Human overpopulation

What are your thoughts on human overpopulation? Is it a problem? Why or why not? And if you agree with me that it is a problem, what do you think the best solutions are?

And by human overpopulation I'm not simply referring to the issues of physical crowding due to high population density in urban areas, but also the implication that each new human being puts an additional strain on the earth's finite resources and environment. I think a strong case could be made that virtually any world issue you can think of is exacerbated, if not caused by human overpopulation. Global climate change, deforestation, world hunger, endangered species, disease, and even violent crime are all linked in some way to the ever increasing human population. For instance, even people who attempt to live as eco-friendly as they can, still likely have a far more significant carbon footprint than most other animals.

As to the solutions… aside from the obvious one of people choosing to have fewer children, I think at a minimum governments should fund birth control and sterilization so that it is completely free for anyone who wants it. Even if you're a staunch fiscal conservative, I'd make the case that you should support this funding as it would likely reduce the number of people on welfare, food stamps, etc.

Additionally, I've considered that it might help to stop "rewarding" people who have multiple children with additional tax credits. However, I'm doubtful that this would necessarily result in people having fewer children as I don't think many people actually plan to have children because of these tax credits (In the US it's only an annual credit of $1,000 per child, and possibly a bit more for low income households that qualify for EIC). Moreover, it seems that reducing these tax credits would actually end up punishing the children- as it would effectively mean their parent had less money for the child's food / clothing- and it clearly isn't the child's fault their parent had too many kids.

So what do you think? Should we encourage people to have less children? (which of course would not mean they shouldn't adopt). Or should we all continue to reproduce like rabbits on fertility drugs?

Additional info: http://www.overpopulation.org/

Its not a problem. As poorer areas urbanize, population growth rates decline. Many parts of Western Europe, Russia, USA, and even China are already below the replacement rate needed, resulting in declining population growth with eventual population decline. Only immigration is making the situation in the US more stable.

The UN estimates that we may have as much as 1 Billion LESS people in 2100 than we do today.

If When mass murderer becomes a new legal job because noone is dying, I'll apply.

Should be pretty soon, just wait till they push the lifespan on 200 years and when we start getting artificially grown body parts from base cells.

UN? Yea… Nice crystal balls they have there. Shall I send them a pack of tarot cards and Nostradamus' poems in hardcover?

People who think the world is overpopulated are never willing to euthanize themselves or their loved ones to help solve the problem

joxer said:

Should be pretty soon, just wait till they push the lifespan on 200 years and when we start getting artificially grown body parts from base cells.

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This is the only thing that could realistically cause a serious over population program. However, its unlikely that in any of our lifetimes, even if science makes it that far, that those treatments will be widely available in the poorer parts of the world.

UN? Yea… Nice crystal balls they have there. Shall I send them a pack of tarot cards and Nostradamus' poems in hardcover?

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Its based on population and economic projections. Not perfect, but a hell of a lot better than going around screaming about over population based on no facts.

Well, the world IS already overpopulated. We are already regularly exceeding the sustainable use of global resources - we just passed "earth overshoot day" incidentally, a nice illustration of the problem.
Also although the population curve is indeed flattening, and it is true that growth has nearly or entirely stopped in the most developed nations, World population is still projected to climb another 2 billion by 2050 - and most of that in the poorest nations. If you think that will not cause problems, you are an optimist. Factor in effects of climate change and I think it's not hard to predict that we will see a lot of conflict in those countries, and some of that will inevitable affect us as well. Consider also that some of these countries harbor the worlds largest resources of biodiversity - under incredible pressure already today.
So yes overpopulation is THE problem, the root problem of all large scale environmental problems. Solve it - no easy solutions. Keep doing the best we can to improve education, health infrastructure, economic situation of the poorest countries (ideally improving sustainability on top of that), and tell the religious morale brigade to shut the F** up when it comes to contraceptives.

crpgnut said:

People who think the world is overpopulated are never willing to euthanize themselves or their loved ones to help solve the problem

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Nah, I'd much rather euthanize the people I don't like. I mean, I'm paying Joxer good money for this, I'm obviously going to start with the people who don't give a rat's ass about our planet.

blatantninja said:

Its not a problem. As poorer areas urbanize, population growth rates decline. Many parts of Western Europe, Russia, USA, and even China are already below the replacement rate needed, resulting in declining population growth with eventual population decline. Only immigration is making the situation in the US more stable.

The UN estimates that we may have as much as 1 Billion LESS people in 2100 than we do today.

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Even if their estimates are accurate, the world's population currently estimated at just over 7 billion people, so that would put us at about 6 billion next century. That's still a lot of people. Like you said, as poorer areas urbanize (industrialize), that tends to result in declining population growth. However, people who live in industrialized nations tend to consume far more resources and create far more waste and pollution than people living in a rural village. I'd argue that we should be taking steps to reduce the population as much as we possibly can (in an ethical way) because we're already seeing a lot of problems caused by the insane number of humans. Worse case scenario, doing our best to reduce the human population results in us having a lower human population, but in no way would we be worse off (people will just have smaller families).

The main problem is poor areas keep reproducing and first world doesn't. But the first world became as it is due to its people not by some magic. The rest of the world needs to fix its own problems not export them to first world, and first world needs to sustain itself or wither away forever which would be sad. That's not really possible with globalization though because when people can't have the same lifestyle for their kids they don't have any. So we get a situation where people are forced to pay for other people's kids who came from another country and yet can't afford their own kids and don't qualify for government aid themselves.

Just like communism the whole world becomes third world instead of improving the miserable places.

crpgnut said:

People who think the world is overpopulated are never willing to euthanize themselves or their loved ones to help solve the problem

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Just having a one child policy would be enough, you moron.

Digger Nick said:

Just having a one child policy would be enough, you moron.

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Exactly, even 2 children will reduce propulation over time in countries where it's a problem.

Another key solution I forgot to mention in the OP is education... For one thing, we need comprehensive sex education everywhere; none of this "abstinence-only" nonsense that religious groups are pushing. Even in "first world" countries, there is a lot of misinformation out there about reproduction, with many people believing that the withdrawal method is an effective means of preventing pregnancy and some people thinking that using two condoms at once makes pregnancy less likely (when it actually greatly increases the risk of them breaking).

Digger Nick said:

Just having a one child policy would be enough, you moron.

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Except that it causes a significant problem of an aging population and makes pension schemes (and the like) completely unsustainable. So unless you are a fan of having everyone work until they drop dead, its not a very good policy.

Well, the way I see it ( and I might be too optimistic about science in the short term) is that the problem needs to be solved by colonizing other planets and/or the moon.

But hopefully ( I am looking for example at you Space X ) in 10-20 years from now we'll have a colonization on Mars, ready to grow with a lot of people.

Even if 10-20 years are waaay too optimistic, I am almost certain that in 50 years from now we'll be there.

All of a sudden we are probably going to need more people to colonize all of these new places.. also I think it'd be possible for certain amount of people to live in space stations and such. It also makes a lot of sense from a race survival point of view.. one large astroid crash… and we'd be history as it stands today.


On the very short term, it'd be enough to change our way of living and eating habits in the developed world, then the resources we have is more than enough, in several countries such as sweden, we're moving in the right direction, hope countries like US would try to follow.

In a way China is also trying hard… they just have a hard time as so many poor people are improving their living standard that despite the advancements they make in this area it all ends up in a surplus of waste anyhow.

It's definitely one of the harder problems to solve, and considering how we refuse to solve the simpler ones - I'm not holding out much hope for us.

I'd say technology is one way to alleviate SOME of it - and we should do a lot more to take advantage of the sea as a place to live. There's been some research done that seems to indicate it's fully feasible to live in specially designed buildings on water - but that would obviously be quite an investment. Jacque Fresco of the Venus project has done a ton of work in this field.

Education is always good - and we can't get enough of that. But teaching people who're not in a position to listen is a challenge of changing that position rather than forcing information where it can't be received.

That's one of the simpler problems I was referring to - and that's not going to happen in this world society at a speed where it'd be enough. At least, I'm not seeing it.

I think the best I can hope for are a few more financial recessions in a reasonably short period of time, as people don't like to make use of long-term memory.

If that happened, I think it just might be enough to get "enough" people to start using their brains a little - as, unfortunately, self-interest is the biggest motivator.

So, I'm hoping the greed infested human race will teach itself that lesson sooner rather than later.

blatantninja said:

Its not a problem. As poorer areas urbanize, population growth rates decline. Many parts of Western Europe, Russia, USA, and even China are already below the replacement rate needed, resulting in declining population growth with eventual population decline. Only immigration is making the situation in the US more stable.

The UN estimates that we may have as much as 1 Billion LESS people in 2100 than we do today.

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In the meantime I looked at the actual data - and it may be important to note that what you cite above is is the "low" projection, i.e. the one that makes the most optimistic assumptions towards a decrease in fertility. The "medium" version still predicts growth until the end of the century to > 10 billion.
And assuming todays fertility rate... ooooh, off the chart.

http://esa.un.org/wpp/unpp/panel_population.htm

GothicGothicness said:

Well, the way I see it ( and I might be too optimistic about science in the short term) is that the problem needs to be solved by colonizing other planets and/or the moon.

But hopefully ( I am looking for example at you Space X ) in 10-20 years from now we'll have a colonization on Mars, ready to grow with a lot of people.

Even if 10-20 years are waaay too optimistic, I am almost certain that in 50 years from now we'll be there.

All of a sudden we are probably going to need more people to colonize all of these new places.. also I think it'd be possible for certain amount of people to live in space stations and such. It also makes a lot of sense from a race survival point of view.. one large astroid crash… and we'd be history as it stands today.

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That's an interesting notion but I see a few immediately apparent problems with it. First, I wonder how many people would actually be willing to move to another planet. While I have no doubt there are some hardcore science geeks out there who would jump at the chance to live on Mars, would there be enough of them to actually make a sizable dent in Earth's human population? I doubt a billion nor even a million people would want to pick up and move there (at least not without some huge financial incentive).

Depending on the position of the planets, with current technology spacecraft it would probably take 7-12 months to travel to Mars. Even if spacecraft technology advances a lot in the next few decades, you're probably looking at several months in space. How many people could stand being cooped up in a tiny spacecraft for half a year? Certainly not me… well, maybe if I could bring my PC, but I imagine power would be limited

Then there's the issue of "Spaceflight osteopenia" with astronauts losing an average of 1% bone mass per month in space. Even once you're actually on Mars, the problems is Mars only has 38% of the Earth's gravity, so there would continue to be severely accelerated bone loss as well as decline in muscle strength and immune functioning. The moon has only 1/6 of the Earth's gravity so while traveling there is obviously much quicker, living there for an extended period of time would be even harder on the human body. Of course, it's possible medical science would find a way to overcome all of this, but it's a huge challenge.

^Perhaps I'm looking at this all wrong… We could send people to Mars against their will… Perhaps relocate our growing prison population there (or at least everyone with a life sentence).

The other huge problem is cost. The financial cost of sending large numbers of people to the Moon or Mars would be tremendous. Aside from the costs of fuel and spacecraft, there's the fact that there's no resources there, so everything would initially have to be transported there. Presumably people would be living in a space station similar to the Biosphere 2, which would eventually be a self-sustaining ecosystem, but in the mean time there's the cost of building such a structure, transporting materials, plants, etc. to it.

While I think it makes for very interesting science fiction, I feel like it's too costly and challenging to be feasible even in 50 years. Feel free to say "I told you so" in a few decades if I'm wrong.

Well, I think science is moving faster than a lot of people know.

Just for reference: http://www.mars-one.com/ to signup you have to agree to a lot of terms for example

1) You'll not be allowed to go back to earth.
2) With current technology it'll be a very long flight
3) You cannot bring your family.

Still a very large number of people signed up under these conditions, and they have to do a detailed selection process. That is planned for 2023, it might not be successfull, but the first step is always the plan and goal, it might take a bit longer for it to succeeed.

Once we have people and scientist on site, colonization technology will definetly improve quickly, the main slowdown of science right now is not that we don't know how to it is money. With a colonization on Mars and good space flight, there are very rich mining companies, there is a high probability of a lot of valuable metals in space and possibly on Mars, once this mining starts huge money will be invested and you'll see a circle of technology improvements, I don't think it'll take 50 years.

On top of that even NASA is starting to believe that EmDrive is possible… http://science-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/08/01/020230/nasa-tests-microwave-space-drive , if that is indeed possible… we are looking at weeks instead of months to travel.

The shorter time of travel would reduce the Spaceflight osteopenia greatly, even if the EmDrive truns out to be a dead end, I am sure we'll find some other technology to travel much faster than today. I also think that we'll develop a way to artifically simulate a gravity inside the colony or at least parts of the colonoy, so it might not only need to be medivsl advancements to prevent that futher.

Now regarding the people, I don't think that you'd need to force people, the promise of a better life would be enough, instead of being poor and without food you'll get your own piece of land on Mars were you can grow enough to live and build a better life for yourselves, already 100's of millions of people are risking their life every day under horrible conditions with a large chance to die during the process to emmigrate to other countries and a better life, so I think this issue is completey a moot point.

Ebola will hopefully take care of it. When mother earth is hurting it takes care of it, its hardly the first time..

vurt said:

Ebola will hopefully take care of it. When mother earth is hurting it takes care of it, its hardly the first time..

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Indeed.

Some have come up with a theory about that too.

The black plague was one of Earth's first wide known attemps at it.

vurt said:

Ebola will hopefully take care of it. When mother earth is hurting it takes care of it, its hardly the first time..

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That's a pretty cruel way to express yourself, I would like to say hopefully Ebola will not take care of it, that people most die to solve the overpopulation problem is not the prefered solution at least in my view.