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.'"

Comments

Answer:

[XanC]

No.

Re:Answer:

[countertrolling]

Yes! It's right there in the summary.. We need a new economic model... Resources are more than abundant.. Mismanagement and desire for control is the problem..

Re:Answer:

[fatphil]

We need more contraception.

We need to recognise that people like Mother Theresa and the Pope are the cause of more suffering in the world, through encouraging people to breed offspring who can't be fed properly, than either Uncle Joe or Uncle Mao.

Re:Answer:

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Reiterate: No.

1% of the population controls, demands, consumes and excessively wastes better than 85% of the available resources on Earth.

I assure you, they do not do so through a system that rewards their excessive virtue or merit.

The planet could sustain many times it's current population with a better equity in distribution. This doesn't mean lowering the status on middle-classes in the developed world, but toppling the capstone of this pyramid.

It's a little early...

[Daetrin]

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.

Of course we're stupid

[dargaud]

See: tragedy of the commons...

No

[Spazmania]

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.

Re:No

[hedwards]

Over population is definitely something that we need to be concerned with. But in practice that problem tends to take care of itself when the population gets adequate, food, education and support in old age. Few people genuinely want to have more than 3 kids, the number is small enough that if a few people choose to have more it's probably not even worth worrying about.

The bigger issue is in parts of the world where parents have to depend upon their children to care for them in old age. Parents have no way of knowing how many children will survive to adulthood and as such tend to have a lot more children in order to make sure that they're cared for. These kids then tend to make a similar choice and over time the population just keeps on growing.

But, rather than disasters, the bigger thing we need to be concerned with is how much of the planet's surface we're dedicating to agriculture and living space. We definitely could grow the population quite a bit and still be able to sustain ourselves, it's just the cost would be extraordinary and we'd have to give up our wild spaces.

Re:No

[walshy007]

The problem with your argument, is that all of the advanced unnecessary accessories are now comparatively cheap, whereas the basic necessities of life are increasing in cost dramatically.

A standard size house block of land 50km away from the nearest cbd here costs approximately $300k-400k AUD (about $330k-440k USD) _without_ even a house on it.

You are looking at closer to a million dollars simply for a typical house.

Food is still relatively inexpensive if you actually make your own. No one in the 60/70's bought large quantites of pre-made food and ate out for 3 meals a day of fast food.

The costs of the land to grow your own food costs far more than the produce you would create. If you mean going to the shopping centre and getting ingredients, fast food can work out cheaper.. that is how expensive normal food is these days. It only makes sense to go normal food shopping if you have 3+ people and buy in bulk to create big meals.

What most people take for granted today as a mediocre lifestyle is beyond what even the wealthy had access to in the 60's and 70's

Depends on what you want from life, financial independence, owning your own home, not having food bills eat most of your income? Something many now cannot achieve which was easily doable back then.

Basically, all the luxuries are now cheap, and all the basic necessities of life are now expensive, nice work there.

Re:No

[rgbatduke]

Evidence for this claim? My father worked to help make the green revolution happen in India and Southeast Asia, and he had absolutely nothing to do with oil (nor did the work done by e.g. Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller foundation, US AID, and so on have anything to do with oil). The bulk of the effort associated with the green revolution was the development of far better crop hybrids -- e.g. advanced rice hybrids developed in Louisiana -- with much higher yields and resistances, modern crop rotation methodologies, the development of a sustainable economic model from the farmer to the table, and much more. "Oil" played a (relatively minor) role in only two ways that I can think of or remember -- replacing bullock carts to some extent with e.g. trucks and rail for transporting crops to more distant locations, and as one of many sources of energy used to make fertilizers. The predominant fuels used by the farmers he worked with before, after, and during the revolution were dried cow dung and charcoal.

As a consequence of the green revolution and education and a very energetic population, fossil fuel consumption in India has steadily risen along with the gross domestic product as it has moved towards being a modern society, but oil had almost nothing to do with the revolution per se and has nothing at all to do with the "1-2 billion baseline". At least as far as I know (and I probably know a lot more than most people, having lived in India and watched the green revolution happen). If you have evidence to the contrary, feel free to enlighten me -- with references.

rgb

Re:No

[Surt]

We shouldn't listen OR not listen to anyone based on the history of other people's failed claims. We should judge claims based on their merit/evidence.

Re:We keep saying this...

[fatphil]

That's an empty argument. The earth wasn't supposed to do anything.
Spin, perhaps, but even that's debatable.

Re:We keep saying this...

[Chris Mattern]

The problem with your idea is that "Green Revolution" agriculture is harmful to the soil. Because it involves machinery and pesticides it creates dead soil on top of hardpan. The land will no longer produce vegetables after years of monocropping.

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...

Re:lots of nonsense

[artor3]

Who gives a flying fuck what the purchasing power of [arbitrary currency unit] is? What matters is how much a typical person can buy with a day's wage. That is a hell of a lot higher today than it was in the 19th century.