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The Uncertain Future of Global Population Numbers
An anonymous reader writes "The question of global population is a pretty crucial one; how many people will there be in ten years? In forty? The New York Times notes research done by a group called the Worldwatch Institute, research that concludes world population figures are too fluid to make any sort of educated guesses. Childbearing populations combined with severe resource shortages in some parts of the world make pinning down a global headcount unfeasible for ten years from now, let alone out to 2050. The article continues beyond its original borders, as well, with commenters in the field of population studies noting we don't even have a good grasp on how many people were alive in 2007."
2007: Too many.
Future: Way too many.
... and all still on the same rock.
We need to get out more.
As populations grow out of control, lack of food and resources in some parts of the world will limit population growth, and as diseases and virus' change, our antibiotics are becoming less effective. I think the issue with population levels, and the rapid rate of growth that we are seeing, is far more worrysome than global warming. At least in my opinion. I think we are starting to approach a critical mass point, where we are going to have to start doing something, start making large changes soon. Whether it be global warming, over-population, or some other issue, each is only one of many "Holy crap what are we going to do?" problems. I would love to see the release of Duke Nukem Forever, but will we really be around to see it? :-)
-Eric-
~Liberalism Is A Mental Disorder~
Optimists cite plunging fertility rates in some countries as evidence that Earth's human passenger list will not reach 9 billion. Pessimists see a chance of zooming well past that mark, and they add that with all the signs of strained resources (what's the price of oil today?), this trajectory will lead to some hard knocks. Some say we've already shot over the edge of the cliff and, like Wile E. Coyote in the old cartoons, simply haven't noticed.
Looks to me like the optimists actually have some evidence behind them. The more crowded the world gets, the more expensive it will be to have many children, and the fewer people will have.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
Only Cowboy Neil's alive. He's imagining the rest of us.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Nuke from orbit.
In 2063 there will be 30 billion.. All Borg. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_First_Contact
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Of course when you look at some examples:
Easter islands, where the polynesians peaked at about 10000 inhabitants before falling to about 2000 because they chopped down all trees. (no more boats -> no more fishing, no more houses -> starvation, disease)
Haiti, where the population has stripped their half of the island almost literally bare (almost the complete population survives on food-aid, now you can imagine what happens when the food-aid stops.)
China, where groundwater continues to fall and many areas are already dry.
Great Britain, which is extremely densely populated, has to import about half of it's food and is stupid enough to let half a million immigrants in every year.
It becomes clear that the world just can't go on like that forever. It probably can't even go on like that for more than a couple of years. The green revolution has been made possible by oil and gas and both are getting much more expensive each and every year now.
And no, it's not a "global problem" like the one-worlders want us to believe. Some countries will be able to manage well (like Iceland which with almost zero immigration and geothermal energy plants is well prepared), some will be average (like France which can keep the lights up with nuclear power, but has a huge 3rd-world immigration problem on the other hand or Japan which is overpopulated but may solve that problem with low birthrates and not mass-famine), some will turn into hell-holes (like England which has an even bigger trade deficit than the USA per capita and cannot feed it's population even now while oil and gas is still cheap and there is still some coming from the North Sea oilfields. On top of that immigration has transformed a once cohesive population into a society that with a huge potential for civil strife or even civil war, London is already one of the most crime-ridden cities in the world.) or continue to be hell-holes (like most of the 3rd world)
I would be very surprised if there will be more than 3 billion people living in 2050.
Of course the human species will carry on, future historians will probably think of the 20th century as some crazy period full of socialist (in the late 20th/early 21st-century USA usually called "liberal") experiments.
probably in the next 2-3 years. I'm serious. Look at the Global 2000 plan or read the Georgia Guidestones if you don't believe. Alternative 3? Maybe.. I'm not going to provide the links. You'll have to do some actual research.
If you don't have an Infragard membership or a place secured in [the real] Iron Mountain, you are like me and are fukced.
Why is FEMA building all these prisons that remain empty? When you drive down the street, look at the backs of the signs on the opposite side. Do you see all the stickers? Those are tactical markers. Not in any language since they are designed for UN (Chinese? Russian? blankaznian?) troops to direct them to the local resources. Just start looking.
Still the Sarah Connor Chronicles is entertaining. Don't pay attention to the banks beginning to crumble. The Visa check card is here so why use cash?
"we don't even have a good grasp on how many people are alive in 2007." I have an answer: none. It's 2008. There needs to be a (-1; Nitpicky).
Anyone knows about the actual accuracy of the clock?
Mashiyach
PS: This is about the time people claim that this world, or at least this run, will end or change (parameter change?) significantly.
As population continues to increase, the hectares of land devoted per person for food production will continue to shrink. This will mean that traditional diets will need to change - meat requires a lot of land to produce, and wastes a lot of energy in its production. People will have to eat lower in the food chain to prevent as much energy loss as possible. Limits to genetic/Green Revolution style crop improvements will be hit. Eventually humanity will reach its carrying capacity (no more resources available to allocate to additional survival) on earth. This actual limit is unknown, but suffice to say that we will probably expand greatly upwards, into towering buildings. There probably won't be much in regards to a 'back yard' existing on soil. Earth could possibly be described as a giant feedlot for humans. Climate changes could cause human migrations which we are not prepared for - even more so with modern infrastructure. Furthermore, continued population growth will lead to reduced agricultural and wildlife biodiversity, further use of pesticides to sustain the population for as long as possible, and numerous water-related issues.
From the Neo-Malthusianism perspective there is a limit to the amount of resources available, and that population can increase faster than food production can increase. From the opposite perspective (Cornucopian), the supply of resources is infinite. We can exploit outer-space, or use as resources things we can't imagine now.
Which viewpoint is humanity's future? You decide.
the answer is simple.
Stop brining people back from the dead.
When somebody dies don't strap electrodes on them and shock them back to life. When somebody dies don't give them mouth to mouth and bring them back to life.
Leave the dead alone.
Now I know this will be difficult if your child has died from drowning or your grandpa died from a heart attack but we as a society must accept that people are going to die eventually. No matter how many times you bring them back to life they are going to die anyway.
Maybe new stigmas can be attached to people raised from the dead. Maybe if people started shunning the living dead and called them zombies and such the relatives would refuse to bring dead people back to life.
evil is as evil does
Let's be a bunch of overpopulation alarmists. Oh no, better yet, let's look at some facts: In most 1st world countries, you have tons and tons of people who are more interested in their career than in having children, so they're either single, or they're married with one or two children. Compare to the way things used to be, where people would have as many children as possible. So the population in these areas will either stay about the same or actually decline over time. Now let's talk about places where people still have a lot of children. They'll immigrate to the places where people have fewer children. No big deal. Besides, people in 3rd world countries have just as much of a right to live and procreate as do overpopulation alarmists. Oh, and the world could easily support a trillion people, and we're only at 6 billion right now.
"When you kill one, it is a tragedy. When you kill ten million, it is a statistic."
We are doomed.
*** Don't be dull.***
Sounds like you have never used a slide rule?
For an engineer, who was originally trained on a slide rule, 666 x 10^7 is as special as 666 x 10^-2 or whatever 666 x 10^n.
However, any measurement also has a certain accuracy, you can almost never measure anything exactly. Regarding people, even if in theory you could count each person when they are being borned or when they die, you would not know for sure how many they were at a precise moment. Regarding the population clock I just wonder how large this uncertainty is.
For once, porn really is the answer!
Environmental extremists have been controlling the population for years by banning DDT.
I heard that a dude called Xenu knows the solution to the population prob...
Oh wait, someone's knocking on my door. BRB.
As the other reply said the parent is not flamebait, a healthy population (and indeed the whole biosphere) is in dynamic equilibrium. Whack the dynamics too hard and it MUST find a new equilibrium, or cease to exist.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This whole approach irritates me.
Thirty-five odd years ago, there was a similar group of scientists trying to figure the same thing out (or so they said). They made some crazy predictions; namely, that the world would be over-populated, and primarily due to the heat put off by large cities, the global temperatures would result in us all looking like overdone chicken. TEOTWAWKI kind of stuff, all largely targeted at the gas guzzling, "consumerist" way of life.*
Or, at least, that's how the policy and information filtered down to school-aged kids in the late 80's/early 90's, and how it was communicated through laws and national/international (US and other Western countries) efforts to sap some of the world's hunger - primarily in Africa - to hopefully offset the problem now, so maybe in the future they could take care of themselves. Problem: Africa's population exploded, as did the disease and warfare. And the West is still funding this destructive cycle today, even though it's been proven - time and time again - to make the situation immeasurably worse, not better.
The supporters of these policies would say "oh, but this just proves the policies were effective!" (with regard to the initial population decines after those seminal works were published) - but they would be wrong. The world population was already in decline before these "runaway population" projection supporters tooted their horns. And since then, world population increase has been anything but exponential. China's population shrank markedly due to birth control; the Western countries (including Russia) have all shrunk substantially in population, and India is moving that way now.
What we should be trending and looking at predicting is what the next politically-foisted, crack theory will be. Just look back over the past 5 years, and you'll see an obscene amount of variance in just the "global warming/cooling/etc." argument; look back 30 years, and they're using the same models to predict something different still: the globe is cooling, new ice age - oh wait, it's warming, and we'll all look like overdone chicken by 2010... oh, what's that? 2008 is the coldest year on record in 30+ years so far?
And the same thing applies to population hokum. You can not predict something this complex: there are simply too many factors, internal and external, which have sway. It is significantly more complex than the global warming/cooling argument, because it directly depends (and bases most of its assumptions) on the global warming/cooling expectations. Then you've got cultural changes (ie, women having fewer/almost no children - which is exactly what happens when countries become "westernized", and what was directly overlooked/unknown in the "explosive population" projections), wars, famines, poor land management, extinction of bees (needed to fertilize all flowering plants), epidemics/panemics, and any number of other things.
* while some of it was noble, it went about it in such a reckless, dishonest manner that the message was largely discredited through the approach. yet enough was absorbed by members of my generation that much of the stupid policies and beliefs impregnated in our minds at a young age, and have taken root now that we are adults. yay, brainwashing.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
If that were the case, then wealthier people would be having more children and poorer people would be having fewer. In fact it is the EXACT opposite; the people who can afford the least children, have the most, and vice versa. There are many reasons/factors that come into play, e.g. cultural (it's become "socially unacceptable", for example, amongst the "educated class" to have lots of children - you are considered low class now if you have lots of kids, this was not true even just a few generations ago in our own culture, e.g. my gran was one of over a dozen kids and that was 'normal' then; conversely in many African cultures here, for example, having many children IS regarded as 'wealth'). Another factor I believe is a kind of instinct present in many animals too whereby when times are tough and infant survival rates thus lower, more offspring are produced to increase chances of survival.
The biggest drop in fertility rates amongst the world's wealthy educated minority did not actually coincide with education though, it coincided with the development and widespread availability of 'The Pill' in the late 60s / early 70s. Most of the world's poor either can't afford good contraception or aren't terribly interested in it.
For various reasons the poor are still able to survive in big numbers - their basic needs, like food, are mostly taken care of. In some cases this is thanks to welfare and AID, in others thanks to industrial agriculture allowing the earth to produce a lot of food at low cost. Also things like basic medicines/vaccines are comparatively widely available now globally. So average infant survival rates are MUCH higher than they were even fifty years ago. People just aren't dying much, even in poor countries, so producing children IS very cheap UNLESS you actually want to house and educate them properly, but most do not do this.
just count everyone's fingers and divide by ten!
If you're going to bring logs into it then any number is 666 x n^m for some value of n and m. Even restricting it integer values of n and m we've passed quite a lot of such points already. Exactly how many is left as an exercise to the reader.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I think you're both wrong.
:/
Strife and even war has historically been caused by men wanting more, the kind of more (gold, fur, shiny stuff, bigger SUV) that woman expect him to deliver.
So behind every war there is an greedy woman...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
One this is somewhat certain as far as human population on the Earth goes: at least according to my High School AP Environmental Science book. Populations in whatever constrained area have what's called a "carrying capacity"(called K). This is the effective numerical limit of population as it is constrained by limited resources. Global Warming aside, the generally accepted number K for humans on Earth is around 12 Billion. I don't know about you, but sitting currently at 6.5 Billion with 6 announced only a while back, I feel like 12 Billion is scarily close. Oh yeah...if I remember right the book said we would probably hit K sometime between 2045 and 2065. Once we hit K, there is a kinda population cleansing. 15-20% of the population dies in a very untimely manner, and we kinda start a little cycle of population. 12 Billion now, 10 Billion in a decade, 12 Billion in another decade, etc. This is a pretty consistent phenomenon in the animal world, and can be easily observed in rabbit populations in North America. They have around a 7 year cycle. There are even hunting laws in the U.S. that are synchronized with these K cycles (keeps populations more consistent). Of course, I've never heard a politician apply these concepts to humans... I'm just saying things don't exactly look to green on my side of the fence.
Agreed, but that does not mean it always can. So long as all our eggs are in one basket, we are constrained with finite space, and therefore, finite resources. With unchecked population increase, consumption will inevitably overtake maximum production limits, likely resulting in precipitous—and immensely uncomfortable—population decline.
The quantitative questions are being addressed. (What is that upper limit? When will we reach it?) However, whether will we choose wise reproductive habits receives much less attention. I think we would rather not find ourselves under the hardships of overpopulation.
While the first two questions remain outstanding, it appears we may be deciding favorably on the qualitative point, and my angst may be for nothing. Global population increase is slowing; the trend of declining birth rates is not limited to industrialized nations.
The earth is a closed eco-system, unless we head for the stars. There have been many studies of population growth in closed systems. They end with a lot of suffering.
It's quite possible that human population will trend nicely towards an equilibrium, however, our very economic system is based on perpetual growth and not equilibrium. It is a matter of time until we see some limiting factor in the natural world, that will prevent that magic 5% year-on-year growth. At this point, investment will collapse, and we'll be forced to develop equilibrium based economics.
It is worrying that we are tending more and more to keep our system going by drawing down on our resources faster, instead of being conservative and clever about our use of the planet. If human population is going to gently move to towards equilibrium, then there must be careful consideration of sustainable development. If we continue our hack-n-slash approach, we may well end up with a disaster on our hands. We are already seeing signs of imminent future problems with arable land, energy resources, fresh water and climate change.
Perhaps it would be sane to penalize obviously myopic economic activities, like mining oil-sands, trawler fishing, and massive deforestation. Unfortutely, our economic system is structured such that companies can gain "growth" by hiding costs in externalities. That is precisely the problem with "next-quarter" economics, and characterizes much of the mentality of wall-street.
Our growth based economic system is a tradition that has grown out of the folkways of antiquity. It is no more or less wise than bacteria growing exponentially across an agar jell. This economic system co-exists with, and is ultimately subordinate to the matter-energy relationship that we have with the planet. This is analogous to the bacterial growth hitting the edge of the petri dish.
Perhaps you could try to argue that we'll just find cleverer and cleverer ways of doing things. Blind faith in the genius inventor is an excuse for pillaging the world right now. It's just that the scientific method that gave us the industrial revolution is the same scientific method that is saying we need to curb carbon emissions. The problem isn't with science, but with myopic greed and stubborn ignorance about our relationship with the world.
Expect human society to behave no wiser than the bacteria on the agar jell. We'll consume ever faster, and change our ways only after significant insurmountable problems arise. This situation is analogous to how a person sinks into depression, and then resolves to significant change after they realize that depression is not living.
We learnt nothing from the extinction of the dodo. There will be many more dodos in the future.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Long ago I read a paper that said for everybody to have a living standard on par with a European 1st world nation the planet could only sustain 2 billion people.
Industrializing the 3rd world can not solve the problem simply because the current global system that supports industrialized nations depends upon exploiting 3rd world resources and labor. Note: I'm not even getting into environmental issues.
- Alternatives:
How about GM food? China has rice that causes birth defects. You already eat GM food like the cattle we are. Would be easy to slip it in, have gov help the corps cover it up like they do on so many things already. It could easily take a generation before its resolved and then the population is lower.
How about a mutated gene? we use deadly bacteria and viruses to mix genes between creatures without any knowledge of how it works (fine, maybe we know 1% of the genetics field at this early stage.) Maybe its more humane for one of these new live-virus "vaccines" to go terribly wrong than to starve people by killing of major sources of food (or all the bees...)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Our planet is in imminent danger of being eaten by an enormous mutant star goat!
Ronald said nothing. He flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse, and rode madly off in all directions.
The population has exploded in the past century for one and only one reason - PEAK OIL. For every calorie of food that we consume it takes about 10 calories of energy to make. It is not sustainable to expend more calories than you consume. Through the use of oil, we have been able to have machines do the manual labor of farming. Through the use of natural gas, we have created fertilizers to grow crops. Take away the fossil fuels and our farming capacity dramatically drops.
/.'ers to read The Oil Drum blog, especially the daily DrumBeat's.
Industrializing 3rd world nations will only hasten the global die-off. Look at the HUGE impact on commodities that China & India have place since they industrialized. If China was to consume like we do in the US, it would take 7 planet earths. A real good DVD to watch is A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash.
I strongly urged all
The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.
That rock will support many, many more btw. There's plenty of space left to populate and it shouldn't be up to establishment scum like Maurice Strong to decide. The true worry behind population control lies in the second part of the word.. control. Too large a population exceeds the ability to effectively monitor and control.
Here btw is the population control agenda set in stone for all to see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones
* Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature
* Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.
* Unite humanity with a living new language.
* Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason.
* Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
* Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a one world court
* Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
* Balance personal rights with social duties.
* Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite.
* Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature.
If a woman goes away because you aren't keeping her neck deep in her vices, well, she wasn't yours to begin with was she? As long as women will prostitute their bodies for their vices and men will prostitute their minds and morals for theirs, well....
I've never really understood the mentality behind 'debunkers'. My only guess is it's insecurity. Wanting to seem reasonable and rational. Down to Earth. I'm curious how this person defines a minion and keeps themselves out of that description.
There is no website that is going to enlighten you if you are looking for a specific outcome. Try reading some books for a larger perspective.
Architects of Conspiracy
Pawns in the Game
Rule by Secrecy
The Unseen Hand
Hell even liberals can handle Confessions of an Economic Hitman..
More specific areas:
Trans Formation of America
The Creature from Jekyll Island
(any books on) HAARP
The Montauk Project
Just unplug yourself from your pod and don't be in such a rush to be a slave.
I fail to see why this is a bad thing. Some areas of the world are better for producing food than others, just like some areas are better for producing wood, and so on. Why shouldn't the areas that can produce more than they need ship the products to other areas? This isn't Civilization 4, a city doesn't have to directly produce all its food. We can move resources around. A country is a highly arbitrary border anyhow. Bitching about England importing food would be the same as bitching about New York importing food. Just because New York is importing it from other US states doesn't change what is happening: The food is being grown where it is convenient and shipped elsewhere.
The world is composed of complicated systems. Many slashdot readers build complicated systems. It doesn't fit your world view so it becomes ludicrus. This is about as unscientific a statement as they come.
'You would literally need billions of people in on the conspiracy for it to work'
Absolutely not. It's called compartmentalization and it exists in virtually any organization. Does the president confer with you about foreign policy at his cabinet meetings? No. Do they effect you? Yes.
"Could everybody stop saying 'Oh no', or the fucking Cool-Aid guys gonna keep coming in?.."
The water outflow of the Columbia River would provide each and every person with nearly 26 gallons of fresh water per day (cites: Columbia River).
We could feed all those people - about 500 square meters per person - with the existing farmland within the US (cites: vegan food estimates, farmland in the US).
Essentially, we could live mid-density, and feed and provide potable water for every single person on the face of the earth, and not require a single person living outside of Texas - no one on the other 6 continents, the oceans, or any other State. No one in Canada or Mexico.
We could feed everyone without a single acre converted from farmland - wouldn't need to touch a single acre of forest, nor city, nor ocean, nor park.
The earth can support a LOT of people; the problem is distribution of the resources. And that is a purely political issue. Concerns about too many people on earth are demonstrably false.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
... myself. All the rest, could be just my imagination.
The U.S. transportation system and food industries seem to be by far the most efficient methods currently addressing the problem.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Maybe the people making these calculations should talk to the climatologists who think they have correct global climate models that can predict temperatures 50 years into the future despite all the variables involved. But hey, if people are willing to listen to such far out (no pun intended) climate conjectures then the people calculating the global population don't have anything to lose by talking to the climatology modelers. They will be able to cause mass panic and convince both public and private sectors to throw billions into fixing the problem. I would think measuring the global population involves a lot less guessing (counting people) than climate modeling (counting the bad molecules that supposedly cause the greenhouse effect) 50 years into the future.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Q: What is the meaning of life?
A: Reproduction.
We are not free from natural selection and such.
Evolution selects for successful reproduction. For humans in the modern environment, the main cause of reproductive failure is birth control. We are most likely to overcome this via mental changes, though don't be surprised to see a bit of a hormone level arms race against the birth control pill as well. In the short term, expect stupidity. It's a fitness trait if it helps reproduction (which it does), and the trait is not exactly uncommon. In the long term you can expect more effective adaptations, such as a burning desire to raise lots of children.
We will fill the Earth. If you resist, other people will fill it. (see above) Evolution demands that we fill the Earth.
Life will be a difficult struggle in a world packed with humans. Our future can not be any other way.
This is silly. Those who restrict themselves will simply be selected against, soon being replaced by future generations who have no qualms about selfishly grabbing as much of the Earth as they can. You might as well be one of them, allowing your descendents to be part of our future.
I guess if you like hot dogs and broth-injected meat with a bit of a corn flavor, OK.
Industry won't be producing anything like an all-natural roast.
Okay, once again, it's called compartmentalization. People below don't know what the people above have in mind, they just follow orders. Kind of like a function in a program is limited by it's scope but doesn't need to know about anything else. This concept is 101 shit so I'm a bit surprised that I have to repeat myself here.
Organizations fund educational institutions to indoctrinate people into a particular mindset. You think you are studying science, but it's the 'science' they want you to believe. DOH issues mandates to schools to vaccinate children with drugs that create autism, ADD, &c. The school nurse thinks she is doing the child a favor. She is a minion.
Try thinking and using some of that "free will" you talked about instead of parroting the bs you were programmed with dude. Free your mind Neo!
8 billion living in texas using current tech? I don't believe it. soylent green? free energy? full recycling? A human farm like the matrix?
Population control isn't happening by itself there are forces at work. (see China, who BTW just extended their 1 child per couple law; aside form abortions, infanticide, and soon GM rice. )
You just assert that things could work in a vague texas utopia. I've never read anything that leads me to think your premise has any grounding in reality.
Modern recorded history has largely upper classes riding on the backs of the poor and sometimes a sizable middle class sits in the middle; but still dependent upon exploiting the poorer people. Sure, something new might happen someday but not likely.
NYC is FAR FAR FAR FROM self contained. Don't be silly. They are almost all externalized; economically, food, power, etc. Walmart is cheap because they externalize their costs and your cost to the child slave workers in another country. CHINA puts out more CO2 than the USA now; however, much of it is the USA just our sourcing their pollution (along with the jobs, etc) along with everybody else having their stuff made in China. Then we complain about them needing to fix the problem...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Fun and profit? Goes well with your morning coffee? Finger on the pulse of the world? Distraction from the boredom of an ultimately meaningless existence?
Why read anything on Slashdot?
Just take comfort in the fact that I'm the one with the hat so you can go about your life in blissful normalcy.
-FL
Your point is taken; I understand the evolutionary implications. The problem of resource availability remains. Organisms that reproduce too rapidly doom themselves to some form of starvation in the long term.
Yes, the ENTIRE population could fit inside of Texas. Of course, the energy requirement just to cool them would be ENOURMOUS. Or how about moving the waste out of there? Or how do you make anything there. After all, it is not our drinking, and bathing water that chews up so much. It is manufactuering and farming that eats up water and resources.
All in all, stats like these are TOTAL BS and absolutely WORTHLESS.