The Truth About Overpopulation

[charityagape]

Hippie, maybe you could chill just a little.

 

[one love]

ahh, i'll go with no again here is a line by line, and don't bother responding to this because you will just prove how worthless your point is

1) doctors have good educations that come at a high cost
a)the man was smater then you or i
b)he walked away from more wealth then you or i will ever see
2) when the caplistis nations had and still had a system of imperilism that exploits contries with less capital then yes we are evil
a)people are praticly slaving away in felds, mines, and other jobs for little pay no union respentation
b)labors in less industious nations don't have a market that can one use raw product or if they do they don't have the ablity provied for mass volume or export, because of tarifs, or high port entry fees
c)this means that every person in an less industually powerfull nation then say the US is forced into slavey by people like you that think they have the right to expolit other human beings, again check yourslef
3) che was more christ like then you
a)doctors tend to want to help people
b)he fought to his last breath to liberate people from ecomic slavey, when have you ever freed some one from slavery, OH YEAH YOU HAVEN'T BECAUSE YOU FIGHT TO JUSTIFY IT
c)denied himslef to help others that he had no reason to help other than he saw there suffing and was willing to set is own personal interst aside and fight for them, and aginst ingorant and bigotted people like yourslef
4)overview
a) your agurment makes a lot of claims with no substation or warrants you just again say that you think che was not smart, ok fine, i could say your a moron, but that is just a claim with nothing to back it up, it is just a waste of breath so i'm going to say i'm sorry for you for your wasting of people's vauable time, for having to read your unsubstanated hatefull diatribe

Control yourself, you and I are under 23, we have plenty of time to amass welath and probably have our areas of interest where we are smarter than Che. What you say about capitalism is slanted and untrue. Che wanted to blow bridges up and inprisson people in socialism, sounds like fun to me.

 

[Nymphalidae]

Here's how I had it recently explained to me in my insect pest management class. The world's population has been growing exponentially. Populations do this when given enough resources and space. There is only a certain amount of arable land. We don't just use land for farming; think of all the arable land taken up by urban sprawl.

There is only a certain amount of food that can be produced per acre of land. In developed countries roughtly 30% of yield is lost due to pests (insects, disease, weeds, etc). In developing nations yield loss can be as much as 70%. Food doesn't magically appear, we have to fight for it. As the population increases, the margin for error decreases.

Food production is dependent upon other resources. Without oil, the combines don't run. Without water, the crops don't get irrigated. It isn't just about how many people we have, it's about idiots with swimming pools and lawns in Las Vegas and Pheonix and idiots with SUVs in metropolitan areas.

Here are some pictures from a University of Michigan site to demonstrate:

 

[Chosen One]

Chosen One,

The most effective form of birth control is education. It is a well-known fact that the more education a woman has, the less children she will bear.

The more educated she is- the more likely she is to live in a modern society which has higher usage of birth control. If that is not the case in a particular instance and she dwells from a poor society: the more educated a women is- the more likely she is to be from the upper crust of that poorer society and will then have access to birth control techniques.

If an educated woman becomes pregnant, she will be likely more career oriented and will tend to opt more for an abortion.

 

[Ledifni]

Here's how I had it recently explained to me in my insect pest management class. The world's population has been growing exponentially. Populations do this when given enough resources and space. There is only a certain amount of arable land. We don't just use land for farming; think of all the arable land taken up by urban sprawl.

There is only a certain amount of food that can be produced per acre of land. In developed countries roughtly 30% of yield is lost due to pests (insects, disease, weeds, etc). In developing nations yield loss can be as much as 70%. Food doesn't magically appear, we have to fight for it. As the population increases, the margin for error decreases.

Food production is dependent upon other resources. Without oil, the combines don't run. Without water, the crops don't get irrigated. It isn't just about how many people we have, it's about idiots with swimming pools and lawns in Las Vegas and Pheonix and idiots with SUVs in metropolitan areas.

Here are some pictures from a University of Michigan site to demonstrate:

To follow up on this point a little, I fully expect the population to level out before we all starve. As space becomes more limited and life becomes more and more uncomfortable, I think people naturally have fewer children (for example, many couples decide not to have many children because they can't afford to buy a decent-sized house where there will be enough room for a large family). The more uncomfortable life becomes, the fewer children they will have. This is similar to the behavior of many animals who, placed in captivity where they are denied any of the comforts or behaviors of their past lives, will cease to breed.

The problem with that is that it seems conditions must be very uncomfortable to have this effect. Not only so, extreme comfort has a similar effect, as we see in industrialized nations today. I tend to think that as world population rises and population pressure forces emigration to more industrialized nations, today's wealthy nations will begin to fill up and become more crowded and less comfortable, and we'll go through a phase of mass reproduction until we become uncomfortable enough to stop breeding -- and stay packed together and extremely uncomfortable for the foreseeable future. That is, unless we arrest this process somehow between now and then.

I do not know what would be the best way to arrest it (in fact, I don't really know if I've analyzed the situation correctly, either -- it's an educated guess based on the data I've seen). But I think it is something human society needs to think about.

 

[HouseApe]

To follow up on this point a little, I fully expect the population to level out before we all starve. As space becomes more limited and life becomes more and more uncomfortable, I think people naturally have fewer children (for example, many couples decide not to have many children because they can't afford to buy a decent-sized house where there will be enough room for a large family). The more uncomfortable life becomes, the fewer children they will have. This is similar to the behavior of many animals who, placed in captivity where they are denied any of the comforts or behaviors of their past lives, will cease to breed.

The problem with that is that it seems conditions must be very uncomfortable to have this effect. Not only so, extreme comfort has a similar effect, as we see in industrialized nations today. I tend to think that as world population rises and population pressure forces emigration to more industrialized nations, today's wealthy nations will begin to fill up and become more crowded and less comfortable, and we'll go through a phase of mass reproduction until we become uncomfortable enough to stop breeding -- and stay packed together and extremely uncomfortable for the foreseeable future. That is, unless we arrest this process somehow between now and then.

I do not know what would be the best way to arrest it (in fact, I don't really know if I've analyzed the situation correctly, either -- it's an educated guess based on the data I've seen). But I think it is something human society needs to think about.

For the foreseeable future, there will always be starvation. Simply because the human population will expand to meet the available food supply, and the distribution of that supply will not be even.

So the number of people starving is relative to the number of people in total. And the number of people in total is directly proportional to amount of food that is produced. So if you want to stabilize the population, at any point in time, simply stop growing more food, and recognize some number will starve.

 

[LienShen]

If an educated woman becomes pregnant, she will be likely more career oriented and will tend to opt more for an abortion.

Complete fallacy.

The more educated a woman is, the more likely she will wait until she is well established in her career to have children. She will often use the best choice of birth control and often abstain when there is any question.

The majority of abortions are done on women who make less than $30k a year and are not college graduates.

Interestingly Christians are more likely than non-Christians to get an abortion;

Women identifying themselves as Protestants obtain 37.4% of all abortions in the U.S.; Catholic women account for 31.3%, Jewish women account for 1.3%, and women with no religious affiliation obtain 23.7% of all abortions. 18% of all abortions are performed on women who identify themselves as "Born-again/Evangelical".

http://www.cbrinfo.org/Resources/fastfacts.html

 

[Ledifni]

For the foreseeable future, there will always be starvation. Simply because the human population will expand to meet the available food supply, and the distribution of that supply will not be even.

So the number of people starving is relative to the number of people in total. And the number of people in total is directly proportional to amount of food that is produced. So if you want to stabilize the population, at any point in time, simply stop growing more food, and recognize some number will starve.

Yes, but isn't the point that others forms of population control are less harmful than starvation? I meet many people who are horrified at the idea of population control -- they view it almost like they view the Nazis' medical tests on humans. But they completely ignore the fact that we already have a widespread and extremely active system of population control in place already -- starvation. The idea behind artificial means of population control is that there are things we could do to keep the population down that would be better than just letting the surplus starve to death.

 

[Nymphalidae]

Yes, but isn't the point that others forms of population control are less harmful than starvation? I meet many people who are horrified at the idea of population control -- they view it almost like they view the Nazis' medical tests on humans. But they completely ignore the fact that we already have a widespread and extremely active system of population control in place already -- starvation. The idea behind artificial means of population control is that there are things we could do to keep the population down that would be better than just letting the surplus starve to death.

It's a condundrum. Enforcing population control can't be easy. Do you force sterilization and abortions? That doesn't seem very nice. But is it more moral to let people starve to death?

 

[HouseApe]

Yes, but isn't the point that others forms of population control are less harmful than starvation? I meet many people who are horrified at the idea of population control -- they view it almost like they view the Nazis' medical tests on humans. But they completely ignore the fact that we already have a widespread and extremely active system of population control in place already -- starvation. The idea behind artificial means of population control is that there are things we could do to keep the population down that would be better than just letting the surplus starve to death.

Certainly starvation is the worst form of population control. You could simply tax people based upon the number of children they have. However, frankly, I think people are too ignorant for something like that.

 

[charityagape]

Houseape,

Are you saying in post 86, that no matter the number of people a percentage of them will be starving?

 

[Nymphalidae]

Certainly starvation is the worst form of population control. You could simply tax people based upon the number of children they have. However, frankly, I think people are too ignorant for something like that.

A lisencing system would probably be too complex also.

 

[LienShen]

It would be, but that doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done. Look at all these families that have 4-10 kids that have to rely on their neighbors, their school system and their government to help feed, clothe and raise their children. There comes a point where we have to stop allowing people to be selfish. If they understood that one family of 6 uses as much gas as an entire village of 500 in China... they may start to actually think about being socially responsible instead of being thick-headed and selfish thinking only of themselves and their own happiness.

If you really need to have so many children, adopt ones that already are alive and need homes and families to love them...

 

[charityagape]

I know several families with more than four children. All very well off and completely capable of caring for their children without government assistance. Are these people "selfish" too?

 

[LienShen]

Yes.

Because they take up more of the earths resources. Do you realize that America alone uses up more than 80% of the worlds production of oil? That in turn causes the price of oil to go up, and causes less third world countries to be able to afford equipment that can help them survive. The same goes for food production. There are children in America that can't afford to eat, and there are 375,000 children in orphanages (not including foster children) who have to pay the price for inflation and overpopulation. It's bigger than how many children you can fit into a minivan. Yes, it's very selfish to think of only yourself, even if you are rich and can "afford" it.

 

[HouseApe]

Houseape,

Are you saying in post 86, that no matter the number of people a percentage of them will be starving?

Yes. Not necessarily at a given moment in time, but over any sufficiently long period of time. Why? Because the human population will expand to meet the food supply. We are just like any other animal. Put deer in an isolated forest without predators, and their population will grow until they begin starving. Humans are the same and the earth is our isolated forest.

So if you want fewer people to starve, just have fewer people. The greater the population of the planet, the more will starve. Some people believe that when the 3rd world industrializes, it will solve the problem (after all, Americans & Europeans aren't starving, right?). But that is not the case. It is our ability to outcompete 3rd worlders for the available food resources. Once there is a level playing field, starvation will just equal out more.

 

[AdamAnderson21]

It is a law of nature that when the food source increases for a species its population increases. The only way to decrease or curb population growth is to decrease or curb food production. No matter how many laws you envoke, or how many people you beat over the head with condoms, the population will continue to grow as long as you keep increasing the food supply.

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Yes.

Because they take up more of the earths resources. Do you realize that America alone uses up more than 80% of the worlds production of oil? That in turn causes the price of oil to go up, and causes less third world countries to be able to afford equipment that can help them survive. The same goes for food production. There are children in America that can't afford to eat, and there are 375,000 children in orphanages (not including foster children) who have to pay the price for inflation and overpopulation. It's bigger than how many children you can fit into a minivan. Yes, it's very selfish to think of only yourself, even if you are rich and can "afford" it.

Living the American liftestyle probably has more impact on the use of resources than having a large family.

 

[LienShen]

As an American who drives a hybrid vehicle when I need to get my kids around, is a vegetarian, rides her bike to work instead of driving, conserves electricity, recycles, and teaches my two children to do the same... the "American" lifestyle only seems to apply to the rich and selfish. I honestly don't have any friends who aren't socially and enviromentally conscious. Not that I wouldn't have them, I just haven't met any. But I don't hang in those circles really. I see people all the time that are completely oblivious and ignorant, but I don't make an effort to get to know them. Wasting resources just because you can is illogical and selfish.

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Yes. Not necessarily at a given moment in time, but over any sufficiently long period of time. Why? Because the human population will expand to meet the food supply. We are just like any other animal. Put deer in an isolated forest without predators, and their population will grow until they begin starving. Humans are the same and the earth is our isolated forest.

So if you want fewer people to starve, just have fewer people. The greater the population of the planet, the more will starve. Some people believe that when the 3rd world industrializes, it will solve the problem (after all, Americans & Europeans aren't starving, right?). But that is not the case. It is our ability to outcompete 3rd worlders for the available food resources. Once there is a level playing field, starvation will just equal out more.

Industrialization will help because it reduces birth rates and improves productivity.

Right now, starvation isn't caused by a lack of food but because of a lack of resources to create and obtain food. Ending poverty would do wonders for ending starvation.