On limiting population growth thru contraception

[You]

So what is your point? If population declines due to the decrease in average number of children, all of the Apocalyptic theories apply; but if population declines due to death/emigration, none of these Apocalyptic theories apply?

I have to admit, it a theory I haven’t seen before.

When the Ancient Romans were around they described the Celts in Gaul as horrible creatures living in mud huts sleeping on straw on the bare earth. Of course people will always survive, they always have. But, since we are where we are, we want to survive in the ways we are now accustomed to. No more mud huts.
In the 1940’s in Ireland 70,000 Irish people joined to help in the war. The harvests then were threatened with loss and volunteers from Dublin, the capital city, walked out into the countryside to help harvest. Such a small drop in population could have had significant consequences.
I think that to continue living the way you live now, in your comforts and luxury and swift and sure services you need at the very least a stable population in the order of what we have now. To develop this planet more, to its full potential we would need more people and more sympathetic industries.
Consider the vast size of Australia for example and its relatively tiny population clinging to the coastal areas. If the interior of Australia could be developed in an uber-modern way. Texas is only 1/12th the size of Australia, and Australia is almost all empty space.

 

[buffalo]

For what?

More than enough for now? Every species has a biological carrying capacity: there is a finite number of polar bears, sharks, ants, raccoons, and humans that the earth can support. Sooner or later every species reaches zero population growth.

We aren’t even close.

 

[cho_pilo]

Asking buffalo for the second time:

Population growth needs to be around 3% per year. This provides growing economies, jobs and the ability to support the elderly. The declining size of families is the issue. Abortion alone in the US has caused the loss of 30 trillion dollars of economic opportunity.
cho pilo;8534534:

That’s ridiculous (bolding mine) most of those abortions were for women that were financially or emotionally incapable of caring for a child, most likely they would have been a burden to the system. Please post the study you got that figure from.

 

[Contarini]

We aren’t even close.

But even if true, we will get there some day, right?

Are you simply pinning your hopes on the belief that Jesus will become back before it becomes an issue?

I don’t understand why so many Catholics are willing to discredit their Church’s teaching by linking it to head-in-the-sand statements like this.

Edwin

 

[StAnastasia]

But even if true, we will get there some day, right? Are you simply pinning your hopes on the belief that Jesus will become back before it becomes an issue? I don’t understand why so many Catholics are willing to discredit their Church’s teaching by linking it to head-in-the-sand statements like this.

Edwin

Hey Edwin. don’t include me with those guys! A lot of us Roman Catholics do understand demographic absolutes. I think you may be right, and that Buffalo secretly hopes for the second coming before we see starvation on a massive scale.

 

[Nate13]

But even if true, we will get there some day, right?

Are you simply pinning your hopes on the belief that Jesus will become back before it becomes an issue?

I don’t understand why so many Catholics are willing to discredit their Church’s teaching by linking it to head-in-the-sand statements like this.

Edwin

Haha in terms of space I think you could argue that by the time we use up all the space on Earth we will probably have colonies on multiple other planets

 

[StAnastasia]

Haha in terms of space I think you could argue that by the time we use up all the space on Earth we will probably have colonies on multiple other planets

Nate, I’m not sure what you mean by " the time we use up all the space on Earth." In the sense that we are driving other creatures to extinction we have already used up the “other space.” In the sense that we are either approaching or already at the peak of oil production, we have already used up our available space to grow food sufficient for all of humanity. In the sense that climate change is limiting the water supply for three billion people, we have already used up the “other space.”

Colonies on other planets are not an option. There are no habitable planets in our solar system suitable to make even the tiniest dent in human overpopulation. It would take several centuries to get to another star system that might or might not have an habitable planet, and whoever went on that spaceship would have to agree to strict birth control for the duration of the flight. This is fantasy land!

StAnastasia

 

[_L]

How about such people not have sex at all if they think the Earth is overpopulated and just cut out the risk of failed contraception? Of course THAT won’t happen

 

[Warrior1979]

We aren’t even close.

It depends. If nonrenewable resources are taken out of the picture, we’ve got a major problem. As long as we have those nonrenewable resources, we can hide our heads in the sand.

 

[Warrior1979]

Colonies on other planets are not an option. There are no habitable planets in our solar system suitable to make even the tiniest dent in human overpopulation. It would take several centuries to get to another star system that might or might not have an habitable planet, and whoever went on that spaceship would have to agree to strict birth control for the duration of the flight. This is fantasy land!

The biggest issue with colonization, as you’ve noted, is the lack of habitable planets. As a result, it would take a MASSIVE amount of resources to form a colony. All one has to do is look at experiments such as the Biosphere projects. Amazingly expensive and resource intensive project for less than a dozen people…and, unlike living on other planets, system redundancy is not absolutely essential. If something goes wrong, they can simply walk out of the sphere.

 

[You]

The biggest issue with colonization, as you’ve noted, is the lack of habitable planets. As a result, it would take a MASSIVE amount of resources to form a colony. All one has to do is look at experiments such as the Biosphere projects. Amazingly expensive and resource intensive project for less than a dozen people…and, unlike living on other planets, system redundancy is not absolutely essential. If something goes wrong, they can simply walk out of the sphere.

You could start to engineer an atmosphere for the moon and in a few tens of thousands of years from now people might live there. Cool idea, You.

 

[StAnastasia]

It depends. If nonrenewable resources are taken out of the picture, we’ve got a major problem. As long as we have those nonrenewable resources, we can hide our heads in the sand.

We are doing this quite well. I heard Barack Obama on the radio this morning echoing a typical Republican line about how “we’ve got to get our economy to grow faster.” I’m not sure how an economy grows eternally on a finite planet…

 

[StAnastasia]

You could start to engineer an atmosphere for the moon and in a few tens of thousands of years from now people might live there. Cool idea, You.

No, you couldn’t. Why do you think the moon has no atmosphere? A planet has to have sufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere. In any case, this will be a moot point in far less than 10,000 years. In a generation oil will be a precious commodity, and gasoline might skyrocket in price to $10, $25, $100 per gallon.

 

[Nate13]

Haha lets make a truce. The pessimists can go prepare for Armageddon, and the optimists will stick their necks out to see if we can beat the unbeatable. Besides the pessimists survival assuming their predictions are right, necessitates stupid people like us remain optimistic to be swept away to leave more resources for the pessimists

 

[You]

No, you couldn’t. Why do you think the moon has no atmosphere? A planet has to have sufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere. In any case, this will be a moot point in far less than 10,000 years. In a generation oil will be a precious commodity, and gasoline might skyrocket in price to $10, $25, $100 per gallon.

Maybe it never had an atmosphere. It has gravity enough to hold itself together anyway. Hey, its worth a try. I’m giving you lots of ideas for free of things to try but you don’t want to.

 

[Contarini]

Hey Edwin. don’t include me with those guys! A lot of us Roman Catholics do understand demographic absolutes. I think you may be right, and that Buffalo secretly hopes for the second coming before we see starvation on a massive scale.

I said “so many.” Of course I didn’t include you.

In fact, you’ve made me take this issue more seriously than I did.

If you would like to PM me and let me know how you view the question of birth control in light of the population issue, I’d like to hear what you have to say.

I find Catholic teaching on the nature of sexuality to be intrinsically convincing, though of course difficult to follow. I also find the rhetoric of “there are too many people” rather disturbing. But logically, obviously you’re right that the resources of one planet are finite.

Edwin

 

[kama3]

The biggest issue with colonization, as you’ve noted, is the lack of habitable planets. As a result, it would take a MASSIVE amount of resources to form a colony.

Other planets are not habitable, but they have resources which we could use for supporting life down here.

The idea of using helium-3 from the Moon for power generation is a typical example.

 

[kama3]

You could start to engineer an atmosphere for the moon and in a few tens of thousands of years from now people might live there. Cool idea, You.

Traditionally, Mars has been regarded as a better candidate for this (the technical term is terraforming, you may want to look it up). From what I remeber, terraforming Mars would not be that expensive – it would basically amount to putting some automated chemical factories on the surface. Robotic missions to Mars typically cost around a billion dollars each, so I’d risk saying that it could be done for a couple trillion dollars, world GDP currently being $65 trillion per year.

The reason this is not a solution to overpopulation is that:

• it would take between several hundreds to several thousands of years for the process to complete. By then, the present crisis will be long over.
• it would only increase existing real estate by 38%. I read somewhere that if everyone in the world wanted to live at the level Americans do today, we would need a 400% increase in planetary surface.
• you would have to develop a cheap way of sending large amounts of people to Mars.

 

[You]

Traditionally, Mars has been regarded as a better candidate for this (the technical term is terraforming, you may want to look it up). From what I remeber, terraforming Mars would not be that expensive – it would basically amount to putting some automated chemical factories on the surface. Robotic missions to Mars typically cost around a billion dollars each, so I’d risk saying that it could be done for a couple trillion dollars, world GDP currently being $65 trillion per year.

The reason this is not a solution to overpopulation is that:

• it would take between several hundreds to several thousands of years for the process to complete. By then, the present crisis will be long over.
• it would only increase existing real estate by 38%. I read somewhere that if everyone in the world wanted to live at the level Americans do today, we would need a 400% increase in planetary surface.
• you would have to develop a cheap way of sending large amounts of people to Mars.

Personally I would not choose Mars. It takes too long to get there and back, nobody would tolerate wasting a year and a half of their lives on just one commute there and back.
Thats why I suggest the closest object to Earth. And instead of wasting money and effort building factories I say we should just fire cheap rockets of bacteria and algae or whatever simple biological life-form will start the process towards creating an atmosphere.

 

[Warrior1979]

Other planets are not habitable, but they have resources which we could use for supporting life down here.

The idea of using helium-3 from the Moon for power generation is a typical example.

Since they can’t create such an environment here on earth, I seriously doubt they’ll be able to do it in a place where it is millions of times harder.