World, Writing, Wealth discussion
Wealth & Economics
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If there were just enough food for the entire humanity..
Everyone should be entitled to enough food to eat. It is maddening to see so much food thrown away, especially if there is a glut. But how do you get the food to those who need it? We have seen what happens with many food parcels sent to countries who need it where it is taken stolen and sold. It all comes back to population though - the world has to stop having so many children.
The people with the lowest bmi go to the front of the line.
When there were 3 billion people alive we produced food for 3 billion, but the poor went hungry.When there were 5 billion people alive we produced food for 5 billion, but the poor went hungry.
Now there are 7 billion+ people alive we produced food for 7 billion+, but the poor still go hungry.
The problem is not over-population, it is poverty.
Solve poverty and you'll solve hunger.
Graeme wrote: "Now there are 7 billion+ people alive we produced food for 7 billion+, but the poor still go hungry...."I also have a feeling it's less about capacity, more - about distribution and calibration of the system. Hope the realization that all the games, incl politics & moneymaking should start above the basic survival level shall dawn
China and India are in the process of lifting 2.5 billion people out of some basic poverty traps.Once electricity is available, so is refrigeration. Once refrigeration is available - food supply increases enormously.
Graeme wrote: "When there were 3 billion people alive we produced food for 3 billion, but the poor went hungry.When there were 5 billion people alive we produced food for 5 billion, but the poor went hungry.
N..."
The cause of most of the world's ills is over-population. If the population was reduced there would be room for people to grow their own food. Hunger can be overcome by some very basic foods.
Hi Rita,When I was a teenager, I read
by Paul Ehrlich and I was convinced that overpopulation was a real and pressing problem as encapsulated by this line...“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”
That turned out to be BS.
Thomas Malthus, with his
basically stated that,"Population multiplies geometrically and food arithmetically; therefore, whenever the food supply increases, population will rapidly grow to eliminate the abundance."
Written in 1798 and still wrong today. Wrong for 221 years and still going strong...
There comes a time where an idea has been consistently and repeatedly demonstrated to be false where it should be let go and consigned to the dust bin of history.
The concept of overpopulation is intuitively plausible in much the same way the idea we are standing on a stationary planet while the sun moves across the sky (rather than what we now know is due to the rotation of the planet...) It all seems so self-evident, and obvious...
And yet it's not.
Fertility rates are dropping around the world and are converging on replacement level (for the world) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_f...
We'll probably hit approx 11 Billion people before 2100 and peak, and then decline until we stabilise based on peoples desire to have children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Populat...
The thing I missed completely as a teenager was the presence of technology impacting this whole problem.
My expectation if I was able to live long enough to see it, is for the world population to peak at around 10B (dropping fertility is still not fully understood) and that the vast majority of people will be capable of living lives of material abundance above what we have now - primarily due to technical and cultural shifts.
Graeme wrote: "Hi Rita,When I was a teenager, I read
by Paul Ehrlich and I was convinced that overpopulation was a real and pressing problem as encapsulated by this line....."I know we have discussed this before. The food issue may get solved although I doubt distribution will be. Fertility may change the numbers come 2100. In the meantime the consumption, C02, pollution, plastic in oceans and over use of fertilizer to improve yields, will have killed much of the planet In particular fish stocks. The most fertile agriculture ground is on coastal and river plains. Ocean rise may wipe out much of this capacity. Climate change is already endangering agricultural land. Yes crop growing regions may alter but that also takes time. The US saw huge dust bowls in the depression.
World population growth is not just about food it's what a longer living larger population consume. Another 2 billion mobile phones? Another billion cars (even with electric power)? Another 500 million homes built from... More pressure on disputed land, water, food, gold, diamonds etc.
The materials and methods in 2100 will make ours look the way the 17th century looks to us.
Another underlying question is the priority of rights. If there are landlords with warehouses full of food and an a hungry crowd outside the fence (for whatever reason at this point), should a private property prevail or the right to live?
As a practical matter, if people are sufficiently hungry, law may well break down.
I have just seen, on our news, someone asserting we all have to stop eating meat, eggs and milk so that the entire world population can have enough to eat. Before we dismiss Ehrlich, we should not hat while food production has increased dramatically. it has been at the expense of huge fertiliser applications and the consequent expansion of nitrous oxide emissions. According to the RSC, the supply of phosphate is in trouble after about a hundred years. And the biodiversity of the planet is decreasing dramatically as things like slash and burn are predominant in places that have little control. To say we can take on a huge population makes a lot of assumptions that may well not work out.
The implication of what I said above, is that we can't make effective predictions of what will happen with 11B people on the planet assuming the technology we have today.It just doesn't work.
80 years will see game changing technologies occur.
One variable that hasn't come up is how our vaccines and antibiotics are becoming increasingly ineffective. In a generation, we could see mass deaths from diseases we thought were wiped out and infections we think nothing of today.
Hi J.J. it's a good point.We're actually due a major pandemic...
The population growth is acutely uneven and generally speaking: in many hungrier places - booming, while in wealthier - bordering negative, if to believe these data: https://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=24
The fertility rate in the U.S. has fallen from 3.7 in the 1960s to 1.9 today, but in large part due to immigration, the United States population is increasing and is expected to hit 400 million by 2051. So you can't just look at population numbers to see what's going on with birth rates.
I remain unconvinced that over-population is anything but a dud issue.
I'll have contributed to the decline by the time we hit 10 Billion
In any other statistic review where I see an upward graph indicator I always ask what is happening to make the curve change direction. The growth rate is not having a big enough effect. Also health improvements are extending longevity and fertility treatments extending birth capability
My bigger point is how many cars, how much plastic is needed for consumption by 10 billion and how much rain forest is left. Check out bio diversity and insect numbers for what 7 billion humans are doing to the planet let alone another 1, 2 or 3. What is changing to stop that or reduce that consumption? Nothing.
Hi Philip,The graph you give and the point you make is compelling - in the absence of the technology dimension.
There are two parameters on the graph. the reality that will shape the world is more multi-dimensional.
The current rate of technology advance will radically reshape the context for the population problem and I have no doubt that the problems that 'bedevil,' humanity in fifty years time will not be the ones that draw popular focus today.
Graeme wrote: "Hi Philip,The graph you give and the point you make is compelling - in the absence of the technology dimension.
There are two parameters on the graph. the reality that will shape the world is mo..."
I like Optimists and wish I was not so pessimistic about them :-)
By the time we get a technology solution we may have wiped out most of the planet's species - Insect biomass - 75% decline in last 27 years in some protected areas
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...
Of course like global warming all these scientist are making it up and in the meantime the US denies global warming and pulls out of Paris accords. The Catholic and Muslim religions continue to be anti-contraception and the population continues to make inroads into rain forest or Savannah
From Brazil spokesperson on BBC in November last year.
Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has hit its highest rate in a decade, according to official data.
"About 7,900 sq km (3,050 sq miles) of the world's largest rainforest was destroyed between August 2017 and July 2018" - an area roughly five times the size of London.
Forgot to add I watched loggers in Borneo cutting down 600 year old giant trees so that they could plant Palm oil plantations - giving jobs yes but destroying habitat fro Insects and blocking migration paths for Elephants and Orang Utans.
What technology is going to replace a 600 year old tree spanning 500 feet in 50 years...
Philip wrote: "The Catholic and Muslim religions continue to be anti-contraception ..."Here too, the religious dudes live according to the principle of 'be fruitful & multiply', so among some secular the feeling might be of the 'birth race', because as long as the secular population is the majority, the religious canons are confined to the religious communities, but with their pace, we can't be sure future generations will as easily be able to drive on Sabbath or buy pork
There are countries desperately financially encouraging birth and those discouraging it...
The argument that food will continue to increase in availability is wrong. The most valuable farm land is the first to be inundated by ocean rise. Pesticides are killing of insects widely, and insects are needed to fertilise crops. The world's fisheries are in danger of collapse, Genetic engineering haas increased crop yields, but at the price of additional fertiliser use, and phosphates can't continue this usage rate for much longer. Antibiotics are losing effectiveness, so that may assist the planet to survive, if not a lot of the population.
Nik wrote: "There are countries desperately financially encouraging birth and those discouraging it..."The encouragement is a financial one because it's a financial crisis in the social welfare and pension schemes. You need tax payers to pay the pensions and social care costs of the elderly population. You need new doctors and nurses to provide the care of long term sick or at least medically needy people many more of whom survive into old age and then live long term.
When the UK Welfare state was set up in 1945-1948 the pension age for a state pension was set at 65 for a male but the average age of death for a male was 66 and 71 for a female i.e. the pension system paid out for a year. Now life expectancy is 83 for a male and pension age is being raised to 68. i.e. plus 3 years for state income from tax for 17 years more life expectancy and of course much of that period requiring health or social care.
Technology in the form of medical advances is helping but that tends to keep more people alive.
Life expectancy and medical advances are good things as are famine relief and a slow reduction in absolute poverty around the planet
There is slightly more to it. My father was in the police force, and he had the option of retiring at 60, or working until 65. A statistical analysis showed that those who continued to 65 rarely got past 67, but those who retired at 60 lived well past 75, even if they took part time work. Stress tends to work much harder as you age. The police, of course, is an above average stressful job, nd that study only included police.
The good news for the pension systems is that Millenials are supposed to be the first generation with a shorter life expectancy than their parents, so that trend of people living long is reversing itself...
So, is the world population increasing or decreasing?
Increasing. Decreasing in the Western world, but some other places easily make up
If world population is increasing, then demands on natural resources are increasing. I don't get how Graeme or anyone else thinks this is a dud issue.
Hi Scout,I think we should husband our resources, i.e. be good stewards of the planet. However, I also think that the link between population growth and resource depletion is overplayed.
Every single prediction of world wide doom throughout history has been false.
The last 150 years has seen a massive improvement in the general welfare of people with access to technology, industry and science. There is no reason to think that trend is about to change, if anything it continues to accelerate.
Predictions of Nairobi having say 80 million people living there by 2100 are far-fetched. What will happen is that the economy will develop, and people will pass a threshold (around per capita GDP of $10K USD) where having more children ceases to make sense, and family size will drop.
I think the real problems will be as follows.
[1] Governance: A general trend to dictatorship empowered by modern technologies of control.
[2] Technology (the dark flipside of our progress): The rise of genuine AI allied with autonomous weapon systems. Basic "Terminator/Cylons" scenario.
[3] Destruction of the food supply through misuse of chemicals/seed genetics in farming.
[4] Ongoing reduction of human fertility to dangerously low levels.
This is a good example of what happens when people look at a problem and extrapolate forward.https://fee.org/articles/the-great-ho...
No one can anticipate the reversal of trends that seem "obvious."
A couple of videos that bear on these questions.REF #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEqyP...
REF #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU...
I'm trying to see things from your point of view, but I'm having a hard time. You talk about the past 150 years as if nothing has changed, as if the trend will inevitably continue. Do you not see that this planet is being depleted of its resources, that the more people it has to support, the more stress is put on it. The earth is a closed environment with limited resources, isn't it?
In my opinion, Scout has a point. The fact w don't know where all our resources are, and hence from time to time have made predictions and found them to be wrong does not alter the maths. Many of our resources arise solely from very slow geochemical processes. The elements do not go anywhere, but we are using very concentrated ores, many of which have been concentrated through plate tectonics over a couple of billion years. The Royal Society of Chemistry produced a forecast that about twenty elements will have their ready supplies depleted by the end of the century (approx.) and the phosphate deposits are only going to last so many decades. When the phosphate is gone (mainly down rivers to the bottom of the ocean) crop yields drop. It won't happen soon, but it is inevitable. The "swipe control" phone screens, etc, have gone through half our indium in the brief period we have had these screens. We can recycle,but we better make a better job of it fairly soon.
Case in point.REF: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil...
The resources problem is often framed in terms of peak supply, with scarcity driving prices higher while society then suffers, or in worst case crashes.
The reality is peak demand, followed by decline of price resulting in reduced use of the commodity.
How long ago was Oil $100+ USD a barrel?
What is it now? Consistently hovering between $40 and $80, and not looking like it's going anywhere soon.
Shifts in technology swap out one resource and bring in another. The IC motor will disappear over the next few decades, replaced by better tech.
Oil can be replaced with something else, but elements cannot, nor can phosphates, because life needs the phosphate to make phosphate esters to solubilize a lot of compounds otherwise insoluble in water.
CO2 - we cut down trees and kill off oceanic algae due to more production of CO2 just from warm bodiesWe cut down more trees and over fish just to feed more people with space for agriculture
We cut down more trees using chainsaws and trucking fleets thus burning more carbon fuels to build more houses for the ever increasing population
We spend more and more energy to retrieve the fossil fuels and food we need - e.g. long range fishing into Antarctic
We develop more and more plastics that we dump (or don't) into landfill these end up in ocean as micro plastics which then kill more fish and associated water mammals and bird life
On BBC R4 Today programme this morning - forecast is 20% loss of all species by 2050. Extreme forecast is potential loss of 90% of all insects by end of century. We already have major issue with loss of bees i.e. primary pollinator for food
Technology will help but it's very late to the game and achieving very little except more consumption, as Ian states, of critical elements which require mining. Thus more fuel and bigger holes with more natural land destroyed to get them.
Look at the extremes gone to to get oil if the price is right. Do we really want Gulf of Mexico, Alaska or North Sea type drilling in the Antarctic Ocean?
The variable oil price is also down to net value of dollar not just availability of the oil. The price at the pumps depends on tax policy of national / state governments - look at riots in France or Zimbabwe when fuel price was increased
If we take one resource issue: Energy.We have the technology either right now, or only a short distance away to deploy 4th generation Nuclear reactors and skim Uranium from seawater.
REF: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamescon...
REF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generat...
This solves the reliably production of an abundant supply of CO2 free baseload electricity.
We do not have an energy resource issue, we have a energy policy issue overlayed with an obsolete historical view that nuclear energy is wrong.
Provide a stable, secure, and abundant energy framework for modern society and a lot of other problems become solvable.
Further to Graeme on energy, nuclear energy is regarded as awful because of the likes of Chernobyl and Fukushima, both of which were largely made worse because of the stupidity factor. But there is no need for any of that sort of power station. The molten salt thorium reactor cannot have a melt down, its products are much less hazardous, but nobody is interested. Why not? Because the thorium reactor does not produce anything that can be used to make nuclear bombs.
Yes Ian. Thorium is an excellent resource. Again blocked by policy, not by feasibility.
I'm in favour of small nuclear reactors but public opinion and therefore political opinion is against regardless of science or practicality. UK still trying to build 6 new reactors and might only get one. No company can sign up to the liability clauses on waste disposal even with massive over charging on price.Agree the proposed reactor types are the wrong technology.
Meanwhile renewable options continue to grow, especially off-shore wind. To drive gas prices down the government is pushing fracking against massive local opposition.
All because we need more energy because we have more people in the country. Getting very parochial now but
This is not sustainable
Yep, and the local fertility rate is 1.88 or less.https://www.indexmundi.com/united_kin...
That's below replacement level.
The only way you can continue to grow your population is through some sort of massive immigration program.
Graeme wrote: "Yep, and the local fertility rate is 1.88 or less.https://www.indexmundi.com/united_kin...
That's below replacement level.
The only way you can continue to grow your ..."
Yes, UK growth is based on increased longevity and net migration - one of the main issues in the Brexit debate. The reduced birth rate has therefore had minimal impact on the population rise. The birth rate has actually increased more recently because the majority of the migrants are in that age group. The rate spiked upwards in 2009-2012. Following the accession to the EU of several Eastern European countries in 2004 the great financial crash allowed people to move for work around Europe (under EU rules). It has still not returned to those levels pre-2009. At the time and since, the UK has had much better employment rates and vacancies than the rest of the EU. The strains this increase in migrants had on the UK are seen as a root cause of the Brexit vote. (Not my personal reason). That fear has been exaggerated by EU public plans to encourage more members to join who would immediately have freedom of movement rights. Turkey, Ukraine etc were actively being proposed and discussed. Lots of reasons why that might not happen but it remains EU policy alongside 'ever closer union'
The death rate has been decreasing too. From the same source as your link 10.3 down to 9.4. Despite a small increase in last two years it has declined continuously for decades excluding impact of World Wars.
Overall and back to the main point. There are more people. They will breed more people. They then live longer; therefore, the world population increases until something else happens to change this. That increasing population will consume increasing resources however badly distributed.
Soylent Green (or I should call it Make Room! Make Room! ) anyone.
Quite a good book it was too, by Harry Harrison.
To argue about the dangers of overpopulation we are lacking the principle index of World's capacity, i.e. this planet can support: ? billion people, beyond which its current food/water/whatever supply is insufficient. We might just have enough food to conquer hunger and eradicate it like plague or smallpox. Not sure, we have this data either - of how much food is produced globally.The resources are there for consumption, desirably with renewal option, especially regarding trees, animals, fish and the like. Many resources were just lying around for millions of years until we find use for them.
Yeah, maybe not very practical at the moment, but physics and chemistry I learnt told that elements of the Periodic table can be synthesized. Hopefully, in the future it'll become easier.
Also, we work with a tiny bit of the outer core of the planet, while a look below may be uneconomical at the moment, but may become so in the future.
If we respect people's autonomy, we can't limit birth, we can maybe encourage or discourage it financially.
Now almost every Western country faces the problem of cheap labor. Well fed locals just don't eagerly grab construction, home-care or other positions. Some states opt for immigration, others - for temporary work permits, each with it's own side effects.
As far as synthesis of elements go, it happens in a supernova, in extremely high energy nuclear collisions, or when an element with a very similar mass is exposed to a high intensity neutron flux. The energy requirements are extreme, and the products are often quite radioactive. Not very promising for scale, but I suppose we do this already for certain medical applications, e.g. to make radioactive markers.The problem with cutting down and using everything is the subsequent adverse effects on the environment. An ecosystem is quite remarkable at being able to recover from minor assaults, but there comes a point when the total effect starts to become too much. We really don't want our great grandchildren living in a giant cess pool
World, Writing, Wealth
Books mentioned in this topic
An Essay on the Principle of Population: The Future Improvement of Society (other topics)The Children of Men (other topics)
Make Room! Make Room! (other topics)
The Population Bomb (other topics)
An Essay on the Principle of Population (other topics)
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Just wondering what you think