The Truth About Overpopulation

[LienShen]

Beyond Malthus, here are some interesting things to think about;

The Tsunami wiped out a lot of people, and in as little 30 hours... the rest of the world replaced them.

People in Niger are starving to death and for every one death we create 4 lives.

20,000 people died in an earthquake in India, the losses were made up before the West heard the news.

As long as it takes you to say, "There is no population problem." enough people are born to fill a jumbo jet.

The population of the world by current census is growing at a little over 79,000,000 per year. That is enough people to fill the country of Germany, added to the world.

We like to think that in the western world we can afford to pay for our children. The sad fact is that a western child uses 30 times as much of the world’s natural resources as a third world child. A single Orthodox family in the U.S. may use as much oil as a small town in Africa or India.

Some other statistics;
There were 1 billion people on the earth in 1804
2 billion in 1927 (123 years later)
3 billion in 1960 ( 33 years later)
4 billion in 1974 ( 14 years later)
5 billion in 1987 ( 13 years later)
6 billion in 1999 ( 12 years later)
6.5 billion in 2004 (5 years later)

It's not that we are currently starving here in North America, it's that just south of us in Central America they are starving. And if we, despite all our capitalistic greed, could understand that we are using more resources than everyone else by 30%... then maybe we could start to be responsible for over-populating. The population will reach 7 billion by 2011, 9.5 billion in 2050, 11 billion in 2200 at current fertility rates. This is globally unsustainable. We are already at a deficit on grains and we lose about 3.6% of the grain amounts each year. And there is a Stockholm report that says by the year 2025, 2/3's of the worlds population will be without a proper water source caused by over-population. Growth in the World Fisheries stopped in 1989, and has been in a steady decline since then.

The news should report these things everyday, so that people who think that breeding is a right would start to understand that it's a serious problem. And that tax breaks for having more children is not the solution but part of a bigger global problem that makes it more difficult to govern countries, and much more difficult to solve the worlds ills. It gets worse every year. It's time that people were responsible instead of just breeding everyone else out of existance for their own greed and selfish needs.

Is it morally wrong to have more than two children? I think so.

 

[Scholar in training]

May I ask what source you're using to support the numbers in the original post?

 

[LienShen]

Mostly WHO and government info.
http://www.who.int/
http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html
http://www.unfpa.org/swp/swpmain.htm
http://esa.un.org/unpp/
http://www.geohive.com/

And a few others here and there. But all the statistics and numbers came from those sites.

 

[On the Narrow Road]

So WHERE exactly is this population explosion occurring?

 

[trunks2k]

So WHERE exactly is this population explosion occurring?

Mainly poor third world countries. Africa and India have high growth as, IIRC do many South and Central American countries. China used to have a high growth but popluation control measures worked a bit too well. But at the same time, people in first world countries leave a much larger ecological footprint than those in poorer countries.

 

[LienShen]

No, it's happening all over the world, not just in third world countries. We just currently can somewhat substain ourselves. However, 4 out of 10 children in the U.S. go to school hungry. 38% of our population relies on public assistance of some sort. And it's growing. The more we depleat, the less we will have. The more we use in excess the less we have. But it's happening everywhere. It's less visable in North America and Europe, but it's painfully obvious everywhere else. China has serious penalties for having more than one child in a family, with good reason. They have a frightening person per square mile ratio.

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Overpopulation is something we can handle. We already produce enough food for 10 billion (although this assumes that we switch to a more efficient vegetarian diet). Some simple irrigation projects in third world countries would do wonders to help pull people out of poverty, which would decrease birth rates.

 

[John812]

Awesome OP Undeniably

Is it morally wrong to have more than two children? I think so.

I agree. Perhaps it is even immoral to have any children and instead adopt the ones that would otherwise starve to death. Maybe until every child was already taken care of would it not be immoral to have children.


God bless ya!

 

[Stuco]

Well soon we might not have to worry about overpopulation. With as fast as tetions are rising between countrys the biggest thing will have to worry about is rodioactive fallout. And finding something to eat. Cause most of the plant life will be dead and if they fire enough nuclear weapons we might go into a nuclear winter and I would estimate that that might put the population back under 1 billion.

 

[Madcoil]

Yes yes, we are eating more than all those children who are starving.

It makes sense, really.

 

[FSTDT]

Perhaps now would be a good time to plug the article A Singer Solution to World Poverty.

 

[Glass*Soul]

Another thing to take into consideration is that as oil becomes scarce, it will become more difficult to farm, fertilize, process, and distribute food. Also, modern farming techniques using irrigation and hybrids is producing food that is less nutritious due to the shorter growing time.

 

[FSTDT]

Another thing to take into consideration is that as oil becomes scarce, it will become more difficult to farm, fertilize, process, and distribute food. Also, modern farming techniques using irrigation and hybrids is producing food that is less nutritious due to the shorter growing time.

I'm not sure that shorter growing time makes it less nutricious - we pump basically everything full of pesticides and steroids (some of those can negatively effect the environment), and we fortify everything with additional vitamins. (In fact, its hard to buy anything that hasnt been fortified with calcium or other minerals.)

 

[Glass*Soul]

I'm not sure that shorter growing time makes it less nutricious - we pump basically everything full of pesticides and steroids (some of those can negatively effect the environment), and we fortify everything with additional vitamins. (In fact, its hard to buy anything that hasnt been fortified with calcium or other minerals.)

Actually, I would say we're both right. Shorter growing time is suspected of playing a role as do the type of fertilizer used and the additional CO2 we now have in the air. Here are two articles on the problem.

http://www.annieappleseedproject.org/isfoodbecles.html

http://www.motherearthnews.com/additional/res.php?id=4&page=1

I can remember when the produce section of a grocery store was filled with delicious smells and you could judge a good piece of produce by smelling it. Now there's no aroma and little taste to any of the produce.

 

[charityagape]

Are we saying a woman's choice to her own body and what goes on with it doesn't count when it effects other people?

 

[Higher]

Whaddya wanna do? Stop making babies? Sorry, hormones don't agree with that.

 

[hippepower]

So WHERE exactly is this population explosion occurring?

go to a hospital i think you might find a lot happening there esspically if you head to the matintary ward, wow this guys quick on the uptake

 

[charityagape]

I think he meant what countries?

 

[hippepower]

ok now there is a lot being left out of this thread mainly because people forget there first day in chem I back in highschool, there are three laws that are constant in everything
1)the law of conservations of energy, the engery that goes into a reaction must be the engery that leaves a reaction
2)the law of conservation of mass, the mass that goes into and equation must be equal to the mass that leave the equation
3)the law of conservation of mass and energy the amount of engery that goes into an equation must be equal to the amount of mass that leaves an equation, e=mc^2

the above is for thoes whom have forgottne or have not got to that part yet, so what does that tell us, the more energy that we as humans have to use, the more stuff(more people inculded) we can create if you look at any stats you will see that population growth started growing rapidly around the time of the industial rev, not a big supprise there is an amazing amount of engery in foissl fuel the question is when are we running out of oil/coal, and how will that affect population growth, stagnation or decline, the long and the short of it is that people have been far to greed for more and more sources of power for far too long, the native americans while not haveing all the fun mathical and chemcial equations to go by still understood that everything is enterconnected and that taking from one thing ment you had to give back to another but western caplistist don't see that but see resouses as means to more money this bubble like all will burst there will come a time where there is just not enough energy to support this much mass, most people like to call this time mad max where this is no gas there is now power there is no AC there is no heaters just you and what you can find off the land hopefully by that time this hippe is far far away from all you crazy city slickers living in a cabin where there will no of you to bother me i don't care how far north i have to walk(thats right no more driving to starbucks) i'll get there too bad all ya'll don't have advanced outdoor/surival skills sucks to be you

 

[one love]

North American capitalist greed cause people in South America and Latin America to starve? Where? Chile, Uraguay, Argentina? Surely not Costa Rica. These SA nations are starving, if they are as you say, because of people like Che 'I blow up your bridge' Guevara. People people in these countries were vastly uneducated and therefore capable of believing a moron like Che or Allande or Castro.

Chop down the rainforest and build farmlands if you want these people to eat. Tell them to change to an open market economy if you don't want to see them so poor.

It is not immoral for one to have more than two children, who are they hurting?

Who are the people that are helping these poverty striken Africans and South Americans? Sweden? Norway? Socialist Europe? Believe it or not it is the evil western capitalist bankers of World Bank striving to create infrastructures across the globe in impoverished areas.

I was one of those 4 children that went to school hungry and that's because I never ate breakfast, not that I wasn't able to have breakfast, as with many many others I knew.