The world is becoming overpopulated. How would you fix it?

Did you even try to go back and read the previous post or read the articles that have been posted?

Well when you think about the far-reaching applications of paint-on solar panels (The entire east and west faces of a skyscraper, perhaps?) coupled with a list of nations penalizing corporations based on energy consumption or environmental carbon output it has potential there.

There seems to be an odd lack of desire for these kinds of technologies, though.

OT : Most humans won't act until the problem is at their doorstep literally. So my guess is it'll either be too late by the time humans realize it and most of humanity will die out in a war for control of these resources.
The only way I see humans survive this is if we can harness lightning as a source of energy.

Its not as much there is a lack of desire to implement them. Many people and lobbying groups want cleaner, more efficient energy methods implemented and researched. Quite a few billionaires endorse this stuff. So why don't we get anything? One issue is plain laziness on our part; not many people actually go in to research this stuff. For example, I'm doing research in plasma physics right now, which is one of the main fields used in researching fusion technology as well as semiconductor manufacturing. I'm even attending a research university, yet I still feel that not enough people actually go into fields like chemistry, physics, or math and divert into engineering. We simply just don't have enough scientists these days. You can ask for better technology all you want, but if no-one is there to research it, then you're stuck. Its arguable that the technology is already there or build-able thanks to our army of engineers, but at the same time it really isn't. At the moment, solar power is much less efficient than oil and coal to be worth turning a profit. Hydroelectric and wind have another, much more significant problem: the big powerful oil, gas, and coal companies. They lobby against such technologies, of course. They want to keep their profits, and know they will lose them if other energy sources take over.

Another thing dragging resources down is the energy grid which is over 100 years old in this and other countries. It desperately needs to be modernized. Its extremely inefficient; a good portion of the energy produced at power plants is lost from resistance in the cables on the way to our homes. Blackouts? They shouldn't even happen. If the grid was up to date with technology, there would be no problems even in the worst storms. The current energy grid can't deal with problems at all; snap a cable and thousands are out of power. In an intelligent modern grid, power could be constantly diverted from source to source, making it all much more efficient. Homes could produce their own power, and divert it as needed to neighbors, or sell it back to energy companies. Problem with this is that it would cost a LOT of money to rebuild our power infrastructure, money that isn't moving around.

Those are all ways to better use our energy resources.

But, it seems quite a few people here are getting misconceptions on what this thread is about. Its not about the population itself. Its about our resources versus our population. My definition of "overpopulation," the one I'm using here, is when the population reaches a point to where resources available cannot sustain it. The world is gradually, but slowly working up to that point. In some areas of the world this is already the case, like China and many 3rd world countries. Furthermore, many areas of the world have quite stable populations, but utilize their resources very poorly.

I'm really surprised at how this thread is turning out. So many people are focused on reducing our population rather than increasing resource efficiency. Keep in mind there is no one right answer to this. In fact, its all the different solutions brought together that solve the problem.

I don't have any figures to back this up, but I'd wager we have more scientists now than ever, just by sheer population numbers. There must be a core problem within culture as a whole.
Engineers being poached by more lucrative private-sector prospects, perhaps.



This is unfortunate, but it's just a matter of time before we run out of fossil fuels and petroleum companies start breaking into some of the 'clean' patents they've been hoarding.
I wonder if they'll introduce any kind of artificial limitation on the energy so as to increase profits.

thank you

The world is not overpopulated, it only might seem so because urban areas have much more people than the rest, the population is not spread evenly. The population growth is decreasing by itself, and in some areas of Europe is already negative and is becoming an issue. The average fertility rate of most countries except for africa is around 1-3 kids per woman. The antibiotics boom have wore off already.

There is not a lack of food either except for africa, nor will there be in the future. In fact, people are eating more and obesity is becoming a problem. Even many places in africa are getting more food over the last years, and even there, people get in average at least enough to be healthy.
Here's a comparison of the energy consumption of 50 years ago with in recent years, and this with the increase in population in the last 50 years:
1961
2000-2003
And you tell me there is a lack of food?

And resource production does follows consumption, its the supply and demand rule. There is very little land being used for production (in percentage of total area), because it is enough to feed everyone. If food supply really starts to be a problem, then production would naturally increase to keep up with the demand, just like it did in the past. Technology advance is already making it possible to produce more in less land space and with less effort, there is nothing to be done about that. And this “not enough technology being created” is also bullshit. Or you think all the improvement in all sectors on the last decades is just a lie? No better incentive to new technologies than capitalism, better technology, more profit, there will always be researches on all areas due to that.

And if it ever becomes a problem, then there is nothing to do about it, the problem will solve itself over time, because before food starts being a problem, it will become more expensive, and so people would naturally have less kids, as it would be more expensive to create them, and not only because of food.

Also, there is nothing to be done about global warming, because it is a natural occurrence. The Earth has cold and hot cycles over the centuries, and that is nothing we can do anything about. Don't tell me “oh, but its getting more hot than normal now”, Medieval times weather was warmer than ours. We are not contributing that much.



Yes, it is. Just like all the crap that says the natural disasters are our fault.
I remember people predicting global warming doomsday since the 80s (the heat would get so huge it would destroy our crops and civilization as we know it), and they always said in the next 10 to 20 year the heat would have changed mankind, and always failing their predictions, just to postpone the doomsday again and get even more fanatic on their rants. This goes back to Lovelock Gaia's Hypothesis. Really it is just a new age doomsday belief like any other, but this one is cool. The media and the masses love it.

Just wondering what source backs that up too, because:

Wikipedia needs to be updated then.

As soon as the MWP was reported to be higher than the current temperature(2000s) the IPCC and other groups connected with ONU began to claim that it was only a local event, exclusive to Europe and that's about it. And as soon as they began to whine about that, research groups began to collect global data, and it was nailed down when Antarctica was also proven to be warmer in that period than today, something which the air chains wouldn't permit if it was only a local event. Eventually it has been proven that the MWP was indeed globally warmer than today, an average of 1-2 celsius warmer. Some places were like 4 celsius warmer, others were as low as 0,5 celsius warmer, but still warmer.

You can find data about this here, it's a symposium of 1090 scientist and 625 researches, from all continents, and they indicate that in general the MWP was globally warmer than today. Historical temperature data changes a lot depending on what you're using to collect the data (tree cores, fossils, animal migrations, rock cores and etc), that's why climate studies always need a lot of data to draw an average, and if you look at all studies the average indicate warm periods globally.

This post is good until you got to the part about global warming and food production. (apart from the part where you ignore that most future population growth will come out of Africa/Asia where food production/resources is actually problem) Firstly, you used wikipedia as a source, lol nope. Secondly what you don't realize is that not every piece of land is suitable for agricultural production. I don't think mountains or deserts are a very suitable place to farm. Also agricultural suitable land doesn't last forever, like everything it eventually decays until the soil is unusable and you have to move to another location. Thirdly, you forget that climate plays a pretty big role, i mean GL trying to produce bananas in a non-tropic environment or rice on-mass in the southern hemisphere. And lastly, countries that consume the most food ie China have run out of land themselves, they are outsourcing into buying land off other countries in Africa and even here in NZ to feed their massive population leaving very little for the people in Africa to grow.

Also climate change isn't a scam rofl, unless you want to say your research and knowledge de-bunk the top scientists in the world with some new evidence you've discovered? Climate change is a natural process yes, but it's no secret that humans have contributed a significant role into forwarding and speeding up this process. I would provide articles but all you have to do is do a 5 minute google search yourself and you'll find dozens of publishing's. Comparing the middle ages to now is complete non-sense and is irrelevant to anything but a stupid strawman. Pollution, inefficient practices, climate change and waste from over-consumption of a massive population is destroying our eco-system and environment and is driving the extinction of species; there is no subjective in that. And it is that which is the real impeding issue here which everyone seems to be ignoring.

Fixed your grammar and also better worded your post so the points come across better. You're welcome.

The thing is that space is NOT a viable option for a population release valve or possible way to get more resources in the near future. Space colonies, and even space stations, cost billions, if not trillions, of dollars to fund. So much can go wrong with them as well; one leak can result in the entire facility imploding in on itself. Asteroid mining and gas giant hydrogen / helium extraction doesn't even look profitable yet as opposed to the costs of getting ourselves into orbit, let alone long term travel. Until we get a cheap way to get ourselves up there (like an orbital cargo elevator), I don't see large scale commercial and residential space stations, space colonies, or mining operations existing anytime soon. Its much cheaper and profitable to just use those billions of dollars to fund your military, or even fund your infrastructure and economy. Its just the way politics works. Now, I'll admit: the first step in residential space colonies and stations is the privatization of space, which the (forced) stepping down of NASA has helped. Now, instead of governments, we have companies as the forefront of aerospace research and trying to make viable ground to orbit transport. At the end of the day, its money and corporations that fund progress. So is space a way to get rid of the impending resource vs population problem? Very much so. Will it be a viable one anytime soon? No.

A much better way to spread out our population and also gain more in terms of resources would be deep sea mining operations and colonies. Anyone here ever watch a TV show called seaQuest DSV? That's where we should focus our infrastructure and resource gathering in the next 100 years. Many other projects should include floating islands of population. One such example is proposed Shimizu Mega-City Pyramid. Of course, the main problem with these types of structures is that they require ultralight and ultrastrong building materials that can be produced in mass quantities quickly and cheaply. We have yet to develop these. One possible material could include the recently discovered areographite as well as many other carbon nano-tube structures.

Speaking of the oceans, in my last post I talked about wind power as being a viable option to increase our power production if implemented in our infrastructure properly. The best option for wind power are ocean wind turbines, which take the winds coming in and off the coast and turn it into power. The wind on the coasts is much more readily available than the strong winds found in high altitudes, plus most of the population centers exist near the coast anyway.

First, I did not ignore that. I specifically excluded africa from the lack of food and fertility issues, thereby acknowledging the issue. However, the topic at hand is "world", not "africa" or "asia". If you want to discuss how africa in specific is going to get its population increased and lack food, then I guess you should create a new topic.

Second: Yes, wikipedia is not the greatest source of information, but to completely dismiss because it is wikipedia? Really? I used wikipedia graphics because they had better colors and had a map with it, better presentation, that is the point of wikipedia, easy knowledge. I found sources with more detailed info on land use, for instance, but it was a list of countries with numbers, not really as easy to get the info across. That info is based on solid facts that don't change, most sources will all have very similar information, data is data, the only thing that changes is their interpretation, but not the data. But if you want it anyways:

Population growth rate:

CIA (Current)
World Bank (1980 to current)
United States Census Bureau (1950 to present and estimate)

Fertility rate:

CIA
World Bank

Land in use for temporary crops (arable land):

I'd also like to add here that the total use of land for the entire world is 10%, forgot to put it earlier.

CIA
World Bank

Population density:

World Bank
NRCS
SEDAC
City Mayors

BMI:

WHO
FindTheData
Imperial College London

The main source of information for kcal consumption site (The Food and Agriculture Organization) is not working properly, though, so gonna be missing that one, unless you don't mind me taking plenty of links which got their info from that site, but it would be rather pointless.

Third: Not my point. Most countries are between 20% and 2% of land use. Such low percentage, for many of them, is far from being all the land there is. Brazil, the 5th largest country, has almost no mountains, and a good climate for planting something all over. It uses less than 9% of its land. Will you honestly say that is as high as it gets? Some countries are bordering their limits, in special small ones, or those with too much useless areas, sure, but my point is to show that there is plenty of land in the world as a whole to be used.

Fourth: There are already solutions and preventions for land degradation today. Technology advance, hey. Malthus didn't teach population alarmists anything?

Fifth: Are you serious with this one? So because I can't plant apples (a cold climate plant) in hot areas, does this mean I can't plant anything there at all? I'm sorry, but I shouldn't even be needing to explain this. If a portion of land is suitable for planting something, then it can be used for planting that something. You plant tropical stuff in areas with tropical climate, cold climate stuff in areas with cold climate and so on. I don't think life in north america will suddenly be threatened by a shortage of bananas in Brazil.

And last: China exports a huge amount of goods to countries all over the world, including food. They are not producing to supply themselves only, but other countries as well. I don't see how this adds to anything. They are aggressive mass-producers, its no wonder they've started to use almost all of their land for that.



I don't do any research at all, I just read papers. And I mean scientific papers, not journalistic articles. It requires a lot more than simply 5 minutes on google. And yes, there is a lot of knowledge inside these papers that disprove previous papers about global warming. That is the beautiful thing about science, it's always correcting itself when something goes wrong. The global warming per human cause is not a confirmed hypothesis, nor it is a consensus between all scientists. They are always finding facts which put previous notions in check. So talking about ecological doomsday scenarios is nothing but faith.

And the point of the MWP argument is that if the earth was hot before we could do anything that we're supposedly doing to destroy it, the current warming period can also not be caused by us, can be just a natural oscillation. CO2, CFC and any other "pollution" crap we produced were already proven to not be produced in quantities high enough to threat life itself, or be the major cause of the current global warming, by scientific papers, in the same way IPCC claimed MWP was local when it was global. Science changes.

Pollution can in fact interfere in localized system. But globally? Serious evidence proves otherwise.

I'm still waiting for the global crop destroyer heatwaves that we were warned in the 80s that should supposedly come by 2010 to actually appear and destroy civilization, probably I'll still be waiting for it 30 years from now as they warn today.

Simple. War.....problem solved.

Before posting you should read the articles given or read op's recent post.

Decided to fix the thread title and OP post so people don't make anymore misguided posts.

The world isn't overpopulated, isn't becoming overpopulated, and there isn't and won't be a lack of resources. That was my first point, so I don't see why discuss an imaginary issue.

That is a terrible idea. You are still consuming a resource that is still fading away, you are using a method that is leading to the decrease in fish and damaging certain ecosystems. Your idea is the reason why natural resources are fading.

Woah woah woah, stop.

I mean, have you taken a LOOK at the state of the world lately? Impending large scale international war? Economic collapse? Ecological disasters? Rising gas and fuel prices? People reproducing like rabbits in many 3rd world countries, which only makes them poorer and poorer? There is a rising gap between the upper class and lower class. The middle class is becoming smaller. Education is falling. Per capita per person in many countries is falling. You are requesting to ignore these issues and not discuss it any further because you get annoyed seeing them since you have read a few articles saying otherwise. Sure. I'll take full heed of your words (sarcasm).

We need more power and more resources readily available to continue to expand at the rate we have in the last century without major collapse. The earth is a finite set of resources. In many of your posts you talk about expansion being an easy thing. Its not. Expansion costs money, wealth that is spread out too thinly and unevenly amongst the ever-growing population. 3rd world countries are mostly headed by unstable political sectors, are ripe with strife. There is no way they could afford to expand and develop their entire country. Most people don't even want to expand and destroy the earth's natural beauty. Nobody wants us to turn into freaking ecumenopolis, I can tell you that.

I also cannot believe you said that pollution is not a problem globally. It might as well be a global problem with the sheer number and scope of local problems because of it. Are you blatantly ignorant that in quite a few places its literally unhealthy to breathe the air because of it? That in some locations merely stepping in water would probably kill you? That rising ozone, the primary source as pollution, has destroyed most of the upper atmosphere around Antarctica? Who is to say it won't spread, causing intense UV radiation in many areas, driving up cancer rates and destroying ecosystems? That in China, which in going full industrial has entire cities covered in nothing but smog and fumes, making the air incredibly unhealthy? We aren't solving the problems faster than they generate. Wood products are a finite resource, and we cut down rainforests, one of the greatest CO2 eliminators besides the ocean, daily. They take decades upon decades to grow back. Even the ocean isn't free of it. We carelessly spill oil in there. Tsunamis destroy much of the infrastructure around coasts and wash it into sea creating large floating chunks of toxic environments. We dump byproducts into water supplies like no tomorrow. Reefs are getting rarer and rarer due to increased CO2 levels in the ocean. That's us now. Most of that has happened in the last 100 to 200 years, much faster than any cycle the Earth has ever had. If we ignore this like you say, then it will get progressively worse. I haven't even gotten started on global warming, but that's not what this thread is about. I'd like to see these articles you speak of that debunk pollution as an issue that isn't worth worrying about. You expect us to ignore these issues? Hell I can't even see the horizon where I live because of the smog. THAT worries me.

Don't forget that money and education are also resources we are discussing here. Much of the world is in a giant wealth shortage right now. While education can be infinitely reproduced, in general it is also falling. Why? Not enough teachers for the current population.

All of this is us now at all those consumption, land development, and population density numbers you pulled. We aren't going to maintain those figures, and we aren't going to get better either. Our consumption levels only get progressively larger over time.

The world is a very unstable place right now, both ecologically, politically, and economically. There is only one Earth. There is only one humanity. She is literally a garden on the edge of an abyss. If we push what she can take a little too much, we all die with nowhere to go. Of course we have a impending fucking overpopulation problem. Too many people and inefficient resource production are fucking ruining our planet. That's the source of most of our problems, indirectly or directly. There are simply too many people for our resources to be spread in a fair way. Damnit, there isn't even enough wealth for our population to be stable. The best way to get rid of a problem is to cut it off from the source, and the source of most of society's problems are greed, corruption, and simply too many people. The first two are human nature. To get rid of those would to have us lose our humanity. However, the third one CAN be solved, albeit slowly and carefully.

Regardless, I appreciate your posts. They add a lot of color to this thread, and its making the discussion a lot more interesting.