[dohboi]

I know you guys always want to downplay everything all the time (unless it happens to be one of your own favorite bugaboos), but you should at least try to pretend that you can still read what is in front of you.

It does not say '10 million' it says '10s of millions,' and estimates are up to 50 or 60 million additional deaths from starvation this year.

That would about DOUBLE the usual number of deaths globally this year.

If you think doubling the number of deaths that occur globally in a year is no big deal, then I guess there's nothing much left to say about it. Of course, it may end up being a much smaller number--I for one hope that it is; but let's get the estimated numbers at least roughly right, shall we?

[onlooker]

I think we are talking about a humanitarian disaster the likes of which we have not witnessed in our lifetimes. Personally, I grieve for these people in the manner they are dying and will die. I do not think this unfolding disaster will be mitigated all that well. We now seem to be entering the era of true tangible overshoot effects.

[Newfie]

Doh,

The ugly truth is the more people that survive the more people reproduce which makes more people which makes the ultimate future correction even if worse comes hen even more people will die.

Think about cats, is it better to do away with a litter or to let the reproduce to the point where there are hundreds that need to be put down? Which is the more humane solution?

Very ugly truth indeed.

[dohboi]

That's why there should never be just food sent places. It should also always come along with education, access to birth control, and other measures that have been shown over and over again to lead to lower birth rates.

Meanwhile:
http://newsdaily.com/2016/02/drought-ma ... frica-wfp/

Drought may affect 49 million in southern Africa

[Tanada]

That's why there should never be just food sent places. It should also always come along with education, access to birth control, and other measures that have been shown over and over again to lead to lower birth rates.

Meanwhile:
http://newsdaily.com/2016/02/drought-ma ... frica-wfp/

Drought may affect 49 million in southern Africa

Great idea theoretically, however shipping food is something that goes back to deep in human history while shipping birth control runs into a ton of local opposition. Same thing for education, its great to say you should educate all the poor women of the Middle East or India or Indonesia, but as soon as you try it you insult the culture, the local and regional government and often their religion. The Billion Muslims that inhabit the zone from North Africa all the way to New Guinea are not going to follow dohboi's idea of education for the women in their population. Neither or the 1.3 Billion Chinese who have a proud cultural heritage going back nearly 3,000 years. That leaves you with another half Billion in Central and South America who are believers in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Don't forget the 800,000,000 residents of India who are not Muslim or Christian but who do follow other faiths that encourage procreation and resist birth control.

Nature or God or Climate Change or CME or AGW will shift things around, but your westernized culture is not going to be gleefully embraced by those who have been resisting it for 200 years or longer.

[dohboi]

Yes, I am well aware of these limits.

Education and health, though, have indeed been leading forms of philanthropy now for a while.

"Education still number one cause

Since 2004, education has always been a top popular cause for the ultra wealthy, followed closely by health."

http://fortune.com/2015/12/11/billionai ... y-charity/

But most places would accept better medical care, and that's really all we're talking about. The idea that women should have some rights over what happens to their bodies is spreading fast.

But yes, all this requires new thinking.

Faced with a world plunging into mass extinction event and heading toward a massive human die off, one would like to think that some would realize that it's long past time to consider some 'new thinking,' but that doesn't always seem to be the case, does it.

[Newfie]

Let em die is new thinking too.

Are you open to new ideas?

[onlooker]

All this wrangling about a die-off is a moot point now it is going to happen whether we like it or not!

[vtsnowedin]

I know you guys always want to downplay everything all the time (unless it happens to be one of your own favorite bugaboos), but you should at least try to pretend that you can still read what is in front of you.

It does not say '10 million' it says '10s of millions,' and estimates are up to 50 or 60 million additional deaths from starvation this year.

That would about DOUBLE the usual number of deaths globally this year.

If you think doubling the number of deaths that occur globally in a year is no big deal, then I guess there's nothing much left to say about it. Of course, it may end up being a much smaller number--I for one hope that it is; but let's get the estimated numbers at least roughly right, shall we?

Well lets look at the numbers for a moment. Currently the world population is growing by 85 million per year even with 50 million deaths per year. Up thread several pages there is an estimate that in that 50 million some 150,000 deaths are caused by climate change. That is a totally insignificant amount compared to the 85 million growth. So if the title of the thread comes to pass and deaths this year rise to 100 million the world population will still rise by 35 million. That would slow the rate of growth but not solve the problem.
Those countries with high growth rates and religious and cultural resistance to birth control have a very hard future in front of them.

[ozcad]

Dohboi sez: Those countries with high growth rates and religious and cultural resistance to birth control have a very hard future in front of them.

Yes, and if any of those "overstocked" countries have a competent military with modern weapons, their neighbors will have a hard future ahead of them as well. It is another type of "race to the bottom".

[vtsnowedin]

Dohboi sez: Those countries with high growth rates and religious and cultural resistance to birth control have a very hard future in front of them.

Yes, and if any of those "overstocked" countries have a competent military with modern weapons, their neighbors will have a hard future ahead of them as well. It is another type of "race to the bottom".

That is certainly a possibility but the ten fastest growing countries are not well armed.

iew as: list / map
▲ Country Population growth rate %
1. Lebanon 9.37
2. Zimbabwe 4.36
3. Jordan 3.86
4. Qatar 3.58
5. Malawi 3.33
6. Burundi 3.28
7. Niger 3.28
8. Uganda 3.24
9. Libya 3.08
10. Burkina Faso 3.05

http://www.aneki.com/fastest_growing.html

[onlooker]

Yes but what about two countries who are overpopulated, nuclear armed and do not like each other. India and Pakistan.

[dohboi]

It's kinda funny because one of the other people I discuss these issues with outside of these forums is a philosophy who is (to me) oddly un-philosophical/reflective about the efficacy of philanthropy--he thinks everyone should be more concerned about helping the poor of the world by various means, but especially by preventing preventable deaths from things like malaria. While I applaud his altruism, I try, in that context, to suggest that you can never change just one thing, and that there may be unintended consequences of even such seemingly benign actions. At the least, I suggest that any such effort should also be accompanied by other efforts I have mentioned above that have proven to be effective in decreasing birth rates.

So I'm arguing against mere food and disease-prevention philanthropy in that context, while here I find myself attacked for not embracing the inevitable die off! LOL.

Oh well, each to their own.

I'll just point out for now that vt's list of countries with the highest birth rates correspond with many of the poorest countries in the world, that is, with countries where people have the least means to buy to food. So that kinda undermines people's assumptions that food availability exactly scales with population growth.

If people would at least acknowledge the stunningly obvious fact that the situation is a tiny bit more complex that the petri dish analogy, perhaps we could move the level of discussion up half a notch...perhaps.

[vtsnowedin]

Yes but what about two countries who are overpopulated, nuclear armed and do not like each other. India and Pakistan.

Yes quite worrisome but I gather that the function of MAD "mutual assured destruction" has been explained to them.
I also consider the possibility of China and India going to war over the rice growing regions of the Mekong delta a real future concern. But both China and India have taken strong measures to curb population growth which eases those pressures.

[dohboi]

It's hard to imagine good outcomes in South Asia. Much of Bangladesh will be underwater in the coming decades, India and Pakistan are going to be among the first places to have sustained wet bulb temperatures beyond the survivable 34 C, and India is adding more humans per day to the planet than any other country on earth. Even if there weren't long, deep seated religious and cultural animosities that unscrupulous politicians are all to happy to exploit whenever useful, it would be very tough going for this region...

[vtsnowedin]

........

I'll just point out for now that vt's list of countries with the highest birth rates correspond with many of the poorest countries in the world, that is, with countries where people have the least means to buy to food. So that kinda undermines people's assumptions that food availability exactly scales with population growth.

If people would at least acknowledge the stunningly obvious fact that the situation is a tiny bit more complex that the petri dish analogy, perhaps we could move the level of discussion up half a notch...perhaps.

No one in those countries is thinking much beyond the level of a petri dish so the analogy serves well enough. The solutions that might work given the religious and cultural conditions on the ground are so draconian that we will not discuss them here. We will most likely continue to send food and medical aid to these countries as long as we can and in so doing make matters worse.

[vtsnowedin]

It's hard to imagine good outcomes in South Asia. Much of Bangladesh will be underwater in the coming decades, India and Pakistan are going to be among the first places to have sustained wet bulb temperatures beyond the survivable 34 C, and India is adding more humans per day to the planet than any other country on earth. Even if there weren't long, deep seated religious and cultural animosities that unscrupulous politicians are all to happy to exploit whenever useful, it would be very tough going for this region...

As bad as it is in south Asia, the situation in central Africa is far worse. Civil wars and disease outbreaks such as Ebola have already started with no good end in sight.

[onlooker]

At this point those places in Asia and Africa no matter how rationally or even brilliantly they were thinking and no matter if everyone was on board to make drastic changes, these places are doomed to suffer a large scale die-off.

[vtsnowedin]

At this point those places in Asia and Africa no matter how rationally or even brilliantly they were thinking and no matter if everyone was on board to make drastic changes, these places are doomed to suffer a large scale die-off.

Oh I think there are things they could and should do that would be effective and not involve war or "ethnic cleansing". It is the fact you can not get everyone on board that condemns them.

[ennui2]

I think there are things they could and should do that would be effective and not involve war or "ethnic cleansing". It is the fact you can not get everyone on board that condemns them.

The same could be said of any society on the planet. There are things that could be done to soften the blow and you can never get a critical mass of people willing to get "on board". Transition was supposed to be the mechanism to gently nudge people to get "on board" ahead of time, and despite Rob Hopkins' continued feel-good blog postings, it's going nowhere.