Overpopulation thread: how many planets does your lifestyle require?

[Arandur]

Couples use NFP when they feel they do not have the resources to support a child, how is it different to use NFP when you feel there are not enough resources in the world to support additional people?

It is different. You really have no concept just how vast the resources on this planet are. Many people will on the one hand marvel at the power in one little tornado or hurricane, and then on the other act as if we’ve already covered every inch of land on the planet with human habitation or industry. The truth is there are vast amounts of untapped resources.

Using NFP because you believe there are not enough resources in the world is gravely immoral because you are placing your faith not in God, but in an environmental movement that has lied to you about the availability of resources, one that values vague environmental aesthetics far more than it values people. That is a faith that is antithetical to faith in God. It is idolatry.

And it doesn’t have to be an either or situation. We should seek more efficient means of providing for ourselves, but at some point we will run into a limit (and perhaps have already reached this limit). There are only so many resources on the planet, even with perfect efficiency there is a limit to how many living things can be supported.

The practical limit is far from reached. Malthus was proven WRONG. He thought we would overpopulate more than a hundred years ago with about a tenth of the population we have now. Ehrlich thought the same back in the 70’s and was proven wrong. The human capacity for ingenuity is far greater than typically accepted by environmentalists (who fundamentally, if only subconsciously, look at humans as having less value and dignity than that they pridefully ascribe to other elements of nature).

We can talk about the ways that this world order is maintained today to the advantage of Westerners, but this is not what it’s about.

The current distribution has more to do with politics and economics than anything else. I bet you would fall in the camp of people who are anti-globalist, despite global trade often bringing wealth and organization to these communities. Asia has been growing dramatically precisely because it trades with the West and adopts those efficiencies we have already accomplished. Yes there are many problems, mostly caused by governments. Capitalism itself has done more to combat poverty than any other system known to man, precisely because it works on natural, ecological principles.

The point is that some things, like water, like land, like natural resources are simply “there” on the planet. And if you believe God gave us this planet with these resources, do you think God made for some of us to have the great majority while others nearly nothing? Or do you think God meant for us to share them in a reasonably equal amount?

God calls us personally to charity, but He never tried to equalize the rich and the poor.

Do you understand how free market capitalism works? Economics? Supply, Demand, and Scarcity? Are you familiar with ecology, with resources, populations, and scarcity?

I mean, do you think it’s fair for Western nations to buy food grown in Ethiopia (in order for Ethiopia to be able to pay back its loan to the IMF) while its people don’t have enough to eat?

The borrower is slave to the lender.
Perversities arise due to debt, and I won’t defend them. But are you aware that Western charity has actually caused a lot of poverty in the 3rd World? The West can produce vastly more food than it consumes. We often destroy a lot of it deliberately. Sometimes we give it away for free or discounted prices to 3rd World countries just to get rid of it. By doing that, we destroy the livelihood of farmers in those countries and force fields out of cultivation. This is another example of how redistribution just does not work. Just as the Pilgrims found in Plymouth, you can’t remove the incentives to labor and expect people to contribute productively as much as they otherwise would. You can’t increase the supply and decrease the price and expect native producers to be able to produce as much.

These things you listed, particularly new inventions and improvements in technology will certainly allow us to provide for more people, but still not an infinite amount of people. At some point, overpopulation will have to be confronted.

Not necessarily. As numerous agencies have charted, population growth naturally slows. We can forecast it declining. Obviously you haven’t bothered to do your due diligence in researching the other side.

The fact is that as incentives are reduced to have large families, size diminishes. Yes, there will always be finite resources; NFP’ers will abstain if they cannot support further children well.

And as it stands, we do not have space elevators, colonization, or widespread nanotechnology. Those are all very hopeful things, but we don’t have them now. …
Talking about what might-be is pointless. … We should talk about what is, what we have now, and work with it.

I was clear about why I listed them. They are all on the horizon. Japan has working towards a space elevator within the next 10 years, and I believe there were two other countries shooting for shortly after 2020. There are current applications for nanotech. A 10-20 year horizon is very real. Look how much impact computers have made in just 20-30 years. Change happens fast.

Change happens MUCH, MUCH faster than population growth. With projections currently placing us at 8 billion in 70 years or so, that’s plenty of time to expand. The economic growth of Asia alone would be able to support that; U.S. farming and building techniques of 40 years ago would be a vast improvement in most of the world. With twice as many years as the Computer Age has had and we will see the ability to support many times our own population on this planet alone, with colonization possible if not happening in our lifetimes. Scientists have been discussing Moon and Mars bases and starting terraforming pretty seriously, within 30 years. I bet even if our population doesn’t top out or start declining as is currently projected, we’d still have probably 1000 years or more to start colonizing off the planet.

As it stands, it is more likely that food will become less available.

Based on what? Based on politics and corruption regionally, possibly. Based on anything else and I think you’re totally wrong, with no legitimate evidence otherwise.

 

[Arandur]

There is more demand for fossil fuels, and many say peak oil is here.

Known reserves are greater now than they have been at any time in history. They can fuel us between 30 and 70 years, depending on projections. New reserves are found all the time, as are methods for getting more out of what we have. As far as reaching a supply/demand crisis, that’s just a price trigger that will speed the switch to alternatives. A natural outcome.

Fossil fuels are key in modern farming techniques. Modern farming techniques also turn land into deserts.

Ah, no. It is primitive farming techniques that have caused the desertification of areas of Africa and Asia. It is modern farming techniques that have allowed deserts to be turned into farmland. You have it backwards.

You say hydroponics is more efficient, but I bet it is also more expensive or else it would be more widely used.

Exactly my point. If the price of food increases, there will be a natural shift to hydroponics. There are already some vegetables that are competitive–you can see them in your grocery store. Technique keeps becoming more efficient. Typical pattern.

You still need energy to operate the facilities. Where does that come from?

You actually don’t need to have electricity, but the greatest production can be gained if you do. That energy can come from any source. Even the energy used is being reduced, such as with new LED grow lights.

What is so hard to understand about the basic economics of it? As one thing becomes more scarce it becomes more expensive; as cost/price goes up, alternatives are developed and switched to; as alternatives are used, their efficiency tends to increase.

Even when you look at things optimistically, unless we will be able to indefinitely colonize new planets (a really far-fetched idea, considering the distances between stars) we will have to say at some point that it is not only moral to limit family size, but immoral not to.

I don’t accept your assumption that colonization is a far-fetched idea within the time frames we have based on rates of population growth. I also don’t accept your assumption that population will grow continually. No one in demographics thinks that’s true. All the facts point to population topping out and then declining.

Even if you accept a utopian scenario of 100% of humans accepting Catholic principles, you’d still now have to accept other possibilities that would follow: increased vocations to being single, religious, or priests. Increased marriage age (and decreased family size). Decreased fertility. We’ve seen all of these in our population already (except for the vocations to priesthood and religious).

 

[sanctamaria17]

I don’t know, I’ve been quite shocked to see people defending greed as a positive force, American style individualism and profit as primary values in Catholicism, and saying that it is a bad idea to work with others for the good of all. Those things all strike me as positive evils; taking action against environmental degradation at least has the backing of the Pope. I have an good idea who backs those other things.

OOps, I just realized I may have mixed up my threads a bit! It was the talk about conservatives and Marxists that had me confused. So my real comment - why in the world is a call to social action identified with communism? No one would identify a call to action on abortion as a call to communism.

Exactly…

What happened to the “seamless garment” aspect of our theology? I mean, why is taking a stand for the environment seen as dangerous…especially when the Pope backs it? Why is taking a stand against poverty and world hunger seen as Marxism when it was COMMANDED in the Bible (nearly 2,000 times) and is a HUGE part of Catholic social teaching?

Seriously, flyingfish isn’t advocating artificial birth control or sterilization, she’s wondering if this would be a reason to use NFP? If this falls under the “discernment” aspect?

I mean…wow…

 

[flyingfish]

The practical limit is far from reached. Malthus was proven WRONG. He thought we would overpopulate more than a hundred years ago with about a tenth of the population we have now. Ehrlich thought the same back in the 70’s and was proven wrong…

This really depends on what your definition of “overpopulation” is. If you would only consider the world to be overpopulated when there’s no more room for new people to stand, then it’s not.

The way I meant overpopulated when I started this thread is that there are not enough available resources to sustainably provide every person on the earth with a decent life.

I also think that it means leaving enough space for other species to flourish. As it stands, we are destroying and polluting habitats, creating what may well be one of the mass extinction events in the history of life on Earth. Only this time preventable, and caused by human beings.

As for Malthus, Ehrlich having been wrong, well Malthus’ idea was that eventually population growth will exceed our ability to produce food. How exactly has this been proven wrong? There have been technological innovation he did not foresee, but his main point is still relevant today. Similarly for Ehrlich, not all his specific predictions came true, and perhaps he did not anticipate genetically modified foods that the world now relies upon for high yields, but plenty of places in the world experience famines and resource shortages (especially by our standards) and there are not enough available resources today to provide a Western lifestyle to everyone in the World.

Overpopulation is the world’s top environmental issue, followed closely by climate change and the need to develop renewable energy resources to replace fossil fuels, according to a survey of the faculty at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF).

sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090418075752.htm

In a study titled Food, Land, Population and the U.S. Economy, David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the US National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), estimate the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third, and world population will have to be reduced by two-thirds, says the study.[16]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation

Ah, no. It is primitive farming techniques that have caused the desertification of areas of Africa and Asia. It is modern farming techniques that have allowed deserts to be turned into farmland. You have it backwards.

This is simply untrue. To be sure, in some places if you spend a lot of money and resources you can turn deserts into farmland.

But what I’m talking about is the kind of irrigation technique that is very widely used in industrial farming today is rapidly destroying arable land.

energybulletin.net/node/281

It takes 500 years to replace 1 inch of topsoil.21 In a natural environment, topsoil is built up by decaying plant matter and weathering rock, and it is protected from erosion by growing plants. In soil made susceptible by agriculture, erosion is reducing productivity up to 65% each year.22

…

Much of the soil in the Great Plains is little more than a sponge into which we must pour hydrocarbon-based fertilizers in order to produce crops.

Every year in the U.S., more than 2 million acres of cropland are lost to erosion, salinization and water logging.

Modern techniques turn soil into salty deserts over time, and the kind of crop we grow (genetically modified stuff) in order to achieve high yields needs huge quantities of fertilizers and pesticides or otherwise it simply will not grow. Those in turn consume fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are limited, and India and China’s rising middle class will soon demand to have the kind of life Westerners have, and you can guess what it will do to our fossil fuel consumption.

As for hydroponics costs, will we have enough energy resources to implement it mass scale? To be sure, we in the West will not starve. It is the more vulnerable populations that are at risk. Especially in light of climate change and what that will do to food production and even water availability.

Arandur:

I was clear about why I listed them. They are all on the horizon. Japan has working towards a space elevator within the next 10 years, and I believe there were two other countries shooting for shortly after 2020. There are current applications for nanotech. A 10-20 year horizon is very real. Look how much impact computers have made in just 20-30 years. Change happens fast.

I mean, it sounds like a lot of fun, and I have read The Fountains of Paradise. At the same time, from the research I did on it it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be operational in 10 years.

Even if it goes online it sounds like a very expensive project that will have very limited uses perhaps similar to the Shuttle program. It will have scientific and military uses, maybe very rich people will pay a lot of money to ride on it, but as for being used to address resource shortages? Sorry, but I just don’t see it. Maybe you can explain to me how a method of launching stuff into space at 1/100 cost of Space Shuttle will make a difference.

Scientists have been discussing Moon and Mars bases and starting terraforming pretty seriously, within 30 years

Terraforming?! Come on. Do you have any idea how expensive that would be? We might be able to build a space-station like base on the moon, again for a very small number of people, relying very heavily on resources from the earth, and being extremely expensive.

It is very nice to speculate about how Mars might be terraformed, but really, it’s a distant, geologically dead world. Its atmosphere is what, 0.5% as dense as that of Earth, it is very cold (so that CO2 freezes on its surface). Not to mention that it’s thought to have been very different in the past (had liquid water on its surface, an atmosphere) and lost it. If you go there and start terraforming, it would have to be a continuous process since the factors that led it to lose the water and atmosphere in the first place (probably lack of geologic activity, maybe exposure to radiation from space because there is no magnetic field shielding the atmosphere) would still be there.

Any effort to terraform it would require continued (name removed by moderator)ut of Earth’s resources as well as huge expenditures of fuel needed to get stuff there.

Unfortunately we do not live in a science fiction novel.

 

[Arandur]

This really depends on what your definition of “overpopulation” is. If you would only consider the world to be overpopulated when there’s no more room for new people to stand, then it’s not.

overpopulationisamyth.com/overpopulation-the-making-of-a-myth#FAQ5
The entire human population could have single family homes with yards and occupy only the landmass of Texas.

Really, making this comment, you have no idea of the scale of this planet. None. Earth is far, far greater than the pathetic little thing alarmists make it out to be.

The way I meant overpopulated when I started this thread is that there are not enough available resources to sustainably provide every person on the earth with a decent life.

Who are you to declare what is “decent?!!” This is what really offends me about you alarmists. You are so extremely prideful, so self-centered, the exact same mentality as the people who promote euthanasia and abortion because you determine what is best for other people, what “quality of life” SHOULD be. How arrogant! I find it sickening, truly sickening. And certainly, to apply any such consideration to public life, is tyranny.

How exactly has this been proven wrong?

Every prediction has been proven wrong. In science and mathematics, such patterns are pretty good indicators of truth or falsity.

but plenty of places in the world experience famines and resource shortages (especially by our standards)

Again, due largely to primitive agricultural methods like back in the middle ages and ancient times, when our own Western culture had the same vulnerabilities. Also due to governmental corruption and poor policies.

and there are not enough available resources today to provide a Western lifestyle to everyone in the World.

The same thing has been said and predicted time and time again, and yet we keep expanding the availability of resources such that the relative use and price of resources continues to go down. Julian Simon, among others, proved this. Again, patterns indicate truth, and there have been no patterns that support Malthusian alarmism, and many that support the opposite view.

Since academia is rife with alarmists with political agendas, I do not take their words at face value but investigate them. I was an Environmental Science and Policy major in college, just five years ago. There were a few reasonable scientists who saw what the data suggested, that even the alarmists’ own data, where it was accurate, opposed their conclusions. I changed my views because I saw firsthand how dishonest, illogical, and politically-motivated the academic world often is.

Do your own research, be skeptical. Read the opposing arguments with as much depth and vigor as the ones you’ve been supporting.

This is simply untrue. To be sure, in some places if you spend a lot of money and resources you can turn deserts into farmland.

The proof is in the pudding. America cultivates vast expanses of arid land. California has been turned into one of the largest rice-producing regions in the world, for Petes’ sake. Israel is even better at farming arid land than we are. Meanwhile, African farming practices are causing vast swathes of desertification. Look at where the desertification is occurring to greatest extent in the world. Yes, there are places in the already desert-West of the US, areas never meant for farming, but many more areas in 3rd World countries.

Fossil fuels are limited, and India and China’s rising middle class will soon demand to have the kind of life Westerners have, and you can guess what it will do to our fossil fuel consumption.

You’re still not paying attention. The reserves of fossil fuels are HUGE, able to supply us for more than a century (even of oil, when you consider oil sands–already under development). What is more likely is that the cost of extraction drives price up. As price goes up, alternatives become more viable. R&D and mass production make alternatives even cheaper. The price mechanism gives us clean, renewable energy naturally. So quit worrying about energy.

As for hydroponics costs, will we have enough energy resources to implement it mass scale?

It doesn’t take much energy, and again, price will drive energy, just as it will drive any shift to hydroponics. If it so happens that energy and food costs increase as a proportion of our income (from only about 10-15% now), then so be it, we have less disposable income for other things. Food and energy will always be essentials and will be the first things paid for.

To be sure, we in the West will not starve. It is the more vulnerable populations that are at risk.

Nope. All the “vulnerable populations” just need better farming techniques. Since food is an essential activity, as long as we can make methods of production available (this is our primary responsibility, not reducing population), people will provide for themselves.

Especially in light of climate change and what that will do to food production and even water availability.

If climate change involves a plunge into an ice age, then yes, we have a problem. If it’s just warming, there will be stresses due to shifts, but more energy will be available to the ecosystem, which means more productivity. This is a common lie of the global warming religion.

 

[Arandur]

Maybe you can explain to me how a method of launching stuff into space at 1/100 cost of Space Shuttle will make a difference.

Are you familiar with the concept of “paradigm-shift?”
First off, what does expense have to do with it? It’s less costly than many other things we engage in. And I said 10-20 years.
Get lots of heavy product into space quickly and you can transport things across the planet without container ships and freight planes. More importantly for the paradigm shift, you can finally get the material into space necessary to create factories. The huge limitation in all space exploration has been the need for extremely durable and reliable things that are extremely light and use very little energy. Get lots of heavy material into space and conventional, cheap technology can take off. Large things can be built without the limitation and cost of dealing with gravity. Huge amounts of fuel are no longer needed, and things can be slingshotted into space. Mars and moon trips can be incredibly easy. We can begin to mine the moon and asteroids. We can manufacture vastly efficient solar arrays to provide energy to Earth. Conventional technology could handle most of this stuff with a little modification; the big limitation is just that we can’t get it into space right now. Paradigm shift.

The terraforming possibilities rely on paradigm shifts and new technologies as well. There are many ways proposed to deal with the challenges you mention. My main point, however, was that, based on rates of population growth that you continue to utterly ignore, we have centuries if not millenia to figure it out–if we ever even need to, given that population is projected to naturally top out and decline within two generations.

 

[flyingfish]

overpopulationisamyth.com/overpopulation-the-making-of-a-myth#FAQ5
The entire human population could have single family homes with yards and occupy only the landmass of Texas.

And on what land would the food those people eat be raised? Whence would the energy to power their homes come? The water?

This is the problem. You seem to think that it’s simply a matter of physically fitting people into an area. Where huge amounts of lands are needed to sustain those people’s lives.

The test in my original post attempts to address this question. How much land and resources are needed to sustain a family in one of those homes.

As for what is “decent”? How about having a house, running water, electricity, a healthy diet that includes animal protein, a means of transportation (whether a car or public transport), you know, those very simple types of things that we in the West take for granted but most people in the world to some extent lack. All these types of things are taken into account in the quiz that attempts to calculate how much of the earth’s resources are needed to support you.

Every prediction has been proven wrong. In science and mathematics, such patterns are pretty good indicators of truth or falsity.

And while you are comfortably typing on your computer, tell that to people who don’t have access to ~10global hectares to support their lifestyle where there are enough for 2 per person.

There are people who don’t have enough to eat, where entire families live in one room shacks, and things like electricity and having a car are beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

For many people, those predictions are all too true. And for everyone to have the comfortable kind of life you have, we’d either need to drastically cut the world’s population or get our hands on a few more Earths.

The proof is in the pudding. America cultivates vast expanses of arid land. California has been turned into one of the largest rice-producing regions in the world, for Petes’ sake. Israel is even better at farming arid land than we are. Meanwhile, African farming practices are causing vast swathes of desertification. Look at where the desertification is occurring to greatest extent in the world. Yes, there are places in the already desert-West of the US, areas never meant for farming, but many more areas in 3rd World countries.

These things are possible only because of the wealth of America and Israel (which gets a ton of money from America). This is not something that a 3rd world nation could ever do. And the energy for those types of practices doesn’t just magically appear, it is taken from the finite total available to all the people in the world.

You’re still not paying attention. The reserves of fossil fuels are HUGE, able to supply us for more than a century (even of oil, when you consider oil sands–already under development). What is more likely is that the cost of extraction drives price up. As price goes up, alternatives become more viable. R&D and mass production make alternatives even cheaper. The price mechanism gives us clean, renewable energy naturally. So quit worrying about energy.

I don’t see how you see a century as any significant length of time. That said, peak oil is not about the amount of oil available, it is about the rate at which it is extracted.

theoildrum.com/uploads/28/PU200611_Fig1.png Data from many different models, most of which show peak oil between 2010-2020.

What do you think will happen when the price of oil goes up, and poorer people can no longer afford the petroleum-based fertilizer, pesticide, and farming machinery that is absolutely necessary to grow genetically modified crop (that stuff won’t grow naturally, and the crop that grows naturally won’t give you anywhere near the yield required to feed everyone).

What do you think it means when energy becomes more expensive? It means it’s harder to get it, it means fewer people will have access to it.

If climate change involves a plunge into an ice age, then yes, we have a problem. If it’s just warming, there will be stresses due to shifts, but more energy will be available to the ecosystem, which means more productivity. This is a common lie of the global warming religion.

Climate change is not “just warming”, it also means more extreme weather, and different weather. It means the melting of glaciers from which huge numbers of people get their drinking water, it can mean flooding in low laying areas.

Sure it’s not a big deal if you live in the USA, but it’s going to be pretty disastrous for people living in the 3rd world, people who are already on the edge.

Do your own research, be skeptical. Read the opposing arguments with as much depth and vigor as the ones you’ve been supporting.

Sounds like you need to take your own advice.

 

[flyingfish]

Are you familiar with the concept of “paradigm-shift?”

It’s possible that I have read a book or two.

First off, what does expense have to do with it? It’s less costly than many other things we engage in. And I said 10-20 years.

This:

Get lots of heavy product into space quickly and you can transport things across the planet without container ships and freight planes.

I am extremely skeptical that transporting things across the planet via space will ever be cheaper than using ships or trucks or trains. That is why I don’t think something like that will make the huge difference you’re suggesting in distributing resources.

Plus, if there simply aren’t enough resources for everyone, another way to transport them won’t fix anything.

More importantly for the paradigm shift, you can finally get the material into space necessary to create factories. The huge limitation in all space exploration has been the need for extremely durable and reliable things that are extremely light and use very little energy. Get lots of heavy material into space and conventional, cheap technology can take off. Large things can be built without the limitation and cost of dealing with gravity. Huge amounts of fuel are no longer needed, and things can be slingshotted into space. Mars and moon trips can be incredibly easy. We can begin to mine the moon and asteroids. We can manufacture vastly efficient solar arrays to provide energy to Earth. Conventional technology could handle most of this stuff with a little modification; the big limitation is just that we can’t get it into space right now. Paradigm shift.

You know, if you’re right and if anything resembling this sort of thing happens in the next 10-20 years (or even the next 100-200 years) I’ll be shocked but pleasantly so. I’ll gladly take all the "I told you so"s and more.

I have a more pessimistic view on space exploration and development. Not much progress has been made in the area for several decades now. And the financial investment is simply not there. (Of course there’s plenty of it for a war.)

The terraforming possibilities rely on paradigm shifts and new technologies as well. There are many ways proposed to deal with the challenges you mention. My main point, however, was that, based on rates of population growth that you continue to utterly ignore, we have centuries if not millenia to figure it out–if we ever even need to, given that population is projected to naturally top out and decline within two generations.

We disagree on the state the world’s population is in today. As for it “naturally topping out and declining”, it doesn’t just happen naturally. It is happening because more and more people are using artificial birth control, because it is financially difficult to raise children in industrial societies, because women are taking an active part in many societies, because people are getting married later and so on.

My main argument was that it would be moral for Catholics to use NFP to limit family size to allow for this topping out/decline/stabilization.

 

[Arandur]

And on what land would the food those people eat be raised? Whence would the energy to power their homes come? The water? This is the problem. You seem to think that it’s simply a matter of physically fitting people into an area.

Duck and weave, duck and weave. You should be a politician or a boxer.
My point was clearly in response to your absurd exaggeration about overpopulation to the point of people not having room to stand. It was about space and the scale of this planet. Remember, that figure was current population, so there’s plenty of space for food and water on the planet.

All these types of things are taken into account in the quiz that attempts to calculate how much of the earth’s resources are needed to support you.

The quiz is bogus. That’s what I’ve been addressing this whole time.

There are people who don’t have enough to eat, where entire families live in one room shacks, and things like electricity and having a car are beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

Because their economies are too inefficient to produce more. As China industrializes, do we find people squeezed off the land because they’re occupying a larger footprint? No, we find agriculture able to sustain more people from the same amount of land, freeing up people for other tasks. They seem to be finding space for power plants and cities and so forth. The real world just continually gives the lie to alarmist environmentalists.

These things are possible only because of the wealth of America and Israel (which gets a ton of money from America). This is not something that a 3rd world nation could ever do. And the energy for those types of practices doesn’t just magically appear, it is taken from the finite total available to all the people in the world.

You are so misguided and lost. Get out of your echo chamber and read the evidence and arguments on the other side.
1st, Israel gets military aid, not much else; they have a pretty strong economy and lots of skilled citizens. 2nd, they actually have programs to educate poor farmers all over the world on better agricultural techniques. 3rd, India, China, and Asia again prove you wrong–3rd world nations can and ARE improving their economies, which relies on improving their agricultural production first in order to free up people for the labor pool. Economic development requires stability, as well, which is something many of these countries haven’t had because of conflict and governmental corruption.

Show me any evidence whatsoever that there is a practical “finite total” of energy “available to all the people in the world.” We have plenty of ways to keep increasing the amount of energy we produce, even from renewable sources.

I don’t see how you see a century as any significant length of time.

Oh you don’t? Then you need to study up on your history. At the turn of the 19th century, we still relied on wood and coal for heat and energy and horse and buggy for local transportation. We didn’t even really have computers entering widespread use until 1990. 20 years of computers have changed the face of this planet. 20 YEARS, and only 12-15 of that with any significant Internet use. CHANGE HAPPENS FAST.

That said, peak oil is not about the amount of oil available, it is about the rate at which it is extracted.

I’m well aware. Which is why I keep talking about price mechanisms and technology. Innovation can change rates of extraction, and even if it doesn’t, peak oil is a supply/demand problem that just drives up price, moving us to alternatives because of the increase in price.

What do you think will happen when the price of oil goes up, and poorer people can no longer afford the petroleum-based fertilizer, pesticide, and farming machinery that is absolutely necessary to grow genetically modified crop

You’ve been arguing that “poor people” can’t afford this stuff now, anyway, so your point is moot. The 3rd world doesn’t use much of it.

As I’ve said repeatedly, and as you’d understand if you cracked an economics book, price goes up with scarcity and leads to more investment and more innovation and shifts to alternatives. If energy prices go up, other energy options are invested in as well, increasing supply. To the extent that energy affects agricultural production, food prices will go up. That will encourage more investment and options, increasing supply. It’s just a natural shift. Food is an essential, the first essential, really, so if necessary, it will take up a higher proportion of peoples’ incomes and money will shift to the agricultural sector.

Climate change is not “just warming”, it also means more extreme weather, and different weather. It means the melting of glaciers from which huge numbers of people get their drinking water, it can mean flooding in low laying areas.

I’m quite aware of climate change (practically an oxymoron). If the net effect is warming (even though we’re now in a cooling trend), net energy is increased, which increases biological productivity. Yes, climate change means shifts in weather patterns, which have occurred throughout history. I said the transitional stress/costs could be high. But people have always had to follow changing patterns in nature–why do you think there are nomads? Nature’s shifting patterns have been a major cause in the rise and fall of empires and civilizations. Why are you so arrogant as to assume we shouldn’t have to deal with the same problems our ancestors have dealt with?

Sounds like you need to take your own advice.

Hah. I’ve been deep in this mess for over 12 years. I majored in Biology and Environmental Science and Policy in college. I spent months in studies with Columbia University’s Biosphere 2 station, and Boston College’s School for Field Studies in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia. I’m quite well versed on the subject, and if anything have had more exposure to the alarmist side and arguments than the other.

My main point with the space technologies is to show the proximity of game-changing technologies, to show that humans can and have throughout history come up with ways to solve our problems and increase prosperity, without population being a long term barrier.

 

[Arandur]

We disagree on the state the world’s population is in today. As for it “naturally topping out and declining”, it doesn’t just happen naturally. It is happening because more and more people are using artificial birth control, because it is financially difficult to raise children in industrial societies, because women are taking an active part in many societies, because people are getting married later and so on.

Changes in social structure due to economic or cultural conditions occur without deliberate, societally-planned impositions. Man is a social animal. I’d call that natural.

My main argument was that it would be moral for Catholics to use NFP to limit family size to allow for this topping out/decline/stabilization.

And I have said that that is idolatry. Placing your faith in the environmental movement and not in God. It offends the dignity of the person and the value of life by saying that life is an offense against nature and should not be procreated. It is antithetical to our life-affirming faith and trust in God.

Find me one place anywhere that the Church has supported population control.

“Population Is Proving To Be An Asset, Not A Factor That Contributes To Poverty…The extermination of millions of unborn children, in the name of the fight against poverty.”
catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=31054

thefreelibrary.com/The+Pope+on+population+control+and+the+environment.+(News+in+Brief)-a093209986
catholicexchange.com/2009/07/15/120358/

The pope pointed out that population growth has led to a result in poverty, saying that, in 1981, around 40% of the world’s population was below the threshold of absolute poverty and indicating that percentage has been reduced by half despite population growth in some of the worst areas.

“This goes to show that resources to solve the problem of poverty do exist, even in the face of an increasing population,” the pontiff said.

“Moreover, among the most developed nations, those with higher birth-rates enjoy better opportunities for development. In other words, population is proving to be an asset, not a factor that contributes to poverty,” Pope Benedict concluded.
lifenews.com/int1039.html

 

[Rkirby]

I answered before I took the quiz. I put one planet because we really don’t use that much. My survey results told me my lifestyle used 3.6 planets. Could it be that because we have 8 people in our household we are being penalized? Certainly not everyone in my household travels 150 miles per week in their own vehicle. They survey was fun but doesn’t really do anything except give you ideas for reducing consumption, which we have already done. We live in a 32 year old mobile home. We have never bought new furniture. We have never bought a TV, VCR, new appliances. Everything we have is used. My husband pulled a perfectly good television out of the trash at his place of employment and we used that for a couple of years. Ditto with a VCR. Almost all of our clothes are hand-me-downs or yard sale items. (We do buy new socks and underwear). I buy one new pair of pants every one or two years. My husband buys them more often because he wears them out at work. Even this computer I’m using was bought from a surplus auction. It’s 8 years old. Sure it may use a little more energy, but manufacturing a new one for me would use a lot more energy and resources.

Quiz is here: earthday.net/footprint/flash.html

---

Overpopulation is an interesting topic.

While physically there is enough room on the planet for more people, there already isn’t enough room to provide everyone with the kind of lifestyle Westerners enjoy.

We would need several Earths for every single person living today to have the kind of lifestyle we in the West have.

There are online calculators that attempt to measure just how many planets your lifestyle would require. They do this by calculating the amount of area needed to support an activity. For example if you eat meat, it would take into account the amount of land, water, energy and other resources needed to raise the animals you get meat from.

According to this quiz earthday.net/footprint/flash.html my lifestyle would require 4.4 planet earths if everyone currently alive were to have the same way of life.

---

What do you think is the moral solution to this issue? Should we control population growth so that everyone in the world could have a good lifestyle, or should Westerners experience a big reduction in quality of life to be able to have more people on the planet and a more fair distribution of resources.

 

[Calliso]

Interesting article in the national geographic here. ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/cheap-food/bourne-text

 

[Bluegoat]

You say hydroponics is more efficient, but I bet it is also more expensive or else it would be more widely used. You still need energy to operate the facilities. Where does that come from?

Yes, it often is. If the heating used comes from fossil fuels, or from bio-fuels, it isn’t actually efficient at all.

If you can use solar or thermal, it’s different, but it still uses a lot of expensive equipment that is, resources.

 

[Bluegoat]

I answered before I took the quiz. I put one planet because we really don’t use that much. My survey results told me my lifestyle used 3.6 planets. Could it be that because we have 8 people in our household we are being penalized? Certainly not everyone in my household travels 150 miles per week in their own vehicle. They survey was fun but doesn’t really do anything except give you ideas for reducing consumption, which we have already done. We live in a 32 year old mobile home. We have never bought new furniture. We have never bought a TV, VCR, new appliances. Everything we have is used. My husband pulled a perfectly good television out of the trash at his place of employment and we used that for a couple of years. Ditto with a VCR. Almost all of our clothes are hand-me-downs or yard sale items. (We do buy new socks and underwear). I buy one new pair of pants every one or two years. My husband buys them more often because he wears them out at work. Even this computer I’m using was bought from a surplus auction. It’s 8 years old. Sure it may use a little more energy, but manufacturing a new one for me would use a lot more energy and resources.

Probably you actually benifited from having a larger family according to the quiz, rather than being penalized.

It’s really hard for most North Americans to score 1 planet, unless they unhook from the grid. They are weighed down by the infrastructure that supports them.

There are a lot of systematic things that could be done about this, but it requires national will.

 

[flyingfish]

Duck and weave, duck and weave. You should be a politician or a boxer.

The quiz is bogus. That’s what I’ve been addressing this whole time.

You are so misguided and lost. Get out of your echo chamber and read the evidence and arguments on the other side.

Hah. I’ve been deep in this mess for over 12 years. I majored in Biology and Environmental Science and Policy in college. I spent months in studies with Columbia University’s Biosphere 2 station, and Boston College’s School for Field Studies in the rainforests of Queensland, Australia. I’m quite well versed on the subject, and if anything have had more exposure to the alarmist side and arguments than the other.

Well, we’ve been repeating ourselves for a few posts now and I don’t see the point of continuing.

That said, perhaps if you’re sincerely interested in getting me to see “the other side” you should provide evidence for your position (say in the form of studies published in reputable, peer reviewed scientific journals).

I don’t have the advantage of a formal degree in Environmental Science, but everything that I have read from the academia (journals, books, the like) argues again and again that overpopulation is a huge problem, that there isn’t enough for everyone, and that people, animals, and the planet itself are suffering as a result.

You’ll have to forgive me for being skeptical of someone who claims the opposite, calls most academics in the relevant fields “alarmists”, and fails to provide evidence supporting his position.

Believe me, I don’t want you to be wrong. But it just seems that you’re placing all your hope in future technological advances that may or may not happen.

 

[flyingfish]

Interesting article in the national geographic here. ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/06/cheap-food/bourne-text

I thought I’d paste some relevant portions for those who don’t want to read a 13 page article.

“Agricultural productivity growth is only one to two percent a year,” warned Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C., at the height of the crisis. “This is too low to meet population growth and increased demand.”

…

In other words, we need another green revolution. And we need it in half the time.

…

Today, though, the miracle of the green revolution is over in Punjab: Yield growth has essentially flattened since the mid-1990s. Overirrigation has led to steep drops in the water table, now tapped by 1.3 million tube wells, while thousands of hectares of productive land have been lost to salinization and waterlogged soils. Forty years of intensive irrigation, fertilization, and pesticides have not been kind to the loamy gray fields of Punjab.

Many crop scientists and farmers believe the solution to our current food crisis lies in a second green revolution, based largely on our newfound knowledge of the gene. Plant breeders now know the sequence of nearly all of the 50,000 or so genes in corn and soybean plants and are using that knowledge in ways that were unimaginable only four or five years ago, says Robert Fraley, chief technology officer for the agricultural giant Monsanto. Fraley is convinced that genetic modification, which allows breeders to bolster crops with beneficial traits from other species, will lead to new varie*ties with higher yields, reduced fertilizer needs, and drought tolerance—the holy grail for the past decade. He believes biotech will make it possible to double yields of Monsanto’s core crops of corn, cotton, and soybeans by 2030. “We’re now poised to see probably the greatest period of fundamental scientific advance in the history of agriculture.”

The green revolution’s legacy of tainted soil and depleted aquifers is one reason to look for new strategies. So is what author and University of California, Berkeley, professor Michael Pollan calls the Achilles heel of current green revolution methods: a dependence on fossil fuels. Natural gas, for example, is a raw material for nitrogen fertilizers. “The only way you can have one farmer feed 140 Americans is with monocultures. And monocultures need lots of fossil-fuel-based fertilizers and lots of fossil-fuel-based pesticides,” Pollan says. “That only works in an era of cheap fossil fuels, and that era is coming to an end. Moving anyone to a dependence on fossil fuels seems the height of irresponsibility.”

So far, genetic breakthroughs that would free green revolution crops from their heavy dependence on irrigation and fertilizer have proved elusive. Engineering plants that can fix their own nitrogen or are resistant to drought “has proven a lot harder than they thought,” says Pollan. Monsanto’s Fraley predicts his company will have drought-tolerant corn in the U.S. market by 2012. But the increased yields promised during drought years are only 6 to 10 percent above those of standard drought-hammered crops.

Regardless of which model prevails—agriculture as a diverse ecological art, as a high-tech industry, or some combination of the two—the challenge of putting enough food in nine billion mouths by 2050 is daunting. Two billion people already live in the driest parts of the globe, and climate change is projected to slash yields in these regions even further. No matter how great their yield potential, plants still need water to grow. And in the not too distant future, every year could be a drought year for much of the globe.

 

[Matrix_Refugee]

I got 4, but I think the numbers may be skewed:

For the question “What is your house made of?” I selected “Wood” – however, my house was built in 1910, well before vinyl siding was invented.

Also “How many books/newspapers do you buy?” was tough to answer: I buy a LOT of books, but I buy most of them from thrift stores, used book stores, and as used books via Amazon.com.

 

[Arandur]

I got 4, but I think the numbers may be skewed:

For the question “What is your house made of?” I selected “Wood” – however, my house was built in 1910, well before vinyl siding was invented.

Also “How many books/newspapers do you buy?” was tough to answer: I buy a LOT of books, but I buy most of them from thrift stores, used book stores, and as used books via Amazon.com.

It is very skewed. Taking the simple answer route, the best result you can get is around 3; taking the advanced one and basically saying you’re a hermit living on a self-sustaining farm with no power or running water, you get 2.6. The biggest two areas skewing the numbers are the calculation of “average” bioproductivity for a “global acre” (highly underestimating the productivity of modern agriculture and forestry), and however they’re determining the acres associated with energy (which it lists as requiring far more acres than that required to produce food or provide wood).

 

[k5thbeatle]

How many earths would it take to hold all the left wing liberal web-sites that spew this nonsense?

 

[Arandur]

Flyingfish, you may have selectively ignored portions of the article referring to abuses of the monoculture system and the attempted transmission of other more modern and safer methods of highly productive farming protecting land from erosion and water from pollution and so forth. Of inefficiencies in government and so forth.

That said, perhaps if you’re sincerely interested in getting me to see “the other side” you should provide evidence for your position (say in the form of studies published in reputable, peer reviewed scientific journals).

Hey, the burden of proof lies with the alarmist. You should do the research yourself. It’s not hard to find. Unfortunately, the internet isn’t the best source, but you could google any number of terms to get some background, from “Julian Simon” to “Overpopulation” to “environmental alarmist” or “skeptical environmentalist.”

If you have access to academic journals, I could dig up my old notes and provide references. I could provide references to my textbooks and other supporting books, if that would help you. I could refer you to professors and scientists. What would you most prefer? I’ll see if I can find a little time to provide some, in between more important things like fixing up my house to prepare for rent and looking for a different job.

I don’t have the advantage of a formal degree in Environmental Science, but everything that I have read from the academia (journals, books, the like) argues again and again that overpopulation is a huge problem, that there isn’t enough for everyone, and that people, animals, and the planet itself are suffering as a result.

If they say that, that’s sloppy thinking. It’s not “overpopulation” that is the cause of such things, but unsustainable or destructive consumption of certain resources and improperly-disposed of wastes. These are mostly localized problems, and much can be done about them without resorting to this crusade against mankind.

You’ll have to forgive me for being skeptical of someone who claims the opposite, calls most academics in the relevant fields “alarmists”, and fails to provide evidence supporting his position.

If you’ll forgive me for being skeptical of someone who is seemingly unfamiliar with the field, unskeptical of pop culture opinions and media, and hasn’t apparently spent much time considering critics of those ideas.

Believe me, I don’t want you to be wrong. But it just seems that you’re placing all your hope in future technological advances that may or may not happen.

As I said and explained, most of the technology needed to sustain our current population (and one considerably larger) in a much wealthier lifestyle is already here. It is the price mechanism that will drive wider implementation of existing technologies as well as development of new ones.

The point about new technology was that, even if population growth was sustained, we can probably manage to accommodate such an ever growing population in one way or another. As it is, population projections do not indicate an ever-growing population, but a maxing out and decline. Current technology is more than enough to handle that, even at a Western lifestyle. We have the technology to effectively eliminate pollution from our sources of energy. We have the technology to use sustainable building materials. We have the technology to feed vastly larger populations. We have the technology to recycle or safely dispose of our wastes. We have the technology and methods to preserve wildlife habitats even while living nearby or among them. We have the capability to preserve species despite production of goods.

All this exists now. Implementing it and getting it all distributed equally is a political and economic issue. It is not a problem of there just being too many people. So “overpopulation” is a misguided claim. It certainly shouldn’t be used as an excuse to deny respect for the dignity of human life, receptiveness to God’s gift of life, and faith in His Providence (in favor of faith in a particular fad ideology).