Overpopulation: A crisis?
By 2040 global population is expected to reach around 9 billion. With a such a big population, could we sustain ourselves without running out of our non renewable resources such as water or oil. Many of the Earths lakes are already going dry, for example lake mead will go dry within 20 years. Could we find a way by then to combat overpopulation? Floating cities sound like a really good idea, they are self sustaining, the only problem is they are VERY VERY expensive. What do you think?
Is the housing crisis proof of overpopulation?
Where? It depends where. Housing crisis varies from place to place. Here in Southern California it's because not enough housing is being built each year to keep up with demand. But I know that in some places (such as Vancouver and Toronto in Canada, where I was born) have a major housing crisis as well. Housing is insanely expensive in both Toronto and Vancouver and makes Southern California look cheap! And it's partly because of lack of housing but mostly because of allowing foreign buyers buy homes and keep them empty and take advantage of the system. In some cities and countries around the globe it's caused by huge inequalities between rich and poor. You either live in a slum or pay millions to live in a decent area. That's how most third world countries are now. So to answer your question it all depends on the location. It varies. But overpopulation is causing part of it for sure
Do we have a crisis of overpopulation in the future?
No, we are starting to have an underpopulation crisis.Western Europe, Japan and Russia have bithrates rates that are less than 2.1 children per woman, the rate needed to keep a constant population. These countries are dying off unless they start having more children. The US is right at 2.1 children per woman.Immigration can help in the short term, but it does not add more children.The problem with low birthrates is that most developed countries depend on its workers to pay for Social Security and Medical care for its senior citizens. With fewer workers, this becomes a burden on them.Even developing countries are lowering their birthrates. It is expected that world population will top out at 9 to 10 billion sometime after mid-century.We can only hope it stays there. We can handle a stable population. It’s much more difficult to handle a declining population.Here’s how bad it is for Japan: they sell more adult diapers than they do baby diapers.
How is overpopulation causing a food crisis?
Before asking “how”, ask “yes or no”.The problem isn’t so much with limited production versus an overwhelming demand, but rather, it is a distribution problem that stems from complex structural causes, including social, economic, and political reasons.Ask, is the U.S with ~350 million pop., overpopulated? You may ask, “well how can the U.S be overpopulated when there are countries like India and China with 1 Billion+ people?Well, each American uses about 3–4 times as much resources, as say, the average Indian, or Ethiopian… So it’s not just simply about sheer volume of people, but rather, consumption levels, standards of living, and so on….
Can India/China's overpopulation crisis be fixed?
If we continue to be ignorant of what “overpopulation” means, then no. Overpopulation is the situation where the population exceeds what can be maintained indefinitely. This means the maximum that can be kept alive using only renewable means. The whole world is very overpopulated because we do not know how to keep our current numbers alive without consuming resources faster than they renew. We depend on fossil fuels to deliver the sustenance for 7+b humans. This must be thought of as a premature death debt that we owe.There is one and only one way to pay it off. We must average less than 2 babies world wide until we no longer require non-renewables to keep our numbers alive. Any other solution is indifferent, or ignorant, to premature death caused by averaging too many babies.
Could LGBTQ+ people solve the overpopulation crisis?
Have you never heard of sperm banks? There are lots of LGBT people out there with kids, both from previous relationships with straight people and from their LGBT relationships or marriages.Heck, I am friendly with a married lesbian couple who have six kids, plus one infant grandchild. Admittedly, when they first got together, one of them had two small children from a previous relationship with a man and the other had one small child from a previous relationship with a man. Eventually they decided to procreate together (see above re: sperm banks being a thing, for decades now). They had one child together, then another child together, who turned out to be twins. So, a total of six kids. All of whom are quite determined that if and when they get procreate, they will have either one or at the absolute most two kids. The peril of growing up in a big family: you usually don't want a big family yourself.P.S. All six of their kids are straight, incidentally. Being LGBT is not hereditary.
What are some sound ideas to solve the overpopulation crisis?
Good question, assuming you believe overpopulation to be a real long term threat. I don’t. The UN forecasts a permanent leveling off of the world’s population circa 2050. As societies become more abundant, birth rates fall and so do family sizes. Countries that become richer switch from concerns about overpopulation to concerns about underpopulation. (Those concerns are misplaced, but this fact will not be appreciated until their leadership ceases looking at young people as the engine of production to meet the needs of older people.)Russia, Japan and China are having or will soon have large population declines. So, too, would many Western countries, except for immigration.Even now, we don’t have overpopulation; we have inadequate distribution of the food and other necessities that are now being produced.Most fundamentally, we have insufficient production of abundance. With effectively unlimited supplies of clean, renewable energy, matter, and organizing intelligence (software), any forms and quantities of products desired can be produced. Those three Pillars of Abundance are available to humanity, as documented in my book and elsewhere.Also, when products are no longer needed, they can be completely recycled via either permaculture or plasma converters, as can waste products of all kinds.Presently, many cities have major garbage dumps. Those will shortly become sources of raw materials and energy, with plasma converters installed as Japan and the US DOD have already begun. Nuclear waste is a concern, but it becomes wonderful fuel for thorium reactors, whose output is safe.Our coming physical abundance will be greatly enabled by the advent of full immersion VR and AR (augmented reality). This will expand a high degree of physical abundance to limitless experiential abundance. With VR available, most of the possessions that people now seek can be replaced by experiences—which is what people really want, in most cases.
How would you go about solving Canada's overpopulation crisis?
Canada does not have an overpopulation crisis. It has the second lowest population density of any country after Australia. It has an area larger than the United States, the European Union, or China but fewer people than California, Spain, or several cities in China.It does have a problem in that the population, for historical reasons, is piled up in a few small areas which do not have much food growing land or natural resources. These include the interlakes area of Southern Ontario, the Montreal area, and the lower mainland area of the BC coast.The way to solve this is to move the people to where the agricultural land and natural resources are. Alberta has four times as much farmland as Ontario, and eight times as much as BC or Quebec. Saskatchewan has even more agricultural land than Alberta. Those two provinces have 75% of the agricultural land in Canada, and 95% of its oil and gas reserves, but only 15% of its population. The land area actually occupied by people also extends much farther north than in the other provinces, so there is much more room for them to spread out.The chattering classes who drive the Canadian political dialog don't see that however. They just see that their condo in Toronto or Vancouver is so small and expensive and the streets are so crowded that the country must be overpopulated. If they moved to Regina or Edmonton things would look much different.And they also have a problem with the fact that people are moving in large numbers from the resource and farmland poor eastern provinces to resource and farmland rich Alberta just because that is where the opportunities are. They think people should stay in the overpopulated east and continue to complain about overpopulation rather than moving west. Otherwise, by the end of the century, on the current trend line, Alberta will be the second most populous province, Quebec will be the fourth most populous province rather than second, and that would just totally upset their status in the country.
With coming overpopulation crisis, will it be a reality that human society pass laws, publicly support eugenics or death squads that target the poor, disabled, or elderly? What steps should be taken today to minimize the damage of resource scarcity?
It is true that some countries are starting to get problems from people living longer, putting pressure on housing and social services and limited money available - such as the UK where I live the National Health Service is having problems, as is care for the elderly. This lack of funding is affecting other areas such as Prisons, Police, Fire Service, and Social (council) Housing.There are things that can be done to combat this, and I am expecting that soon taxes will go up. Governments are reluctant to do this because they will become unpopular - so they will let things get really bad before that happens.Before any of this happens there will obviously be measures taken to reduce the population by limiting the numbers of children born - as in China.It is interesting that some people suggest that the birth rate might be reduced nowadays in areas where young people are sitting at home texting and meeting on Facebook etc. instead of in person.
Is it true that the earth is suffering from an overpopulation crisis? Or is this hysteria?
population growth is an exponential equation, that is, the time it takes for the population to double. Mathematically, this leads to infinity. Without infinite resources, every exponential phenomenon will stop. Try proofing yeast, or sustaining a sour dough culture, with continual growth, forever. Population growth will end either by the choice of people, imposed by government, or by nature. We have seen the last two in different parts of the world in our lifetime. What is the right of every person born in this world? food, water, shelter, education; purpose, hope, family... What is the plan to provide this? 5 year plan, 50 year plan, 500 year plan, 5000, 50000... Or do we not care about future generations?