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Is it inevitable that due to rapid population growth millions of people will die?

Is it inevitable that millions of people will have to die due to population growth?

  • Yes

    Votes: 14 35.9%
  • No

    Votes: 25 64.1%

  • Total voters
    39
M

McjaqqerSwaqqer

One of my friends recently got into a heated debate with me as to weather or not millions of people are going to have to die as a result of rapid population growth. His logic was that as resources become depleted, and demand grows, people will be forced to fight over the remaining resources and in the process will have to kill each other. I however disagreed. I stated that I understood the premise behind which this scenario would take place. However I argued the inevitability of this situation ever presenting itself. I stated that through technological and intellectual achievements we will have the potential to maintain a larger more robust population indefinitely. My logic was the following.... Today we live in a world of 7 billion people. 300 years ago we could never have hoped to maintain such a large population effectively. However due to technological and other developments we are able to. Why must this trend which has been going on since the dawn of men stop now?..... My friend went on to argue that the killing of millions of people might not be such a bad thing because it would help others survive more efficiently and allow them to have more resources. HE ARGUED THAT THE DEATH OF MILLIONS WOULD BE BETTER FOR MANKIND. To this I replied, who decides who dies and who doesn't. I also replied saying that he was out of his mind. I just want to receive reassurance that I was not the one with faulty logic because I was in a setting in which 5 people were supporting his thinking and only two other people were supporting mine. (The people who supported the person with this reasoning supported him primarily because they believe he is some freaken diety and because they don't like me)
 
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How about billions (of people)? :confused:
 
My friend went on to argue that the killing of millions of people might not be such a bad thing because it would help others survive more efficiently and allow them to have more resources.

It would make sense if we were locust or even sheep. But we happen to be a species that creates and develops "resources". Not coincidentally, life is just fine in densely populated Holland, and not so comfortable in near-empty Ethiopia. It is about good government, culture and infrastructures, not about how many people are there. The more, the better, as long as they behave.
 
It would make sense if we were locust or even sheep. But we happen to be a species that creates and develops "resources". Not coincidentally, life is just fine in densely populated Holland, and not so comfortable in near-empty Ethiopia. It is about good government, culture and infrastructures, not about how many people are there. The more, the better, as long as they behave.

The current state of the world's ecosystems really paints a different picture.

The number of humans doesn't matter as much as the kind of lifestyle the humans want to live. Countries like the USA are resource hogs and can't live without their luxuries. If every human on earth lived in more realistic proportion to the annual natural bounty, we could sustain our current numbers.
 
Haha, why, because their insights make you uncomfortable? :)

More like their insights are barbaric and ridiculous. Forced population control and advocacy of wars and diseases? You really have the balls to wear a libertarian lean under that title?
 
The current state of the world's ecosystems really paints a different picture.

The number of humans doesn't matter as much as the kind of lifestyle the humans want to live. Countries like the USA are resource hogs and can't live without their luxuries. If every human on earth lived in more realistic proportion to the annual natural bounty, we could sustain our current numbers.

Why should limit ourselves to the current numbers? When there were a hundred thousand of us, huddling in caves, the "natural bounty" could barely support our numbers - starvation and diseases were killing most of us off before the age of 25. Doing better now, at 7 billion.

(Remind me, when those global famines were supposed to start, according to Paul Ehrlich's Population Bomb? Was it the 1970s or the 1980s?)

The state of the world's ecosystems is exactly a reflection of our "lifestyle", but not necessarily in the way you mean. The nearly complete deforestation of New England in the 19th century had been nearly completely reversed, as Americans developed more efficient ways of doing agriculture. Meanwhile, the worst ecological damage ever was done in the places like the USSR and Maoist China - by mismanagement and idiotic megalomaniac projects - places not knows for their addiction to "luxuries".
 
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When we run out of Phosphorous the world will be a radically different place. That will be our grandkids and great grandkids problem. Nothing will change until lazy people suddenly cannot get cheap, abundant food.
 
The language of 'have' is troubling and bothersome. It is that way because, for all intents and purposes, large quantities of people will likely be purged to thin our ranks. Overpopulation of human beings is a problem. While I'd rather no one get killed over it, I'm not a decision maker, but decision makers have been talking about overpopulation and population control as far back as I know to President Nixon (Richard Nixon: Special Message to the Congress on Problems of Population Growth.). The U.N. talks about it. Hell, Bill Gates is even rumored to discuss it.

The thing is, is that the talking stage of population control will one day go into an operational phase of population control. The facts may be hard to face head-on, but the more of us around there is, the more strain it has on every vital natural service. We already know supply can't keep up with demand. People, billions of them, are going without. That's why the U.N. suggested eating bugs. And the ones that are living okay, well, our materialism is killing our environment. Something, sooner or later, is going to give, and in a big way too and a lot of us that are still young are going to endure truly horrific times because of the short-sightedness of those that came before us.

And they said the future would be bright colors and flying cars…
 
When we run out of Phosphorous the world will be a radically different place. That will be our grandkids and great grandkids problem. Nothing will change until lazy people suddenly cannot get cheap, abundant food.

Peak Phosphorous, just like Peak Coal, Peak Copper (yeah that was a thing), Peak Tin (that too), and Peak Just-About-Everything, is a problem that will be overcome by human ingenuity driven by market pressures. Every single time we've encountered these alleged problems in the past we have always found unconventional sources for these materials, increased the efficiency of our extraction, or generated alternatives for the purposes they were originally suited for. It is why Paul Ehrlich (that awful old man who wrote the Population Bomb) always loses the bets he makes on commodities prices and was signally embarrassed in the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which Ehrlich bet that the prices of a basket of commodities (copper, chrome, nickel, tungsten, tin) would skyrocket from 1980 to 1990. The high profile bet went in Simon's favor in 1990 as all five commodities fell in value.

The Earth has a mass of six trillion trillion kilograms and we've only scratched the surface (literally) of its bounty. How did we avoid peak oil? By innovating new methods for reaching deeper and more inaccessible fields and by creating new tools for increasing efficiency from existing ones. It is a process we will continue to repeat for other resources because the raw materials are there in abundant quantities. Where there is a need a way will be found as it always has.

Malthusians have this sickening problem of seeing every new human is another mouth to feed, another body to clothe, another potential problem in waiting. While they should see a new mind, a new member of the labor force, a new leader, a new artist, in other words: potential. For example in the long term I think one of the greatest developments in the history of modern civilization has been the lifting of China from the dregs of the third world. We are only just beginning to feel the impact of millions of new scientists, engineers, and artists. Imagine magnifying that by similar developments in the rest of the developing world and you could transform the planet.
 
The current state of the world's ecosystems really paints a different picture.

The number of humans doesn't matter as much as the kind of lifestyle the humans want to live. Countries like the USA are resource hogs and can't live without their luxuries. If every human on earth lived in more realistic proportion to the annual natural bounty, we could sustain our current numbers.

We have added a billion people in the past decade and the standard of living across the developing world has improved. If the introduction of a significant percentage of our entire species in such a short time span has not led to a population driven environmental/economic collapse what makes you think we are struggling at all?
 
One of my friends recently got into a heated debate with me as to weather or not millions of people are going to have to die as a result of rapid population growth. His logic was that as resources become depleted, and demand grows, people will be forced to fight over the remaining resources and in the process will have to kill each other. I however disagreed. I stated that I understood the premise behind which this scenario would take place. However I argued the inevitability of this situation ever presenting itself. I stated that through technological and intellectual achievements we will have the potential to maintain a larger more robust population indefinitely. My logic was the following.... Today we live in a world of 7 billion people. 300 years ago we could never have hoped to maintain such a large population effectively. However due to technological and other developments we are able to. Why must this trend which has been going on since the dawn of men stop now?..... My friend went on to argue that the killing of millions of people might not be such a bad thing because it would help others survive more efficiently and allow them to have more resources. HE ARGUED THAT THE DEATH OF MILLIONS WOULD BE BETTER FOR MANKIND. To this I replied, who decides who dies and who doesn't. I also replied saying that he was out of his mind. I just want to receive reassurance that I was not the one with faulty logic because I was in a setting in which 5 people were supporting his thinking and only two other people were supporting mine. (The people who supported the person with this reasoning supported him primarily because they believe he is some freaken diety and because they don't like me)

I think it is. I use to live in the country then got swallowed up by city growth, move further out, got swallowed up again and move again. That is a heck of a lot of farm land to lose to urban development, suburbs and population growth. Sure hybrids and technology has increased the yield of crops immensely per acre and that is the only reason millions aren't starving now. But what happens if the next set of hybrid seed doesn't work. Then in a lot of places water for the crops and drinking now come from underground aquifers and the water is being used faster than it is being replenished. What about the next blight or infestation that current chemicals can't control?

I think when this starts to happen the death toll won't be millions, but billions especially the way the population keep on growing. We have a handle on it now, but no one knows about tomorrow.
 
people in poorer countries do die of starvation now every day because they can't sustain themselves and rely on charity to feed themselves.
 
Peak Phosphorous, just like Peak Coal, Peak Copper (yeah that was a thing), Peak Tin (that too), and Peak Just-About-Everything, is a problem that will be overcome by human ingenuity driven by market pressures. Every single time we've encountered these alleged problems in the past we have always found unconventional sources for these materials, increased the efficiency of our extraction, or generated alternatives for the purposes they were originally suited for. It is why Paul Ehrlich (that awful old man who wrote the Population Bomb) always loses the bets he makes on commodities prices and was signally embarrassed in the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which Ehrlich bet that the prices of a basket of commodities (copper, chrome, nickel, tungsten, tin) would skyrocket from 1980 to 1990. The high profile bet went in Simon's favor in 1990 as all five commodities fell in value.

The Earth has a mass of six trillion trillion kilograms and we've only scratched the surface (literally) of its bounty. How did we avoid peak oil? By innovating new methods for reaching deeper and more inaccessible fields and by creating new tools for increasing efficiency from existing ones. It is a process we will continue to repeat for other resources because the raw materials are there in abundant quantities. Where there is a need a way will be found as it always has.

Malthusians have this sickening problem of seeing every new human is another mouth to feed, another body to clothe, another potential problem in waiting. While they should see a new mind, a new member of the labor force, a new leader, a new artist, in other words: potential. For example in the long term I think one of the greatest developments in the history of modern civilization has been the lifting of China from the dregs of the third world. We are only just beginning to feel the impact of millions of new scientists, engineers, and artists. Imagine magnifying that by similar developments in the rest of the developing world and you could transform the planet.

It isn't "peak" phosphorous that is the issue, but supplies of minable phosphorous. It is the same thing with abundant free water in the midwest. sure we can desal and pipe it in from the coastlines, but what is that going to do to food prices. It is helium which the US is running out of but is dumping onto the market at a loss for reasons known but God. Then there is the mismatch between supply and demand for things like medical technetium isotopes that have to be generated as needed because of their very limited shelf-life (in terms of hours)
 
people in poorer countries do die of starvation now every day because they can't sustain themselves and rely on charity to feed themselves.



In most cases this is due to one or more of the following:

1. Bad, corrupt, inefficient or very greedy/top-down government.
2. Low technology, poor agricultural methods.
3. They live in a desert, or area very unsuited to agriculture.
4. Bad economic model in use.
 
In most cases this is due to one or more of the following:

1. Bad, corrupt, inefficient or very greedy/top-down government.
2. Low technology, poor agricultural methods.
3. They live in a desert, or area very unsuited to agriculture.
4. Bad economic model in use.
Those who need the most breed the most.
If you can't feed yourself don't make kids.
If sex is the only form of entertainment you can afford, You shouldn't have sex.
 
Those who need the most breed the most.
If you can't feed yourself don't make kids.
If sex is the only form of entertainment you can afford, You shouldn't have sex.


Many of those in the poorest starving areas have limited access to contraception, and often do not know how to use natural methods or have tribal taboos against same.
 
You know i heard this theory that when the world's population rises high enough eventually the man power will become so overwhelming that they go to the military. And when the military becomes big enough you eventually get another Napoleon or another Hitler. And when you get that you get ww3 and the bodyest war in history.
 
Many of those in the poorest starving areas have limited access to contraception, and often do not know how to use natural methods or have tribal taboos against same.

Then don't have sex.
Problem solved.
 
Considering the chance of death in humans is 100%, it's virtually certain that if millions more people are born that each and every one of them will die.

Sorry for the bad news.
 
More like their insights are barbaric and ridiculous. Forced population control and advocacy of wars and diseases?

No, those aren't insights into the problem, they're what some people (though not may) suggest as a solution. Some might advocate government policy aimed at those ends, but the thread asks about the inevitability of mass die-offs because of population growth. A couple big things are profoundly dependent on oil, which in my opinion are industrial food production and global freight. Without these things, 8+ billion people cannot be sustained. We've grown dependent on systems that require oil, so whenever oil goes away, we do.
 
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