Slashdot Mirror
Earth's Population To Hit 7 Billion This Year
MikeChino writes "The UN Population Division just announced that the world's human population will hit 7 billion by Halloween 2011. The increase of one billion people in the past 12 years is worrying, especially since the global population only reached one billion total in the early 19th century. In the next 20 years, our population growth is predicted to rise to 8 billion people as our demand for food increases by 50 percent, water by 30 percent and energy by 50 percent." Not everyone finds it to be worrying per se.
This only ends one way, and any fool can see it.
But sure, argue both sides. Have as many kids as you want. I couldn't guess their odds of living to 70, but I am willing to bet that this is that "magic" generation, and they will see suffering and mass death unprecedented in all of human history.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
:(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkgDhDa4HHo
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
The Voluntary Human Extinction movement needs all the help it can get.
I must be old and grumpy and cynical.
Humans consistently underestimate exponential growth. If you have a bigger population, it will grow faster.
Who honestly thinks humans are immune from population cycles of the animal kingdom? of overpopulation killoff? We're due for a war soon. War is just human's way of normalizing the population for resources.
I don't want kids and it annoys me when I see massive families. What does that make me? A dead end in genetic material or "Idiocracy" in the making?
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
Well, since humanity's `welfare infrastructure` insists on curing and feeding the idiot's and the sick I think that this is a consequence we have to live with...
-- no sig today
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/4003063.stm
Given decreases in TFR, it's possible the world will experience a population decline this century.
The total fertility rate is below replacement level for many countries of the world. The main exception is sub-Saharan Africa.
Most of the Anglo- and Eurosphere is in decline. The US is in decline natively, and only growing due to immigration.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
This is by far the most depressing thing I've heard in a while.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
They add about 2 million to the population here every year. Africa's population is set to double in 30 years. My advice, buy land. Food will be worth more than gold.
Seven Billion is about two Billion too much, a fact that Pope Benedict should bear in mind the next time he speaks against contraception. Still, I don't suppose he will ever go hungry or thirsty.
Ganty
The world waits with baited breath for your solutions for increasing energy generation, food production, and water purification.
Oh and all this while we are about to run out of the millions of years of solar energy we just burned up in the form of fossil fuels.
Oh, you expected someone else to figure these things out. I see.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
i honestly tried to resist
http://www.awfullybigmoustache.com
We created anti-biotics, pesticides, irrigation, the agricultural revolution. We have the ability to completely transform any habitat to suit our own. We chop down the rainforest (the earth's lungs) to plant millions of acres of soy, sugar, and other cash crops. We divert the mightiest of rivers and dam them, laying waste to natural cycles that held true for thousands of years. When all environments are covered with humanity, we will move to the oceans to harvest what is left of their bounty. Even if we have massive famines, there will still be billions of humans. Diseases such as plague, flu, virulent TB, ebola ect... are able to be defeated through modern methods of intervention. No...the population will continue to rise, and the planet is set to become much more crowded. Your choice to forgo your evolutionary birthright will be but a blip among the billions of humanity.
Start colonizing other worlds, encourage more and more birth rates, turn the Earth into a Hive World and then spread across the galaxy, we have to do something otherwise the Orks, Eldar, Tyranids, Tau and all the others will wipe us out.
Easiest solution short of genocide or mass sterilization:
-- Make everything artificially more expensive, and don't subsidize children. Literately make the cost of having more than 2 children prohibitive so we stop getting welfare whores popping out babies so they don't have to work. --
More specifically, make it expensive from the consumption side. Having 8 children probably means you have to buy huge land yachts for automobiles, and go through thousands of dollars in food per month.
In theory (just like communisim) it could work, but in practice what will more likely happen is that governments won't have the balls to eliminate to cut entitlements on child tax credits.
In countries like China and India, they have to get over "must have a boy", I actually think the problem will over there will resolve itself if we do nothing, the excess men will adopt all the children that the breeders produce. In North America and Europe this won't happen.
The second derivative of the world population has been negative for a while now. In other words, this will end with the population stabilizing at some level. Quite possibly (but, of course, not certainly) without any catastrophic natural or human-made disaster.
Probably not what you were thinking?
The US census bureau projects March next year to be the time when world population hits 7 billion.
Nice touch having the 7 millionth arrive on Halloween! Wouldn't be nearly so scary if it was say, in the middle of September. Anyway, I demand a recount!
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
they will have plenty of food!
Welcome to the vast club of people who've had their head in the sand since the dawn of humanity.
Call me immoral but people should stop having as many kids as they are.
But don't take me wrong. The immorality is probably not where you think it is, but in the double measure you are applying. Most of the families with high number of children are located in 3rd world countries. Today, having more than 3 kids is something pretty uncommon in 1st world countries. I was raised in a country who moved from extremely poverty to great wealth in a couple of generations, and what it was common with my grandgrandparents (7 or more kids per family) now is reduced to 1 or 2 kids in average. The population increase in most European countries is due to immigration.
What I mean is that the number of kids is something that tends to autocontrol itself. Once a certain wealth level is achieved, the number of kids per family is reduced.
So, yes, your message is immoral, because what is needed is not severe population control measures, but wealth balancing measures. Erradicate the so called 3rd world, and you will find that the population will stabilize itself.
The next frontier will be natural gas. There is plenty of natural gas in the middle east (and else where). After that there is coal. Electric cars will proliferate over the next 20 years. Even Solar power plants are picking up steam. Don't forget about nuclear. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and others are in the advanced stages to build dozens of nuclear power plants. Some people might get hungrier, but they won't breed any less.
"In the next 20 years, our population growth is predicted to rise to 8 billion people as our demand for food increases by 50 percent, water by 30 percent and energy by 50 percent.""
That seems to imply that the INCREASE in population over the next 20 years, ie more than double.
The obvious solution is to ban sex (between men and women) and encourage homosexuality.
We wont even need a war that becomes inevitable once resources get scarce. No, nature will take care of it first. The more there are people, the more densely populated the world, the more likely is a proper pandemic. People go every day from one end of the world to another. All you need is a germ that is highly contagious, lethal and has a 3 day latency period and most of that 7 billion will drop dead and it wont even take very long. This is bound to occur within this century. All the highly sterile environments we insist on keeping are perfect breeding grounds for such a disease.
If you want some arguments for growth, Becker and Posner discussed this a while ago. Becker came out more strongly for population growth.
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/05/does-the-earth-have-room-for-10-billion-people-posner.html
http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/05/yes-the-earth-will-have-ample-resources-for-10-billion-people-becker.html
People have been using this to justify power grabs for centuries.
This summary is absurd on its face: the 7->8 billion person increase of 14% will increase water demand by 30% and food demand by 50%? Bullshit. We currently overproduce food, and we pay farmers not to produce. Moreover, future generations will work with what's available, innovate, and find ways to provide for themselves. Humans have for thousands of years. Nothing will change.
Nothing to worry about. God wants us to use up everything and trash the fucking planet. Then Jebus can come back!
The population growth is a really worrying issue I think we failed to nail in the last decades.
With a world average of 2.58 children per woman it doesn't sound too bad, but add to it the increase of life expectancy and it's then no surprise that we are still growing so fast.
We need to bring family planning to the poorest countries which hold the greatest birth rates as soon as possible. That will solve two problems with one shot: reduce population growth and poverty. Since giving them the opportunity to achieve economic stability before having children, and having less children to feed would give those families a lot more possibilities.
Second step would be education, to give them the chance of economic growth.
That'll free up about 1.5 billion from the surplus population.
If you can get India and Pakistan in there too, you'll cull another 1.4 billion.
Taking 41% out should alleviate the population pressure problem quite nicely.
And it's a lot more humane then invading those countries, killing all the babies, disemboweling the women and cutting off all the mens' penises.
It's hardly likely to be slashdotters doing it, is it?
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
"Earth that was could no longer sustain our numbers, we were so many. We found a new solar system, dozens of planets and hundreds of moons. Each one terra-formed a process taking decades, to support human life, to be new earths. The Central Planets formed the Alliance. Ruled by an interplanetary parliament, the Alliance was a beacon of civilization. The savage outer planets were not so enlightened and refused Alliance control. The war was devastating, but the Alliance's victory over the Independents insured a safer universe. And now everyone can enjoy the comfort, and enlightenment of your civilization."
Josh Whedon will be proud!!!
-- no sig today
With the rapid growth of the internet, and free hi-def porn, males will increasingly re-interpret Onan and his 'seed' in Genesis 38:9-10. At least, I give the porn industry as much of a chance of solving this as Al Gore. You do have to give Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter credit for both having one-child and making it ok for men to lust in our hearts at babes.
Gently reply
Now he is a subject all you devils can appreciate. Lets just decide who is worthy of living and who isn't after all this web site is full of people who think they are smart. Key word is think!
I know I'll get down rated for this, but with the concerns of global food supplies not being enough, and the growing global population, should we REALLY be trying to save people from starvation who will never be able to provide for themselves? Starvation is the thing that keeps societies from growing faster than the increase in food production, so why encourage third world countries to continue to increase their populations when they can't feed themselves?
There is a basic concept, if you have a resource, trade it for a resource you do not have, and that includes money. If there is an entire nation that has no resources to trade and they are not capable of growing their own food, then the population will starve, the population will go down, and things balance out. Helping rebuild after a natural disaster is one thing, but if after 20+ years a country can't recover, then why should we continue to help? The world as a whole does not need money pits, and the world as a whole does not need a "food pit" that will never be able to trade resources for food.
Helping people in your own country would make far more sense, since if you can elevate THOSE people out of poverty, they may be able to become productive and to add value to society as a whole. If you want to adopt people and bring them into your own country, then fine, bring them in, and make them productive.
This will be the third time population growth caused a major change in society.
The first time happen when population grew larger than the bicameral mind state of man could handle. We created Consciousness, the ability to create and use higher level abstractions. Higher than the base level animals share. In doing so we gave up the benefits of the bicameral mind in its ability to be in touch with nature (i.e. how crabs know to move inland before a hurricane makes landfall, Monarch butterflies every fourth generation know to go back to one location in Mexico, from the three generations before them traveling as far a Canada, etc..) But there was effort of man to keep a connection to the bicameral mind state via the job of oracles. The Tower of Babel is more a metaphor for an event that happened around the world of this population driven breakdown of the bicameral mind movement to the creation and use of higher level abstraction (consciousness) than it is a religious event. From it came introspection, the first recorded suicide and by error or intent we discovered deception and how it can be used for advantage of oneself at the possible disadvantage of another. Julian Jaynes work covers this transition of mind state Origins of Consciousness through teh breakdown of the bicameral mind
The second major change in society population growth drove was of mathematics, the abstract tool set used. The Roman Numeral system did not lend well to accounting after the population grew beyond the limits of roman numeral mathematics. The Hindu-Arabic decimal system with its zero place holder (Only a fool would think "nothing" could have value) took three hundred years to overcome the roman numeral system, though it was much easier and more powerful to use. Population growth was the motivating factor. Today the Hindu-Arabic decimal system is the universal language of society, for it defines economy.
The build-up of population pressure today is doing what? Well its become very clear our numerical abstractions which are supposed to represent value in the economy, as a tool of trade called money, have become far to manipulated and distorted to anymore be an honest representation of value. For it to be an honest representation it would be required to be able to show the less than zero real value existing for which the massive negative numbers around the world are suggesting.
Recap: we created higher level abstractions to overcome growing problems in society due population growth. Then we created a specific set of abstraction to again deal with society issues caused from growing population.Today we again are dealing with population growth issues, but this time its the breakdown of the honest use of the abstract tools we have created.
The breakdown of these abstract tools, money and language and society really beginning to fight back has and will continue to be in the news. Bank bailouts, real estate bubble burst, the trillion dollar bet, 9/11 (world trade center), Tunisia, Egypt, Wikileaks, Anonymous, Rupert Murdoch etc.
Society has gotten tired of the crap of the LESS THAN 1% screwing the rest of us... 7 BILLION.... Things are going to change...
We Do NOT Forget, We Do NOT Forgive, Expect US!
The Anonymous of a 7 billion Society...
I suspect we'll find the honesty of the bicameral mind and honest advantages of the tool of abstraction...
Hyperion Cantos - Dan Simmons
...
A lot of the projections on population growth assume that nothing will change in the birth and death rates. Two things will change as population density increases, both deriving from the abject poverty brought on by overpopulation in 3rd world countries.
First will be war. A bunch of desperately poor people with nothing to lose are easy to whip up into a frenzy. Despots will have no trouble building an army that will march off to take what little his neighbors have. Conflicts are already flaring up. The scale will only get bigger. And they're not going to just swoop in and take the resources, they're going to kill each other off. We will see more genocide between warring factions. It's only a matter of time.
Second will be disease. People packed into slums living in complete squalor will breed disease. I doubt we'll see a huge super bug that wipes out 90% of the population of the earth overnight. However, simple diseases will proliferate and wipe out whole towns at a time. An influenza strain alone could wipe out hundreds of millions of people in a year. Reports of outbreaks will only get more common as the population grows. As we cure more diseases, they'll evolve into new strains. Any disease that's hideously deadly will probably burn itself out too fast to wipe out the world's population, but we'll still see new and nasty diseases that wipe out large numbers of people.
We can talk all we want about educating women so they don't want to have so many babies. But we don't realize how much it's going to take to actually make that happen. Cultural issues have to be overcome. Someone has to provide that education to a growing population. That's not going to be cheap. We can talk about how third world countries will build themselves up out of the poverty. But that completely ignores the fact that there are some significant impediments to that happening in many parts of the world. Somalia is a good example of how some countries have actually regressed in recent years. (i.e. last 20-30 years) I don't want to say that those things will never happen or won't help. I'm just being pragmatic. It's an uphill battle and there will be many casualties along the way.
The population will soon be at 7 billion and then 8 billion in 20 years. The industrial nations of the world have a relatively stable population. But for the rest of the world, who think they can overbreed indiscriminately, food will get scarcer, water will be in short supply, oil will be harder to get. I want to be the one selling guns. Let them fight it out. Darwin at the finest. May the best survive.
When butter is in short supply, make guns.
We just have to raise Africa out of poverty? That should be easy right?
Considering it was just last week I saw a report on the news about the refugee camps in Kenya. There is now 500,000 people in those camps. Half a freaking million. Also many of the camps have been around for 20 years. Twenty freaking years. There was a story about people that were BORN in the refugee camps, and are still there as adults!
Am I the only one that sees this and goes "WTF!"
On the whole Africa is one messed up place, between war, famine, corruption, exploitation, genocide, plague, lawlessness, lack of anything infrastructure, education, health care, dictators, racial hatred, etc... the place is about as messed up as a place can possibly be. It has been receiving aid from both countries and individuals for decades and decades and there has even been some UN "interventions" (though not nearly enough in my mind).
Anyway I am not offering up any solutions, as if I had one I would be trying to do something about it. That assumes there are "solutions" to this sort of thing. People have been trying to fix Africa for a long time with no success. The fact that they have so many kids, seems crazy to me (but of course it hard to judge never having been in that situation). So ya, I'm not going to hold my breath for an African solution to population issues.
It is logistic growth... the earth is finite in size, and therefore has a limited capacity to sustain a population. The population may very well continue to grow, but can only asymptotically approach that threshold, rather than there ever being an abrupt change in population growth caused by exceeding the earth's population capacity too rapidly.
The actual value of this asymptote will become clearer as we actually do approach the population threshold. Some claims currently are that this threshold lies somewhere in the 9 to 10 billion range... which, if correct, we should be able to know for sure quite soon.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I don't really care much for China, but I'd rather see Africa nuked.
When is it "Halloween"?
Holy fuck, /.-ers, keep your commenting and moderation to tech-related topics. This topic is a poster child for less engineers in decision making; both in business and the world in general.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I tried to wrap my head around 7 billion people, so i broke it down by counting by ten. You can imagine 10 people in one room easily. Now if you count those 10 people every second for about 21 years straight without sleep, you'll hit 7 billion.
Good way to cull the herd. Of course world wars may cull the herd to extinction but what the hey.
I don't give a rat's ass.
The oil is supposed to run out in 50 years, no idea when the affordable oil will run out. The industrial revolution starting with coal is what allowed us to grow from 1 billion on the planet to 7.
When the affordable oil runs out the food will not get created or transported... Problem solved.
The most awesome thing is that the survivors, after watching 6 billion people die will have learned nothing about responsible reproduction.
We aren't going to space, we aren't headed towards immortality, we killed ourselves for babies.
Methods for population increase is described more explicitly here- www.porntube.com
"Not everyone finds it to be worrying per se."
I followed the link, and not only does Caplan find it worrying, but he also finds it not worrying!
(I do not think 'per se' means what you think it means.)
By 18 years from now, that 1 billion increase over 10 years will constitute an extra half a billion sweet 18-year olds to potentially tap.
OK, seriously, why not just have kids anyway? So they might live through an overpopulation kill-off, so what? These things happen, and it won't kill overyone; I'd rather my offspring be around and survive a great die-off, than some other random chump's offspring be around and survive a great die-off. Plus, it's nice to have kids around. Shit happens, at some point you just have to let go and stop taking things seriously and let the chips fall where they may.
Watch the video on youtube by Hans Rosling about the magic washing machine
http://youtu.be/BZoKfap4g4w
So yes I agree that educating girls would go a long way to reducing population growth. However we can do a lot in these countries by giving them the free time to gain an education. Far too much of their time is taken up by daily chores to include washing clothes and preparing food. So providing means to cover those two important areas would give them time to get that education when it is available,
The third area is harder, overcoming religious belief.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The slashdot crowd should definitly read "Limits to Growth" ! /. topic for which the most insightfull answer would be a key point from this book, but I barely see any reference to it.
Twice a month there is a
Yes... it is sometimes called Club of Rome report and usually one think he knows what it is about after having read some random rant about it, written by people who haven't read the study either... Please, trust me: people really need to understand what it is about.
I do have read "Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update", the 3rd edition of this report written by Meadows' team.
The point is that they were remarkably right in their first report (1972).
If you don't have much time, at least read the book introduction and/or the abstract of this short study: A Comparison of `The Limits to Growth` with Thirty Years of Reality.
Contrary to popular belief, The Limits to Growth scenarios by the team of analysts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did not predict world collapse by the end of the 20th century.
The whole book is very interesting, it has many facts about humanity Earth "burn rate".
What you should keep in mind: even with VERY optimistic discoveries, a good deal of technical breakthroughs, wise politics... in the very next decades we will face a growth halt and a decrease of average well being, production, etc. We could have maintained the well being and the population if we had done the right thing in 1990, but it is too late now to avoid this decrease.
We're in overdrive since the 90's, has many over studies show, often stated as "1,5 Earth needed". And no matter how optimistic you are, how strong your faith is in technical advances, this won't make ocean fish replenish as we fish more and more with advanced techniques, this won't make available oil fields expand as we discover less than we pump out (even with more advanced techs), this won't make damaged farmlands heal as we over-exploit more and more lands, etc.
The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compare favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the "standard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century.
So where the point here ? This discussion is about Earth population but without any reference to this Earth simulation where all scenarios show that we're heading to a population decrease in the next decades.
I think the point is worth enough to be mentioned, to the least.
We have plenty of hypocritical liberal parasites in the west here that want to "grow" our economy by opening the floodgates to unabated immigration from all these third world shitholes with cancerous growth in populations.
We're all going to be just fine.
Trust me.
My aunt never had kids but she has dogs as a replacement.
How many dogs to make a human?
The important thing to note is that countries like the UK, Canada, United States and Sweden have relatively low growth -- below 1%. Even at current levels, their populations will double in approximately 100 years (give or take). Countries like Liberia, Burundi, Afghanistan and East Timor will see their populations double within 20 years. So, much as it's comforting to see people in the comments suggest that *we* stop breeding like rabbits, it won't necessarily stop the global problem. The solution to that one is politically distasteful -- *we* would have to share knowledge, money and education to help the citizens of war-torn and impoverished nations.
We have enough resources for everyone. They are just unevenly distributed.
"Not everyone finds it to be worrying per se."
Note: It isn't necessary to provide equal time to ideology-driven-"scientists". They have their own web sites and news channels.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Right now 7 Billion people may only equate to 3 Billion consuming Electicity, Fuel, and other non renewable resources. The real problem is when 7 Billion people have a car, electricity, and purchasing bi-products (plastic, metals, etc.). We would need 3 Earths to sustain that many people. Humanity is falling off a cliff, it's just a mater of time before we hit bottom.
TMOSLEY used PLAINLY WRONG STATEMENT BARRAGE!
Humans aren't dumb animals. We don't breed when resources are rare.
We also cut back on breeding when children cost to much
People with a lot of kids make the news because they are so RARE, not because they are common.
(Hint: We're not all highly educated first-world residents, and there are a lot of third-world hellholes out there that don't make the news)
Hit 3 times!
TMOSLEY'S CREDIBILITY greatly decreased!
FIGHT/PKMN/ITEM/RUN
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The baby boomers that is? The sheer number of them that will be kicking the bucket in the next 10-20 years will actually drop our population. If anyone ever bothered to check out the birth rate in the world they'd see births being lower. Fewer and fewer families are having more than 2 kids, women are focusing on careers instead of families, and again the boomers are about to die. Sure we'll hit 7billion, but in 20 years don't look shocked when we're back down to 4-5billion. Remember as well that China has a one child only policy. So that 1 billion population will be almost halved in 20 years as well. If you check, all the first world countries populations are actually going to decline. It's the 3rd world populations that are still having 3+ kids per family. But then again they still have a lot of problems medically than we do in first world countries. I'm not worried about the world population at all. The world will still be around and those that survive even the most catastrophic global collapse will re-up the population to stable levels. I just think all the doomsayers need to off themselves if they really think it'll be that bad.
You do have to give Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter credit for both having one-child
President Carter has four children: three sons and one daughter.
Population growth should be seen as an extremely powerful tool with obstacles to overcome rather than an inherently bad thing. A larger vibrant population of (intelligent productive) people means more science, technology, goods, art, and everything else we need as a society and most importantly survival. A shrinking or stagnant population will lead to doom.
I wonder how many Hitlers and Stalins are walking down the street, having no sex in Halloween..
The US sent men to the moon in 1969. Six decades later, and the best we got from NASA was a fancy sewer pipe in space along with a now-discarded orbiter system.
Worried about overpopulating the Earth? For this reason, and many others, get the hell out of the way of individuals who want to figure out how to leave this ball of rock you're so worried about.
When did humans become a liability exactly?
Having a larger and growing market is good for the market place, because it allows the market place to find solutions to the new problems, creating more wealth in the process. This type of thinking, that humans are a liability, is closely tied to the stupid idea that more demand from growing markets increases prices for products and resources, while in reality it creates incentive for more production and increases production, thus allowing new economies of scale to bring the prices down.
That's why oil as at all time low in price, gas is cheapest that it has ever been on in US, as a gallon now only costs a dime. Of-course that's a silver dime - real money, as they used to mint before 1965.
You can't handle the truth.
The most resourse efficient thing, is to eliminate North America.
Exactly. How many decades of external monetary relief have poured in from other countries? Yet these people still f@#k like rabbits and produce more offspring than they can take care of?
Screw all the relief and assistance and support for Africa. These people just don't get it.
For a continent called the birthplace of mankind, to which all human races can trace back their ancestry, how can this continent be so f@#king far behind?
You would think that if human populations expanded from Africa to the rest of the world that Africans would have some superiority to show for it (technologically or otherwise) Most of the people starving and dying cannot even find water? Good Grief! All the nomadic ancestors that left Africa developed further intelligence and learned how to manipulate their surroundings to their benefit - in flood ravaged areas, in arctic temperatures, in rock-ridden infertile lands - What the hell is wrong with these africans?
All of the greatest discoveries and developments this world has ever seen are not in Africa (were developed by people who left the continent). The people who stay are dumb as hell and can't even survive on their own. Does the sun cook their brains?
I say screw 'em. We can't fix their problems, and they are too dumb to learn.
And send all the kikes and niggers there.
You're welcome.
Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area.
There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure.
The biggest consumer is farms. The immediate solution for the next hundred years is hydroponics with which you can cut water consumption by two thirds. Hydroponics is also easier to farm and produces more in a smaller area. Simply construct large scale sealed transparent tents; i.e. large scale green houses. Smaller versions of the old idea of the bubble cities. A closed environment can be constructed to be very green and you are only out the initial cost of the system. You can also put them in both hotter and cooler environments so you wind up with more useable land. You also don't need to be as worried about pests as you normally would and wouldn't need to use pesticides.
Bathrooms need to use less water. We also need to adapt to urinals and bidets for both sexes in bathrooms at home and promote lather and rinse instead of a continuous shower.
Another issue is we need an aqueduct system in the United States to move excess water from east to west.
For power we need a redundant superconductor network to make the location of power production irrelevant. It will just take the same kind of effort to build as it took to build the railroads and the highway system.
As long as you don't think of people dying from violence, starvation and disease in wars, refugee camps, floods and earthquakes as catastrophic...
The death of a thousand cuts...
Most of our classic religions are rooted back in the days where human population was Low, perhaps dangerously low. So either a higher power, or just some intelligent people came with a code of ethics to follow that will help keep the human population going... A lot of religions classic Immoral acts are focused around keeping human animal nature controlled so a safe and expanding their civilization can continue.
It worked, too well.
We now need a new moral system which allows for sustained continuation of our population without much more over population.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Wow, so giving people free money and food doesn't help them out of poverty? Imagine that.
Nope, though it does tend to ward off the worst possible effects of starvation. Helping people out of poverty is a whole different kettle of fish.
Let Africa fix their own problems. They're adults, they can handle it
The problem with that logic is that in a global society, Africa's problems have an annoying habit of becoming other people's problems. Problems in Nigeria or Libya affect global oil production. Lack of government in Somalia results in piracy and terrorism. The AIDS epidemic in Africa doesn't respect national borders. Government upheaval in Egypt threatens Middle East stability and major shipping routes (i.e. the Suez Canal). Africa's vast natural resources are needed in other parts of the world but African problems make that difficult.
The world isn't so simple anymore that the rest of the world can simply ignore Africa until it gets its act together. You are correct that ultimately, African nations will have to find their own way to prosperity but in the mean time ignoring the problems in Africa would only make the problems worse. The real question is "what is the best way to help"? I'm not sure anyone has figured that one out yet.
If you read between the lines, you would see that 8 billion is predicted to be the PEAK.
There have been countless predictions of the peak for human population and so far there has been little reason to believe any of them. You don't know when/if human population will peak and neither does anyone else.
Humans aren't dumb animals.
That doesn't mean they can't do some very dumb things. Humans also are very selfish, egotistical, and have a strong sex drive. Add in the fact that they are easily convinced of completely irrational things (see religion), and you are set up for some serious problems.
We don't breed when resources are rare.
Umm, actually we do. Look at any chart of income versus reproduction rates and you'll notice an inverse correlation. Income (resources) goes up and breeding goes down. We DO breed when resources are rare.
People with a lot of kids make the news because they are so RARE, not because they are common.
In parts of the world large families aren't rare at all. Look at the population boom in the Middle East? A huge percentage of the population is under the age of 25. Families with more than 2.5 children aren't remotely rare for much of the world.
Does the 7 billionth baby get a t-shirt?
"I'm the 7 billionth human on this planet and all I got was this damn t-shirt!"
According to the UN we produce food for 12 billion. So whats the problem? Obviously the distribution is blocked somewhere; and, as with all matters regarding the distribution of wealth (food in this instant) the hip pocket nerve dominates...
lets take a look at the 2 biggest culprits..... i am sorry , but if we do not find a way to stop them from reproducing when they can not even supply their own people, which means they will need resources from other countries, then we have a serious problem. how about every 2nd male is snipped to disallow procreation, this way that slows the population increase to half in those countries.....and this would be done inside the hospital without the parents knowledge as this would be a country enforced rule....thereby giving random chances.....but of course this could become corrupt as politicians take bribes into preserving the family line for someone who paid enough cash!.....
And how many more (or less) such deaths occured this week compared to last week?
Admit it, you have no idea what is the absolute quantity, no the rate of change.
Shouldn't we be focusing on getting back down to 6 billion rather than increasing up to 7? come on people, i thought by now you'd realize the more people exist, the less we can have for ourselves. And dont give me that "dont be greedy" crap. We got 6 billion other mouths to feed, we're past the point of being "greedy". We need to insure our survival!
Unlike some other memberships, this is completely different from what you might be used to. For one, you won't be assaulted by the often rehashed facts that many similar resale rights membership contain. Also, you will find this very useful in acquiring new products as it is highly specialized for that very purpose.
http://premiumresalerights.com/