Malthus

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Seems to me it is time to bring up Malthus. Maybe because I just transported one of our front yard chipmunks?

Views on "fixing" society.

Views on population and overgrazing.

Views on God's finger.

Hey - something for everybody. If you do not know Rev Thomas Robert Malthus, here's a start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_malthus

he did have some very good points, horizon had a documentary that explained his arguments quite well.

overpopulation is our biggest enemy, many people today has seen the population almost triple in their lifetime and we do have limited resources.

This is a good presentation on world population:

http://www.gapminder.org/videos/what-st ... on-growth/

Shows why things are tapering off and why they will probably level out around 10 billion. The next problem will be if we greatly increase human lifespans, or if we can't sustain 10 billion (or more) mouths due to environmental degradation.

I agree, but it is now rather unfashionable to say so, though. I heard it was all the rage in the 70s (when people thought China's one child policy was a good idea) but there has been something of a backlash. People think you are somewhat a racist/classist to be a Malthusian because population growth is obviously a lot higher in non-white ethnic groups and amongst poorer people. The fashionable line now is Gandhi's, 'the world has enough for everyone's need but not enough for everyone's greed' - he was correct when he said it, but when we hit a global population of 11 billion (which we will), we won't even have enough for everyone's need. Many more people are just going to starve.

Human lifespans will increase and there will be more wars due to dwindling resources. Both of these will lead to population growth beyond 10 billion. As the video says, poverty and war increase family size. The only way out of it is education and women's rights in developing nations.

A la la.

Me, I have - being a lifelong educator - little or no faith in education as a solution to social problems.

As for "women's rights" - I do not judge tis the point to argue the term but simply take what I assume this to mean - I see no reason to believe that any recognition of rights or granting of privileges will be a key to population growth.

My take on malthus' theories on population - and I apologize if I'm not well enough read on him, i haven't put much thought into his theories in about 15 years - was that he based them on pre-industrial-revolution data.

Mechanization. Artificial fertilizer. Selective breeding of crops and livestock. Direct manipulation of recombinant DNA. Our ability to support increased population has come a long ways in the last 200 years.

More educated women have less children. Women with free access to contraception and no taboo against using it have less children. People who don't live in a country where the only way to support yourself into old age is through your children, have less children. People whose children don't keep dying have less children.

yet never has more people gone without water, food and energy.

in rwanda they are right now struggling because there simply isnt enough land at all, never mind equipment for modern farming technique, this results in people selling their land to western investors who then proceed planting a cash crop, ie. not food. in the end it will make it even harder for them to be self supporting.

Think of how well off the Rowandans would be if they did not sell their land.

ruveyn

they would still need to fill almost a third of their food needs from other countries,

Malthusian collapse is inevitable when you combine exponential growth with finite resources. Technology, efficiency savings, free markets, communism not of it matters.

There are 3 options:

We leave the planet to continue exponential growth in the stars - this is probably impossible.

We stop being a bunch of idiots and control our population numbers in a nice, palatable way - this is politically impossible.

Or the final option, we share the fate of every single other species in history that has a population explosion and consumes all available resources - we die off unpleasantly till our numbers become sustainable.

Number 3 is the most likely. Of course we could learn to control our numbers and consumption (we do have the brains for it) but I would not bet on it.

ruveyn

number 3 is already happening, we are in a state of overshoot already, our population should have stopped at the 3-4 billion mark (sustains european living standards globally, american consumption is four times higher than that for a total sustainable population of just about a billion, or the same population the earth had untill about the 1800's)

Still working with a finite base, even if the parakeet's extraterrestrial ambitions start to fly. Finite supplies - and more importantly finite room for an already overcrowded species.

We produce enough food to feed everybody. These are political failings.