The population of the earth in the last hundred years has gone from 700 Million (approximately) to over 6 Billion and with the life span on the rise and the lack of means of controlling birth rates this number will more than double in the next 20 years which means mankind is basically out of synch with nature and will soon use up all the natural resources. Thoughts?
I don't agree when you say there are no means of controlling birth. There are, it's just that a lot of countries are too preoccupied to give a damn or just don't have the necessary resources. Back in India where I'm from, the population may be well over one billion but every single year, the rate of increase in population is plummeting drastically thanks to measures taken by the government to educate people about family planning, etc. Obviously you won't see visible change in a few years, but you will in a couple of decades.
optimal human population for planet earth was attained sometime between 1750 and 1917. lowering human firtility accross the board without bias or exception IS the rational answer. too many countries have been terrorized out of doing so by u.s. forign policy. which is why whatever is done about it probably needs to be done on the sly. no nation needs or ought rightly to be favoured or excepted either. there are those who would pretended population is no problem because we are a long way from standing room only. in reality we would start starving off long before we ever got anywhere near there. we have a problem with 'development' encroaching on food production as it is. those who think nonvoluntarily lowering human firtility would be unjust or undemocratic haven't counted the votes of nonhuman life forms. probably haven't immagined why they should or need to. reality is that we do however. so how do we define overpopulation. i have one simple answer. when economic activity prerequisite to survival comes in direct conflict with environmental well beeing and stability, also prerequisite to survival, or even prerequisite to mental and physical well beeing, that IS overpopulation. nature has a way of dealing with this if we don't. and i guarantee we aren't going to like it if that is what we continue to leave it up to. famine and disease are what happen to a species that gets out of ballance with the community of other life forms it is surrounded by and dependent upon. our big brains can't hold that off forever. even if they've managed to for a few decades or even centuries. =^^= .../\...
There is no such thing as overpopulation on our planet yet... Just big cities with lots of opportunities or better life style where everybody wants to live. There are so many spaces where , tehres only 1 human for 1000 sq killometers, and can be prepared for life easily with todays technologies. The limit of population will be then when, as much ppl as economy would be comfortably able to feed. the rest will be dying constantly , as in africa and India for ex.
btw moonlightdelerium- what exactly affected you after you read aristoteles work.. can u give me alink or send that ?
I concur with Themnax's post. i believe there are already too many people on this planet because there are very few completely natural places left, and the human population has had a detrimental effect already on global species and habitats. While population control seems reprehensible to most, I think it is necessary and will only become more so.
Unless of course there were a World Government and they created "Meals In A Pill" in which an entire meal could be distributed to the people through a pill with all the required vitamins, nutrients, calories, etc. Then the Capitalists could market that and mankind would be one step closer to the slavery they are sprinting towards.
Gravity- godo idea. But its a logn way to overpopulation. That series in old, 1977 wtf... we just started workign on normal computer, what fuckign mars ?? omg... maybe lets watch 1944 Godzilla movie , japanese have it today still.
The Friendship section of the Nichomachean ethics absolutely affected the way I looked at my "friends" and the way I live my life. The idea that you need to have friends to know if you're virtuous because a virtuous person can only have virtuous friends.
There are 3 ways of battling overpopulation: In No perticulair order 1. Kill the imperfections in society ( rapists, retards, petophiles ext. not the physically handicap though) 2. Ship people from overcrowded nations to Canada or Russia 3. Expand our living space, like building domes on the moon I don't know about you people but I really could go for #3.
but moderization seems to eliminate population growth. The Northern hemisphere is the most moderized and population growth has seemed to have tapered off, while in the underdeveloped third world countries of the southern hemispere(excluding japan, new zealand, and australia) have very large precentages of population growth. So perhaps in the future as the world becomes more universally modernized, the rate of population growth would decline throughout the world.
Actually we reached a billion people just past 1800, 100 years ago the Earth's population was about 1.5 billion, in 1950 2.5 billion, but that does mean we've gone up 4 billion in 50 years. The estimated carrying capacity of the Earth is 8 billion people, but in 2050, we're supposed to be around 9-11 billion, so we got more then 20 years before it doubles.
polecat- yep, i agree, stupid wild, uncivilized "Animals" all tehy do is fuck, eat and fight... alot are born, alot are dead. But no new neurons in brain are developed :S
to the contrary, none of those 3 mention the only real solution, (and your number one is a total nonsolution at all, ethical questions entirely aside), which is lower all human firtility accross the board without bias or exception. i'm all for developing the capacity for participating in galactic civization, but if we don't develop the moral self restraint for it, the tecnological capacity isn't going to do us as much good as you seem to expect. sure we'll run into those less developed then ourselves, but we'll also run into just as many if not more who are more so. and quite possibly united with each other for mutual protection. if we go out there with the idea of colonization and to export our excess population, chances are we'll both get our butts kicked and deserve to. of course no one will mind what we do within our own solar system. but the odds of any of us from any world finding any other world that our life forms can breath the air of is somewhere between an extreme long shot an nil. self sustaining extraterestrial colonies means developing complete ecosystems that can supply the kind of breating mixture our life form depends upon. that or modifying our life form itself to breath the atmosphere of worlds circling other suns that have atmospheres and functioning ecosystems. not saying it can't or won't be done. just that's quite a leap from where we are now. (and i aggreee we're not doing as much about it as i'd like to see happen. the very priorities that would screw us up once we got out there are keeping us from getting out there. obviously we DO need to stop denying the connection between priorities and probabilities. just as we do on general principals anyway.) =^^= .../\...
There is only one of me...can that possible be too many???? Change the argument from the gross concept of over population to the personal and singular individual then the argument becomes "who do you get rid of." I hate no one enough to do that. many people argue the restriction of the elements of life to limit population growth but I cannnot deny anyone the "right" to have as much life or the elements of life that have been granted to me as an individual. If a law were passed the limit of resources that one could use, then it would it be applied equally to all at the same time? If the number of children were limited or stopped or the right to companionship or marrige were stopped to reduce population would these be retroactive? It is easy to talk about concepts but for me it is hard to talk about indiviuality in the application of these concepts. Just as an example, during the war on drugs were any notorious drugs killed or put in prison, or were people placed in some of the most barberous places on the planet or were worse yet slaughtered to enact this "war"?? Any "war" on overpopulation ultimately become a war on individuals and that is sad.
no. not if it's done by attrition. and definately not making war on anything. every war on ... (you name it) can, granted, only make (whatever it is ) worse. that's why lowering fertility is the only sensble answer. (firtility = probability of conception) (lowering fertility lowers birth to death RATE ratios, WITHOUT shortening ANYliving being's life!) the alternative is eventualy famine and disease. =^^= .../\...
