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World Population Grows Beyond 7 Billion
First time accepted submitter assertation writes in with a LA Times feature about the booming world population and the strain it puts on the environment and governments. "After remaining stable for most of human history, the world's population has exploded over the last two centuries. The boom is not over: The biggest generation in history is just entering its childbearing years. The coming wave will reshape the planet, and the impact will be greatest in the poorest, most unstable countries."
Taco's wife needs to stop having kids.
It also means that you've only got a 0.0000000143% chance of getting that coveted first post.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And fertility rates are dropping everywhere, and more people than ever are choosing to simply not have children. Of course by mentioning that, this article wouldn't be nearly as alarmist, so it was conveniently omitted.
Liberty in your lifetime
By bringing middle classes to developing nations. People who don't have to have litters to ensure that one child survives have one or two children, below the replacement rate. People who have careers and money to spend and cultural activities to take part in don't spend so much time screwing. And when they do, they realize that having extra children will prevent them from enjoying those luxuries.
In short, the fight against overpopulation is the same as the fight against global inequality.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The top 1% is based on income, not population.
I may have found a contributing factor to you not being in the 1% ...
and still none for the average /.er. ;-(
....that if i had a button which if pressed, would kill every man, woman and child; I would push it without hesitation.
The problem with that is that you're effectively dooming three billion years of evolution to comparatively short term extinction.
Humanity may be killing vast percentages of the biome, and may be causing substantial short term damage to the ecosphere, but its also the best opportunity the planet has had, or likely will ever have, to getting off the planet. And life that doesn't get off the planet will end, period. The odds are there won't be a second chance. Could intelligence arise again? Its possible. Its also possible it has arisen before.
The problem is one of opportunity. Getting life off this rock doesn't take intelligence. It takes intelligence, the right series of events making that kind of capability important to be developed, *AND*, most importantly, it will require some hypothetical future species to have access to vast amounts of energy.
Guess what, we've used up virtually all of the dense sources of energy that can be recovered without technology. The conditions that led to the development of coal, oil and natural gas involve geological and environmental conditions that in concert won't likely happen again.
So your short-sighted action would likely save one small potential set of life that otherwise wouldn't have a chance to exist, but would essentially guarantee an end to the entire chain of life in another half billion or billion years.
Oceans and deserts are even closer, and probably the investment needed to sustain a lot of people is smaller.
the us native-born reproductive rate is 2.
2.1 is required for the population to stay the same.
The US only has a growing population because of the higher birth rate among immigrants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate#United_States
With the advent of medicine, however, mortality rates plummeted but birth rates did not.
I'm not sure that's the case - at least not here in the US. If you go back to my parents generation all the families had 5-7 children without fail. Some had more than that (my grandfather on my mother's side came from a family of 14).
Fastforward to modern times. None of my aunts or uncles had more than 3 kids per family. Between my own generation I'm seeing more like 1 or 2 kids per family. Part of it may be the increased cost of raising children - part of it may be the increased number of women in the workplace (where each child is not only time off from work for recovery but without a parent at home each is another daycare bill). I'm sure a large part of it is simply the invention of birth control.
Regardless, birth rates per family (if not for the planet as a whole) seem to have come down significantly in the last 50 years.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
"This natural inequality of the two powers, of population, and of production of the earth, and that great law of our nature which must constantly keep their effects equal, form the great difficulty that appears to me insurmountable in the way to the perfectibility of society."
Thomas Malthus, 18th century.
People have been saying that the "end is near" since human beings developed speech. None have been right. Ockam's razor and the law of induction tells me they won't be in the future.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
Unless I'm missing some hidden factor that forces groups of people's net worths to be exactly equal, then I'd say that "assuming everyone is worth a different amount" is a very valid assumption. Even if you magically redistributed everything to be exactly equal, that would end as soon as one person wanted extra pepperoni on their pizza.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
I think the US is one of the exceptions, where the more affluent population continues to have more than multiple children.
The intelligent hardworking people I know have two, one, or no children. The dumbest and poorest just keep pushing them out. It's exactly like the movie Idiocracy.
It doesn't help that we have a social system that rewards low income high birth rate. My wife and I will have to make a tough decision when it comes to offspring #2. Can we afford it or not? If we can't, I'll get snipped and we'll just go on working to pay for other people's children through welfare, food stamps, WIC, EIC, Section 8, school lunch vouchers, head start, etc, etc, etc. Our standard of living would improve if we both just quit working and had more children.
:wq
If you kill yourself then the effect is the same, from your point of view.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Firstly, TFA is dead wrong in stating that human population has been relatively stable throughout most human history. This is blatantly false, for anyone who has bothered to look at the historical record. In pre-history, human populations have varied wildly, from up to several dozen million to possibly as low as several tens of thousands. Likewise, once "civilization" has started, human populations have obeyed a rather steadily increasing geometric curve. We notice now because we're finally at the heel portion of the hockeystick curve where the numbers start increasing quickly.
Secondly, the decline in number of children per woman is primarily tied to increasing Woman's Rights in a society. The closer women are treated like property (both culturally and legally), the higher the number of children borne, and the inverse when women and men are treated equally. Women's Rights is also closely correlated (and, likely a causative factor) in development of a significant middle class. Religion only has an impact in so far as it affects Women's Rights (which, it certainly can have a very negative impact).
Also, there are two major factors that aren't really addressed in TFA: lack of energy, and water. Advanced civilizations require ludicrously larger amounts of power than low-tech societies, and, even with conservation, this isn't going to change. We need power to run our 1st world countries, and the more everyone else tries to emulate us, power requirements will be exponential (probably high exponential) in growth. Until we have real clean energy, this energy demand and the side effects of providing energy is going to be the number one environmental pressure. On the other hand, (decreasing) access to clean water for both drinking and agriculture is something that is radically reshaping societies, as we can't really de-salinize enough to make a difference at this point, and we're well on our way to draining many historical water sources out of existence. Water will be the new oil which people fight over, likely very, very soon. It's already a major friction point in the Middle East and Indian subcontinental areas.
To quote the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
Yet you aren't either. Likely because you don't actually understand how math works. You're using a simplistic equation that assumes everyone is worth different amounts, and thus you get a nice linear vector where you can chop off 1%. That's not likely true at all.
Actually, if we're going to go there, I am... and comfortably so. Although the reality is the 99% of the 1% have a lot more in common with the bottom 1% of the 99% than the 1% of the 1%.
And, of course, my original post was mocking your brain fart, not really attempting to make any socio-political statement about any correlation of internet gaffes to wealth or the intelligence or lack thereof of any particular income bracket.
Now, I suppose the fact that everyone else seems to understand that and you missed it might suggest an additional set of evidence related to my original assertion, so perhaps the joke was a little too close to home.
The birth rate decline in western nations correlates best with raising educations. If this is the true cause, improving educations in third world nations is the solution. A more educated populace will decide on their own that having so many children is a bad idea.