the part of the poor wouldn't make sense, so they instead on the only kind of wealth the poor actually are allowed to have -- their children. All backed by deeply questionable "science", of course.

We ARE depleting our topsoil. We ARE draining in years, aquifers of fresh water that take centuries to replenish. We ARE destroying the world's fisheries.

This is not a craze, this is math.

That said, giving the women of the world good educations would be an excellent way to reverse over-population.

 

[Vinayaka]

Back in the dark ages when I went to university overpopulation was discussed much the same as it is today. One economics prof I had, had the sustainable population tagged at 30 billion. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, but his entire premise was based on the actual problem being distribution of wealth, not overpopulation, and as a consequence, food distribution. He used one example of just elimination of the world's golf courses, and using that water and land to grow food instead.

Using his premise, sustaining what we have by using our resources in a much wiser way, would be the plan.

Here's a chard demonstrating the food distribution imbalance. I'm always amazed that Iceland is a big exporter, given their location.

Food Exports and Imports Worldwide | IndexMundi Blog

 

[beenherebeforeagain]

Back in the dark ages when I went to university overpopulation was discussed much the same as it is today. One economics prof I had, had the sustainable population tagged at 30 billion. I think that's a bit of an exaggeration, but his entire premise was based on the actual problem being distribution of wealth, not overpopulation, and as a consequence, food distribution. He used one example of just elimination of the world's golf courses, and using that water and land to grow food instead.

Using his premise, sustaining what we have by using our resources in a much wiser way, would be the plan.

Regardless of how efficiently we were able to use resources, virtually the entire food chain of the planet would have to be converted to support humans--it is doubtful that any wildlife would be completely annihilated in order to support humans.

Perhaps a better question would be: why would we want 2 billion, or 8 billion (the level we will shortly be at), or 30 billion humans in the first place?

 

[Vinayaka]

Perhaps a better question would be: why would we want 2 billion, or 8 billion (the level we will shortly be at), or 30 billion humans in the first place?

Agreed. We're an odd species.

 

[Politesse]

We ARE depleting our topsoil. We ARE draining in years, aquifers of fresh water that take centuries to replenish. We ARE destroying the world's fisheries.

This is not a craze, this is math.

That said, giving the women of the world good educations would be an excellent way to reverse over-population.

Absolutely. But to say that we do all this for the benefit of the many poor, as opposed to the few wealthy, is to pay little attention to the world as it truly is. The place where I live, the central valley of California, has lost much of its ancestral aquifer in the last five years of drought. You might, if you wanted to employ Malthusian logic, blame the tripling of the population of the valley. But to do this would be to ignore that the reason the aquifers are being plumbed is to grow almonds to decorate the salads of the wealthy, not to feed the multitudinous poor of Fresno and Stockton. They will never see those almonds, unless their husbands and brothers are smuggling them home from work. Similarly, the coffee fields of the South are not grown so that the many poor of Central America can get their caffeine fix; they are grown for people like yourself.

 

[Aštra’el]

There are way too many people on earth. The most powerful governments should brainstorm ideas on how to engineer a suitable apocalypse to deal with the situation.

Perhaps they could use a plague, one of which only a fraction of the population possesses the cure/ vaccine. This would not cause the cataclysmic destruction to the earth that something like nuclear war would, and would leave infrastructure intact.

 

[icehorse]

The place where I live, the central valley of California, has lost much of its ancestral aquifer in the last five years of drought.

Hey! We're neighbors!

Anyway, I largely agree, but even if we weren't living large (which I agree some of us are), there would still be an upper limit on how many people could live comfortably and sustainably on the planet.

 

[LuisDantas]

I was thinking that maybe some of our current problems are due to overpopulation

"Some" is an understatement, IMO.

We have arrived at the stage where having the patience to listen to the other people who have stakes on our shared problems has become a significant challenge in and of itself.

Legitimacy of political representation alone is a major worldwide problem now, and overpopulation is a core reason why.

I should however point out that while I agree that we should have as a goal a population of at most 2 billion people worldwide, even that is an "ideal circunstances" value. Realistically, it can only be truly sustained by a near-utopian environment of overall education and moral and political maturity. One that we are unilkely to ever have, since we are so much more likely to consume our own entrails before ever making the attempt.

and that technology advances are actually hurting us by not allowing human deaths.

Not really. I do think that medical technology's advancements, important as they are, end up bringing largely neglected ethical dilemmas as the gulf among wealth levels becomes even more meaningful than it already is.

But that is a minor, almost insignificant concern when compared to the core issues that come from the current overpopulation and under-integration. It threatens the quality of life, but it can hardly do much to avoid net deaths.

By far the most likely near future scenario, one that arguably has began already, is actually one of growing acceptance of otherwise unnecessary deaths, as our gross inability to sustain our own weight manifests in increasing right-wing radicalism and the attending moral bankrupcy, including the already manifest military aspects of same.

Still, even that is perhaps a lesser concern, as our challenges have largely shifted from survival proper to social integration, dignity and mutual understanding. We are so divorced from our own sustenance as a true society that we are more than likely to suffer a slow, agonizing and very deluded regression towards a simpler and disastrous yet viable model of beligerent tribes based on fear and pride as opposed to higher principles.

 

[LuisDantas]

Not only Paul Ehrlich but also lots of geologists and other scientists from different parts of the world say that overpopulation will lead to the destruction of all the Earth ecosystems. Not because of lack of space, but because of overexploitation of resources. It's also true that looking at this map, it is clear that it's not something that depends on Westerners. (...)

It may appear to be clear if you ignore both the technological and the cultural aspects, I guess.

I don't think we can afford to do that.

 

[LuisDantas]

Eliminating 5 billion already living people can only be accomplished through mass murder.

That is what we had when facing comparable challenges in the past. It was called war, and I guess it still is.

But the scale of it has raised drammatically in the last 100 years or so, and we now have all the necessary conditions for an even more drammatic jump to happen soon.

 

[LuisDantas]

It is an Optimum number. Like the optimum amount of water you can drink. You can drink less water or you can drink more water but each will create different challenges.

For example rather than killing off the population perhaps all the worlds economy's should add a percentage of income for scientific discovery of habitable off-world settlements. Where people can leave to live by choice. Similar to early continental travel.

I have serious trouble in even attempting to consider such an approach. How can we talk seriously about space colonization when we have trouble feeding, teaching literacy and even respecting the basic dignity of each other as it is?

It sounds like a complete write-off to me. Or at the very least, something to begin considering after the actual problem is already solved.

 

[LuisDantas]

Cant argue with this. The evidence speaks for itself. Question is, what do we do about it?

It seems to me that the political aspects are so complicated that an early prerequisite would need to be a grassroots, street-level campaing towards better, more planned, more responsible family units.

A very early part of it would be improving the social acceptance of having more emphasis on the extended family instead of the so-called nuclear family; of adoptions over natural births; of having less or no children with better education and family references as a goal.

At some point very soon, we will have to talk soberly and realistically on how serious a decision it is to have children. It is one of very few actions that nearly all people can make that is likely to influence all future generations to some degree, after all.