World Overpopulation Myth Debunked

reply to post by jeantherapy


Yeh me too , I decided that although I would love to have a child or two , its just not right , when there are already children without parents in the world.
Why make more , I will never have children , not that I wouldnt like to , just that I agree
that the one way to make this world better for everyone is to not reproduce.

reply to post by Synergy23

If it were true that there wasn't enough rare earth materials to go around for everyone to make use of the computer technology we have at our disposal in the U.S. (which isn't true, even with our economic insanity -- only when *consumption* patterns are thrown in), this would be an admission of imminent collapse of the computer technologies sector of the global economy altogether. It would mean not just that there isn't enough to go around for everyone, but that within just a few short years (considering the rapid turnover from cyclical consumption every single year) there won't be enough for anyone at all. I don't agree that it is that imminent a threat.

You fail to address allocation of labor and resources. It is not that rare earth materials are short, dire supply. It is more that so much can be produced at one time with consequences to production.

So you want the entire world to have a computer? You have to multiply how much rare earths are being produced. Add a labor force, and disposal of waste created. A labor force to manage that as well. Then a labor force to refine and produce the components for the computers.

Essentially, there isn't enough to go around because there are other things that are equally pressing as everyone on planet earth having a shiny computer.

Lynas has been trying for several years to find a site for the permanent disposal of the roughly 20,000 tons a year of low-level radioactive waste that will be produced, and is still struggling to do so.

Link

Originally posted by boncho
Let's make these easy:
...

The debunking thread has now been debunked.

If it was true that 7 billion people need 24+acres of habitable land, then all the land would have been taken, yet it isn't...

And there aren't so many "shopping malls, and shops" as your thread seems to be implying... With enough money you can drill to an aquifer, (many people who live in africa know how to get water from the desert by drilling with long, thin wooden tubes they carry as they move throughout the desert) or you can desalinate ocean water with simple methods.

If a REAL FREE MARKET/Capitalism would exist in the entire world, and not the current monopoly that exists, EVERYBODY would be able to feed themselves. As for "schools, hospitals etc" if each person leased 1 or 2 acres of the land where they lived there would be more than enough schools, hospitals etc... Enough FAMILIES live in the United States, feed themselves and even sell some of what they harvest in 14 acres.

If people united, and lived within their families, as it is supposed to be, each family of an average of 3-4 would have from 21-28 acres which is more than enough to live well.

But then again the world elites would have to allow atmospheric CO2 to reach levels of 1,200 ppm - 1,500 ppm for yields, and harvest to increase as much as 60% which would help feed all the people in the world. With higher levels of atmospheric CO2 than exist at present all plant live use less water which means more water for us and animals as welll.

reply to post by ElectricUniverse

If it was true that 7 billion people need 24+acres of habitable land, then all the land would have been taken, yet it isn't...

Yes, but there are millions of people in India that live in slums.

Number of people in slums: 110 million

Link

Barely getting by, barely using their fair share of the space.

There are deserts, volcanoes, mountains, and inhospitable places. There is only so much arable land. There is only so much access to water.

The link I posted earlier gives a good break down of how much land is needed for an American lifestyle or others as well. Anything above third world conditions though, and the math suggests there is not enough land to sustain the population.

This means: Overpopulation.

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For the record, Overpopulation can never actually happen. It can get to the point it is about to occur, but then it corrects itself. It's almost an oxymoron.

As populations increase beyond sustainable levels, the effects are felt throughout the population. No access to resources, no access to hygiene, no access to daily necessities.

If you put 2 people in a room and force them to live there for a month, the one side of the room is going to stink but they may survive. Put 50 people in a room, and they will all be sleeping in their own waste.

The hundreds of thousands of deaths by simple curable diseases in India is a testament to the overpopulation problem. But people will say, "Well if we just gave them the cures everyone would be fine..."

But it's not just that. So you put your focus on disease and then another problem arises, and another, and another....

It's not just one issue, it's a multitude, and it's because there are just too many damned people.

Originally posted by thehoneycomb
So I got bored and figured out how many square miles a person would have to themselves if land was distributed to all of the approximate 7 billion of earths inhabitants equally. Each person alive would have about 12 square miles all to themselves.

So is the world overpopulated?

No.

Total land area of the world 57,308,738 Sq. Miles
Total Population around 7 billion. (I used 7 billion)

You simplified the problem (for yourself) to a point that it becomes ridiculous.

According to the Guinness World Book of Records, the record number of people crammed into a Volkswagen Beetle is 20. I guess that means a Beetle can transport 20 people, correct?

In any case, no consideration needs to be taken to the driver, how those people are going to survive in there during a long trip, overload, etc. Only the fact that you can cram them in there counts.

I was going to write you a lenghty answer what the overpopulation problem is really about, but what's the point? You'll just answer with equally naive suppositions, right?

The basic problem is that there are too many people trying to figure out this thing with pocket calculators.

reply to post by thehoneycomb


This is easy to say and do the math, the math may seem right but
what all the people who go along with this idea is forget is :
NOT ALL THAT LAND IS ON FLAT EARTH ;
NOT all the Land is FARM-ABLE
NOT all that Land has FRESH WATER
NOT all that Land exist on non-geo hazards
NOT all that Land has build-able surfaces


/and most important keep up the good work with your disinformation .

Thank YOU for giving me 12 miles of land on the top of the Alps ....
Thank you for giving me 12 miles of land in the middle of the Sahara....

This is just like the myth of us "wasting" water and such. They try to tell us that by us leaving the sink running WE are wasting water, and when it runs out, WE will be blamed. They would ignore things like fracking which waste BILLIONS of gallons a month per mining operation and are not regulated by anyone since money talks and A-holes listen.

I don't know. It is a myth. There is enough on this good earth to sustain 10 times our population. If we take into account the amount of resources these A-holes want to WASTE for a profit, then no. Maybe we can't waste everything for money AND live in balance....no maybe not that way.

reply to post by BIHOTZ


If 300 million people waste a gallon of water a day, that's 300 million gallons of potable water that could have been used for something more productive.

I don't see the conflict here.

reply to post by matt47274


Absolutely well said my friend. When we hear it said "to live in the way we are currently accustomed" etc etc, and a formulation goes on from there, it is usually fundamentally flawed. Change the formula. Change the way we are accustomed to living, get down and dirty a little bit.

I know I quote Einstein regularly... but he is a bit good:

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction"

and the classic one:

"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."

I am a mimicry of someone again, but imagine if we all 7 billion of us got off the plane and landed on earth for the first time and had to work out a plan of how to survive, thrive, and move forward. Would we be questioning the available resources and space? I for one don't think so. As someone mentioned earlier it is an intelligent management of resources.
As the 7 billion of us disembarked from the plane, would anyone mention money? no they wouldn't. So taking out money I am going to stand up and say that we could learn a lot from the spine of the Venus Project and Jaques Fresco.
I know it and he have been chastised numerous times here, but we could maybe learn a lot, if we just dropped the facade of being some kind of superior being on this planet and saw the world for what it actually is.

Final quotation to sum up my view a bit:

"Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be." AE

We are not over populated, we are over indulged.

reply to post by Mufcutcakeyumyum


Intelligent management of resources is not what inspires innovation. If people only focused on how much wheat and whale oil they had since the 16th century, we would not have all we do today.

While everyone knocks the current system, it's actually what got us where we are. Innovation is sparked be scarcity and necessity

reply to post by thehoneycomb


Except how much of that "habitable" land is in fact habitable?
People are also social organisms. They live together that's how it works.
The areas where they tend to live together are over populated.
I'm sure people would scream if you said "oh well cut down some rainforest so people can live on the land."
Limbo

reply to post by boncho


A good point well made, and to a degree I do agree with you.
I only said that we could learn a thing or two from the Venus Project, I made sure I stopped short of saying lets go balls out and implement it.
We could argue that a lot of scarcity in the world is contrived, and doesn't need to be so, due largely to financial constraints which whatever side of the fence you sit on, should not be the case.
Should an excess of pieces of paper in one set of hands mean a severe lack of food placed in anothers hands?
Science and technological advance, I believe is sometimes slowed or stopped due to lack of funding.
Technology is already out there it is said, to run all cars on battery alone, travelling at comparable distances and speeds to those which run on fossil fuels. Problem is, the patents are supposedly owned by the fossil fuel companies, thus stunting innovation. In this example, scarcity may well have accelerated innovation, but it has not filtered down to the base level.

In my opinion, innovation is sparked by imagination, not scarcity. The man who invented the telescope did not do it due to a lack of something, he did it because he was curious. The man who invented the plough did not do it because he had a lack of food, he better used his imagination to find a way to do the job more effectively. The hand tiller he used the year before worked just fine, he just used his imagination to find a better way.
Sure, if something is genuinely scarce, and there is a necessity to consume it, you have to innovate to better utilise the resource.

Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by Mufcutcakeyumyum

 

Intelligent management of resources is not what inspires innovation. If people only focused on how much wheat and whale oil they had since the 16th century, we would not have all we do today.

While everyone knocks the current system, it's actually what got us where we are. Innovation is sparked be scarcity and necessity

edit on 21-6-2012 by boncho because: (no reason given)

Attributing credit to the current system for innovation just because it prospered in being the most widely supported and having the best conditions doesn't mean it actually "solely" deserves it.

We need interstellar travel before overpopulation will be fixed. Then we can all have our own planets, im calling dibs on Endor now just so yall know.

reply to post by thehoneycomb


LOLOL how did you get 12... FAIL.

And dont forget the fact that 50% of the land mass is either dessert or frozen wasteland. And you cant grow most types of food in those places. And you would require an outside source of water, heating or cooling to live in those places as well.

Sure there is allot of "land" left, but most of the unpopulated areas are hard places to live. And its resources we are running out of. and i mean resources like furtile land to grow enough food to feed 7-14 billion people, while not mowing down and paving our remaining forests.

Sorry to say but im all for de-population. Drop the Bombs already. Too many people, most of them dicks or ignorant.

Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by XB70

Also, the first tools were invented millions of years ago, but the earliest known murder is Ötzi the Iceman from ~3200BCE[8]. That's a long time for no murdered bodies to have been preserved.
Also, your evidence for this claim is nothing.

 

I didn't realize you had a record every person in between that has died. Please allow me a glimpse into your personal collection sometime.

I didn't realize you were such a lame troll that you would ignore the entire rest of my post to feebly attempt to turn that point around on me. Millions of years of no murdered fossils means that the evidence for humans having murdered and tortured each other regularly since the invention of tools is quite lacking. We found one murder victim from 5000 years ago, so what's the deal with the other 2.495 million years? Don't know if you realize this, but that's nearly 500 times longer than 5000 years, and so far, no known murders.

Bonus time:

Originally posted by boncho
Essentially, there isn't enough to go around because there are other things that are equally pressing as everyone on planet earth having a shiny computer.

Yeah, economists like to say things like that after they realize shortages hardly ever happen.
Now comes the part where I point out that you think a post-scarcity economy is a utopia where everyone has their own individual copy of everything they ever want. This is not only not the case, anyone who thought it was should hang their head in shame and read some good non-fiction books for the next decade. Computers, much like...everything else in the world, can be shared by local community groups. Once there is an impending shortage of available computer time, you produce more. Rarely do they go outside of public places, because rarely does anyone actually need a computer in a private space and all day.

Also, 30% unemployment rate. If there were actually things that were "equally pressing", and this dumb, retarded system actually worked, we'd have much closer to 100% employment, and most of the jobs would be useful, and they would provide an acceptable standard of living. In reality, capitalism cannot even use the unemployed third of our population to address climate change, mass extinction, ocean acidification, hunger, poverty, transition to renewable energy, or making hot dogs and hot dog buns come in equal-sized packages.

If anyone wants a thing to call Utopia, it would be the world where capitalism fixes a problem.

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse
REAL FREE MARKET

Even economists know this # is impossible. There is no such thing as a "real" free market. Monopolies are more natural than the stupid, #ty perpetual free-for-all economic war that you think is better. There's a reason monopolies exist, did you ever think about that? You think they've just always been around? No, they are what naturally emerges from a capitalist economy. This is the end game, this is the butterfly that came out of the cocoon. Capitalism will always result in fascism, when the establishment begins to feel its power slipping away.

It's well-known to science that capitalism cannot possibly be based on human behavior, because it gets it so totally wrong in nearly everything it does. Humans are not motivated by money, they prefer sharing, they prefer varied tasks instead of specialization, etc. etc.

But then again the world elites would have to allow atmospheric CO2 to reach levels of 1,200 ppm - 1,500 ppm for yields, and harvest to increase as much as 60% which would help feed all the people in the world. With higher levels of atmospheric CO2 than exist at present all plant live use less water which means more water for us and animals as welll.

Yeah, it would also mean the Earth will have heated up well over 10C and the ocean would be too acidic to support any of the life that currently occupies it.

Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by BIHOTZ

 

If 300 million people waste a gallon of water a day, that's 300 million gallons of potable water that could have been used for something more productive.

I don't see the conflict here.

Well, I don't know if I understood you correctly but,

If we consume 300 million gallons we still have that amount when we are done since water renews itself and purifies itself. If we pollute it we lose it.

If we wash the dishes, drink it, fill our pools with it, it is still there. We only lose it if we add toxic chemicals like for instance with fracking. The blame is not on us, it's on the ones that don't worry about polluting it.

Just like the financial crisis is blamed on us for taking out crazy loans. If they weren't offered in the first place and the government didn't encourage us to take them, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in. Banks and governments made the problem not us. Same thing here.

Governments and corporate lobbyists are responsible for wasting epic amounts of resources for greater profit without costly oversight. Shoot, look at BP. They paid enough to have inspectors and regulators go easy on them. Look at the result.

Look at Australia. They have a huge problem with mining and fracking. The mining companies use insane amounts of fresh water and dump untested chemicals into underground water supplies. Every day. The amount of fresh water and fertile soil that is wasted on these mining operations is insane. That is happening all around the world.

I don't know. What power does a single person or all of us unelected people actually have when it comes to resource management?

The blame is irrelevant IMO. We must stop wasting our resources for a profit. A profit the public doesn't see in cost reduction or quality of the products /services offered by the corporate world.

It's a lose lose.

Originally posted by ElectricUniverse


And there aren't so many "shopping malls, and shops" as your thread seems to be implying... With enough money you can drill to an aquifer, (many people who live in africa know how to get water from the desert by drilling with long, thin wooden tubes they carry as they move throughout the desert) or you can desalinate ocean water with simple methods.

You mean, if it's profitable.

If a REAL FREE MARKET/Capitalism would exist in the entire world, and not the current monopoly that exists,

Free markets by their nature gravitate towards monopoly. That is the nature of competition.

But then again the world elites would have to allow atmospheric CO2 to reach levels of 1,200 ppm - 1,500 ppm for yields, and harvest to increase as much as 60% which would help feed all the people in the world.

Global warming for all! Good luck controlling it thereafter.

There are safer ways to feed the world.



Question: Would your free market depend on economic growth? If it depends on growth it depends on consumerism. If it depends on consumerism we still have marketing manipulation of human values and more rapid consumption of natural resources. It encourages cheap products, rapid turnover, pointless multiplicity. It makes pollution, cancer, crime and environmental degradation profitable. In a free market, the more problems there are the more profit there is to be made.

The free market ignores science. Science of human behavior (particularly motivation). Science of robotics. Science of nanotechnologies. Capitalism in its historical form was a necessary stepping stone in our social evolution. However, it is growing more and more outdated by the day. It's time to discuss new alternatives.

Originally posted by boncho
reply to post by Mufcutcakeyumyum

 

Intelligent management of resources is not what inspires innovation. If people only focused on how much wheat and whale oil they had since the 16th century, we would not have all we do today.

While everyone knocks the current system, it's actually what got us where we are. Innovation is sparked be scarcity and necessity

edit on 21-6-2012 by boncho because: (no reason given)

So, Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Tesla (who invented just about everything and got little of the credit), etc. were all motivated by greed? Although, in a sense I do agree. Innovation is sparked by scarcity. At least, in the sense that we can never obtain perfection. There will always be gaps in our knowledge. This "scarcity of knowledge" is the driving motivation to true innovation. Science builds on itself whether you throw money at issues or not -- so long as the scientists are given the RESOURCES necessary to make their contributions.