Overpopulation

[Muskelmann098]

More likely, less economically developed countries will collectively declare war on western civilisation. And no matter how many nukes you might have, that's something that can't be stopped.

Now that's realistic, provided that governments who can't organize their own food supply is able to organize some kind of attack. However, I think this is more likely, and at the same time, it would be a natural way of solving an overpopulation problem. Nature has its way of correcting stuff like this. Food shortage is one of them, and war is another. Personally, I'm not sure what is worse...

[overburn404]

Well, as long as organizations such as "Greenpeace" or whatnot reject every scientific advance made in the agricultural industry (and other industries, since i brought it up), nothing is going to change. The population will reach a point when it will remain constant , because those who don't have anything to eat will starve to death. I utterly hate that idea.
But what can I do when we bring it on ourselves... Progress is stagnated by money. Thus the areas that will advance the most will be those that are in short supply for the individual. Unfortunately the majority of the research done these days is done for commercial purposes, thus if the people don't directly need it , it won't be done. Or it will be done with minimal funding.
And if it is done, it will probably be sabotaged by competitors who can't do it. So they send in "Greenpeace" to tell everyone that it's wrong.

[Goatboy]

Tremendous gravedig there. Let this thread die.

[overburn404]

Whops, sorry. Didn't look at the last date.
Well, rest in peace thread.

[VACUOUS]

Step 1: Go to Google.

Step 2: Search "Demographic Transition Theory".

Step 3: Realize how dumb this thread is.

The notion that population will outstrip food supply is empirically false. Additionally, population control is an awesome way to justify horrific amounts of violence, especially the lower classes. Ever heard of Lebensraum?

[hkrjunior]

If anyone thinks that killing is the solution then maybe they should be the first ones forced in line. I would like to see whether they change their mind when their own heads are at the execution platter.

Life is precious, so value its every moment.

[msbachman]

The notion that population will outstrip food supply is empirically false.

You're mistaken if you think anything about the future is empirically true/false. But I get your point...what you meant to say was that the total food supply thusfar hasn't surpassed the nutritional requirements for the world as a whole. Correct me if I'm wrong on that though.

Overpopulation certainly is a worry, but right now the greater problem is improper distribution. America's dealing with an epidemic of obesity, where millions are dying of causes at least partly attributable to overconsumption, and at the same time, you've got the following stats of some 4700 persons dying hourly from starvation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation ... statistics

I dug that up quickly by Jeffrey Sachs wrote an excellent book on the topic that all interested should read. Offhand, I think it's called An End to Hunger, can't remember for certain.

In all honesty though, I think both sides of this discussion are partially valid. The world is far too populated for every person to consume to their hearts' desire. So if this were important, we'd have to cut down on the population a bit--noone's saying that necessitates a massacre--many portions of northern Europe have done so voluntarily by way of birth control and choosing smaller families. China has done so to an extent by rule of law (still in effect? idk). Alternatively, we could let the population expand to the limits of agriculture--and you can't reasonably claim that the advances in agriculture will continue indefinitely. Let's say that advanced agriculture could support 20 billion people. We will hit this figure if population continues to grow unabated.

On the other hand, the population could grow significantly if we had better measures in place to export foods to poorer countries. Which many countries do currently, only to see the shipments reapportioned to support the buying of armaments.

So the bottom line is that at some point, either consumption will have to be reduced per capita or the population will have to be reduced. Likely, people will oppose either, and we'll fuck up our world beyond repair, either from pollution, waste, and eradication of natural resources, or a great war kicked off by food riots.

[VACUOUS]

The point that I'm trying to make is not that over consumption isn't bad, it's that demographics indicate that world population will level off and we won't experience a Malthusian crunch as illustrated by this graph: