Overpopulation is real. Let's use one of the most famous overpopulation examples: China.
dude location is irrelevant. 7 billion people on earth = not enough to go around. end of story. for a while we've had a pretty high population and much of the wealth going to a few nations. but now other large countries are catching up. we already are seeing the effects of the emerging chinese middle- and upper-classes and their increased demand for goods driving up food and other commodity prices. it's unsustainable.........either we get the world's population under control or everyone suffers.Originally Posted by goldenchild9
Africa is not one of those examples, though.
It has the lowest population density on Earth and plenty of land for population expansion.
Originally Posted by JOE CAMEL SMOOTH
dude location is irrelevant. 7 billion people on earth = not enough to go around. end of story. for a while we've had a pretty high population and much of the wealth going to a few nations. but now other large countries are catching up. we already are seeing the effects of the emerging chinese middle- and upper-classes and their increased demand for goods driving up food and other commodity prices. it's unsustainable.........either we get the world's population under control or everyone suffers.Originally Posted by goldenchild9
Africa is not one of those examples, though.
It has the lowest population density on Earth and plenty of land for population expansion.
Originally Posted by Wr
Originally Posted by JOE CAMEL SMOOTH
dude location is irrelevant. 7 billion people on earth = not enough to go around. end of story. for a while we've had a pretty high population and much of the wealth going to a few nations. but now other large countries are catching up. we already are seeing the effects of the emerging chinese middle- and upper-classes and their increased demand for goods driving up food and other commodity prices. it's unsustainable.........either we get the world's population under control or everyone suffers.Originally Posted by goldenchild9
Africa is not one of those examples, though.
It has the lowest population density on Earth and plenty of land for population expansion.
these problems are only relevant because people are trying to govern more and more humans with smaller groups of people's or elites. if everybody wasn't forced to participate under trade restrictions and hindering economic policies and have sustainable economics not (free market capitalism/ back door corporate socialism) these things wouldn't even be an issue.
People swear that there is a shortage of food in the world. Do you have any idea how much food get's thrown away daily? Do you know how many farmers are paid not to grow food?
the world's populations are sustainable. Population CONTROL is not and never will be.
the only thing unsustainable is our economic policies.
[h1]On World Population Day, take note: population isn’t the problem[/h1] 124
by Fred Pearce
11 Jul 2010 3:00 AM
http://www.grist.org/share/2010-07-11-on-world-population-day-take-note-population-isnt-the-problem
Is population growth the cause of our troubles?A green myth is on the march. It wants to blame the world'soverbreeding poor people for the planet's peril. It stinks. Andon World Population Day, I encourage fellow environmentalists not to beseduced.
Some greens think all efforts to savethe world are doomed unless we "do something" about continuing populationgrowth. But this is nonsense. Worse, it is dangerous nonsense.
For a start, the population bomb that Iremember being scared by 40 years ago as a schoolkid is being defusedfast. Back then, most women roundthe world had five or six children. Today's women have just half as many as their mothers -- an average of2.6. Not just in the rich world,but almost everywhere.
This is getting close to the long-termreplacement level, which, allowing for girls who don't make it to adulthood, isaround 2.3. Women arecutting their family sizes not because governments tell them to, but for theirown good and the good of their families -- and if it helps the planet too, thenso much the better.
This is a stunning change in just onegeneration. Why don't we hear moreabout it? Because it doesn't fitthe doomsday agenda.
Half the world now has fewer than the"replacement level" of children. That includes Europe, North America, and the Caribbean, most of the FarEast from Japan to Thailand, and much of the Middle East from Algeria toIran.
Yes, Iran. Women in Tehran today have fewer children than theirsisters in New York -- and a quarter as many as their mothers had. The mullahs may not like it, but thoseguys don't count for much in the bedroom.
And China. There, the communist government decides how many childrencouples can have. The one-childpolicy is brutal and repulsive. But the odd thing is that it may not make much difference any more. Chinese women round the world have gonethe same way without compulsion. When Britain finally handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, it had thelowest fertility in the world -- below one child per woman. Britain wasn't running a covertone-child policy. That was as manychildren as the women in Hong Kong wanted.
What is going on? Family-planning experts used to saythat women only started having fewer children when they got educated or escapedpoverty -- like us. But tell thatto the women of Bangladesh.
Recently I met Aisha, Miriam, and Akhi-- three women from three families working in a backstreet sweatshop in thecapital Dhaka. Together, they had22 brothers and sisters. But theytold me they planned to have only six children between them. That was the global reproductiverevolution summed up in one shack.Bangladesh is one of the world's poorest nations. Its girls are among the least educatedin the world, and mostly marry in their mid-teens. Yet they have on averagejust three children now.
India is even lower at 2.8. In Brazil, hotbed of Catholicism, mostwomen have two children. Andnothing the priests say can stop millions of them getting sterilized. The local joke is that they preferbeing sterilized to other methods of contraception because you only have toconfess once. It may not be a joke.
Women are having smaller familiesbecause, for the first time in history, they can. Because we have largely eradicated the diseases that used tomean most children died before growing up. Mothers no longer need to have five or six children toensure the next generation, so they don't.
There are holdouts, of course. In parts of rural Africa, women stillhave five or more children. Buteven here they are being rational -- they need the kids to mind the animals andwork in the fields.
But most of the world now lives incities. And in cities, childrenare an economic burden. You haveto get them educated before they can get a job. And by then they are ready to leave home.
The big story is that rich or poor,socialist or capitalist, Muslim or Catholic, secular or devout, with toughgovernment birth-control policies or none, most countries tell the samestory: Small families are the newnorm.
That doesn't mean women don't stillneed help to achieve their ambitions of small families. They need governments or charities todistribute modern contraception.But this is now about rights for women, not "population control."
It is also true that population growthhas not ceased yet. We have 6.8billion people today, and may end up with another 2 billion before thepopulation bomb is finally defused. But this is mainly because of a time lag while the huge numbers of youngwomen born during the baby boom years of the 20th century remain fertile.
With half the world already atbelow-replacement birthrates, and with those rates still falling fast, theworld's population will probably be shrinking within a generation.
This is good news for the environment,for sure. But don't put out theflags. Another myth put out by the population doom-mongers is that it's allthose extra people that are wrecking the planet. But that's no longer the case.
Risingconsumption today is a far bigger threat to the environment than a rising headcount. And most of that extra consumptionis still happening in rich countries that have long since given up growingtheir populations.
Virtuallyall of the remaining population growth is in the poor world, and the poor halfof the planet is only responsible for 7 percent of carbon emissions.
The carbon emissions ofone American today are equivalent to those of around four Chinese, 20 Indians,40 Nigerians, or 250 Ethiopians. How dare rich-world greens blame the poor world for the planet's perils?
Some greens need to takea long, hard look at themselves. They should remember where some of their ideas came from.
The granddaddy ofdemographic doomsters was Bob Malthus, an English clergyman who got famous bywarning 200 years ago about population growth. He believed that the world's population would keepincreasing till it was cut down by disease or famine. Back in the ferment of the Industrial Revolution, he was afavorite of the evil mill owners and a scourge on anyone with a social conscience.
Malthus hated Victoriancharities because he said they were keeping poor people alive to breed. Better that they die, he said. He believed the workhouses, where thedestitute ended up, were too lenient, and he successfully campaigned for aget-tough law known at the time as Malthus's Law.
The novelist CharlesDickens, a social reformer, attacked Malthus in several of his books. When Oliver Twist asked for more gruelin the workhouse, that was a satire on Malthus's Law. In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge was acaricature of Malthus. In HardTimes,Thomas Gradgrind, the unfeeling headmaster of Coketown, had a son calledMalthus.
I think Karl Marx,another contemporary, was spot on when he called Malthusian ideas "a libel onthe human race." And we are seeingthe truth of that today as, round the world, women are voluntarily cuttingtheir family sizes. No compulsionneeded.
The population bomb isbeing defused right now -- by the world's poor women. Sadly, the consumption bomb is still primed and ever moredangerous. Now that would be aproper target for environmentalists.
What is evidence then? What evidence do you need other then whats right in front of you?
Originally Posted by JOE CAMEL SMOOTH
are you joking? we don't have the resources or the space for even our current population to live and consume at a level close to what citizens of "1st world nations" currently do.
not even close.
and the golf course arguments you made is ridiculous. that's like me saying "there's no recession, i spent $10,000 on bottle service last night"
It's like you all studied the same information packet on how to write these conspiracy posts. Impressive.
You forgot a crucial step... OPEN YOUR EYES.
