View Full Version : 7 billion and counting
"What would you tell the human species about the fact this month there will be seven billion of us, and just twelve years ago there were only six? According to this CNN guest column by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs in 1999 the human population was six billion and this month it will go to seven. How long will it take to get to eight billion? One projection says it will be 2025, so that is just fourteen years to get to the next billion, but it could also be 2030, which would be nineteen years. Nine billion could be reached by 2045-2050."
"To put it simply, where will all the additional people go if the human population continues to grow?"
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/7-billion-humans-and-growing.html
I envision a future with only concrete and humans and some sort of vat proteing food. Not a single animal or a single blade of grass.
What can we do to avoid this?
"To put it simply, where will all the additional people go if the human population continues to grow?"
To the cities, as they do now.
What can we do to avoid this?
Get rich and wealthy. So far that's been the best measure to cut down on birth rates. How we can achieve that without exploiting the planet further is yet another question.
To the cities, as they do now.
yes, but there must be a limit to how big they can get. They are vulnerable now, just think of a temporary black out.
Get rich and wealthy. So far that's been the best measure to cut down on birth rates. How we can achieve that without exploiting the planet further is yet another question.
We can't, I think. The anwer must be something like the poor half cut down on babies (which can only be done if they have better chances of survival) and the rich cut down on pollution - which they won't.
Hm!
Get rich and wealthy. So far that's been the best measure to cut down on birth rates. How we can achieve that without exploiting the planet further is yet another question.
It would have been a good solution fifty years ago, but we are way past that. I seem to recall someone calculating that bringing the whole of the world's population up to our standard of living would need another two and a half Earths' resources. (And right here, not at the end of some hypothetical interplanetary freight line, before anyone brings in why we should have stuck with the space program.)
Right now, just those of us who are living that way are enough to wreck the ecology.
Back when I started reading science fiction, writers were imagining that in the 21st Century we'd all be on strict rationing because of overpopulation. They forgot to ask, who bells the cat? Who imposes rationing on the rich and powerful to benefit the poor and weak? Barring an invasion from space, not going to happen.
"To put it simply, where will all the additional people go if the human population continues to grow?"
http://www.care2.com/greenliving/7-billion-humans-and-growing.html
I envision a future with only concrete and humans and some sort of vat proteing food. Not a single animal or a single blade of grass.
What can we do to avoid this?
We will probably avoid it the hard way. A global organisation efficient enough to support an artificial ecology the world over is almost certainly beyond our reach: long before we got close, the system would have broken down into local squabbles over resources and the excess population would be removed the old fashioned way by the Four Horsemen.
I feel increasingly conflicted when I hear appeals for famine relief (or indeed any kind of disaster relief.) When some journo explains that without help X thousand mothers and children will die, my instincts cry out, but my logic says, a good thing too. Gaia is doing for us what we don't have the guts to do ourselves.
Barring some impracticable world dictatorship powerful enough to impose a Chinese birth control regime on the whole planet, Nature will bring our numbers down to what the planet can carry by the same thing that stops any runaway population, a mass die-off. The only question is how badly we will have damaged the ecology before it happens, which will affect how small the surviving stable population is.
denuseri
10-20-2011, 02:57 PM
The monkey wrench that threw the Malthus population predictions on their collective head was the legalization of abortion. Countries that legalized abortion saw a marked decrease in population increases from indigenous/main grouping births. The USA and Europe both have negative birthrates in their primary populations with almost all of their respective population growth being supplied via immigration (legal or otherwise) or high birth rates of newly imigrated populations who hav as of yet to embrace abortion as an option.
The first of the real issues with our ever increasing population are already showing themselves and have been for the past ten years or so. We already have fought three separate wars for control of the oil corridor (masked as something else of course). The economic collapse although caused solely by stupidity and over indulgent often times plain criminal means is not an animal onto itself and disconnected from everything else either.
Next main problem should be showing up in about ten years (give or take a little depending on usage) as the fresh H2O supply system is taxed beyond its ability to cope with the ever increasing demand for potable water.
Some cities like Singapore already recycle every bit of their drinking water from sewage.
De-desalination isn't being made affordable enough to keep pace or be worked in as a replacement for current systems either.
And as proven so many times in history...when the water supply dwindles, so will the food along with it.
After that it will be power supplies.
Sorry, Denuseri, but there is no correlation between legalization of abortion and the growth of a population. None at all. Italy, which doesn't really embrace abortion, due to its mostly catholic population (although abortion is legal during the first 90 days), has the lowest birth rate all over Europe and the second lowest in the western world (1.23 births/woman).
France, almost equally as much catholic as Italy (and where abortion is legal during the first 12 weeks) has a birth rate of 1.8.
Also, the abortion rate in Switzerland dropped from 12 per thousand in the seventies, when it was only obtainable under very restricted medical indications, to around 6.4 per thousand in 2009, seven years after its legalisation.
So, no, abortion has nothing to do whatsoever with population growth. If it had, the German Democratic Republic hadn't crashed because of its incapability, but because it would have simply ceased to exist.
Likewise, if that were the case, the Irish would be falling off their island coz there's not enough room for all of them.
Sorry, Denuseri, but there is no correlation between legalization of abortion and the growth of a population. None at all. Italy, which doesn't really embrace abortion, due to its mostly catholic population (although abortion is legal during the first 90 days), has the lowest birth rate all over Europe and the second lowest in the western world (1.23 births/woman).
France, almost equally as much catholic as Italy (and where abortion is legal during the first 12 weeks) has a birth rate of 1.8.
Also, the abortion rate in Switzerland dropped from 12 per thousand in the seventies, when it was only obtainable under very restricted medical indications, to around 6.4 per thousand in 2009, seven years after its legalisation.
So, no, abortion has nothing to do whatsoever with population growth. If it had, the German Democratic Republic hadn't crashed because of its incapability, but because it would have simply ceased to exist.
Likewise, if that were the case, the Irish would be falling off their island coz there's not enough room for all of them.
Maybe is it anti-conceptives that make the difference? I know the catholic countries are not supposed to have or use it, but obviously they do. Or else they have written of sex!
I must agree with Denuseri in her other comments, absolutely!
Next main problem should be showing up in about ten years (give or take a little depending on usage) as the fresh H2O supply system is taxed beyond its ability to cope with the ever increasing demand for potable water.
Some cities like Singapore already recycle every bit of their drinking water from sewage.
It is a problem in DK as well, now.
De-desalination isn't being made affordable enough to keep pace or be worked in as a replacement for current systems either.
I keep wondering how money - of all things - continue to rule our lives and preclude common sense.
And as proven so many times in history...when the water supply dwindles, so will the food along with it.
yep.
After that it will be power supplies.
And fresh air.
Maybe is it anti-conceptives that make the difference? I know the catholic countries are not supposed to have or use it, but obviously they do. Or else they have written of sex!
No. It's development and education that goes with it. It's the only factor that really has an impact on birth rates. Except, of course, a harsh 1-child-policy as they did in China (do they still?). Which, btw, leads to an ever growing surplus of males (as in India, too). Which, in turn, will become a major problem very soon, if it isn't already. Especially, surprisingly enough, for women.
I must agree with Denuseri in her other comments, absolutely!
Yep, me too. Although I'm pretty sure that as soon as a barrel of oil costs $500 there'll be plenty of ideas where to get our energy from. Just as there won't be any problem with cheap de-salination as soon as enough (rich) people don't have enough drinking water anymore.
If there's one outstanding ability we humans possess, then it's the ability to adapt.
denuseri
10-23-2011, 06:44 AM
Only the "rich" people wont need it...they get bottled water delivered, and by the time things get bad enough...they will have their very own water plants etc.
PS: I will find the data sets from the "studies" I encountered while studying for all this Malthusian related stuff in previous classes later once I go back through all my notes from a couple years ago which will explain and support my position on the relationship between legalized abortion and population growth.
Don't bother, denu. I'm sure there's a correlation. As in: Developed countries are more likely to allow abortion (with the exception for Ireland, of course). And, developing goes hand in hand with sinking birth rates, although usually with a time laps of one generation.
So, sorry, I worded that wrong in my post above. There is a correlation. However, legalization of abortion isn't the cause of sinking birth rates but both are caused by development.
IAN 2411
10-29-2011, 03:21 PM
So the population is 7 billion now, is there a problem with this now? Answer No. There will be a problem in years to come but I don’t think that it will affect food resources. Europe has been holding back agriculture in most countries to keep the price of food artificially high for years. They are even paying farmers in the UK to leave fields fallow so that there are no corn or crop mountains. The once dairy farmer in the UK is now a thing of the past, albeit there are a few left, as we buy in milk from the EU because it keeps for years and its called "Long Life" sold in a cardboard box. I have dared my daughters to bring it in the house as it tastes exactly what it looks like “Piss”.
I would think that there is at least one third of the Earth that is not used for food or inhabited in any way because of climate or accessibility. It is still a resource and it can with scientific knowledge and a shit load of money [The money that is wasted on warring with every country that says boo to the United States and Europe.] be turned into fertile food resources. There is also enough land to house another few billion people.
Nature also has a way of keeping the populations down, by tidal waves, tornado’s, hurricanes, and epidemics of rare strains of flue and the like. There are normal terminal illnesses, and I think it was once said that a person dies by accident every second somewhere in the world. Instead of these scientists and statesmen putting the shits up all those people that don’t know any better, they should be sorting out the problem before the inevitable takes place. However, no doubt in ten years time they will still be walking about with one thumb in their mouth and the other thumb stuck up their ass.
This only my thoughts
Be well IAN 2411
IAN 2411
10-31-2011, 12:33 AM
Seven billionth person on earth born soon
What does the future hold?
The seven billionth human being is expected to be born into the world on Monday 31st October.
But the stark reality is that if that baby is a girl in the developing world, her future is set to be far from rosy.
According to a recent report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) there is a widening gap between boys and girls in those regions of the world.
While they receive the same care and opportunities during early childhood, as they reach adolescence the anomalies in terms of health or education become marked.
“While there is little difference between boys and girls in early childhood with respect to nutrition, health, education and other basic indicators, differences by gender appear increasingly more pronounced during adolescence and young adulthood,” said UNICEF deputy executive director Geeta Rao Gupta.
If the seven billionth child born happens to be a girl in the developed world, for instance in Europe, Japan or the United States, once she becomes a teenager she is likely to receive many of the same opportunities as her male peers.
Her education, health and career prospects may even exceed those of her male counterparts.
But if she is born in a region defined as ‘developing’ she is significantly more likely to be married as a child, less likely to be literate than young men in her country and, shockingly, should she be born in sub-Saharan Africa, is as many as four times more likely to contract HIV/AIDS than boys her age.
A World Bank working paper examined the real economic impact of excluding girls from learning or work opportunities.
For instance, just one teenage mother in India can lose $100,000 (£62,052) in potential income over her lifetime, while a single girl in Ethiopia who has dropped out of school can expect to lose the equivalent of two months’ average pay per year.
The financial impacts on the national economies is bigger still: the cost to India of the 3.8 million girls having children at the ages of 15 to 19 is $7.6 billion a year (£4.7 billion) – enough to fill every single car in the US with a full tank of petrol 100 times.
The denial of education to 4.5 million girls in Ethiopia costs the country $582 million (£361 million) a year.
So beyond the headlines about the seven billionth birth – which will come 12 years after the six billionth, a baby boy in Sarajevo – UNICEF chiefs are urging developing countries to improve the education prospects of their female citizens.
Increasing the availability of good and long-term schooling for girls will have a ‘ripple effect’ and help to break the cycle of poverty in those regions.
“Closing gender gaps in all stages of childhood and eliminating gender discrimination – whether against girls or boys – are fundamental to inclusive and sustained progress for countries around the world,” said Rao Gupta.
“In addition to the harmful and often tragic effects of gender inequalities on children themselves, the kinds of persistent inequalities that we continue to see… are major barriers to the efforts of many nations to move out of long-term poverty and achieve their development aspirations.”
Be well IAN 2411
rocco
10-31-2011, 08:16 AM
Well the 7th billionth person was nominated by the officials of the UN! A girl born in the phillapines, was given a chocolate cake with "7B" written on it and a voucher for a pair of fucking shoes!
I nearly crashed the car!!!!!!
IAN 2411
10-31-2011, 09:50 AM
Well the 7th billionth person was nominated by the officials of the UN! A girl born in the phillapines, was given a chocolate cake with "7B" written on it and a voucher for a pair of fucking shoes!
I nearly crashed the car!!!!!!
Yes, I must agree, that cake was a bit over the top.
Be well IAN 2411