A smarty pants scientist makes an easy anaology about our planet - And now I am scared.

Suzuki's "test tube" analogy is not what is going to happen in the world, in my opinion. I think he's off the track and his comments should be examined more thoroughly. Suzuki is a beloved figure in Canada. He has been Canada's "village scientific explainer" for decades now. He's a nice guy and his voice should be heard as long as it is not thought to be definitive or authoritative.

I think what will happen with world population will be more akin to what happens at the local pub when you order a pint of stout. Let's call it the "pint of Guinness" analogy. The barmaid will start the pour and the "head" will froth up, and she will let the head settle and pour a little more. Again, the head will froth up and she will pause to let it settle, repeating this process until the glass is full with a thin layer of foam on the top that gradually dissipates. I think that is how we are going to reach the maximum carrying capacity of the planet and I think that number will be much larger than Suzuki and a lot of the neo-Malthusians believe.

Is there a limit to population growth on the planet? Absolutely. Is there a limit to economic growth? Possibly, but both those limits, if they both exist are much larger than the Malthusians believe, in my opinion.

This is one area where, in extremis, China is showing the rest of the world an option.

It's interesting that Suzuki uses bacteria as his analogy... because that's the very thing (bacteria/virii) that's going to wipe out a large amount of our numbers in the very near future.

History shows that once populations become overcrowded (aka major cities and clumped civilizations), disease kicks in to clean it back up and reduce the numbers to something that's more manageable.

Mother nature wins time and time again.

Ask the other 95% of the various species that "used to be".

Any number of natural events could wipe a very large percentage of the human population out. A massive eruption at Yellowstone caldera could do it. We probably would have been wiped out by bubonic plague if people simply went about business as usual, but they didn't. The plague was devastating and decimated the population of Europe, but even knowing next to nothing about diseases and epidemics, humans survived.

We're more knowledgeable now.

I think the hidden agenda behind what Suzuki is saying is the oligarchical agenda. I'm not sure if Suzuki is a dupe or what, because he does talk about limits to economic growth as well as population growth, which confuses me a little.

I think that among the oligarchs there is a sense of a limit to "how many people we can control".

Personally, I think our real problems are all political and educational and they are centered on the elite of the planet.

reply to post by ipsedixit



Well, we may be more "knowledgable" now, but we certainly aren't any smarter for it.

We keep continuing to make the same damn mistakes over and over.

reply to post by CranialSponge

That's the human process. We are both smarter than ever and just as dumb as ever. Norman Mailer once said that his generation made mistakes and that the next generation will also make mistakes but that those mistakes will be better, smarter mistakes.

I think he is right about it. Of course we are going to continue to have problems that in a perfect world could be avoided. We are going to continue to learn the hard way, but we are going to continue to learn and most important of all, we are going to continue, I think.

pikestaff
reply to post by McGinty

 

Because of the one child edict from the government, China now has a whole generation of spoilt males, the girls were aborted, so now China is also exporting wife-less males to look for wives.

So it wasn't perfect

reply to post by McGinty

We have a different name for the spoilt males in our society. We call them "entitled".

I think if the oligarchical rulers of our world were civilized people and not simply ogres, they would be controlling population by means of generous social security benefits, especially in the third world. They have to guarantee people's retirement benefits.

All the lunatics are at the top in this story, in my opinion. The notion of India and Pakistan as nuclear powers who can't give their people fresh water or decent social security benefits is a prime example of where the world is in this discussion.

reply to post by Sovaka

Part of the solution is to remove the 1% from this Earth. Kick them off into space and have nothing more to do with them. Their goals do not align with those of this Earth.

LM*O!!! seriously !!

thank you for this ..Have to go now.. my CPU is pegging on ATS reply to certain topics again .. ugh ..

Another point I wanted to make that illustrates how control is at the root of the world's "development" problems is that one of the most costly injuries to development in the third world that has taken place in recent memory is the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and the crushing of what he had put together in Libya.

America and its allies, i.e., NATO, destroyed Gaddafi's Libya because it was seen as an African power point that aimed at African development by and for Africans. Gaddafi had many plans in process to bring about the flowering of Africa as a continent. These plans have been thrown back 50 years at least and they may never come to fruition, mainly because the oligarchical controllers of the industrialized West cannot live with the thought of another nexus of power coming up in the world.

They will never do for Africa what Gaddafi was attempting to do and would have done. I'd like to hear what Dr. Suzuki has to say about Gaddafi. Would he reiterate the selective coverage of media outlets in the West who ignore all of Gaddafi's initiatives and concentrate on his repression of political opponents? I'll bet he would. I don't know this for sure but I suspect that Suzuki is something of a "Canadian Chomsky".

I wish he would prove me wrong.

Personally, I think that Gaddafi could have turned North Africa into the breadbasket of the continent. That relates directly to issues of population on the planet.

reply to post by Mamatus


Exactly. When we poison our oceans, it is the end. I hope our way of living was worth it. I hope the deniers are happy in their ignorance, cause I am scared.

reply to post by Mamatus


Overpopulation? Don't say what we all know but give us a solution.

www.evawaseerst.be...

reply to post by Mamatus


The one thing that is really going to bring this home to everyone is, FOOD. Have you noticed how food prices are edging up very steadily? And wages are not?? At some point those two factors are going to collide. In a lot of places they already have. Probably the biggest factor in what happened in Egypt and the other "Arab Spring" countries. And as the population rises its only going to get worse. TPTB are well aware of this and its most probably the biggest single reason for the move to a police state. They know at some point things will get ugly on a large scale (lets hope not). Our only chance, as the human race, is to stop having so many offspring. That's the ONLY thing that can save us. If we don't, the whole civilization WILL come crashing down, and I don't believe wealth or status will go very far to save anyone. How would a millionaire fare in the world of the road warrior? Money cant buy everything. Read "The population bomb" By Paul Ehrlich. He predicted a lot of what we are seeing now back in 1968. And he made a grim prediction: "Either we will correct the problem or nature will". I am hoping its us and not nature.

reply to post by openminded2011


I've been asking myself for a good few years now 'why are Governments pushing for mass immigrations and why on earth are they wanting to build more and more buildings in the already saturated cities??

People everywhere need to stop mass producing IMO.

Resources will die out eventually.

Mr Suzuki is right but you know what the rich corps want? More people to do their work in order for their bank accounts to keep growing, ...

Its like the Royal Family Analogy... if their offspring keep having children, then there will always be Royal family and whoever is the offspring, never need go through hard-times and their heads remain in the sand forever...

Mamatus
reply to post by guidetube

 

I think David Suzuki just told us......... I do not think there is a damn thing we can do about it except make a move to save humanity by moving to the stars or space. Personally at 48 years old I would not care much for the change. I love nature, animals and the oceans. It has been hard to watch what has been happening. I knew we were on a path to our own demise. I had no idea of Daivd Suzuki's (and apparently other scientists) rather simple math.

This was the single scariest thing I have seen in all my research on what is happening to the oceans. It makes scary sense.

While this may be very true, we are stuck here... we have no way to the stars or their planets! Thanks mainly to the people that was 'bored' after we walked on the moon and brought our space program to a screeching halt! I remember at the time, people were complaining their 'soap operas' and ballgames were being interrupted by Apollo updates, that and Nixon canceling all Apollo flights after Apollo 17 to dump even more money into LBJ's money maker, 'Nam!
Thanks to the people and the government we are a half century behind in space exploration!
Think about it, we don't even have the resources, money or the equipment to go to the moon right now (all the Apollo equipment is gone as well!) let alone 'to the stars'! We are stuck here!
If it can't be fixed on Earth, it can't be fixed!

reply to post by Mamatus


The only problem with packing up and going to a new world is that we will be bringing us along. If we cant treat this world with respect then we shouldn't go and treat another with disrespect.

reply to post by Dianec

In the 1800's we know there were about 3 billion people on the planet so

No, more like a billion, pre industrial.

If there is a significant leap in power generation tech, the richer countries will ride out a collapse. They'll build superproductive farm-factories with 24hr lighting and environmental control if power becomes really cheap.

Poorer countries with high populations will be massively boned though. I'd expect to see mass malnutrition if fish stocks collapse, as a lot of poor people depend on fish for their protein.

If you really want to know what's going to start the next big war, the Arab worlds' population keeps growing, and they buy in about 2/3 of the food they consume with oil money. They are already having trouble meeting their food needs, and once the money from the oil starts to really fall we'll see a combination of religious fundamentalism and starvation pushing them across the Med into fertile green land, and across the Sahara into SubSharan Africa. It's going to get very ugly. 15 to 20 years. Time for Nato to start patrolling the Med.

reply to post by Mamatus


Good post. It is very worrying when you work out the maths. Back in the 70s a study was done to see how many could live on earth comfortable. They came up with a figure of 2 billion.

Regarding the coming crisis, I think our governments know it is coming because the scientists have told them. Meanwhile they talk about 'sustainable development'. They are not going to tell us what they know.

People make points about overpopulation being the end of man.
If you look in the natural world locusts overpopulate on regular basis, eat the available food.
Locusts are still around..
limbo

As they're not too far away from me I've wanted to take a trip down to the Georgia guide stones for a while now. The older I get I actually try to view them with an increased understanding.

reply to post by Mamatus


We're doomed. But hey we can watch Hillbilly Hand Fishin' till the last morsel of food is gone..... including the fish thsoe guys hoot and holler for....