THE Global Population Thread Pt. 2(merged)

[Nefarious]

If you got rid of roughly 6.5 billion people...

There is a realistic solution.

That is the only solution. It is the end answer to the equation. Getting to the end answer is the problem we face but the answer remains the same.

[dohboi]

Ok, now you guys are talking in code. Is "realistic solution" related to "final solution"??

[basil_hayden]

Ok, now you guys are talking in code. Is "realistic solution" related to "final solution"??

Nah, just means is the solution they can live with, you know, without interfering with BAU.

Why move towards living simply when you can kick 6.5 billion out of the lifeboat?

[Nefarious]

Ok, now you guys are talking in code. Is "realistic solution" related to "final solution"??

Nah, just means is the solution they can live with, you know, without interfering with BAU.

Why move towards living simply when you can kick 6.5 billion out of the lifeboat?

How simple do you want to go? I happen to like having a house to live in,ac in the summer,heat in the winter,I like my refrigerator/freezer, also not to mention indoor plumbing. How far down should we go tin one room shacks with a dirt floor?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTWduFB_RX0&feature=player_embedded

The guy in the video says less than 100 million having an average western lifestyle. Now if we lived "a little" simpler we could raise that number "a little" bit but no where close to the 7 billion we have now.

[dinopello]

The cultural changing of "the success metric" I think is a key element of an effective response to where we are ecologically. Every day people are bombarded with "Economic Growth" percentages and "Housing Starts" and are told this is what measures how good their lot in life is. So any policy that promotes Growth and Housing Starts people support ! Any kind of consumption tax is viewed as bad because consumption is good !

[Cog]

The earth can sustain 7 billion will a lot of them poor and wretched and a few hundred million of us living the good life. I'm good with that.

[Lore]

The earth can sustain 7 billion will a lot of them poor and wretched and a few hundred million of us living the good life. I'm good with that.

Would you be good with a world that lacks the capacity to support said 7 billion people with only a tenth of a percent living the good life, while you're included in the wretched and dying?

[vision-master]

The earth can sustain 7 billion will a lot of them poor and wretched and a few hundred million of us living the good life. I'm good with that.

Cog in his former life. lsol u2.

[Newfie]

Perhaps this should be folded into the Overpopulation/Taboo thread? Seems to be treading the same water.

[dohboi]

How simple do you want to go? I happen to like having a house to live in,ac in the summer,heat in the winter,I like my refrigerator/freezer, also not to mention indoor plumbing.

A well sealed and insulated house needs little cooling or heating, and of course we don't need to be cooking ourselves alive inside in the winter while reaching for our sweaters in our Arctic AC in the summer.

Europeans (and most others) generally have tiny refrigerator/freezers if any. They stop at conveniently located markets and street stands to get fresh fruits and veggies, so they don't have to keep them frozen.

Plumbing, once installed, is not a major energy user, but lots of simple conservation measures can cut way back on the amount we use.

How far down should we go tin one room shacks with a dirt floor?

LOL. I'm surprised you didn't drag out the old cliche about "we might as well be living in caves."

Really, Americans always think that any slight adjustment to their obscenely wasteful ways means going straight to third world slums or worse. We are really a pathetic lot compared to our pioneer forefolks (not idealizing them, mind you, just saying that they would be shaking their heads at our pampered perspectives.)

[Revi]

We'll be in small houses with insulated floors, if we're lucky. We'll have minimal electricity if we live in a place that's close enough to the parts of the grid that get left on. Otherwise we'll be either in the dark, or have some kind of solar energy system. Remember that they will do something called "load shedding" where they save the electricity for the better parts of town, and turn it off for the other side of the tracks. They are doing this already in India.

We're going back to the kind of energy use we had at the beginning of the last century. Remember who had electricity then? Only the rich side of town.

[Loki]

Bangladesh has 164+ million people at a density of 2,918/sq mi (Wikipedia). 2,918 people per square mile! Ye gods, what a nightmare.

I suppose slowing the growth rate (slowing, not stopping or reversing) of this absurdly overpopulated little country is a good thing. But they already seem to be well beyond the tipping point. Is there anything resembling nature left in Bangladesh, or has everything been stripped bare to feed the masses?

If my state (Oregon) was as densely populated as Bangladesh, we'd have a population of 287 million I think the 3.8 million we have is already WAY too many.

[Newfie]

Loki,

Some people seem to aspire to the "chickens in a coup" solution. That is my problem with "carrying capacity" discussions. Who really wants to live in a chicken coup? Apparently quite a few.

Now that's scary!

[Pretorian]

well, like it or not, 164 million within Bangladesh will do a hell of a lot less damage than 164 million Bangladeshis within any other, bigger territory. Imagine if every one of them would have 5 acres or so to pamper his behind.

[Nefarious]

Really, Americans always think that any slight adjustment to their obscenely wasteful ways means going straight to third world slums or worse. We are really a pathetic lot compared to our pioneer forefolks (not idealizing them, mind you, just saying that they would be shaking their heads at our pampered perspectives.)

I'm not saying that we shouldn't cut back to help preserve the environment - we should
I'm not saying that we shouldn't cut back on fossil fuel usage- we definitely should
What I am saying is that when it comes to the problem of overpopulation cutting back doesn't amount to a hill of beans.If the whole world lived in one room tin shacks with a dirt floor,the earth would still be under a huge strain and wouldn't be sustainable.

[Newfie]

And the Western extreme would be what? Vegas? The population density for the state is quite low, but they are all huddled into one massively wasteful energy suck where no one should live but they do because they can. Surrounded by natures vast and fragile beauty. I wonder what the Vegas annual energy consumption is compared to Bangladesh?

So there you have it, two failed solutions:
The Chicken Coop: Bangladesh or
The Neon Jungle: Vegas

If you were to cull the worst of the herd you could start with either and then go to the other in any order and not be wrong.

Two utterly failed attempts at human civilization. Clearly neither road is a path to sustainability. Yet who is calling for either's elimination?

You could easily say that humanities problem, its own path to downfall, is our inability to look at these two failed conditions and not say "These are failures, we must eliminate them and the conditions that brought us here."

It is like playing Russian Roulette with a double barreled shotgun, both chambers loaded.

[Revi]

I agree that the earth isn't going to be sustainable even if we cut back in the US. I am just saying that we won't be able to afford a lot of fossil fuel. We will need to learn to live within our means, which are meager already and will be even more so. We are broke this week, so I am driving around in a small electric car. It will be like that, but even more so from now on for most of us "middle class" people.

We'll live in minimally heated small houses and drive around in glorified golf carts, if we're lucky.

[dohboi]

I down size cause it's the right thing to do ecologically and ethically, and because it puts me ahead of the pack in knowing how to live in the generally downsized world (at very best) we're heading in to.

I doubt very much that it will be of any immediate help to the 24 million Yemenis, 80 million Egyptians, or the (estimated) 164 m Bangladeshis, or 170 m Pakistanis all of which countries had populations a quarter of that size (or less in the last case) about a half century ago.

These poor buggers, and those in a number of other countries, certainly have many more people than can be sustained from the resources in their localities.

[dohboi]

Pret said:

164 million within Bangladesh will do a hell of a lot less damage than 164 million Bangladeshis within any other, bigger territory. Imagine if every one of them would have 5 acres or so to pamper his behind.

Yep. But I always find it interesting that people worry more about some damn Bangladeshi coming anywhere close to American living standards than they do about getting Americans to bring their consumption down even to European or Latin American standards.

But really, it's China that has a population many of whose consumption patterns are starting to approximate Americans. And India is producing more kids per minute than any country on the planet. One of my favorite simulations of this dynamic is "the breathing earth" (not sure what all the background noise is supposed to represent, though):

http://www.breathingearth.net/

India's birth rate is like a heart beat--nearly one a second. Makes even China look laid back.

Of course, it is the US and China that are flashing red every two seconds, showing that we are burning up more fossil fuel than much of the rest of the world combined. And of course, most of China's emissions are devoted to making junk that ends up in our landfills.

[pstarr]

I down size cause it's the right thing to do ecologically and ethically, and because it puts me ahead of the pack in knowing how to live in the generally downsized world (at very best) we're heading in to.

I doubt very much that it will be of any immediate help to the 24 million Yemenis, 80 million Egyptians, or the (estimated) 164 m Bangladeshis, or 170 m Pakistanis all of which countries had populations a quarter of that size (or less in the last case) about a half century ago.

These poor buggers, and those in a number of other countries, certainly have many more people than can be sustained from the resources in their localities.

I used to purchase green technologies (and engage in green behavior) as an economic vote for sustainability. I did the right thing to support good businesses and a rosy future. (It cost me more money than otherwise.) Now I recycle to save money and I tend my garden for my families future security.

As for failed states in the ME and Asia; it's happening now. There isn't much chance of history, population, and natural resources rolling back to some golden era of Democracy in those places. They have entered their decline and all we can do is continue to engage with intelligence, counter-intelligence, and selective military strikes to contain the coming chaos. Too bad.