Are we overpopulated?

B

Bayerithe

1,000+ Posts
not sure if this goes in Quack's or West Mall.

With all the financial troubles and debt crisis matters at hand, it makes me wonder ... are we overpopulated, as a nation AND as a planet?

With unemployment at 9%+, there aren't enough jobs to go around. Were the days of 4-5% unemployment a time of fake prosperity? Do we have too many people draining government services such as unempoyment, medicare, social security, etc?

Do we simply have too many mouths to feed? Did we pass some limit at some point where the number of people simply passed the abilty to support those people, both financially, and environmentally? Are we past a level of sustainability?

We've started bioengineering crops with GMO's (genetically modified organisms), and we've increased the ability to grow livestock via hormones to meet increased demand and to keep costs low ... are we contributing to cancer cases this way?

In a ripple effect, we're outsourcing jobs and manufacturing to other countries in order to maintain cheap parts and products, to satisfy the public. As a country, we've become a nation of services rather than manufacturing, sitting on a throne of fake, paper money that spins round and round at the stock markets.

Are there just too many people? Have we bought into some mindset that our families need to be ginormous to be content? Does it go back to not being satisfied with just a manageable amount? I see news reports of people having anywhere from 8 kids to tv shows with 19 kids??

Do people really expect us being able to sustain current levels of population growth?

As a father, I look at my son and think that I couldn't imagine devoting my attention to more than 2 or 3 children, let alone 5, 6 or more. I feel quality over quantity here as far as attention giving goes.

So ... are we suffering from excess population? Is education the answer? Abstinence programs?

Have we lost a sense of quality, over quantity, in so many facets of our lives?
 
We might be, but the last number I read from a few years ago put the U.S. population rate at around 2.1 kids per pair (I think that's the measure they used.) Essentially, the number was right around what you would need to keep the population healthy and not in decline.

From what I understand, the only countries with non-sustainable growth rates are third-world, particularly in the Middle East and Asia. In fact, some have suggested Europeans are actually under-breeding, and that they may be facing a pretty serious labor crisis down the line. I haven't done research on this, so I don't know how accurate that is.

The problem is that the ideas of population control tend to be proposed and supported in areas where it's not really an issue. It doesn't do any good to underpopulate one country while others continue to overpopulate.
 
I would say that there are definitely too many people on the planet. There will be massive food and water shortages in the future. China isnt building up its millitary becaue they are afraid of its neighbors. They are doing so to obtain resources in the future for its population.

We also have too many people for our representative form of government. Back in the day we had 1 rep for every 60,000 people. now we have 1 rep for every million or so. This country wasnt really designed to be a large federal bureaucracy. it was designed to be a republic of states, all with differing views, constitutions, etc. and a small federal government to hold it together.
 
General, that is a great point in that last paragraph. To me, has the government has attempted to respond to growth by trying to increase it's own size and programs to accomodate an increasing population?

Let's somewhat forget about growth for a minute and think about something ... in 2010, the US population was at almost 310 million.

What if we had 20% less people? (250 mill) What sort of impact would there be on the country? I'd think infrastructure costs would be lower, to manage less people on the roads. Environmentally, we'd be somewhat cleaner. We'd see some level of unemployment change, I'd think. There'd be more demand for labor, even though we'd see some drop in services/jobs needed to serve a larger populous.

All in all, I think it would be more manageable.

I go back to that point about needing to biologically alter crops and livestock, to feed the current levels of population and wonder if it would be needed, at least as much as we do, to support a population that was 20% smaller.
 
Over-population alarmists always amuse me. Aren't enough jobs? Of course there are. It's all about allocation of resources. And that 9% will slowly become 5%, which is damn near full. We weren't over-populated in '99 or '06 when employment was fine.

Much more importantly, what population alarmists don't seem to grasp is that the minute population declines, economies and stock markets decline with it. Just ask Japan and certain Euro countries with severely declining birth rates.

This is a stupid and lazy criticism of the world.
 
From an economic point of view, I am not sure you can have too many people. In fact, in general growth in populations help economies grow.

From an agricultural viewpoint, we are nowhere near reaching a point where we cannot feed our populations. Efficiency can be improved and starving populations have more to do with logistics and capital than sustainability.

From an environmental point of view, while we aren't anywhere near reaching overpopulation from a theoretical viewpoint, we are reaching overpopulation from a practical viewpoint. If everyone wanted to live like we do in the US, the world would already be overpopulated. As it is, we aren't overpopulated, but we are destroying our environment. There is no denying that the world has fewer and fewer pristine ecosystems and while there might be debate, I believe we are depleting many resources. All along the equator from the coral reefs to the jungles in Asia, S. America, and Africa we see encroachment from man. As a value judgement, I see this as a problem but from a purely scientific viewpoint, I only forsee us heading towards problems. As we move further away from the equator, man has a smaller impact. On the downside, however, growth is often slower in these parts of the world so any impact that we may have may take longer to reverse.
 
From now on I support the wineries in the hill country as much as possible.
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let's not go overboard. texas wines are pretty terrible and some of them are expensive and terrible. you can support the us economy by buying wines in the united states.
 
i am worried way, way more the availability of water than the availability of fossil fuels over the next 100 years.
 
The sad truth is- water and food will become more expensive. So will oil and coal. This will cause more poverty and starvation in much of the world. People will die either directly (starvation) or indirectly (wars over resources, lack of proper health care etc.)
 
To go back to a line of discussion earlier in the thread, our population growth rate of ~2.1% is close to what most consider the optimal rate. The problem is the distribution of that growth. Family size has a very close inverse correlation to education level. That makes it harder to find the people needed to staff more technical jobs while unskilled workers fill the unemployment ranks.

Europe is seeing a similar issue to us - the population growth of ethnic Europeans is very low and the growth rate of immigrants is very high. This is significantly and rapidly changing the ethnic makeup of those countries, and making the natives very uncomfortable. A notable exception is Switzerland, which has strict immigration and citizenship restrictions. Their model is looking better to more and more people all the time.

At some point, this will reach a boiling point, likely over there before it does here.
 
If population growth continues, at some point there will be too many people on the planet.

TO find an optimal number of us, the kinds of basic or perhaps starting questions scientists should ask and try to answer are for example:

1) At what number of human beings will the energy represented by the sun hitting the Earth be less that the energy used by humans?

2) At what number of human beings or O2 depletion will we have to start manufacturing O2 to stay alive?

3) At what level of energy use will the planet be unable to radiate off assuming there is no global warming?

There has got to be an optimal number of human beings, a number which can at least partially be determined by science and math.

To justify that number if high, there ought to be a nobler purpose to our being here, namely to find a way to move our species off the planet without resorting to mass murder and other socialist utopian restrictions on life and freedom.

We need to graduate from Earth and starting filling up the Universe with green.
 
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