Human Overpopulation

[Loopy Grumpkins]

Does human overpopulation exist? If so, what can we do reduce the effects of it/slow it down or even stop it?

On a side note, do you agree or disagree with any of the following methods of slowing down human over population.

1) Laws limiting each family to only one child (Possible punishments: Fines, "excess" children being adopted by other families without the biological parents' consent)
2) Colonizing other planets (in the future)
3) The government assigning jobs so that more people produce necessities like food and work in manufacturing rather than other jobs like professional athletes, writers, film directors, actors, artists, etc.

[Ykori]

I would argue that overpopulation is relative. I believe that this planet could support many more than it does now, but not as long as there is a profit to be made out of not helping people.

[Eystein,]

How so? There is a limit somewhere, we just don't know exactly. If everyone were to live like we do, they say we've already exceeded it.

I agree we must help each other. But the best thing we can do for the poor, is to convince them to not have so many children. Then aid will get much more effective, and we can acctually gain the time needed to target everyone's specific problem without continuously having to expand our efforts.

Take Etiopia for example, it was hit by the worst famin ever seen on television in 1984, and have been more or less dependent on food aid ever since...

Problem isn't that we help feed people. The problem is that since 1984, Etiopia's population have doubled to 80 million. Today 13 million are completily dependent on food aid to survive, even while Etiopia's food production is maximized. Even though there's no drought now, more people are depentent on aid today, than those who were struck by famin in 1984, and they live on an absolute minimum. So imagine a new drought! I don't think you'd want to!

Etiopia's population continue to grow rapidly, so who are we helping really? And how many countries can we put under the same conditions before something goes very wrong?

[Ykori]

Of course there is a limit. But the real problem is not lack of resources or money. Resources exist in abundance, but they are not distributed in an effective way.
Just look at how much food the western world just throws away. The stores throw away loads of food before they even try to sell it, wich is sort of crazy. So I'd say that the change of lifestyle and attitude lies more with us than with the poor.

[Eystein,]

Yeah. But spending our lives eating and fucking, without thinking, isn't a good way to spend it!

...Well acctually, that did sound like a good life, didn't it o.O? But you know what I mean... It's not fun if you have another baby each time either.

I think it's wrong to assume there's enough resources to provide decent lives for everyone. We don't even know how to provide enough sustainable energy for our own needs when conventional sources are depleted. I think we will manage it, but no one knows if we make it in time. And there are lots of other resources we're using up, that we must dig deeper and deeper, or destroy rare and valuable ecosystems to reach.

The poor need help, but the more we get, the only fair system left will be communism, where can live poor together.

[Ykori]

I'd say that giving food is not a solution, it's just a way to help people make it through the day.
What really needs to be done is to help poor countries get their economy up and running. A big step in that direction would be to write of the national debts of the under developed countries.
But I doubt that'll happen anytime soon.

[Eystein,]

Yeah, it's dispiteful how we continue to prey on them, even though the loans too often were given under false pretences, or to corrupt regimes that don't exist anymore.

But I still wonder what the benefits would be, if in the end, all the reassigned money only were to end up providing food for the ever increasing baby numbers.

Vaccines also. It's all well and good, and the right thing to do, but in the end, we just end up with hordes of people we can't provide for if don't battle this. They can't get sick, but their lives are like shit.

We can't beat this with uncontrolable growth.

[Ykori]

Well, not if we see it as if the solution is to give poor people food. The poor countries need to be helped into helping themselves provide for themselves. That's what is so amazing about kiwa, the fact that it's not really giving as much as it is giving people a chance to provide for themselves.

[Eystein,]

I also think it would be the solution if we are within the limits of providing good and fair lives for all. (Education and "down to earth" purpose brings birth rates down.)

But I don't think we are! And what if I'm right? Can we really afford to expand our numbers? And what about other living things?

All the worlds problems and tensions would be so much more easy to fix, if we could just stop this growth somehow.

[Eystein,]

I'd make it read "to only eat and copulate, isn't a good way to spend our entire lives" or something like that, if I could just edit it... I'm not a native speaker, so the proper words aren't always available to me. I'll try to use modest words as much as possible... I just wanted to mention it, in case someone thought it was offending or stupid. :)

[Eystein,]

This technology is good. But it should be used to make cities self sustainable and thus clear up some farmland, so that nature can reclaim it, aswell as reducing carbon emissions. It should not be used to continue our insane growth rate, which regardless of what technologies you throw at it, will reach it's limit some time. Our technology continue to buy us time for now, but population growth is exponential, so very soon, technology won't be able to keep up.

We need to tackle this, or else societies will collapse all over the world, and people will mass migrate to the remaining habitable lands, which most probably will be overwhelmed by it and close their borders on them. Billions might die... We will also not be able to protect our wonderful wildlife if our numbers increase uncontrolably.

I see the UN growth prognosis flat out around 2050's, but I fail to see what form of benign mechanism is responsible for it.

[Alexandra Marceau]

I believe that overpopulation will be a factor in the coming generations. As we improve the longevity of our species, we're going to have a problem with what to do with the excess people. I don't see the birth rate dropping, though, to be honest, I'm not really an expert in the subject. I'll have to do some reasearch. I mean, I would think that in a declining economey the birth rate would decline as well, but I could be wrong about that. I'm just assuming. But, while the economey declines in certain places in the world, the birth rate will not totally come to a halt.

I'm not saying this is something our children will have to worry about, but in the years to come many scientist say that humans may be able to live up to 200 or more years. I mean, stem cell research is really leading the way with extending human life. Stem cell researchers learning to build all new organs and starting to explore ways it may be able to cure devastating diseases like cancer and parkensons. With things like this taken out of the death factor, we really could have people living for hundreds of years!

So, yes, I do believe that overpopulation will be a problem. It will NEED to be dealt with by those in power. I am a liberal, and I don't like to think of the government impeding on a person's existance anymore than is nessasary, but I do feel like at one point in the future this will be nessasary. I think that birth caps will need to be put on families. After a woman produces one child, I think it would make sense for her to have some sort of mandatory tubal ligation or at the very least an idu. It sounds almost like a rule in a dystopian society, but I really think it would be nessasary to ensure the continuation of the human race. If this is done, hopefully things like government job assesment won't be nessasary. I really would want that to be avoided at all costs.

[Eystein,]

I think all here are young enough to be affected by a coming overpoulation, and should worry about it. At the end of the WW2, there was only 2.5 billion people in the world. Today it's 6.7 billion and it's expected to reach 9 billion by 2040, without any plan what so ever, as how to provide for all of us.

The really sad thing, for the selfish me at least, is that we might not be able to take advatage of all the wonderful brakethroughs in medicine and biology that you talked about, due to ethical concerns.