The World Has Hit 7 Billion in Population

http://news.yahoo.com/challenges-loom-world-population-hits-7-billion-040835519.html

Isn't humanity really some busy rabbits?

We're between a rock and a hard place: We could stop population growth, even make it negative. If we want humanity to survive, we should. But then the youth would have to support a humongous generation of old people, and that's intolerably unfair.

There's no way out of this one. Well, actually there is: Mechanizing the vast majority of work and implementing socialism... Y'know, make sure nobody has to work but everybody gets a paycheck. That'd be a way out of the conundrum.... But it would be enormously hard to implement.

edited 17th Oct '11 7:46:05 AM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

Actually, the world is headed for stable/declining population growth for simple economic reasons. In most "first world" countries, it used to be that a couple had 5 or more kids because one or two could be expected to die young and the others would help the family farm/business be more profitable fairly soon in life. Kids are now more of a liability than an investment for much longer (usually until they are done with high school) and are not expected to die which leads to it making economic sense to have not have as many kids. If you look at most "first world" countries, they have had declining population growth for a while now.

What is causing the most of the growth are the second world countries that have the life-saving technology available but have the culture/tradition of having large families.

Yu hav nat sein bod speeling unntil know. (cacke four undersandig tis)the cake is a lie!

That has its own downsides, namely this:

The Technocracy government in Call To Power got started on the concept of "liberate all from manual labor with machinery". The problem was that the only jobs left were the kind only available to skilled engineers, scientists, and other highly educated folks, so to keep the masses distracted (because when everything is given to you for free, life kind of becomes meaningless and dull when nobody wants you to do anything), the government started to issue mandatory drug regiments, a literal "opiate of the masses". Then the computers in control of everything got their own ideas...

Not saying it would go that way for us, but you do have to remember that a lot of people will lose their livelihoods if you start replacing their jobs with machines. The only good way to do this, if you ask me, is to have the government sponsor free re-education programs to get people more tech-savvy, and hope that the costs of these programs is offset by the increase in production. Not easy to implement!

This seems just plain false to me.

Assuming, for the sake of discussion, that we will ever get to the point in which the few jobs still available are for highly educated, specialized folks, and the rest of the population is allowed a good lifestyle with no need whatsoever for work, what I would expect to happen is the beginning of the "age of the amateur" I heard a few people talking about.

If people have too much free time, they don't get existential angst — at least, not necessarily so. Rather, they find themselves some hobbies, just like many retired people do nowadays. So you'd have people who obsess over gardening, or over some form of art, or over politics, or over religion, or whatever — and, with so much free time available, I'd be ready to bet that many of them would end up doing interesting contributions. Not a bad scenario, I think.

Returning to the subject at hand... Woo! Go humankind!

Overpopulation does not concern me much at the moment — the way I see it, there is still more than enough space for other people, and more humans means more innovation.

I mean, come on, we have not colonized most of the deserts yet, nor the oceans, nor the atmosphere, nor the underground — there is plenty of room available!

edited 17th Oct '11 9:03:34 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

You are right, we've only colonized about 50% of Earth arable land. We should totally take over the rest as well. Where was it again? Oh yes, the Amazon rain forest, the Congo, the few jungles left in Malaysia...

I'm being facetious, but you get the point, hopefully. This isn't just OUR planet - every time that humanity spreads, something else loses its habitat. We could, in theory, plow every last remaining plot of arable land, but at what cost to the rest of life on Earth? Do you really want to live on a planet where the only species are the few that we managed to domesticate, and the only environments are cultivated land? Frankly I wouldn't want to live on the planet Coruscant, and neither should you!

Well, not to mention that a lot of that vegetation and whatnot we'd be destroying is what keeps our atmosphere breathable and livable. Having a planet-wide city would require a ton of atmospheric control technology that we're, well, nowhere near having. And then might conk out in the next hurricane or solar flare anyway. Heck, we're already at the point where any given first world country would be screwed if they had something knock out the power grid over too large a portion of their area.

Heathen's wrong, anyway. We could cut population growth, suffer out the few decades of lopsided age ratios until the old, well, succumb to the inevitable, then be much better off afterwards. Unfair, yes, but actually a quite viable way out of this one.

edited 17th Oct '11 9:17:22 AM by Jeysie

Apparently I am adorable, but my GF is my #1 Groupie. (Avatar by Dreki-K)

^^ Jungle soil actually makes for terrible farming.

Doesn't stop people from trying it, though, does it?

I think its about time that we consider suicide booths, to be honest. If someone wants to end their existence, make it as affordable and as painless as possible. Or painful, sometimes they want it painful...

Yes, because publicly funding suicide is a brilliant idea.

Actually, I think that this kind of is our planet. I appreciate the existence of other species, and I understand their usefulness for the ecological equilibrium; but ultimately, my first concern is for humankind, not for some rare species of squirrel or lizard. I'd want to keep some specimens in a museum, of course, for scientific reasons; but if such a being becomes extinct in the wild, as long as this does not spark an ecological catastrophe I will not care in the least.

But ultimately, I think that a even more widespread human presence, combined with a good understanding of ecological roles and equilibria, would be beneficial to our planet. Let us not kid ourselves, the ecological systems of Earth have always been unstable: there are many, many, many records of ecological catastrophes, most of which had nothing whatsoever to do with human intervention.

This seems the kind of problem that an intelligent, endemic species is especially suited to deal with — at least, once we have managed to achieve a sufficient understanding of ecological systems.

I do not advocate razing the forests to farm them, of course, that would be a stupid move. Perhaps our technology would allow some more people to inhabit them and actually have a positive effect on their ecological stability; but I agree, you cannot send billions of people there.

But there are a number of other free niches that we could take. There are the deserts, for example: I am pretty sure that our technology is already sufficient to colonize good parts of them, should the need arise. And — this is my favourite idea, to be honest — there is the underground, which would give us incredible amounts of available room.

edited 17th Oct '11 9:31:57 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Population growth really isn't that big a deal, it's inefficient space allocation that is.

Look at the giant, mostly empty space in the middle of the US, and then look at the population density of India and China. Yeah...

I am now known as Flyboy.

That giant "mostly empty" space is filled with croplands. It's empty of people because we needed somewhere to put all the corn.

Does anyone think that Anti-Spirals will come and doom us all since we got so big now?It's a joke from Gurren Laggan.

The US also massively overproduces on farm goods, to the point where the government subsidizes the destruction of said goods so that the whole market doesn't crash.

Losing a good chunk of the farm land would not be that big a deal.

I am now known as Flyboy.

Don't Explain the Joke is in full force, here

You realize that is mostly a myth. Most excess crop is now converted to ethanol, and those farm subsidies are basically making it so that farmers can make a modest living off of their profession. Without them, most farmers would be forced to sell their land to Big Food, which would be bad for everybody but the corporations, because then the companies would just plant monoculture everywhere and wait until the new potato blight showed up to wreck our food supplies.

edited 17th Oct '11 9:46:52 AM by MyGodItsFullofStars

Overpopulation will need to be tackled by a notion of measures:

• Increase infrastructure will be both a short term and long term response to the issue to allow the coping with increased population.

• One major issue with increase population is increased resource consumption, raising population levels. We must increase our efficiency to allow survival.

• The mechanised workforce idea could have implications: resource management may become easier and could aid the development of infrastructure as well as help manage as increased population.

• Improve the distribution of medicine and food in developing nations will increase the survival rates of children. This in turn will encourage smaller families as child death will be lower if it be.

• Finally... this is the “mad idea.” I sense that in the near future when we begin the development of colonising the stars... well let’s just say we could ease our population if we could begin the journey to Mars sooner. Food for thought.

I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok. I sleep all night and work all day.

I agree, but for a rather distant notion of "near future". The Gobi desert, for example, is pretty much the Garden of Eden if compared to Mars, but it is basically uninhabited right now. Before starting to think about colonizing Mars, we should find a way to build livable cities in the Gobi desert an in other areas of that kind — it's far easier (in fact, I am pretty sure that it would already be possible, although for now the potential benefits are nowhere close to the cost). Oh, and the oceans, these are also far easier to colonize than Mars — the distance is closer, you have all the oxygen and the raw materials you want, and there are plenty of species to raise as food.

Or, and here I return again to my favourite idea, start digging down and build subterranean, multilevel cities. There is plenty of more room underneath Earth's surface than on it, and, in fact, doing that would allow us to reduce our ecological impact on the surface. Plus we could get some serious amount of geothermal energy, and a great amount of useful minerals. And it would be way, way cool.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Although there would be a host of long-term physiological issues with regards to lack of sunlight exposure and such...

I am now known as Flyboy.

Surely, if you have access to geothermal energy, rigging up appropriate levels of UV light wouldn't be much of a problem.

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

USAF@Hey,same thing happened in Gurren Laggan as well.

I'd say we build Humongeous Mecha anyway for the fun of it.

On topic:I'd say this might be good to look into doing moon colonies.And Nasa might get funding for it.

...wouldn't that create too much heat, given that now it's not a large open space that comparatively easily vents?

I am now known as Flyboy.

...Right. My immediate thought was to vent it through to the surface, which is probably not an exceptionally bright idea.

With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.

Well, my thinking went "hm, it would be too dark, the kids born down there would be fucked." Then you said that and I thought "wait, wouldn't they all cook? You couldn't possibly vent all that heat effectively!"

Maybe they could figure out a way to capture the heat? Boil some water, drive some turbines, etc.?

I am now known as Flyboy.

People don't need to spend every waking hour underground. It's not like they couldn't go to the surface to play in the park once a day, or we could even have timeshares where we switch rooms every few weeks, one on the surface one underground.

Getting ahead of ourselves though... The population growth is affecting third-world countries the most. We need to stop people from using agent orange on jungle to create farmlands before we can start building subterrenean techno-utopia megacitites.

edited 17th Oct '11 10:24:59 AM by ShirowShirow