Global Overpopulation (or not)

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earthling
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Global Overpopulation (or not)

Post by earthling »

The most comprehensive, well thought out position I've seen on this topic with complex stats presented in easy to understand terms. Worth watching the entire hour...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz_kn45qIvI
IraGlacialis
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Re: Global Overpopulation (or not)

Post by IraGlacialis »

If you are interested in population trends, I suggest looking at Hans Rosling's site: http://www.gapminder.org/
It shows a good set of charts about developed world growth vs developing world.

In any case, despite the very painful transition period as our Baby Boomers retire then pass on, an S-curve (hell even a little dip before things level off) is something the US should strive for.
earthling
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Re: Global Overpopulation (or not)

Post by earthling »

I don't quite agree with his (and most people's) perspective that poverty equates to low income, lower life expectancy and few possessions. Self-sufficient tribal people living meaningful lives, disconnected from the modern world are not poor at all, and in some ways are/were living a more 'real' life as hard as it may be. But in context to those who participate in or are aware of the modern/global economy, his presentation is very fascinating. His counter-intuitive message is that to slow down population growth, reduce infant mortality and educate them into modern economy. Is presented very well, even though imperfect, and a good basis for discussing the topic even if disagreeing.

He is suggesting that even if we do need population control (he seems to imply we do), we don't need to worry about it because it's happening anyway as the global economy grows, with pops expected to peak to 11B-12B people. I don't support population control or chastising someone for having many children - if someone can responsibly take care of 5+ children then they should go for it if they want that. OTOH, as he points out, it took thousands of years for population to hit 1B but only a couple hundred years to add another 6B. In earlier humanity, typically 4 of 6 children in family would die before being able to reproduce. Now it's rare to be 1 in 6 even in less developed world.

We are becoming exceedingly efficient at keeping people alive longer (especially to age of reproduction) so it's maybe a good thing a slowdown/offset is happening sort of naturally rather than engineering society in a forced manner (like China, although they are easing on that a bit).
IraGlacialis
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Re: Global Overpopulation (or not)

Post by IraGlacialis »

It's true that low income and few possessions doesn't equal poverty, but those qualities (as well as poor health) does lead to poverty.
What we are focusing on aren't self-sufficient villages and such. What we are focusing are the depressed communities that do have all the issue that come with poverty; ironically, even here in the US (I'm even not talking about American Indian tribes), some of these communities were doing pretty fine until they got established with the outside world.

What I took from it is that we don't need engineered population control, a la China (which incidentally, is probably going to go through even a bigger retirement pain than us). Rather increased education, health service, and sanitation should take care of the population growth in the developing world by itself the same way it has in the industrialized and emergent economies; that's what I got from his TED talk.
So it would be industrialized nations responsibility not necessarily to engineer lifestyles of the developing world, but to help them skip many of the steps to development. Ie: skip building tons of fossil fuel-burning plants and having slash-and-burn agriculture in favor of renewable energy and sustainable agricultural techniques. Not to mention increasing sanitation, waste disposal, and health services (which we definitely are doing).
Instead of mandated caps (like you said, there are many families actually able to take care of large amounts), education should play its part in decreasing the average family size.
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