Nine Billion--Population 2035

[yellowwood]

For the last few decades, the world has added a billion every twelve years.
Three billion in 1960, projected nine billion in 2035.

Overpopulation will dwarf all other issues in the years to come.

The earth is running out of resources. Agricultural science has increased the food supply, but water will be the big, unsolvable problem.

Also, of course, the added population will continue the acceleration of global warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

http://www.opr.princeton.edu/popclock/

[FarCenter]

1. Water is a big problem but fossil fuels are a bigger problem

Current crude production is around 85 million barrels per day and has been flat for several years. In the next decade it will start down. After that it will fall faster, and there will be huge dislocations in the global economy.

It's unlikely that we will get to 9 billion. The death rate will go up markedly after 2025.

[CleanGreenFuture]

6. Agreed, though I would pare back your timeline a bit. We're already six years

into the flat, or plateau, of oil production. Economic growth is now all but impossible. Indeed, we are transitioning into a contraction, if we're not already there. And once the graph turns downward, the effects will accelerate exponentially as the net availability of oil rapidly declines as more energy is needed to extract resources, something you and I know as EROEI. Also, the Export Land Model must be considered.

As for the death rate, I think it's possible that we're already seeing the affects of high oil prices on charitable efforts in places like the horn of Africa where famine has set in. Famine is one of the precepts of a post-peak oil production paradigm.

[cloudbase]

2. That's not

a sustainable figure.

[GliderGuider]

4. True, that. A long-term sustainable number is

probably somewhere around half a billion.

At our current levels we are seriously damaging the habitability of the planet by stealing its ecology from our children and grandchildren.

[Lorien]

9. Neither is it currently. at current rates of consumption the planet will

run out of resources-drinking water, fuel, forests, fish, all of it-by the year 2050. The solution is to make education-particularly of women- a global priority. Well educated people have far smaller families, and educated women have the opportunity to make futures for themselves in the third world that don't involve being married off to act as little more than a servant and brood mare to her husband. If we don't confront the issue of overpopulation then the planet will look like Easter Island far sooner than many of us think.

[Gregorian]

3. The great denial topic.

You won't get recommendations on these posts. You won't see most members replying. Yet it is the most important topic of any ever posted here.

The problem is some kind of associated guilt with having helped make the mess. I wish we could all sit down and figure out how we're going to change this mess around to a sustainable level.

Choice is freedom. Yet we curb choice in the least important areas. Get stopped without a seatbelt, and you will be fined. But something as powerful as having too many children, and you get a free pass. Even the concept of "too many" is seemingly impossible for people to understand or even discuss rationally.

So some people make choices that directly impact the choices of others, when they choose to ignore population. The examples are numerous. It is not as if our actions are confined to our own families. A billion people in China are going to have an impact as they are now turning into a modern society.

Some things need to be addressed before their resultant effects become apparent. We all understand that waiting until the waters rise is not a viable reaction to global warming. Yet global warming is directly proportional to population. Modern lifestyle living is forever with us. We're not going to start taking cold showers. So that leaves the other factor in the equation. Population.

It is simply careless and selfish to continue ignoring this.

[CleanGreenFuture]

8. The denial of the problem and the unwillingness to discuss it frustrates me to no end.

Commenting in any great detail here (or almost anywhere else for that matter) is an exercise in futility.

[roamer65]

13. Call it draconian, fascist, whatever...

but I steadfastly believe we are going to have to highly restrict human reproduction in the future. Perhaps a lottery system.

The Earth does not have the carrying capacity for nine billion people.

But I think it is much more likely we will have the other "solution" to overpopulation...World War III.

[Romulox]

5. War, famine, disease are inevitable. nt

[Bucky]

7. Of course the truth's a little more complicated

For instance, the high estimates, which run to 14 billion by century's end, assumes continued growth rates, which the critical loss of global resources will probably prevent. The low end estimates, on the other hand, recognize that many nations, as they industrialize, will slow their population growth. Mexico's a good example. Just as Russia, Western Europe & Japan are now shrinking in population (and as the US would be if it weren't for immigrants and first generation Americans), you can probably expect Mexico to quit growing around mid-century.



The mid-level estimates also discount large scale die-offs in under-resourced regions, which we can also expect in the balance of this century. Once the Arctic Icecap and a large chunk of the Antarctic melt off and raise global sea levels, the most densely populated regions of Bangladesh, for instance, may cease to exist, triggering a mass exodus into India and Burma, chart-bending death counts, and probable war.

Of course we may all be fighting over potable water resources by that time anyway. So really, overpopulation may just be one of those self-fixing problems. On the other hand, my friend who studies this problem for the State Department tells me that the low-end estimates made 10 years ago are the ones currently being borne out by recent statistics. Collectively, humans seem to quit growing once they have to.

[GliderGuider]

10. Not to mention food supply limits brought on by climate change and soil depletion,

along with Peak Oil, the death of the oceans, global economic instability and the rest of the lugubrious litany of limits.

"The changes that must be made to avert the crisis will instead be made only as its consequence."

[amborin]

11. ongoing species extirpation due to habitat loss, etc.....

[Stargazer99]

12. Isn't it time to tell the anti-abortionist to shut up?

Make all insurances provide birth control at no cost. And give the poor no cost birth control? Oh hell no that might make too much sense!

[gulliver]

14. Sure wish people would learn to live within their means.

It's just one more area where Republicans are crazy. Someone shows them a chart where budget deficits trend upward and they freak out about not living within our means. Show them a chart where CO2 and population go up or fish populations go down and not a peep. They have an impoverished notion of happiness based on ever-expanding opportunity for resource exploitation. It's crazy, and it's not even happy. The earth is running out of spiritual resources too.

[drokhole]

15. Three of the largest problems of humanity - ignorance, militarism, and breeding...

...and while each reflects/reinforces the other, breeding feeds them all. Depletion of resources, exponentially larger carbon footprint - not to mention too few jobs for too many people (especially with the advancement of technology). Hell, that's how it is now.

So what do we do? We create these mechanical, mindless McJobs - because, hey, "people gotta work," right? And it's the only way to deal with the sheer volume. Jobs, jobs, jobs! Regardless the drudgery. Regardless if it fills people with melancholy, anxiety, and resentment. Not to mention fear, because losing the non-livable wage McJob is worse than having no job at all! Because, for one, you can't even afford "to live" - and, two, you lose that "job having" status, and are generally regarded as worthless shit via the "standards" of society.

So, we put ourselves in a double-bind. Fearful of losing our job (professional, McJob, or otherwise), and fearful when we don't have a job. And fear breeds hate. And hate breeds anger. And anger blinds - breeding ignorance and militarism.