Slashdot Mirror
World Population Expected To Hit 7 Billion In Late October
kkleiner writes "A new report documents the prodigious rate at which the world's population is growing. It was just 1999 when we reached 6 billion. And now within the next month or two we will have surpassed 7 billion. What does the continued increase in world population mean for humanity and for the the planet?"
This enormous wave of young people -- kids born in the 80s, 90s, 00s -- are going to topple established trends in ways we cannot imagine. This population increase of one billion people in ten years means that one in every seven people on this planet is under the age of majority. In ten years you'll start seeing change on the scale of the Arab Spring like you wouldn't believe.
It's obviously not a question of whether we can support 7 billion people, since we basically are
Sustainable? That's the big question, if we start running out of various non-renewable resources - oil just being one of them - can we? Deforestation, topsoil erosion, overfishing, lots of resources can maximize production for a short while but afterwards they go into sharp decline. And if you start running into famine conditions, don't think anyone is willing to die to let nature recover. Don't be surprised if this is the cause of war in the late 21st century...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
National Geographic has been running a series of articles that try and answer the summary's question:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/7-billion
Our consumption of their resources is *why* they consume less. You are the cause of their resource scarcity.
No.
This is one of the most retrograde ways of thinking available to the third world. A good deal of the Left in Latin America adopt this thesis (read Eduardo Galeano, an Uruguayan author, for an example). But the third world is sucks because it's own failings. I'm a citizen of Brazil so I'll take the examples from here since I know it's history better.
Back when Brazil was a Portuguese colony it showed an amazing period of growth when gold as discovered in the current Minas Gerais state (indeed, Minas Gerais means General Mines). Since the gold industry created a small middle class, a small number of industries (textiles) and trade (food, from southern Brazil and leather from northeastern Brazil) was developed internally. This could be the seed for Brazil starting it's own industry early on it's history. By 1785 the Portuguese taxed us to hell (the "derrama", a full fifth of all gold profits besides normal taxes) and then prohibited the industry at all to be developed in the colony. Besides a few angry manifestos, the Brazilians did nothing. It should be noted that Brazilians had no representation in the Portuguese Cortes.
Ten years before the Americans fought their independence war. It was the time for Brazil to do the same. We didn't. We never did, actually. Brazil stopped being a colony after Portugal was invaded by Napoleon and the royal family fled to Rio de Janeiro. Brazil was then elevated to the status of United Kingdom of Brazil, Portugal and Algarves. By 1822 a royal prince "gave" the Brazilian independence and took the crown to himself. As part of "reparations" Brazil gave (a lot of) money to Portugal and promised not to conquest the other Portuguese colonies. Instead of kicking their asses back to Europe, like the Americans did to the English.
My country own history is similar to much of the history of Hispanic America and Africa. The third world is shitty because of it's own failing and nothing else. Of course, the first world did nothing to help but it's not it's responsibility. It's a dog eat dog world and countries should look for themselves.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
Unlikely. Nearly all population growth is occurring in developing countries. They would handily lose any war with the industrialized countries where most of the food is grown and consumption takes place. Most industrialized countries are at or near zero growth, with some experiencing negative growth (they are shrinking in population).
For whatever reasons, industrialization leads to lower population growth. What's needed to arrest global population growth is to provide education, engineering expertise, contraception, and economic assistance to developing nations so they can modernize their economies ASAP. Providing food, water, and medicinal aid actually exacerbates the problem. They increase survival rates in developing countries without doing anything to stem their high population growth rates, making it that much harder to modernize those countries and increasing their future reliance on foreign aid.
In other words, as contradictory as it may seem, modernization towards self-sufficiency and economic globalization combat global population growth. Anti-globalization and reliance solely on humanitarianism allow it to continue or even exacerbate it.
due to unsustainable population areas means we're just making it worse
I'm not going to tread those waters, but I'm come close to it without offending anyone. I would agree that our hand-outs are and have been making things worse around the world. In the name of God (American's are mostly Christian), we feel it's our duty to feed the needy and hungry. Personally, I agree. But the fact it, it also perpetuates dictators and corrupt regimes in the process. If it wasn't for global economy crashing, there wouldn't have been an Arab Spring and the domino of revolutions that followed. It was an event that was destined to happen, but our "aid" kept prolonging the inevitable. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.
Life is not for the lazy.
A few issues with that theory:
1. Wars could break out between neighboring developing countries, it doesn't necessarily have to be about food. It might be about water, for example, which is more likely to be locally scarce if there is a high demand on it. Some countries import a lot of food- I don't know any that import water.
2. "They would handily lose any war with the industrialized countries..." Sure, so the developing countries won't necessarily pick a fight with the industrialized countries, but they do tend to have resources (oil, etc.) that the industrialized countries want/need, so the industrialized countries may very well pick a fight to gain access to the resources.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
You realize leveling 1st world countries would just reboot things back into the same right? It's not a solution, just delaying everything.