Is overpopulation real and is it a problem?

[Ridgerunner]

However, if people misuse or waste resources so that there aren’t enough for everyone (including people born in the future), then overpopulation can be a problem. This would be a fault of ours, not God’s.

In a way, the case of ‘overpopulation’ is a problem of greed and not sharing resources, rather than a problem of how many people there are.

So, what I’m trying to say is, as a catholic I think its acceptable to say “Yes, it can be a problem, if we make it one. But it doesn’t have to be.”

This is an interesting couple of statements. Clearly, there is truth to both of them. But then we have to ask" “Whose greed?” and “What resources” and “What can we do about any of it.”

Undoubtedly Americans waste things. But it almost always seems to me, when people talk about that, that they’re missing the proper target. Oil is one of the things people cite, saying “Americans use fully 25% of the world’s oil production.” I guess that’s true. But the U.S. also produces 25% of the world’s goods and services, so it may not be a matter of waste at all in that resource. It may simply be that present technology requires “X” in the way of (name removed by moderator)ut to generate “Y” in the way of output. By no means does it imply that somehow cutting down on American oil use would benefit anyone else in the world in any manner.

When people talk about sharing resources, what are they talking about? Water is one of the things one sees cited as a scarce and dwindling resource. Where I live, we get about 4’ of rain per year; more than they get in Ireland. Far and away most of it ends up in the Gulf of Mexico. So how “scarce” is that resource really? I can’t get it to Chad or Somalia. Could the U.S. suck the excess out of the White River or the Arkansas River or the Mississippi and pipe it to Arizona? Maybe. But nobody seems to think it’s at all practical to do it. Maybe someday if the population is a lot larger, but as long as the government pays farmers not to farm and the country STILL has big surpluses, I can’t picture it happening anytime soon.

People talk about food scarcity. And yet, Zimbabwe, which was once a big net exporter of food is now a net importer. So why is that? Well, it’s pretty clear that Zimbabwe’s ruling clique is responsible for that. It took land away from farmers who knew what they were doing, and gave it to political favorites who don’t. It has nothing to do with overpopulation or with greed in the “first world”. And there are a lot of places like that in the world. Unless we declare war on Zimbabwe, I don’t know there is much we can do about that situation.

There is certainly hunger in Somalia and elsewhere in Africa; largely due to the greed of the ruling cliques and the constant internal strife those countries seem to have, also largely motivated by greed and power hunger. We learned that despite efforts to get food to those people, it frequently is just stolen anyway and enriches the rulers and the gangsters. So there isn’t a whole lot, short of numerous wars, we can do about that.

China feeds itself, but it does seem to be destroying at least a part of its agricultural resources and ruining some of its water resources. Nothing we can do about that. Yet, the U.S., Canada and Australia could easily provide sufficient food exports to China so China didn’t need to overgraze, farm marginal land, etc. But China doesn’t want to do that because it worships trade surpluses with the very countries from which it could buy the food. Nothing we can do about that.

So, while I think Americans could certainly waste less, and should, I’m not really persuaded that we’re the cause of very much that;s adverse in the rest of the world. Nor am I convinced that the U.S. is a “resource waster” through greed or any other motivation. Nor am I persuaded that anything we could do, short of lots of wars, would ameliorate very much of the adverse circumstances elsewhere.

 

[Erich]

the argument goes that if we take 10,000 calories worth of grain and feed it to livestock, and then eat the livestock, we end up getting something like 2,000 calories for human consumption. However, if we feed the grain directly to people, we get the full 10,000 calories so its more efficient.

An old rule of thumb is that it requires 50 bushels of corn to finish an animal for our U.S. desired endpoint (USDA choice grade; USDA yield grade 2 or 3; approximately 28% body fat). There are 56 pounds of corn in a bushel, so you will need around 2,800 pounds of corn to produce an animal that weighs 1,250 to 1,350 pounds. This equates to 2.07 to 2.24 pounds of corn per pound of finished animal.

Of course, not all of the “finished animal” is sold as beef. Carcasses are generally 63 to 65% of the 1,250 pounds, or approximately 790 pounds. Some of that carcass is fat that is not consumed, and some is bone (15% or so). Therefore, edible meat cuts and ground beef may be 600 pounds. So, with the example above of 50 bushels of corn fed to a finished animal, now up to 4.67 pounds of corn were required for each 1 pound of beef. (I say “up to” because most animals are not fed a diet exclusively of corn).

I think it’s more efficient for me to eat a pound of beef than it is for me to eat up to 4.67 pounds of corn

 

[RosaryFan]

I don’t mean to offend, I think you are misreading what I said. Educated people have babies all the time! However, in countries where women don’t have access to equal education, and don’t have as many rights, they have many more babies, on average.

This is not an opinion! This has been the trend worldwide.

That is because Life = Hope. And God agrees.

 

[Luigi_Daniele]

I think it out logically.

Would a loving, all knowing God make an Earth that was too small to hold His people?

 

[catholictiger]

i think one bigger problem we must tackle now is how we handle this “overpopulation” problem

there are alot of people who are ok with abortion euthinasia forced sterilization and so on and so forth

no matter how many people are on the earth we can’t let human rights violations happen becuase we are all created by God