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is the population bomb real

Is the world overpopulated


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And? Our fertility rate is still decreasing. The rate at which that clock records births will decline.

Not as fast as our life expectancy is increasing, which means population is still growing. This growth may be slowing down but it is still occurring - and it can pose problems. the only reason why the world supports as many people as it does now is due to advances in agriculture which have bought us a little more breathing room.

We are approaching carrying capacity for the earth, there is not much wiggle room between food supply and demand. We just have to hope technological advances related to agriculture continue to keep pace with the rate of growth, if this does not occur then we will be faced with a population crash, and one not of our choosing.

And yes I am against child quotas or other means of enforcing population control, but I also know that overpopulation is a looming threat, and if and when we hit carrying capacity it will not be a pretty picture as the overpopulation problem self corrects.
 
Regardless, that doesn't mean we have the resources to adequately support 7B people.
We have the resources...for now.
When a system get pushed to it's limits, the weaknesses start to show themselves.
Our ability to transport and distribute goods, is what keeps about 80% of the population alive.
If the overall system becomes compromised, look for bad things to happen.
Mother Nature is not a kind odds maker!
 
I've got a good idea. I suggest that all of the people who think the world is overpopulated do something about it by committing suicide.
 
this thread reminded me of Borlaug who -shortly after the writing of the population bomb - was credited with starting the "green revolution" which allowed India and SE Asia to produce enough crops to stave off disaster due to overpopulation at the time. Here is a quote of his and a link to an interesting read on the topic (wikipedia article about Borlaug)

According to Borlaug, "Africa, the former Soviet republics, and the cerrado are the last frontiers. After they are in use, the world will have no additional sizable blocks of arable land left to put into production, unless you are willing to level whole forests, which you should not do. So, future food-production increases will have to come from higher yields. And though I have no doubt yields will keep going up, whether they can go up enough to feed the population monster is another matter. Unless progress with agricultural yields remains very strong, the next century will experience sheer human misery that, on a numerical scale, will exceed the worst of everything that has come before"

Norman Borlaug - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
I saw Erlich speak while at school in the early seventies, and since the time of his book (which I also read), the world's population has just about doubled.

Since the world's resources are finite, and the ecological systems are fragile, it should be obvious to anybody with a functioning brain that our population can continue to double every 40 years.

Now, the rate of growth is certainly slowing, and in many of the more developed countries, the birth rates have actually fallen below replacement level. What many people fail to recognize is that the slowing of growth in these devloped countries is due, at least in some part, to public awareness of the dangers of unbridled population growth as publicized by people such as Erlich and the ZPG movement. Other factors have to do with women's rights, educational levels, culture and various other factors.

As to whether or not the population bomb is real, the better question is how to deal with a world where the population is still increasing in the underdeveloped world and decreasing in the developed. This is resulting in a shift of human resources from the undeveloped to the developed, as a shrinking labor market in the developed becomes more and more pronounced. To me, that is the real issue in today's word rather than the raw numbers of world population.
 
I agree. Tell the people in Africa and parts of Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan) to have less children.

Who are the countries that have the highest population problem?
African countries.

List of sovereign states and dependent territories by fertility rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Top 50 countries, almost all are exclusively african countries and they can't even be self-sufficient.

What are the countries that are the lowest? European countries (and western nations in general) and developed Asian countries.

So lets have all the nations that are in the top 50 half their birth rates and we'll have a steady, sustainable growth and more prosperity all over the place.

The people with the most children also tend to live in the areas of least consumption. It's not like Africa is a consumption powerhouse. If anything, it produces far more than it's able to consume which again is the least obvious point of the article.
 
Poor people are poor and rich people are rich because that is the result of constrained resources.
I don't disagree, but that is not the only cause. A bunch of constraints on resources are man-made and imposed, and it's not wealthy western nations that are imposing them.
 
More people is more than just adding a mouth, it is adding more brains and more innovation and possibility to our species. I'm emphatically not a malthusian, I consider myself to be an inspire humanist. I strongly believe (and I think it is quite strongly evidenced) in the ingenuity and capacity of our race to better our standard of living and the human condition in general. One of the greatest achievements of the past century in the long term may prove to be the rise of China, the lifting of hundreds of millions into moderate wealth and the creation of another wing of humanities creativity and genius.
 
I agree. Tell the people in Africa and parts of Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan) to have less children.

Who are the countries that have the highest population problem?
African countries.

List of sovereign states and dependent territories by fertility rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Top 50 countries, almost all are exclusively african countries and they can't even be self-sufficient.

What are the countries that are the lowest? European countries (and western nations in general) and developed Asian countries.

So lets have all the nations that are in the top 50 half their birth rates and we'll have a steady, sustainable growth and more prosperity all over the place.

You don't have a right to tell people they can or cannot have children.

Also, let's look at infant mortality rates (the ones at the bottom are the countries with the highest IMRs.)

List of countries by infant mortality rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
It still comes up with a huge baby booming. They should stop having so many children and take better care of the ones they have, and many of their problems will be solved.

How can they take care of the ones they have when their governments are vastly corrupt and their economies are underdeveloped?

Side note: Global Land Grab is also having an effect (Foreign Investors Are Buying Up Farmland in Third World - SPIEGEL ONLINE) (Land deals in Africa have led to a wild west) (The Great Land Grab: Rush for World)
 
How can they take care of the ones they have when their governments are vastly corrupt and their economies are underdeveloped?

Side note: Global Land Grab is also having an effect (Foreign Investors Are Buying Up Farmland in Third World - SPIEGEL ONLINE) (Land deals in Africa have led to a wild west) (The Great Land Grab: Rush for World)

They can't take care of themselves when they have such large families. Smaller, better focused families with a community oriented mentality is what they need to dig themselves out.
 
They can't take care of themselves when they have such large families. Smaller, better focused families with a community oriented mentality is what they need to dig themselves out.

How about instead other people stop going in and grabbing up land and stealing their resources? Africa has a massive abundance of natural resources, but can't actually grow their economy- which would lead to there being less births- due to external debt, corrupt governments, and countries (like France) going in on a whim to bomb them.

EDIT: Also, please tell me how you have the right to tell people if they can or cannot have children?
 
Not as fast as our life expectancy is increasing, which means population is still growing. This growth may be slowing down but it is still occurring - and it can pose problems. the only reason why the world supports as many people as it does now is due to advances in agriculture which have bought us a little more breathing room.

We are approaching carrying capacity for the earth, there is not much wiggle room between food supply and demand. We just have to hope technological advances related to agriculture continue to keep pace with the rate of growth, if this does not occur then we will be faced with a population crash, and one not of our choosing.

Both of the world's leading authorities on food distribution, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme, are very clear: there is more than enough food for everyone on the planet.

Cities are crowded. The World is not.
 
How about instead other people stop going in and grabbing up land and stealing their resources? Africa has a massive abundance of natural resources, but can't actually grow their economy- which would lead to there being less births- due to external debt, corrupt governments, and countries (like France) going in on a whim to bomb them.

EDIT: Also, please tell me how you have the right to tell people if they can or cannot have children?

They can choose to nationalize everything and then what? Their corrupt government is also, their fault. It is not the Europeans' fault because they invest in Africa and promote their economy. Without foreign investment, they would be a dead-beat nation. It is their government that is wasting their money and destroying their future, not foreign investment.

Secondly, France is not going on a whim to bomb them. If anything, the French intervention in Mali saved a lot of people from dying or worse.

Furthermore, this is not about the right of people to have or not have children. this is about the fact that the top 50 nation with the highest rate of growth, that is quite unsustainable, are almost all exclusively african. And that is a problem. If they continue on the path of such a large population growth, they won't solve their problems, but add to them. They need to stop having so many kids if they know whats good for them and if they desire to have some prosperity and start standing on their own two feet. So aside from them being one of the chief sources for the problem of overpopulation, they are also the chief source of their own domestic problems.

Underdeveloped nations need investment from foreign companies to increase the way of life. The companies that invest in African nations are doing them a service. And it is not all European companies, but Chinesse, Taiwanesse, America, South American and many more.
 
Both of the world's leading authorities on food distribution, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme, are very clear: there is more than enough food for everyone on the planet.

Cities are crowded. The World is not.

We are not talking about the present.
 
We are not talking about the present.

Emphasis on "More than enough".

And we have plenty of arable land to feed the worlds growing population.
 
That's why food prices keep dropping?

Temporary economic/weather conditions do not reflect the long term reality.

If you want, I can explain the whole thing, but I would need time.
 
They can choose to nationalize everything and then what? Their corrupt government is also, their fault. It is not the Europeans' fault because they invest in Africa and promote their economy. Without foreign investment, they would be a dead-beat nation. It is their government that is wasting their money and destroying their future, not foreign investment.

Secondly, France is not going on a whim to bomb them. If anything, the French intervention in Mali saved a lot of people from dying or worse.

Furthermore, this is not about the right of people to have or not have children. this is about the fact that the top 50 nation with the highest rate of growth, that is quite unsustainable, are almost all exclusively african. And that is a problem. If they continue on the path of such a large population growth, they won't solve their problems, but add to them. They need to stop having so many kids if they know whats good for them and if they desire to have some prosperity and start standing on their own two feet. So aside from them being one of the chief sources for the problem of overpopulation, they are also the chief source of their own domestic problems.

Underdeveloped nations need investment from foreign companies to increase the way of life. The companies that invest in African nations are doing them a service. And it is not all European companies, but Chinesse, Taiwanesse, America, South American and many more.


Wow! That's funny! For some reason I remember that Europe colonized all of Africa and then was forced to leave due to democratic uprisings, but they still had a strangle hold on the economy. (Neo-Colonialism, Subversion in Africa and Global Conflict | nsnbc ìnternational) (http://www.stanford.edu/class/e297a/Neo-Colonialism in Africa.pdf)

You act like those investments are coming from a place of love and compassion, but it isn't. European nations are grabbing up land in Africa and using it to produce biofuels and GMOS, which prevent food production. (Land acquired over past decade could have produced food for a billion people | Global development | The Guardian) (GRAIN — Land grabbing for biofuels must stop)

This also hurts employment, something that would give people the ability to, you know, take care of the kids they already have.

"When not displaced, the conversion of local farmers into laborers holds numerous negative consequences for local populations. Most deals are based on the eventual formation of plantation-style farming, whereupon the investing company will own the land and employ locals as laborers in large-scale agricultural plots. The number of jobs created varies greatly dependent on commodity type and style of farming planned.In spite of this volatility, guarantees of job creation are rarely, if ever, addressed in contracts. This fact, combined with the intrinsic incentives towards mechanization in plantation-style production, can lead to much lower employment than originally planned for." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_grabbing#Employment)

EDIT: Actually it is about whether or not people have the right to have children, seeing as how that's what the thread is about.
 
Temporary economic/weather conditions do not reflect the long term reality.

If you want, I can explain the whole thing, but I would need time.


So it's weather, economic problems and temporary? We can expect a price drop soon?

I know there's literally enough land to grow food but the size of the population to feed is causing problems every time there's a drought or financial debacle.
 
So it's weather, economic problems and temporary? We can expect a price drop soon?

"Soon," is a pretty relative term. Possibly, possibly not.

Today, the Conservation Reserve Program has created a fund to allow farmers to give their farming land "time off" from growing crops. This is done by renting the land from the farmers, so that grass and trees can be planted there instead of crops. This helps prevent soil erosion and encourages wildlife habitats, and reduces sedimentation in streams, lakes and rivers.

If the situation becomes desperate enough, that could undergo some altercations.

I know there's literally enough land to grow food but the size of the population to feed is causing problems every time there's a drought or financial debacle.

True, but there are actions both the US Government and the International Community could undertake that would resolve those issues.
 
Emphasis on "More than enough".

And we have plenty of arable land to feed the worlds growing population.

This is from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization - which you cited as being one of the sources that says we have "more than enough food", and it is a projection looking into the future:

In the first half of this century, global demand for food, feed and fibre is expected to grow by
70 percent while, increasingly, crops may also be used for bio-energy and other industrial
purposes. New and traditional demand for agricultural produce will thus put growing pressure
on already scarce agricultural resources.

and

But the fact is that globally the rate of growth in yields of the major cereal crops has been
steadily declining, it dropped from 3.2 percent per year in 1960 to 1.5 percent in 2000. The
challenge for technology is to reverse this decline, since a continuous linear increase in
yields at a global level following the pattern established over the past five decades will not be
sufficient to meet food needs.

http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/expert_paper/How_to_Feed_the_World_in_2050.pdf

"more than enough" no matter how emphasized describes the situation at present.
 
"Soon," is a pretty relative term. Possibly, possibly not.

Today, the Conservation Reserve Program has created a fund to allow farmers to give their farming land "time off" from growing crops. This is done by renting the land from the farmers, so that grass and trees can be planted there instead of crops. This helps prevent soil erosion and encourages wildlife habitats, and reduces sedimentation in streams, lakes and rivers.

If the situation becomes desperate enough, that could undergo some altercations.



True, but there are actions both the US Government and the International Community could undertake that would resolve those issues.

"Soon" is important in terms of food costs affecting quality of life.

Ever seen what it takes to feed 7 billion people? It's amazing there's not a bigger problem already.
 
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