Slashdot Mirror
Have We Reached Maximum Sustainable Population Size?
Hugh Pickens writes "Pulitzer prize winning writer Thomas Friedman writes that in few years we may be looking back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? 'We're currently caught in two loops,' writes Friedman. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.' According to the Global Footprint Network we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth's resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. 'Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,' says Paul Gilding. 'We either allow collapse to overtake us or develop a new sustainable economic model. We will choose the latter. We may be slow, but we're not stupid.'"
No.
It's a little early to include the tornadoes as part of a discussion on global climate change. Just like one hot summer doesn't prove it and one cold winter doesn't disprove it (even ignoring the false notion that global climate change != getting warmer everywhere all the time) we'd need to see evidence of increased storm activity for multiple years in close succession before we could draw any conclusions. In general i'm a "believer" in global climate change, but i'm not in favor of using incorrect data to try and prop up the idea.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
See: tragedy of the commons...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
is the cause of the higher prices.
. 'One is that more population growth and more global warming together are pushing up food prices; rising food prices cause political instability in the Middle East, which leads to higher oil prices, which leads to higher food prices, which leads to more instability.'
- well that's plenty of nonsense.
Prices today are pushed up by artificial demand, created by the inflated currencies of the world. US Fed is printing like a maniac, buying up its own debt and is giving the US dollars to all the banks (and likely central banks) around the world, so that they would also buy US debt - this is an attempt to trick the bond market into believing there is an actual demand for US bonds, but all of this is designed to prolong the day of reckoning - when the US bonds are no longer bought and US dollar plunges ahead of all currencies and US is in hyper inflation, because Fed will likely buy out all the debt and default that way, rather than let the market restructure US debt and rebuild the economy.
The prices for food and energy around the world are going up as US is creating inflation around the world, but for now US is still shielding itself from the ultimate catastrophe - currency crisis, but who knows how much longer it can do this? Of-course the oil production will continue declining, as OPEC cannot actually bring more and more production on line, even though it pretends to say that it can, but it can't.
Cartels do not work, because the members have only incentives to cheat. They agree on quotas, and then they produce as much as they can, since they see high prices (even though in reality, the oil and gas are lowest price ever in history if counted in gold.)
As to the population size - the only problem with population size today, is that the governments of the world are distorting the free market and not letting the businesses provide everything the growing populations need in real competitive market. There are a small number of largest companies, that work with government to make sure they keep their monopolies, but of-course monopolies have about as much incentive to maximize their efficiency and compete on price/quality, as any government, which means zilch.
Do not lose the sight of what is really going on: globally the world's central banks are engaged in destruction of currencies in order to maintain the US currency high relative to their own, since there is likely political and personal profit in it for them. This is causing the massive inflation and then prices rise around the world, only so that they stay relatively stable in USA. Do not be fooled by the so called economists, that the government calls 'main stream' and who work for the governments - they are no different than the shamans and witch doctors of yesteryear, who also worked for their kings.
As to the global warming, etc. - how about getting government hands off the energy policy of the world, allowing the businesses to compete on best ways to provide energy, be it nuclear or whatever it is? And how about getting rid of the subsidies to the auto-industries via government sponsored infrastructure, which create the energy policy that we are observing around the world today, complete with wars and pollution?
I am sure this opinion will be highly popular on this site.
Good night.
You can't handle the truth.
I was forced to read "The Earth is Round" as part of my MBA. When it comes to amazing him, the bar is set pretty low. He could probably write a column on how the sun rises in the east
"Empire of Debt" has a delicious and well-deserved excoriation of Friedman. If it wasn't such a great book in and of itself, it would be worth reading just for that.
In 1971, Paul Ehrlich predicted a maximum sustainable world population of 1.2 billion people. By 1994 Ehrlich raised his estimate to 2 billion saying, "the present population of 5.5 billion [..] has clearly exceeded the capacity of Earth to sustain it." Two decades later we're closing in on 7 billion souls the overwhelming majority of which are not expected to starve to death or otherwise suffer a Malthusian catastrophe.
Overpopulation alarmism has become trite and hackneyed.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
That's an empty argument. The earth wasn't supposed to do anything.
Spin, perhaps, but even that's debatable.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
A US citizen is also usually responsible for 10 to 20 times more resource and energy production than a Chinese or Indian citizen. If they want more resources and energy all they have to do is produce them.
Overpopulation alarmism has become trite and hackneyed.
Yes, you are correct. We should continue on our present course without considering the consequences. We will never run out of anything.
I personally think that unless some steps are taken to bring world population growth to zero fairly quickly that there are going to be some truly horrible wars in fifty to one hundred years. First world countries will be very reluctant to give up all their modern amenities, and developing countries will be unwilling to curb their population growth to keep competition for resources to a minimum. At some point, there are going to be some very serious shortages, and the wars that result will not be conducted around the traditional goal of military conquest for resources, but rather the goal of making the world population much smaller in a very short time. I certainlly hope that doesn't happen, but there are enough despotic people in power around the world that I think it might.
The fact is that there are not infinite resources. If there are too many people using those resources, you will run out. The problem is that when this happens, it will basically be like an inflection point on a graph, where change will happen very quickly.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I noticed that this website is in English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian--meaning it is mostly directed to the west. The fact that it doesn't even have Mandarin or Cantonese despite China's 1.3 Billion tells you that he is more interested in extracting money from guilt-laden westerners than solving any problems. French! Less than 2% of the earth speak French as their native language. Heck, more people speak Bengali or Telugu or even Marathi than the entire population of France!
Most of the western countries are stable or have declining populations. The United States is an exception, however much of that is due to immigration. Yet you have India with 1.2 Billion and growing, Indonesia with 237 million and growing, Nigeria with 158 million and growing, Bangladesh with 150 million and growing---and the site is dedicated to telling Westerners why it is all their fault. Solving the real problem, 3rd world population growth, isn't going to get done by telling Westerners to reduce their "footprint".
Indeed. One only has to look at the devastation of the American Midwest, unable to produce any crops after decades of mechanized farming...
Wait, no. The Midwest produces more crops today then it ever did. Something's wrong here...
If Thomas Friedman wants to talk about sustainability, thats great, then he should practice what he preaches. He doesn't, and he and his wife made money off one of the worst drivers of urban sprawl, large lot shopping centers.
Seriously? Your doctor can't warn you about the dangerous and addictive habit of smoking unless he has excellent will power himself?
Sorry, but dismissing an argument with the wave of your hand, because you don't personally like the messenger really is bullshit.
I'm not defending his lifestyle --I'd be first to agree that he's being a hypocrite and such excess is deplorable when most people are struggling just to survive, but that's a criticism of the MAN, not his arguments.
Ask me about my sig!
In other words, it's the same discussion we have had in the 1950's, and the 1900's, and the 1830's, 1870's, and ...
There really isn't anything to add here. Really.
The short version : This specific prediction has been made as often as the end of the world predictions. Needless to say, most dates of "civilizational collapse" have passed, and nobody noticed. Every time something appears to go wrong, whether it's the real fucking great depression (1870, just not felt that hard in America because America played the role China plays today), WWI, the spanish flu, the great depression, WWII, the conflict with Japan, the oil crisis, the various crisises in the 80's, 90's and even the 2000's (how do you even call those ? The 00's ?) there is a new cohort of Malthusians that predict that "this time" it's really going to happen !
Let's now all mention the corollaries : peak oil, peak grain, peak food, peak corn, peak water, peak God's goodwill (this was the original version : God's "good will" will only support about 800 million people, so we'll never exceed that population), peak cows, ... and, to some Global Warming is just another version of the Malthusian argument (given that we don't actually know very well what will happen with Global warming, there is something to be said for this : Global warming won't kill us even if we just let it happen, we'll have to move a few cities. You could say that's simply "stimulating the economy". Perhaps that's even true)