Overpopulated

[manualman]

Your position is an argument against the very existence of cities in any country. Almost nobody in any city has any appreciable amount of land. They trade what they produce for the food others produce. Human ingenuity and productivity is also a “resource” that you aren’t counting, even though it is probably the most important of all, as the Zimbabwe example attests, but to which the examples of Singapore and Japan attest even more.

That’s not exactly his point. He’s not arguing that Singapore is overpopulated so much as he’s arguing that everybody aspires to the standard of living achieved in wealthy urban places (like Singapore, for example) and that should everybody eventually achieve that, there won’t be enough arable land on earth to support it at today’s global population level.

Where he goes badly wrong is in relying on agenda’d people who have prepared estimates of sustainable global ag yields based on current averages (including a LOT of poor farming practices) and projections of stagnant technological status indefinitely.

 

[weller2]

In other words, EXACTLY the same sort of alarmist trope I hear constantly today. No thanks, they’ve been wrong every time. Every time.

You’re saying that technology has solved the overpopulation issue every time – and I actually agree with that.

But you’re also saying that population decline is going to be catastrophic – why are you assuming that technology will be unable to solve that problem?

 

[Ridgerunner]

You’re saying that technology has solved the overpopulation issue every time – and I actually agree with that.

But you’re also saying that population decline is going to be catastrophic – why are you assuming that technology will be unable to solve that problem?

Technology always has a problem dealing with population decline.

Example 1: In a town in my state, the sewer system suddenly no longer worked. The town’s population had been in decline for some time. After study by some expert or other, it was determined that the lowered population no longer “fit” the sewer system; that insufficient water was now going into it to allow it to work properly. They were faced with retrofitting the whole thing. I don’t know what the outcome was.
Example 2. I recently read an article about Gary, Indiana, which suffered a very major population decrease over the last few decades. The town can no longer support the infrastructure over such a large area, much of which is depopulated. Police, fire, streets, sewer, electricity, all are overextended.

A growing population provides the personnel and resources for extension of infrastructure. a declining population has neither for the downsizing.

 

[weller2]

That’s not exactly his point. He’s not arguing that Singapore is overpopulated so much as he’s arguing that everybody aspires to the standard of living achieved in wealthy urban places (like Singapore, for example) and that should everybody eventually achieve that, there won’t be enough arable land on earth to support it at today’s global population level.

Well – I’d grant that there is enough arable land to feed 10 billion people at a reasonable level. But is there enough land to feed 20 billion people? Or 100 billion people? Remember, before TFRs started to drop, human population increased exponentially. The “no overpopulation” crowd basically argues that Earth can support infinite amount of people – that is patently false.

Besides, arable land is only part of the equation. If you dig into the methodology for calculating footprints, you’ll see that it includes land which is needed not to extract resources, but to recycle waste – in particular, the land needed to sequester CO2 and convert it back into breathable oxygen:

http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/en/index/themen/21/03/01.parsys.0006.Image.gif

Of course, we don’t have enough land for that, so we’re dumping more CO2 into the atmosphere then the planet can recycle – and so atmospheric O2 is decreasing at a rate of about 4ppm per year:

http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/sites/default/files/imce/cgo_o2_plot.gif

(See also cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/oxygen/modern_records.html )

So, remember what they told you at school that O2 is renewable? Well, it is not. At least not at the present rates of consumption. (Fortunately, we will run out of carbon before we will run out of oxygen. )

There are several other “renewable” resources, which are currently being consumed at a rate which exceeds their ability to replenish themselves, and they are being irreversibly destroyed in the process. Forests and fisheries are two good examples.

And global resource use is only going to go up.

 

[manualman]

You’re saying that technology has solved the overpopulation issue every time – and I actually agree with that.

But you’re also saying that population decline is going to be catastrophic – why are you assuming that technology will be unable to solve that problem?

Good question. They are fundamentally different problems. Some argue that technology could solve that issue as well and some people believe that indefinitely increasing lifespans will hold populations steady even as TFR continues to stay below 2. In the medium term, that could even be true since total population won’t actually start to fall until death rates exceed birth rates. If one extends lifespans, one pushes the date of that occurrence further back. But even that doesn’t fundamentally solve the problem, it just changes the time scale. We’ve never in history seen life extending technology significantly move back the date of menopause. So there is no reason to expect that longer lifespans will lead to more children unless that happens. And since medical science has already determined that women are born with all the eggs they will ever have, this seems unlikely. On the contrary, a longer lifespan will lead to an economy where higher education has a bigger payoff than dying at 70 did (more years to recover the investment). There has always been an inverse relationship between women’s educational level and number of kids they have (population level here, no anecdotes folks!). Nobody has solved this conundrum yet.

So short of technology allowing cloning of human adults (shudder), there is no incentive for technology to help populations recover. On the contrary, the modern, wealthy technological society presses people to have FEWER children, not more. I’m not able to see how that changes. Yes, SOCIETY will develop a drastic shortage and need for young people. But modern economics innately rewards the individual who does NOT have children over the one who does. I can’t see how technology can make the situation better. If anything, it makes the problem worse.

On the resource improvement side, technological development rewards both the individual who innovates and the society at large which increases its total resources so that larger population can be supported. Both win. See how different that is?

Some might suggest that technology will eventually give us artificial wombs that will relieve women of the discomfort and inconvenience of pregnancy. I predict that will backfire and result in FEWER people having children, not more. Same reason free condoms lead to more STD and unwed mothers: failure to comprehend the nature of things and the effects of uncoupling our actions from our natures.

 

[manualman]

Perspective check. Oxygen is about 20% of the earth’s atmosphere. If it declines at 4ppm per year, then in 100 years, we will have an atmospheric oxygen concentration of only 19.96%. Cue the Chicken Littles…