Population 7 billion. Changes ahead.

by Lion Cask 91 Replies latest social current

• 

  startingover

  BTS

  The prospect of that is exciting to me. However, if what you say comes true, the result will be more and more people.

  Hi startingover. I disagree. Look at what has happened in most of the technologically advanced societies: birth rates have either reached or fallen below replacement levels. Even US population growth would be extremely low without immigration. The nations with rapid population growth are the poorer, less advanced ones.

  I will just say this, I just wish there were not so many people that like to do what I do.
• 

  Terry

  Sometimes you have to step back and take a very hard and practical look at what you think is a problem.

  Make a 3 dimensional model of it to better understand it.

  Imagine the population of the world at 7 billion and have them standing together in Texas, for example.

  How big is Texas?

  Texas is 268,601 square miles, a square mile is 27,878,400 square feet. Therefore Texas is 7,488,166,118,400 square feet.

  Now compare the SEVEN BILLION people to the square feet in just Texas alone.

  Texas has SEVEN TRILLION, 488 BILLION, 166 MILLION, 118 THOUSAND AND 400 square feet.

  You would have plenty of room for every man, woman and child to live in Texas alone with the same amount of living space as the citizens of Paris, France have!

  Now does that give you a better perspective on this....um...population problem??
• 

  beksbks

  LOL. Where do the citizens of Paris get thier food? Energy? Medicine? Recreation? Etc. etc.
• 

  Curtains

  no problem lion cask, peace and goodwill to you.

  I agree with beksbks and would even go further and suggest that Paris needs all of France to sustain it. Same goes for London, Beijing etc. I think I agree with BTS when he suggests looking to smaller communites and would add that they need to be as self sustaining as they can and they need to be able to move, diversify and adapt when local resources become overworked. This is something we can work on now even as individuals. But on a larger scale, I think we need to be looking wider afield than the earth. Imagine if we could look back at the earth from another planet and feel a sense of pride when it regains its vigour and vibrancy.
• 

  Terry

  LOL. Where do the citizens of Paris get thier food? Energy? Medicine? Recreation? Etc. etc.

  Exactly! If you frame anything "a certain way" you create a problem insurmountable.

  Jehovah's Witnesses wanted to believe that 1975 was Armageddon and they slanted all their "reasoning", statistics, persuasion and interpretions around framing that issue.

  They got millions of people stirred up.

  It didn't happen.

  So what?

  So--it was a waste of people's time and their lives.

  I'm not saying population control is not a worthy goal.

  But, I do know this.

  If the intelligent problem-solvers of the world STOP having children, then--only the NON problem solving people who are easily manipulated, superstitious and ignorant will people the planet.

  Draw whatever conclusions you want about this.

  Isn't education containing accurate information to be preferred to fear-mongering?
• 

  BizzyBee

  If the intelligent problem-solvers of the world STOP having children, then--only the NON problem solving people who are easily manipulated, superstitious and ignorant will people the planet.

  Draw whatever conclusions you want about this.

  One could draw the conclusion that you equate concern about over-population with manipulation, superstition and ignorance.

  From your previous post about us all fitting inside Texas, you seem to be saying that over-population is only about physical space.

  If indeed those are your positions, one could conclude that you are a simple-minded fool.
• 

  Lion Cask

  Well, on that happy note, so endeth the thread. Thanks, all.
• 

  wasblind

  " I have said it before- the population increases of the world must be curtailed soon."

  Hey Moshe,

  you got me thinkin' Builderburgh
• 

  simon17

  We will solve the problem of human aging: by 2050 we will have the technology to live as long as we choose to.

  That sounds nice human aging right now is the only good solution we have to the real problem of overpopulation. The exponential growth rate means that non-renewable resources are depleting at a increasing rate: those problems are going to come to a head in a matter of a few decades (maybe less). If you had unlimited aging within 50 years, that means you have to go from hundreds of millions of babies a year to ... basically none. And how are you going to start telling all these different countries to stop producing babies? You're saying that "oh well basically the birth rate will somehow come down". But then you also say, the death rate will drop to nearly zero. There's no way to bring those two concepts together, outside of being able to colonize other planets or solar systems (which we are nowhere near 50 years to being able to do)
• 

  besty

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

  Vinge and Kurzweil and others have been considering this since the early 1990's - Kurzweil is on the record as planning for his own immortality and he is 62 YO.

  Kurzweil asks us to avoid the mistake of simply extrapolating what we can see today. This misses the key concept of exponential improvements themselves occuring at an exponential rate.

  Example - high speed data networks + Google + smartphone = all digital content in the world in your pocket and on demand, anywhere on the planet.

  This is considered trivial today but would have been almost inconceivable 20 years ago, not because we couldn't conceive the component parts, rather the way 'we' would combine them together serendipitously to create a novel concept, which itself then drives innovation even faster and harder.

  We already have machines designing machines - once we figure out how to reverse engineer and download the human brain the possibilities are infinite.

  By 2040 according to Kurzweil.