"We are the first generation to live on earth to witness a doubling of population in our lifetime. The babies born within the nest thirty hours of your reading this sentence will replace the 250,000 people lost in the tragic tsunami of December 26, 2004. Nearly 3 billion more people will join the current population of 6.6 billion within fifty years, and the world has yet to figure out how to take care of those already here."
-Paul Hawken
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming
In this course we have heard much about our exponential population growth. We have also heard undisputed data about our remaining natural resources...
What do you think about population projections for our species?
Do you think that the earth can healthfully sustain a population of more than 7 billion people?
What might this world look like? Be like?
How much more can the earth really give?
While it is haunting to think about a "collapse" in our cultural systems, the reality is that a collapse is a reoccurring conversation surfacing in leading academic communities and elsewhere. Please share your thoughts.
Learn More:
Population Growth over Human History
One Hundred Interesting Mathemaical Calculations: #5: Exponetial Growth and Human Populations
"We Have Passed Our Sustainability" (www.overpopulation.net)
The No Impact Man
9 comments:
I personally think that there is no way in hell our planet can healthfully sustain itself and the organisms that live on it, if there are 7 billion humans inhabiting it. Our planet is already seeing the effects of a fast growing population, and we are fast reaching the population number of 7 billion. Thinking about what our future might hold with 7 billion humans walking around lead me to remember the movie entitled "Idiocracy". The movie's basic premise is what the world would look like in 500 years from now, and how an average joe from this day in age would compare to those members of society in the future. Luke Wilson plays this role of the "average guy" and finds himself immersed into a society where every aspect of life has become significantly dumbed down and disgustingly unnatural. Every object is an advertisement, and the natural environment is a teeming cesspool of garbage. Of course this film seems to be a cinematic exaggeration of what could come of our world if we do not start taking care of it now, but one can only wonder how far off are the predictions that this movie makes? With a projection of the human population to have 3 billion more people within the next 50 years, I have a hard time believing that our earth can sustain that amount at all. If we are having such pollution and natural resourcing problems now at a population of 6.6 billion, I find it extremely hard to fathom what problems we would be presented with 3 billion more people.
The economy has also become a huge issue for many people throughout different sectors of life, even the very wealthy. One way to cause even more of a detriment to this issue would be to increase population. The more people that exist on earth, the more the act of consuming depletes the resources that are non-renewable, and the more we become in states of debt. Although it is difficult to control the levels of reproduction without drifting towards the trends of nations like China, it is probably a good idea to start becoming more aware and action oriented along with the humans that exist right now. It makes sense for so many reasons, one of them being that our children shouldn't have to be born onto an earth that is in a state of severe deterioration. It scares me to think that by the time I am ready to have a child, that these ecological and economical problems that I'm experiencing now will be that much worse, and affecting the next generation of people to come.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0yQunhOaU0&translated=1
I think we need to move toward optimum population (see www.optimumpopulation.org)
Here's an interesting discussion: Is "one child one family" a global viable solution? If not, what is?
www.wiserearth.org/forum/view/48786f2d0953d4549e5d1b2b8ff30250
In the environmental crisis we are currently facing on our earth, I cannot believe that this planet has the resources to support many more humans than we already have. When thinking about the population increase, I can’t help but to immediately relate our current situation to that of the genocide in Rwanda. Although the problems in Rwanda were generated by more than just an extremely high population density, I still feel like the population was one of the biggest factors contributing to the break out of a genocide. Had population been at a manageable density, then people would not be fighting for land, overworking land, and overall exhausting the land of its resources.
On terms of our earth as a whole and the increasing population, I believe a similar effect could occur on a global scale. Combined with treating the earth poorly and not being environmentally conscious enough, the exponentially growing population could very easily lead to a global genocide of sorts. Sooner or later, we are going to exhaust the earth of its resources one by one, creating a global fight for not only oil, but water and land. Once all the land is taken up by housing more and more people, there will be increasing smaller plots of land to grow food on in order to feed the mass amounts of people. Eventually, we are going to occupy all the land space available and conflict will begin to grow as space, food, water, oil and other resources begin to run out. Even if the human race creates alternatives to the environmental problems we are facing now and will in the near future, as population continues to increase human race could still potentially start to extinct itself through a global disease pandemic once we are forced to live in such close quarters. One way or another, like the genocide in Rwanda, the human population will eventually begin to decrease the overwhelming population through conflict combined with natural causes of elimination. I don’t necessarily see this as a life threatening issue for my generation, but I do worry about the situation that will be concerning the upcoming generations.
The graph shown in lecture of the population increase is frightening. Clearly, our Earth cannot sustain this massively increasing population, for we are just beginning to learn the effects of our actions. We are just beginning to learn that we can no longer consume at the rate we do, we are beginning to learn that we need to take responsibility for our amount of waste, and what simple habits we can alter to help the world we live in. It frightens me the amount of people I hear wanting to have children, and the amount of people who have an outrageous number of children. There are so many people already populating this Earth, and I think it is interesting that even though we are starting to understand the damage we are causing to our Earth, and the time line we will see the negative affects (in our children's lifetimes and likely our own), having children is such a priority among our society. It is stressed since childhood, and I constantly correct my parents when they slip into conversation "when you're a parent". I dont understand why the focus isn't shifted into cleaning up and fixing the mess we have gotten into before giving birth to more consumers who will be stuck with the responsibility of our carelessness.
There is no way we can keep on this way. It is disappointing that warnings aren't enough, and that we must see with our own eyes, feel with our flesh, wait until the last minute before believing.
Lindsay Bienick
Sec 005
I can’t even take this question seriously anymore. I took an environmental seminar last year and it showed that population growth was shown to be the pretty much the major cause for our environmental problems and our future ones. I can’t even fathom what our planet would look like if 9 billion people were to exist. I’ve already watched my home on the outskirts of Rochester for the past 15 years turn from one house in ten that was built in this rural area turn into a major area consisting of four subdivisions, a medical center, church, and strip shopping mall, with now two major roads located right at the end of my sub. Humans are taking over the landscape and there is almost no running away from it. I can’t picture Rochester becoming anymore populated before it starts to look completely industrialized. And Rochester isn’t even a major city at all!!!!! The future is one scary thing, that’s all I can say.
Besides urbanizing the landscape, it is clear that many humans go on starving day after day because there is not enough food in this world to feed everyone. I’d hope that if we learn to stop wasting the massive amounts we do every meal that we could feed enough people for at least a year. But for the next 20 years? That’s definitely not possible.
And lets be honest, after this course, we all know that there are currently not enough resources in this world to sustain the environment. Lets not even try to think about the exponential rate of resources used or needed to sustain the population as it increases. It is apparent that we need to find a solution to this resource thing, and we need to find it fast. But how????
Back to the seminar I took. The class related religion to the environment, along with communal efforts put forth to reach sustainability. In terms of population control, I’ve learned that many religions believe that you are only allowed to take so much from the earth. This affects the number of children they are willing to have. Others believe that you only give birth to one child because it is replacing your spot on the earth when you pass. And if you have a spouse, then you only can give birth to two to replace the both of you when you pass. But for those who don’t follow these religions, who says how many children you are allowed to have? Isn’t that inhuman to be restricted to the amount of children you chose to raise? So then, when does the act of being inhuman become less important than the treatment of the environment? I have no idea, but I can only think questions like these have a very fuzzy line.
And why is adoption to so freaking expensive?!?! Adoption is a great way to prevent further population growth as it allows children already born, yet have no home, to be cared for and given a family. I really think many more people would to this if they could afford it. I know I would. I want to have children one day, and I have no problem raising a child from a different mother has long as I can care for it in my own terms. My aunt has adopted four girls, three from Russia, and one from China, and it’s amazing to see the major change in the girls’ lives this has made. They have come from nothing but dirt and a blanket to a large house with sisters and parents. All of them are very knowledgeable of their situation beforehand and have a true appreciation for the lifestyle they now live, one that most Americans are lacking. This could potentially be why we have so many environmental problems also.
As I come to end this rant, I have to conclude that right now there is currently no realistic solution to the exponential growth rate of the world’s population. I can only hope that we can encounter one very soon, before it is too late.
Here is an image that makes we question the rate of species extinction if population growth does reach 9 billion in the next 20 years:
http://flickr.com/photos/70693287@N00/2566232254
I think the world can definitely exist when the population gets beyond 7 billion. Our population is actually quite near that now, since currently the world's population is currently well over 6.7 billion people. My guess is that 100 years ago, when the world population was 1.7 million, people would have never thought the world could exist with over 4 billion people. So much has changed since then and of course so much will change going forward another one hundred years.
Think back to the era of horse and buggy, very slow communication, separate communities, each providing themselves with their own food to eat. But now, just think how we have changed. Technology is ever present. Computers have brought our big world closer together. We can have instant conversations now with people on the other side of the world. We learn from each other and work together as we are trying to find the cure for cancer and treating patients afflicted with AIDS. Just think that twenty years ago no one knew about emailing or texting messages. Years ago it used to be that in order to have a conversation with someone on another continent, they had to call an operator to place the call for them. No doubt in twenty years from now our technology will continue to advance and our current ways of communicating will seem archaic.
There are still many areas in the world that hasn't reached their limits. The projected population for the year of 2040 is at 12 billion, 2080 is 24 billion and 2120 is at 48 billion. The problems that could exist at these huge numbers would be when we run out of resources. But there could be new advances that help develop a secondary resource, just like the world of fuel cell, a new way of producing electricity from fuel. Just like there was never a thought of people flying to visit various place on different continent two hundred and fifty years ago, before the invention of the horse and buggy. So it is difficult for us in 2008 to visualize what the world will be like in fifty or one hundred years from now. So much will change as we all think of new and creative ways to live longer, use our resources more wisely and not destroy all of natural resources we need to cherish now. Everyone needs to leave the world in a better condition than when you first arrived here.
In previous comments and other things I've called oil the product of some great mythological evil force whose mission is to make humans destroy the only piece of land they can populate within a reasonable reach. (Earth).
And then I thought "hey Carolyn, what about all the advances we've made in the medical arena thanks to petrol?"
Well, as you can see, it's all a part of the same big, evil plan! The further we progress in the medical field, the more people we can keep alive for a longer period of time. As a result, we have an exponentially growing number of consumers on our dinky-ass planet. I've brought this up to people before, and the reaction I've always gotten is something like...they delete my phone number and never talk to me again. YES, certainly, we are all attached to people, and we all want them to live as long as possible and for them to have every possible medical option if they ever get sick or injured. I know if my parents, best friends or boyfriend ever got hit by a truck, I would puke all over the place and become ridiculously depressed. But at the same time, we're all complaining about overpopulation and a general lack of non-renewable resources.
We're all really in conflict..with ourselves. I love so many people. I want to have kids of my own. Hell, I want to have an army of kids. But at the same time, I'm scared as hell that this planet is on the brink of imploding. eat eat eat the earth.
Crap.
I personally think not only that the earth can support that many people, but that it must. It is merely a matter of how we treat the earth now that will determine if it can truly sustain that high of a population. If we continue to waste the way we do in todays society there is little hope. But by realizing the problems we face tomorrow today, we are able to plan ahead.
Now with that optimism out of the way I can continue my statement. If we continue on the environmental path that we are on today there is no hope. With food shortages already plaguing the world with 6 .6 billion people, how can we hope for the problems to go away without a drastic change in the way things are handled.
The other thing that we have to consider is whether or not the population curve will slow down, and what it will slow down for. Will it slow down due to human conflict alone?
I think it is plausible that the world could support that many people, but not without a drastic change in our way of life.
Tae Hyung Kim
ADP 3: Section 5
12/12/08
It is kind of "scary" to observe the exponential population growth on planet Earth. We have limited resources with land and water, and it is clear that Earth is reaching its limit- it cannot hold any more population. One of models by the 19th-century clergyman and economist, Thomas Malthus, suggest that the food supply will run out after 102 years;food production increases linearly while the the population increases exponentially. This is, in fact, accurate as suggested by several graphs I have seen in the lectures. The exponential population has been happening for a hundred years with a slight decrease during the 1940's for the two series of WWI & II. We knew this was going to happen. But no strict measures have been taken yet. China, one of the fastest growing nations, has come up with "One Child" policy to slow down its population. It is irony that while the birth rate is low in developed nations while it is opposite in developing nations.
Although several measures are being taken to control the "uncontrollable" population, our life expectancy is getting higher every year with the new development in life sciences. Japan has the highest life expectancy of 81.25 years, and we are on the verge of facing 100 years. Are we going against nature after all? The average life expectancy was relatively low during the early 1900's and no one expected to foresee the population crisis.
We want to live a long, healthy life, and it is reality that there are other thousands of people who share the same interest. More people means more demands, and our natural resources get used up quickly. This situation might lead into famine and war, which we currently see in Africa. We should get a moment to think about what it really means to have more humans on Earth.
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