• Log in with Facebook Log in with Twitter Log In with Google      Sign In    
  • Create Account
  LongeCity
              Advocacy & Research for Unlimited Lifespans

Photo
- - - - -

Debunking the 'overpopulation' argument


  • Please log in to reply
17 replies to this topic

#1 kevin

  • Member, Guardian
  • 2,779 posts
  • 822

Posted 08 August 2003 - 07:00 AM


Everytime I try to talk to someone about the possibility of life extension I get

Response A: GAWD! I would NEVER want to live to be that OLD!
Implying that they believe their health would be shot long before they reached age 'X'.

followed closely behind by the second most popular...

Response B: We're overpopulating the world with people. We can't even feed the ones we've got.
Despite reading and knowing this wasn't the case I found it difficult to convey as I could never remember the stats.

Here's some good statistics put forward by Glen Hiemstra from TheFuturist.com which shows that the exact opposite trend is occurring, even in second world countries such as Mexico.

The impending peak of the U.S. population

This is the shocker. The U.S. population is 290 million and growing. It is common to assume that we will double in size this century. But we will not. The concept of the “population bomb” is so imbedded in our thinking that it does not occur to us that human population growth may end, not because of disaster, but because of other natural processes. It is happening. The U.S. population will peak by 2070 at the latest, most likely by 2050, and perhaps even as early as 2025. Why? Birth rates are falling all over the world, including the U.S. It takes a birth rate (technically a “fertility rate”) of 2.1 children per woman to maintain a steady state in the population. All of the former Soviet Union, all of Western Europe, Australia, Japan, Canada, and now the U.S. have birth rates below replacement. (Japan’s population will begin to decline in 2005, while Russia declined by 10 million in the past ten years.) The birth rate in the U.S. is 2.08, Canada is 1.52, and Mexico has fallen from 7 to 2.9 in the past two decades. All countries in the world, save four, have seen declines in birth rates since 1980. Explanation? Improved communication, thus better information about family planning, global economic development and the economic emancipation of women, and improved global health care all work together.

The bottom line: The U.S. population will peak at no more than 430 million, and will possibly peak at more like 325-350 million. Thus, on the realistic planning horizon is the prospect that communities will achieve their maximum size, and then begin a gradual decline.

#2 advancedatheist

  • Guest
  • 1,419 posts
  • 11
  • Location:Mayer, Arizona

Posted 08 August 2003 - 03:57 PM

We're overpopulating the world with people. We can't even feed the ones we've got.


The Malthusians might actually have a point:

http://www.sciencene...030531/food.asp
Global Food Trends
Janet Raloff

Last year, for the third year in four, world per-capita grain production fell. Even more disturbing in a world where people still go hungry, at 294 kilograms, last year's per capita grain yield was the lowest in more than 30 years. Indeed, the global grain harvest has not met demand for 4 years, causing governments and food companies to mine stocks of these commodities that they were holding in reserve.
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.sciencene...30726/bob10.asp
Catch Zero
What can be done as marine ecosystems face a deepening crisis?
Ben Harder

Give a man a fish, goes the Chinese proverb, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. If he catches too many fish, however, he may leave few fish behind for his children's table. It has taken less than a generation for modern industrial-scale fishing, once it's deployed in an ocean area, to exhaust the vast majority of that area's edible bounty. These massive harvests have left behind devastated ecosystems and depleted economic opportunities.

"There's no place in the ocean left where there are undisturbed fish stocks," says ecologist Boris Worm of the Institute for Marine Science in Kiel, Germany. "The whole ocean has been transformed."

For species after species, in sea after sea, the 20th-century juggernaut of commercial fishing swiftly thinned marine life to a fraction of what it otherwise would be, Worm and Ransom A. Myers of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, report in the May 15 Nature.

---------------------------------------------------------
Then there's the ultimate Malthusian nightmare caused by the prospect of Peak Oil:
http://www.dieoff.org

--------------------------------

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution we've been able to surmount natural limits to food production by using fossil fuels. For example, we use fossil fuels to create artificial nitrogen fertilizers at a rate faster than natural processes can put them into the soil. We use them to move food vast distances to market. We use them to pump irrigation water to seasonably dry areas like California's Central Valley. We use them to process and refrigerate food for storage. We use them to make pesticides.

In effect, we have been "eating" fossil fuels to supplement the calories captured by natural photosynthesis. What are we going to do when these fuels are exhausted? North America's natural gas production is crashing, and the major oil companies have admitted that they can't keep up with the global demand for oil and gas:

Production at BP, Chevron Texaco, Exxon Mobil, Shell and Statoil down:
http://groups.yahoo....s/message/39633

#3 kevin

  • Topic Starter
  • Member, Guardian
  • 2,779 posts
  • 822

Posted 09 August 2003 - 04:59 AM

It seems odd that in a time when grain production is falling obesity in the United States and Canada is reaching an all time high. I guess we're not feeling the drop in grain production quite yet.. The fact is Canada has the dubious distinction of having the highest energy consumption per capita and I don't think it's because we need to keep warm during the winter.

The problem with feeding the hungry or the over consumption you point to in your post, is not that there are too many people or too little food... as usual the problem is a lack of the altruism and an overabundance of greed.

From your above quotes and from many other horror stories easily found in any current newspaper, it is obvious that we can't trust our governments or commercial interests to try to balance the wealth in this world, even to bring the suffering a pittance of what we take so much for granted. It is up to every individual's conscience to do what they feel is possible to alleviate these problems. I personally sponsor six children through an NGO called World Vision and there are 200,000 more like me in Canada alone. Their books are open to inspection and I am assured that my money is not being lost or spent frivolously. The fact that most of these organizations are run by bible thumpers makes me cringe but the committment to their faith has a byproduct that makes their religiousity easier to take.

sponsored ad

  • Advert
Advertisements help to support the work of this non-profit organisation. [] To go ad-free join as a Member.

#4 kevin

  • Topic Starter
  • Member, Guardian
  • 2,779 posts
  • 822

Posted 09 August 2003 - 05:03 AM

Here's an article that one could use to support the argument that as nations consume more energy, their birth rate drops. To counteract overpopulation developing nations would do well to shift a little more resources to the development of the Third World.

-------------------------------------------------
Public release date: 8-Apr-2003
[ Print This Article | Close This Window ]

Contact: Ben Ulph
bpl_jmkt_temp@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com
Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Human reproductive rates follow biological scaling rules

In nations with high per capita energy consumption, women have fewer children. This phenomenon is an unexpected consequence of the biological scaling relationship between metabolism and reproductive rate: larger species of mammals have higher metabolism but lower birth rates. In the April 2003 issue of Ecology Letters, Moses and Brown show that these same biological scaling rules describe the demographic transition to lower birth rates in human populations. Birth rates decline predictably with increased energy consumption, even though most of that energy comes from fossil fuels, not food.
In pre-agricultural societies, reproductive rates and metabolism are predictable from body mass, about 60 kilograms. In the wealthiest contemporary nations, each person consumes not only 100 watts in food energy, but also up to 10,000 watts of extra-metabolic energy, the metabolism of a 30,000 kilogram primate. Women in these nations have correspondingly low birth rates, resulting in fewer than 2 children per lifetime.


###
--------------------------------------------

#5 DJS

  • Guest
  • 5,798 posts
  • 11
  • Location:Taipei
  • NO

Posted 09 August 2003 - 08:13 AM

Kevin,

The relationship between consumption and birth rates is, at best, an indirect one. There is little evidence to support the cause and effect that you proposed above. I think some more likely correlates for declining birth rates would be education, availability of birth control, declining infant death rates (parents feel less need for the extra child insurance policy), social safety nets put in place by the government (which decrease the need for children as a form of social security), and the integration of women into the workplace (which represents a competing priority with child rearing).

Personally, I think that higher energy consumption is just indicative of more developed societies with the characteristics I have mentioned above. Declining birth rates are not a result of increased energy consumption, but instead are the result of other characteristics associated with developed nations.

Kissinger

#6 kevin

  • Topic Starter
  • Member, Guardian
  • 2,779 posts
  • 822

Posted 09 August 2003 - 09:01 AM

Hi Kissinger,

Developed nations would not exhibit the characteristics you describe without increasing energy consumption. If the energy isn't available, it won't be consumed and the characteristics won't evolve thus I would say that the consumption of energy is primary and the characteristics secondary in influencing the declining birth rate exhibited by developed countries. Regardless I don't read the article as asserting there is a direct cause-effect relationship between energy consumption and birth rate, only that there is a correlation, much like you yourself have said.

#7 DJS

  • Guest
  • 5,798 posts
  • 11
  • Location:Taipei
  • NO

Posted 09 August 2003 - 04:28 PM

Hey Kevin,

Here's an article that one could use to support the argument that as nations consume more energy, their birth rate drops. To counteract overpopulation developing nations would do well to shift a little more resources to the development of the Third World.


This gives me the impression that you are implying a direct relationship.

I have a few problems with your statements in this thread, much of which comes down to politics. I do not believe that the world wide distribution of wealth is a zero sum game. I do not believe that because "we are up they are down". This is an argument for another thread, but I'm pretty sure you would disagree with me on this one.

Can we do more to help developing nations? Of course, and it is in our interest to do so. I just disagree on the method you are proposing.

Regardless I don't read the article as asserting there is a direct cause-effect relationship between energy consumption and birth rate, only that there is a correlation, much like you yourself have said


Then you shouldn't have posted the article (no offense). If there is no direct cause-effect relationship then altering energy consumption is a questionable proposition. How can you alter national policy based on indirect relationships? And furthermore, even if there were a direct relationship, why would the US be expected to make the sacrifices and allow its competitors to gain ground on it economically? (Ah, now I reveal my true colors! But no, it is more complex than that).

I would say that the consumption of energy is primary and the characteristics secondary in influencing the declining birth rate exhibited by developed countries.


And I would disagree and say that this is bordering on a reactionary position. "Let's just cut energy consumption and go back to the 50's and the good ol days." [;)] I am all for finding alternative energy resources. I am completely against cutting energy consumption.

I would also continue to deny even the "primary" relationship you suggest between consumption and birth rates. Just think about it. Why do we consume more than developing nations? Because we drive cars, because we heat and cool our domiciles, because we use all kinds of electronic gadgets, etc. How do these things effect birth rates? They don't. What effects birth rate is what I stated above: birth control, education, changing status of women, etc.

Finally, how do you propose a reallocation of energy resources? Just start giving oil away to African nations?? They wouldn't know what to do with it. They don't have the infrastructure or the technology to use it. The infrastructure, technological advancement, and all of the common characteristics of developed nations is predicated upon the population being educated and above subsistence level.

The most valuable commodity in development is not energy resources, but technological/ information based resources. The US's relationship with the Arab world proves this clearly.

Kissinger

#8 kevin

  • Topic Starter
  • Member, Guardian
  • 2,779 posts
  • 822

Posted 09 August 2003 - 08:50 PM

Kissinger,

I think we're both arguing fromt he same side of the coin in most respects..,

First, I regard a 'direct cause-effect' relationship as one with no intervening steps, like that of A -> B. In respect to the relationship where energy consumption leads to the characteristics you describe which then lead to a decline in birth rate, the situation is more like A -> B -> C an 'indirect' relationship.

Just because there is no 'direct' cause-effect relationship, as I describe 'direct', between energy consumption and birth rate decline does not mean the article is not relevant or interesting. (and no offence taken... it takes a bit more than that :p ) In fact I think it is interesting precisely because it goes further than stating the obvious 'direct' relationships that you mention and brings the concept of 'biological scaling' within the natural world to find that it holds true for human birth rates as well even though we are far from the 'natural' state in the wild.

This phenomenon is an unexpected consequence of the biological scaling relationship between metabolism and reproductive rate: larger species of mammals have higher metabolism but lower birth rates


It's almost as if they propose that our consumption of extra energy is equating with a higher metabolism... This thought is novel enough in itself to warrant posting in my mind although you have the right to disagree. ;)

In my statement that 'developing nations would do well to shift a little more resources to the development of the Third World', I made an error. The word 'developing' should be 'developed'. I proposed no 'method' that might accomplish this although I do have some thoughts on it. By resources, I certainly don't mean a mere allocation of oil, or any other type of fossil fuel. Although they would be a necessary part of any solution, it is much more complicated than that and the types of intervention would vary from region to region, according to their needs and the infrastructure in place. Your point about oil in Africa is a good one. Certainly they would probably benefit much more from the emerging solar technologies as these would be more appropriate for their climates and be cheaper for us to supply as well as being easier for them to maintain. Electricity is really what they need badly. There are currently some projects involving donating inexpensive solar 'kits' of solar 'blankets' designed to keep a light bulb going in the evening so that children can study, (it gets dark early), as well there are larger ones that can keep a refrigeration unit running for the maintenance of perishable medicenes. I have had the experience of working with a Canadian organization called OxFam in recycling obsolete educational computers and providing satellite internet access to some of the more developed regions of Guatamala. It will incremental steps of this nature, over time, with the application of new technologies that I believe will have the most effect at the least cost to us.

I'm not against energy consumption... we must consume energy to survive. However, the manner in which energy is consumed in the developed world, needs close scrutiny for inefficiencies. Rampant consumerism such as we see in Canada and the US are indicative of a society that is unable to effectively balance progress with conservation and efficiency. The song by Queen, "I want it all, I want it now", is a really appropriate anthem for the times we live in which is too bad as everyone knows that those unwilling to wait pay a premium for their goods and services. I sincerely believe that cutting back energy consumption does not have to be a painful experience. As a nation, Canada could really go on a diet, both in it's eating and consumer habits. I can see the editorial cartoon now, the fat Canadian, (we are the most obese nation), is sitting at the table with a heaping plate of food in front of him, he's clutching his heart and looks fearfully out of the corner of his eye at the small anorexic negro with the bib standing beside the table who turns to his buddy and says, "Finally... ! So do you want the arm or the thigh?" as he wipes the drool from his mouth.

For me, the long range view of someone who plans on living a very long time is not compatible with the rate we are destroying our planet or consuming our resources. Politically, it is in our best interests to play the role of the benevolent and WISE stewards fate (if there is such a thing) has seen fit to bestow on us. You yourself must wonder occasionally if there will be something left worth living on in a hundred years or so... a worry that goes beyond the boundaries of what is currently the United States. A globally sustainable environment is much more compatible with immortalist concerns, and it's development should be high priority. I'm not saying it'll be easy or even possible (which is unknown and assuredly impossible if we dont' try), just preferable.

Edited by kevin, 09 August 2003 - 09:02 PM.


#9 kevin

  • Topic Starter
  • Member, Guardian
  • 2,779 posts
  • 822

Posted 10 August 2003 - 06:06 AM

Here a link to a thread that holds relevant information to the topic here..

http://www.imminst.o...t=0

#10 MichaelAnissimov

  • Guest
  • 905 posts
  • 1
  • Location:San Francisco, CA

Posted 10 August 2003 - 08:33 AM

And here's my input, from EvPsych corner:

It sometimes seems like people are especially annoyed by the prospect of overpopulation because 1) the amount of people that live in communities with us far exceeds 200, the tribal average our mind is adapted to, and 2) seeing cities, suburban sprawls and large structures are also postancestral experiences we may feel implicitly uncomfortable with. Even if 1 and 2 don't effect us substantially right off the bat, they will begin to provide reinforcement if one starts to acquire the notion that the world is becoming overpopulated. Also, on average, more influential and wealthy people tend to live in areas of higher population density, will feel the effects of crowdedness more acutely, and accordingly spread the word about how crowded they feel the world is.

I can't think of any evolutionary psychological forces that encourage us to *enjoy* higher populations, even the fact that more people exist is responsible for our higher standards of living and technology. This connection doesn't manifest itself in immediately noticeable cues, so it can only be considered in the abstract, as opposed to the experience of being pushed around on a crowded bus. Other tangible cues such as higher property costs can make people pissed off about population.

#11 Mind

  • Life Member, Director, Moderator, Treasurer
  • 18,997 posts
  • 2,000
  • Location:Wausau, WI

Posted 10 August 2003 - 03:06 PM

The fact that Americans or Canadians consume more has little corellation to starving people in other countries.

Somalia - the original reason American troops were sent there was to make sure donated food (from the high "consuming" countries by the way) was distibuted equitably. A dictator, and other warring factions were deliberatley starving the people.

Zimbabwe - Agricultural output is declining because Mugabe is kicking the farmers off their land. He is fomenting racism amongst the population. The problem in Zimbabwe has nothing to do with how much Americans or Canadians consume.

North Korea - the Army and Kim Jong Il get fat while millions of citizens are on the edge of starvation. Food was donated to North Korea and it ended up in the hands of the army.

The agricultural system of the world routinely produces more food than is required to feed the population. Most starving people of the world are in their position because of politics - not for lack of food. Restricted trade and tyrannical governments are at the heart of the world's food problem.

#12 Lazarus Long

  • Life Member, Guardian
  • 8,116 posts
  • 242
  • Location:Northern, Western Hemisphere of Earth, Usually of late, New York

Posted 10 August 2003 - 06:07 PM

Here is an article from CNN Aug. 6th which demonstrates at least in part Mind's point.

http://edition.cnn.c...d.ap/index.html

North Korea is a "case" study in socio-pathology and has its own thread but I again concur with Mind's assessment of the situation there and Somalia is a victim of "Post Cold War Traumatic Syndrome" and a true lack of willingness by the global interests that went in to begin with to take their mission seriously, or to coordinate their efforts effectively. Being compacent about such efforts will get people killed.

In fact the horror stories Mind presents are all true but only the tip of the iceberg for the issue of global hunger and ARE NOT representative of the majority of problems that a study for example of Chiapas or Oaxaca in Mexico would demonstrate; where there exists large scale hunger and malnutrition alongside global agribusiness interests.

These GAT funded global industrial agricultural interests are drastically changing productivity away from sustainable agriculture to meet domestic need toward "cash crops" that are largely exported to meet balance of trade issues, leaving the locals that even work for these businesses sometimes hungry and often disenfranchised.

#13 Lazarus Long

  • Life Member, Guardian
  • 8,116 posts
  • 242
  • Location:Northern, Western Hemisphere of Earth, Usually of late, New York

Posted 10 August 2003 - 06:21 PM

Here, in one of those moments of true serendipity, add this opinion from today's NYTimes.

http://www.nytimes.c...10SUN3.html?8br
Who Said Anything About Rice? Free Trade Is About Cars and PlayStations
By ANDRÉS MARTINEZ
SUKIDATE, Japan

All of the 250 or so members of the 1971 class at Kurihara Agricultural High School in Miyagi prefecture — three hours north of Tokyo by bullet train — went into farming upon graduating, but by now, fewer than a dozen are still doing it full time.

"Early on, I was so excited to be producing rice for all those people in Tokyo and other cities. And they in turn felt a connection to the land, because people's roots, no matter where they lived, were out here," said Koushi Seiwa, one of the few remaining full-time farmers from his class, in a recent chat in the cafe his wife runs. He pointed emphatically out the window as he spoke, toward the tidy, perfectly irrigated rice paddies.

Farmers here are determined to remind anyone who will listen that the sense of order in the Japanese countryside isn't Mother Nature's doing. "Time was when people felt a responsibility to care for the land you received from your parents and they from their parents, and this was central to Japanese culture," added Hiko Hisamitsu, a friend and Kurihara High classmate of Mr. Seiwa.

This equating of agriculture with land stewardship lies at the heart of Japanese and European reluctance to meet developing countries' demands that they lower their barriers to farm imports. Japan's exorbitant rice tariffs, hovering near 500 percent, are Exhibit A of such reluctance. Yet farmers like Mr. Seiwa worry about the incessant international pressure, combined with younger generations' lack of interest in agriculture.


"Now, younger people in Tokyo wouldn't know how to grow rice if their life depended on it, and a lot of consumers probably wouldn't think twice about buying imported rice," he complained.

Not that they are able to do so. For the Japanese government, which continues to spend billions of dollars each year supporting its farmers, rice protectionism is as much a matter of cultural policy as it is an agricultural matter. The Japanese word for rice, gohan, is also used as the generic term for any meal. Besides being the staple of the traditional Japanese diet, rice is also used to make candies and provides the national drink, sake, or rice wine.

Still, recession-weary consumers here are tired of paying three or four times more for food than people do elsewhere. And Japanese industry resents the fact that the country's farm policies have stymied any number of potential free-trade deals with resentful agricultural exporters. The farmers' aversion to regional and bilateral trade agreements has hurt Japanese manufacturers in dealing with countries like Mexico, where European and American competitors enjoy duty-free privileges. Over the long run, it could affect Japan's critical relationship with China, which is eager to sell Japan cheap rice.

Japan now uses a quota system to import less than 10 percent of all rice consumed, tariff-free. The rest runs up against that whopping 500 percent wall. If the tariffs were abolished or significantly reduced, Japan would find itself importing more than half the rice it consumes, according to Keijiro Otsuka, an economist at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo and a leading proponent of liberalization.

An open Japanese market would probably create a trickle-down effect for other rice-producing nations. Farmers in California, Australia and China, where producer prices are one-tenth those in Japan, would be the biggest beneficiaries. They produce the short-grain, stickier Japonica rice that Japanese consumers prefer. Poorer tropical countries unable to produce such rice would, in turn, probably sell more of their own rice to China, which would most likely shift some of its production over to Japonica for export.

Japanese farmers equate that kind of change with the end of Japanese agriculture, but Mr. Otsuka and other economists here don't agree, especially if trade liberalization led to a restructuring of the farming sector. Ever since the implementation of American-prescribed land reform after World War II, farming has been organized around small-time producers. Corporations are literally banned from farming. An end to the current massive protectionism might mean that farms of tomorrow would be larger and more efficient.

Mr. Seiwa sadly views the future in pretty much the same way. "You should wait a few years and once this generation of farmers has all retired, you can then have a few companies here run everything, as they do in America," he said.

For Japan, the question of how much to protect its farmers, and at what cost to its international interests and obligations, is a matter that straddles competing national identities. One is of Japan as an island striving for self-sufficiency, shutting out the rest of the world until well into the 19th century and Commodore Matthew Perry's arrival.

Then there is the more contemporary idea of Japan, the world's second-largest economy and a nation that owes its prosperity to its exporting prowess. This outward-looking Japan believes it has the right to unfettered access to global markets, even if it means that a lot of people elsewhere — including plenty of factory workers in America — lose their livelihoods.

The apparent double standard is always resolved by Japanese officials with an assertion that agriculture is different. The view that farm goods should not be regulated by trade rules covering other products is still widely held here — as it is in many other developed nations whose attitude toward their farmers is equally protective, although often more flexible than Japan's.

Tokyo knows it can no longer openly demand to have it both ways, and professes to want progress in the World Trade Organization's so-called development round of trade liberalization talks. At the same time, it is making common cause with the European Union to oppose meaningful concessions before the Cancún W.T.O. meeting next month. The worst nightmare for Japanese officials is that Washington and the Europeans might still come to an understanding on how to go about reducing tariffs and subsidies before Cancún, leaving Tokyo totally isolated in its opposition.

Japan owes it to the world's poorest to alter its negotiating stance, but it also owes it to itself. Nobody stands to lose as much as Japan in the event that the developing world leads a global backlash against free trade.

#14 kevin

  • Topic Starter
  • Member, Guardian
  • 2,779 posts
  • 822

Posted 28 August 2003 - 07:15 AM

Posted Image
Wednesday, 1 August, 2001, 18:16 GMT 19:16 UK
World numbers 'may peak by 2100'
http://news.bbc.co.u...ech/1467252.stm
Posted Image

The future will be less crowded than expected - and older

By BBC News Online's environment correspondent Alex Kirby
Researchers say the world's population could stop growing sooner than expected.

They suggest it could peak within the next 70 years, and then decline.

By the end of the century, they believe, the number of people alive could be 8.4 billion - about one billion fewer than the United Nations has predicted.

But there will be wide regional variations, and far more elderly people than there are today.

The scientists, whose work is reported in the magazine Nature, say: "There has been enormous concern about the consequences of human population growth for the environment and for social and economic development.

Slow decrease

"But this growth is likely to come to an end in the foreseeable future."

Included among their forecasts are:

*an 85% chance that global population will stop growing before 2100
*a 60% probability that numbers will not exceed 10 billion before the end of the century, and "around a 15% probability" that the world's population by then will be lower than it is today
*about a 75% chance that the peak population of the European part of the former Soviet Union had already been reached in 2000.

The median value of the researchers' projections reaches a peak around 2070 at nine billion people, and then slowly decreases to 8.4 billion by 2100.


Posted Image
Absolute numbers will still grow

But while they say the median population sizes over the next two decades are already declining in eastern Europe and the European part of the old USSR, elsewhere the picture is very different.

"The populations of north Africa and sub-Saharan Africa are likely to double" over the same period, the authors say, "even when we take into account the uncertainty about future HIV trends.

"Owing to an earlier fertility decline, the China region is likely to have around 700 million fewer people than the south Asia region by the middle of the century.

"This absolute difference in population size is likely to be maintained over the entire second half of the century and illustrates the strong impact of the timing of fertility decline on eventual population size."

Ageing world

There will also be pronounced differences in population structure, the authors believe.

"At the global level the proportion above age 60 is likely to increase from its current level of 10% to around 22% in 2050.

"By the end of the century it will increase to around 34%, and extensive population ageing will occur in all world regions."

The scientists base their projections on several variables, including assumptions on the speed of fertility decline, the subsequent fertility level, and life expectancy.

Except in Africa, where they say HIV/AIDS will lower it in the early part of the century, they assume life expectancy will rise everywhere.


Posted Image
Physical pressures should be less than forecast

Dr Med Bouzidi, of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), told BBC News Online: "I think the report is credible.

"It 's encouraging - it shows family planning has been more successful than we'd have expected 30 or 50 years ago.

"But many of the women who need it are not using any reliable and safe family planning.

Scarce resources

"The poorest of the poor still don't have access to contraception."

Professor Norman Myers, of Green College, Oxford, UK, told BBC News Online: "A lot of other population projections show big variations, though not as big as this one.

"It is possible - there've been all sorts of surprises in the recent demographic past.

"But one pivotal variable is the environmental resource base - whether people will have enough to live on - and I'm not sure the authors have taken that into account."

#15 advancedatheist

  • Guest
  • 1,419 posts
  • 11
  • Location:Mayer, Arizona

Posted 29 August 2003 - 03:32 AM

http://www.earth-pol...es/Update27.htm

August 27, 2003-7

Copyright © 2003 Earth Policy Institute



RECORD TEMPERATURES SHRINKING WORLD GRAIN HARVEST: Monthly Drop Equal to One Half of U.S. Wheat Harvest

Lester R. Brown

On August 12 at 8:30 a.m., the U.S. Department of Agriculture released its monthly estimate of the world grain harvest, reporting a 32-million-ton drop from the July estimate. When grain futures markets opened later in the morning, prices of wheat, rice, and corn jumped.

This 32-million-ton drop, equal to half the U.S. wheat harvest, was concentrated in Europe where record-high temperatures have withered crops. The affected region stretched from the United Kingdom and France in the west through the Ukraine in the east. The searing heat damaged crops in virtually every country in Europe.


-----------------------------------------

Also look at the chart and table at:

World Grain Production and Consumption, 1961-2003
http://www.earth-pol...date27_data.htm

#16 kevin

  • Topic Starter
  • Member, Guardian
  • 2,779 posts
  • 822

Posted 29 August 2003 - 04:38 AM

AdvAth:

A sad state of affairs that fits in with your other posts on Peak oil. From the graph at the link you posted:

Posted Image

It seems that there is an increasing erratic behavior of production while consumption seems to be increasingly relatively constantly. I wonder if there will be more over and under of greater magnititude as our population tries to reach some kind of steady state? It is estimated that the world can support a max of 12 billion people. From the graph it almost looks like a system that is struggling up a hill, sometimes putting out too much and sometimes coming up short. I personally think we are bumping up against the ceiling with our current technologies and lack of will of the more developed world to reduce energy consumption. If global warming continues as the article suggests, we had all better have a few dollars put away just to survive let alone be immortal. Unfortunately it will be the underdeveloped countries who bear the brunt.

#17 Lazarus Long

  • Life Member, Guardian
  • 8,116 posts
  • 242
  • Location:Northern, Western Hemisphere of Earth, Usually of late, New York

Posted 16 August 2004 - 04:37 PM

Here is an interesting article by Ron Bailey of Reason Magazine

http://www.reason.co.../rb072804.shtml

Make Mine Malthus!
Overpopulation panic's eternal return
Ronald Bailey

The world has never been overpopulated with humans in any meaningful sense. It seems, though, that it is overpopulated with theoretical fears of overpopulation.

The appeal of the overpopulation myth is obvious —who doesn't love a simple, easily graspable idea that seems to explain a great deal? One such idea is the central biological insight that all animals aim to turn food into offspring. When a species' food increases, then its population grows as well; and when the food supply declines, so too do its numbers. This applies to everything from paramecia to parakeets.

Since humans are also animals that reproduce, biologists have extended that insight to us as well. This is the source of the overpopulation fears that have haunted learned experts from Thomas Robert Malthus 200 years ago to Paul Ehrlich today.

An extensive literature critiques the concept of human overpopulation. But it's apparently an idea whose time comes again, and again, and again, in all sorts of strange places. For instance, the 1990s saw a bad novelization of the concept in Ishmael, in which a telepathic gorilla recycles Malthusianism.

The latest iteration of this two-century-old idea comes from Duke University consultant Russell Hopfenberg, in an article called "Human Carrying Capacity Is Determined by Food Availability", in the November 2003 issue of the journal Population and Environment. Hopfenberg writes, "[T]he problem of human population growth can be feasibly addressed only if it is recognized that increases in the population of the human species, like increases in the population of all other species, is a function of increases in food availability."

Hopfenberg backs his argument by showing that global food supplies and human numbers both rise from 1960 to 2000. In 2001, Hopfenberg, writing with Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel in Environment, Development and Sustainability, further asserts that "if food production continues to increase, the world population is projected to increase to 12 billion in the next 50 years (based on current growth rates)." Hopfenberg's solution to skyrocketing human numbers is simple: "Cap the increases in food production and thereby halt the increases in population by means of a reduced birth rate."

So has the Malthusian case finally been proven? No. Hopfenberg's analysis makes the mistake of considering only global numbers. This hides a great deal of information. If we look on the regional level we see a very different picture than one of a relentlessly rising tide of human babies. Fertility does not correlate with food availability.

The countries with greatest access to food are, in fact, the countries with the lowest fertility rates. As the United Nations reports, 14 developed countries have fertility rates lower than 1.3 children per woman. (Replacement fertility is 2.1 children per woman.) The fertility rates in practically all developed countries are below the replacement rate. Clearly, food availability does not mean more children. More generally, as food security has increased around the world, instead of increasing as Hopfenberg's theory would suggest, global average fertility rates have dropped from 6 children per woman in 1960 to 2.6 today. And the rates continue to plummet. Sadly, in Africa, which has the highest current fertility rates, food production per capita has been declining for nearly 30 years.

If food availability really determined human reproductive capacity, Illinois farmers should have the highest fertility rate in the world. Instead, they have one of the lowest. Hopfenberg would reply that excess food produced in North America and Europe fuels population growth in the rest of the world. In some sense that is trivially true, but the strictly biological model that he says applies to people does not account for such phenomena. For example, deer in Virginia don't sacrifice their chances to produce fawns and ship their food to deer in Arkansas, nor do sparrows in New York forego nesting in order to supply food to Floridian sparrows. Individuals, not populations, reproduce.

The notion that capping food supplies will halt population growth is also trivially true, but not by the gentle means which Hopfenberg and Pimentel suggest, e.g., reducing human birth rates. Food shortages no doubt reduce fertility, but they also shrink population much more quickly by simple starvation.

Finally, Hopfenberg and Pimentel's projection that world population will reach 12 billion by 2050 is off. They simply extrapolate current levels of fertility, yet as we've seen, fertility rates are rapidly declining. The 2002 revision of the United Nations' World Population Prospects' median variant trend projects a world population of 8.9 billion by 2050. Given the rapidly falling global fertility rates, the low variant trend is more likely —and that projects a world population topping out at 7.5 billion by 2040, then beginning to decline. Perhaps Malthusianism will finally decline along with fertility rates.

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His new book, Liberation Biology: A Moral and Scientific Defense of the Biotech Revolution will be published in early 2005.

sponsored ad

  • Advert
Advertisements help to support the work of this non-profit organisation. [] To go ad-free join as a Member.

#18 Lazarus Long

  • Life Member, Guardian
  • 8,116 posts
  • 242
  • Location:Northern, Western Hemisphere of Earth, Usually of late, New York

Posted 16 August 2004 - 04:53 PM

And here are my thoughts on the article.

I always enjoy Ron's arguments. I don't always agree with him but he wastes no time getting to the heart of the matter. Population, and more importantly its *Quality of Life* as the prime measure of that population are directly the issue, energy use being a basic one that is really about our consumptive choices too.

How the quality of life is defined is inherently socially relativistic but also is the product of competition and (survival of) successful norms of conduct. Part of the issue is determining what goes into a free market and afterward; how do we pay for what results?

Bailey is limitedly correct about repressed production IMO and this has also resulted in some of the benefits of its intended environmental rehabilitation. This is the battleground of ideas as it reflects the problem.

BTW, what has also impacted the land use on a lot of agricultural land is that its real estate value went up and it was sold for development or is now in the pipeline.

We tend to limit interpretations of Malthus to Naturalist, Industrialist, Econometric, and Mathematical, but the categories compete and are not mutually exclusive per se. Bailey is correct that we can carve up more land twixt the mass of humanity but at what point before we build Trantor do we stop?

Or is that the issue my urban friends?

Sooner or later we change or the environment that we perceive perhaps too immutable, is subject to change. Malthus never dies he is only answered by each subsequent generation. Every surviving generation faces the same type of challenges specific to the results of its behaviors and evolutionarily this is somewhat new to our species on the scale of it today but not in its practical aspects. But survival demands also change from generation to generation.

Bailey's argument should be seen as about balancing demand as a result of sustainable resources; when that becomes too unbalanced catastrophe results.

Civilizations have come and gone, a considerable amount of the failures resulted from that relationship going out of whack. Yes we are inventive, but yes we can even be more destructive in our *total impact*.

That impact can result in long term irreversible damage to the biosphere of our world, for example the impact on the oceans upon which we also have grown to depend for food.

Nonetheless, we are as a species are also undertaking to Terraform our world into a form of our historic meme for *paradise.* The power both to create healthy options and destructive result are both risk and reward as the numbers are driving a race against human nature; human racism versus humanism. Tech is a tool for both sides.

Technology is what we do to adapt the environment and ourselves but tech is not a panacea for all that ails us when we also collectively make what is around us uninhabitable as a result of demand.

It is our choices in the markets that are driving the rate of damage. It is our *success* as a species that is taking us into an accelerating developmental period. That is both a good thing because we will need all the intelligence we can muster to cope with the level of multiple crises we are likely to endure but also a heightened risk as it makes the crises and problems evermore complex and simultaneously dangerous by upping the total risk potential.

Malthus basically implies that this becomes a never ending challenge to a closed system.

A single world is a closed system. Building a technology that depends for its survival on going off-world is not necessarily a good thing if that technology is not already practical and in place. We are building the *Spaceship Beagle* out of our world.

The growing crisis in the sea (a major die off of all harvested species) will be met by migration to the sea in order to replenish the lost marine life and survive off it. It is far easier to fulfill Bailey's point in the near term I suspect but long term it will require a paradigm social shift, not just a technological fix. Malthus is not dead but lays in wait for the unwary, it is our visage of excess come to haunt us. Much of the twentieth century growth needs to take in the damage and tonnage of seafood our species let along our nation depends upon and we don't just eat beef, we consume rock and raw steel.

What is human need?

Have you seen what we have done to our world in a generation?

In two?

It isn't just about numbers or just their mouths, it is about the total demand of humanity. Growing populations are nothing to panic over but it is something to address. Humans have avoided it ultimately through migratory trends, warfare, and epidemic for more than a million years now and developed fire and agriculture over the last thirty thousand to a quarter million years ago to struggle against these. But the real threats and the *history* and memetic knowledge to confront them greatest threats are only the product of the last few millennium and centuries.

What Malthus is looking at was what to most of his contemporaneous minds were the unimaginable extent of human power, whereby our species overcomes Natural Selection and moves all life into a period of Human Selection with our species as the vanguard species of the quantum shift of genetic dependent evolution to memetic dominant evolution.

We are the Great Human Glacier, and either we compete against the larger threat or we become the threat itself. Malthus saw this dichotomy of our evolutionary psychology and biology.

To humorously extend the image; we melted and usurped the power of the Ice Age not just with fire and now global warming, but with our literal body heat as a multi-billion biological being. Yes we have over 6 billion alive today and we have no real practice at doing so without violence. In my lifetime humanity on Earth has tripled in population and I am only 50.

I remember the world with far less people in it and it was very different. Certainly not all change has been for the better. How much of *any* change do we want to irrationally accept is a serious discussion and Malthus sits at the table in any rational representative regional analysis.

Humanity is the vector species for the transition from genetic dependent evolution to memetic driven evolution and this transition is what I define as Human Selection but the challenges of the transition are identified by Malthus the way Mendel recognized genetics. Malthus was not Watson/Crick but he should not be so lightly dismissed IMO either.




1 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 1 guests, 0 anonymous users