Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family

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JimG said:
Personally, I view people as productive assets, and growth as a good. (Not only is there plenty of room on the Earth, there’s plenty of room in the Universe. I was sort of looking forward to something like Asimov’s “Galactic Empire.” But that’s not possible if we’ve decided to depopulate ourselves out of existence.)
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Growth is neutral. Growth and maturation of humans and animals and plants is good; growth of cancerous tumors is not good for the host organism.:o

The size of the universe is irrelevant. So far as we know, Earth is the only habitable planet in our solar system. At the only speed available to us today, it would take 140 years to reach the nearest star system, and that is assuming it has planets capable of bearing oxygen-breathing organisms.😃

140 years is at least six generations of humans on board that spaceship, and anyone signing on to the adventure would have to agree in advance to strict population limitations and contraception on board the spaceship, until the planet is reached (assuming that it exists, and that we can land safely, and that we can kill any of its current inhabitants that threaten humans).:eek:

StAnastasia
 
StAnastasia said:
Growth is neutral.
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Well, I was speaking of economic growth, which is essential to prosperity. As, to a certain extent, is population growth. That’s why small towns in Kansas who lose population cease to exist and growing cities have growing economies. A New York City with a continuously declining population would soon become a very different kind of city.

I’m aware of the limitations imposed by the speed of light as well as other physical constants. The question is whether it might be possible to sidestep them.

Today, the nation of India has a planned program of lunar exploration, something which the U.S. seems to have given up. But we can always turn around on that.
 
JimG said:
Well, I was speaking of economic growth, which is essential to prosperity. As, to a certain extent, is population growth. That’s why small towns in Kansas who lose population cease to exist and growing cities have growing economies. A New York City with a continuously declining population would soon become a very different kind of city.

I’m aware of the limitations imposed by the speed of light as well as other physical constants. The question is whether it might be possible to sidestep them.
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That’s the paraodox – we are wedded to a system that assumes prosperity is dependent upon perpetual growth in population, GDP, housing starts, etc. And such perpetual growth is not possible forever on a finite planet, with finite resources. Isle Royal in Lake Superior has a delicate balance between moose and wolves; the population of neither species can continue to expand forever, but they are ketp in check by predation and lack of food. Similarly, the population of Homo sapiens will grow until it outstrips its resources, and then will fall back to a sustainable level.
 
StAnastasia said:
That’s the paraodox – we are wedded to a system that assumes prosperity is dependent upon perpetual growth in population, GDP, housing starts, etc. And such perpetual growth is not possible forever on a finite planet, with finite resources. Isle Royal in Lake Superior has a delicate balance between moose and wolves; the population of neither species can continue to expand forever, but they are ketp in check by predation and lack of food. Similarly, the population of Homo sapiens will grow until it outstrips its resources, and then will fall back to a sustainable level.
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No trust!:tsktsk:
 
Kaninchen said:
Indeed, we should trust that God will send another Black Death or, even, a few pandemics like ‘Spanish’ 'flu - that will balance things out again.
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I should certainly hope not! I would hate to give up the hard-won advantages of modern medicine.

StAnastasia
 
StAnastasia said:
I should certainly hope not! I would hate to give up the hard-won advantages of modern medicine.

StAnastasia
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Well, I was being a little ‘tongue-in-cheek’ about a policy of just trusting in God to solve problems. It was more ‘public health’ policies like clean water and sewerage systems that led to the biggest declines in mortality rates (thus large increases in population), by the way.
 
Kaninchen said:
Well, I was being a little ‘tongue-in-cheek’ about a policy of just trusting in God to solve problems. It was more ‘public health’ policies like clean water and sewerage systems that led to the biggest declines in mortality rates (thus large increases in population), by the way.
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Yes, and fossil fuel-based agriculture. The so-called “Green Revolution” would not have been possible with pre-petrochemical fertilizers, pre-modern horse-drawn plows, wind- and water-powered flour mills, etc.
 
StAnastasia said:
Yes, and fossil fuel-based agriculture. The so-called “Green Revolution” would not have been possible with pre-petrochemical fertilizers, pre-modern horse-drawn plows, wind- and water-powered flour mills, etc.
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Certainly, in Europe, the late 18th Century saw great agricultural improvements in things like rotation systems and livestock breeding which, together with the opening up of ‘America’, led to the availability of foodstuffs on an entirely new level.
 
StAnastasia said:
Yes, and fossil fuel-based agriculture. The so-called “Green Revolution” would not have been possible with pre-petrochemical fertilizers, pre-modern horse-drawn plows, wind- and water-powered flour mills, etc.
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Sure and these advances allowed America basically to be so efficient it could feed the world. Do you believe it will stop there?
 
Our population is ‘somewhat’ controlled by ‘life-span’.

If modern medicine were able to advance that to 150-200 years, and in another 100 years to say 500… how would that affect the earths population compared to our present span of near 72-75 years? This, looking at the said span in the 1900’s before penicillin.

Can constant ‘growth’ (economic) also be translated into wanting to live longer… and more comfortably… and richer to have leisure time? Where is the balance of simply having “enough”? It is not so much that we humans always want more, it is more so of what we always want more of. What are we “really” striving for? In what areas of our life? WHY?
 
Michael_David said:
Our population is ‘somewhat’ controlled by ‘life-span’.

Can constant ‘growth’ (economic) also be translated into wanting to live longer… and more comfortably… and richer to have leisure time? Where is the balance of simply having “enough”? It is not so much that we humans always want more, it is more so of what we always want more of. What are we “really” striving for? In what areas of our life? WHY?
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Interesting point. Immortal humans would crowd the earth out very quickly. Also, what’s the point of everlasting temporal decrepitude? If you’re going to live forever, it would be nice to stay at 30, rather than in a wheelchair, sightless, deaf, etc. Apoptosis seems to set an upper limit on human longevity for good reason.

Fertility treatments also increase the population dramatically. Were humans really meant to have litters of five and six?
 
buffalo said:
Sure and these advances allowed America basically to be so efficient it could feed the world. Do you believe it will stop there?
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Our ability to feed the world is made possible because of cheap, plentiful petroleum, natural gas, and water from deep aquifers. How America will feed the world when these resources are used up in the coming decades remains to be seen.
 
StAnastasia said:
Our ability to feed the world is made possible because of cheap, plentiful petroleum, natural gas, and water from deep aquifers. How America will feed the world when these resources are used up in the coming decades remains to be seen.
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No faith in technology?
 
StAnastasia said:
Faith in technology to do what?
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In the year 800, one could easily have made a prediction that the world would soon outrun its resources, and that populations would starve for lack of resources. Same for the year 1,000. Same for the year 1400. Same for the year 1800. But the resources kept expanding. Why? Because of the one intelligent resource–people. People are the ultimate resource, and the most valuable resource. It’s also the resource that we are most intent at the present moment in history, in throwing away.

We pay farmers in Kansas NOT to grow crops because they can grow so much that the prices are too low. Overproduction, not underproduction, is a problem.

During the depths of the great depression, dairy farmers were throwing out excess milk because they couldn’t get enough for it to pay the bills. Resources weren’t the problem.

Nuclear energy can produce more energy out than we put in to it. Nuclear fission energy is rather at the primitive stage. Nuclear fusion energy has yet to be harnessed, but there would be a big payoff in doing it.
 
JimG said:
Nuclear energy can produce more energy out than we put in to it. Nuclear fission energy is rather at the primitive stage. Nuclear fusion energy has yet to be harnessed, but there would be a big payoff in doing it.
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You are correct that we should be developing nuclear as fast as possible, as it may be the only thing rendering year-round habitation of Minnesota and Arizona possible by many people. Conventional nuclear will work for about a century, as we have a century’s worth of uranium left. We should use that time as a grace period to develop fusion power.

Even these will not help agricultural fertility, which currently depends fossil fuels. But going nuclear for electrical generation would release some fossil fuels for agriculture for about a hundred years, allowing us to reduce the population to a sustainable level.

StAnastasia
 
Read the section in Herbert Meyers publication on changing demographics. The richer we get the less we pro-create, around the world. Luckily for the USA we “allow” Mexicans, a strong Catholic group, to make up the difference. If not for the mass immigration of Mexicans to the US we would be in trouble. If you don’t have the time for a 52 minute video this article may not be for you! 👍

superfactory.com/document-archive/newsletter-articles/155-herbert-meyer-what-in-the-world-is-going-on.html
 
As for nuclear fission, we need not depend on Uranium. Breeder reactors can produce more fissile material than they consume, and they can begin with Thorium which is more plentiful than Uranium.

I’m not an expert of this, but I believe that breeder reactors and fast breeder reactors can produce plutonium as well.

Fusion would of course be ideal, since fusion produces no radioactive material.

Or if we can find a supply of anti-matter somewhere in the galaxy, that would also have great possibilities.
 
JimG said:
Or if we can find a supply of anti-matter somewhere in the galaxy, that would also have great possibilities.
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I’m for the anti-matter route.

I even have a detector that is really quite sensitive.

It’s called “matter on a really LONG stick”.

…the tricky bit is finding a decent “lode”, “mother” or otherwise, from which to mine.

But, you don’t have to find too terribly much to make the LONG freakin’ journey worthwhile, though. That’s a good thing, as Martha Stuart (patron saint of anti-matter) is wont to blather.

:shamrock2:
 
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