Why we need fewer people...

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

We need fewer people on this planet, the Professor says -
especially fewer Americans!

Actaully, it's not Americans per se, it's people like the citizens of the USA, with high consumption per capita rates.
It is a series of 8 videos, and you can click the next 10 minute episode by just going to the box at the top of the right hand column and clicking the ' next' box.

Why we need fewer people, what 7% per annum means in real terms, the myth of 'sustainable growth', how long we have got to save our civilisation. It's all here.

However, what is the betting that most of humanity will not notice what's going on.

This guy is giving us a vision of the future, based on mathematical calculations and basic rules of physics.

In terms of the opinions he puts forth - I agree with him . Do you?

As a Green , I would say that population growth can be stopped, and this not need legislation . It can be, and should be, done voluntarily.
I would like to argue the same for consumption cut backs - but fear that rationing will become inevitable in future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=PlayList&p=6A1FD147A45EF50D&playnext_from=PL

Comments

[tridus.livejournal.com]

In most of the western world, population grown already HAS been stopped. Westerners have fewer children then is required to sustain the population, let alone grow it. The US might be the only exception to that.

That's why the doors got flung open in so many countries to such large numbers of immigrants. Growth is good for the economy, and that's the only way to create growth right now.

The fastest growing places are poor and have fewer rights for women, particularly in areas like birth control and education. Stopping population growth there is not an easy thing to accomplish.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Why we need fewer people

We R doomd (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones#Inscriptions)!!!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That's awesome. I've always thought it would have serious art-damage to do something like that, and there it is. I had no idea.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Oh, Malthus.

Will you ever stop being wrong?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Uhm, the video is not Malthus.

I get what you are getting at, but:

If we continue to grow at our current rate for ~5K years, there'll be 1sq meter per person of dry land; in 20K years [at our current rate of growth] human mass will equal the mass of planet earth.

The latter is *obviously* impossible and will never come to pass. but that's the point--perpetual growth is not possible. it MUST stop at some point.

[merig00.livejournal.com]

As a Green , I would say that population growth can be stopped, and this not need legislation . It can be, and should be, done voluntarily.

And I think you should start with yourself

[dukexmachismo.livejournal.com]

http://www.churchofeuthanasia.org/

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting that excellent video. Bartlett obviously is an excellent lecturer and made crystal clear a rather nebulous concept.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

you're welcome.
I have to say that this was one of the best bits of You Tube I have come across in recent years.
Shame it was wasted on some people in this community, but you are obviously the sort of person who can appeciate something that goes a little deeper than the Sports Pages.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Good vid. A pity more people won't watch it.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

IAWTC

[kenderkin.livejournal.com]

Generalizing US citizens in this way is actually ridiculous.

But no worries on my end. I'm not having children. Let's see and neither did either of my older brothers.

The problem isn't necessarily population growth in the United States, it's that there are plenty of undereducated people giving birth to children who are undereducated and so the cycle continues. And this is a GLOBAL issue, not centralized to us "greedy, selfish, consuming" Americans.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Did you watch the videos?

What do you propose we do when human mass = mass of planet earth?

We cannot reach such a state of being--you know this as plainly as 2+2=4

There *is* an upper limit on how many humans can be alive at one time given the size and resources of planet earth.

We might be able to feed us all--technological advances and all--but eventually we will outweigh the earth and there will not be SPACE for us.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Luckily our economy and our world can't be modeled by a simple exponential function.

For example, America's consumption of oil and raw materials, as measured by weight, is about the same as it was 40 years ago despite an increasing population and GDP. At this rate, economic growth looks pretty sustainable.

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

America's consumption of oil and raw materials, as measured by weight, is about the same as it was 40 years ago

That sounds incredibly wrong. Our oil use for sure has gone up. Do you have a source for this?

Simon-Ehrlich wager

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

In 1968, Ehrlich was the author of a popular book, The Population Bomb, which argued that mankind was facing a demographic catastrophe with the rate of population growth quickly outstripping growth in the supply of food and resources. Simon, a libertarian, was highly skeptical of such claims.

Julian L. Simon and Paul Ehrlich entered in a famous wager in 1980, betting on a mutually agreed upon measure of resource scarcity over the decade leading up to 1990. Simon had Ehrlich choose five of several commodity metals. Ehrlich chose 5 metals: copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Simon bet that their prices would go down. Ehrlich bet they would go up.[note 1] Ehrlich ultimately lost the bet, and all five commodities that were selected as the basis for the wager continued to trend downward until 2002,

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Surely we'll find a reasonable way to handle any shortages in the future...

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I for one have been working on my bladed boomerang design for years.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

the video deals with exploiting extraterrestial bodies
it is not a sufficient answer

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Can't watch the video's right now since I'm at work and Youtube is blocked but I'll guess that his "calculatuions" are horribly flawed since I have seen calculations showing that the earth could quite easily support a population of 11 Billion at the standard of living the US Enjoyed in the 1980's with just the resources and technology we had available to us then.

Course that assumed we got off our asses and stopped the ridiculous opposition to Nuclear Power and started giving people more economic freedom but still, it could be done.

Even that however failed to take into account that within 30 years we could have the technology to start moving most heavy industry into orbit if we really wanted to, not to mention ending most mining operations on earth within about 75 years as we develop the technology needed to capture Metal core Asteroids, drag them into lunar orbit and mine them.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

What happens when we have no 11B, but 22B people.

The point is that there *IS* limit on population growth, and if we act as if there is not such a limit we are fooling ourselves.

I stopped after part 2

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

His concepts are so off base. I don't know where to start. I think you have to understand history, well actually you have to understand psychohistory. You can not use such simple liner formulas to predict the cost of resources or their availability.

By 1982, an estimated 621,000 home computers were in use in the United States, at an average sales price of $530 (1162.80 adjusted for inflation)

In 2009 the average cost of a notebook computer was $250.

In the 1800s dinner cost $0.38. That would be $5.14 today. The average wage was $16 a week. $832 per year ($10361.52 adjusted for inflation)

The average American income (mean) for both sexes combined and irrespective of race, color or education, whether earning or not earning and with the only constraint that the sample set consists only of individuals above 25 years of age, is $43,362.

Re: I stopped after part 2

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

He is talking about limited natural resources, not manufactured products. One cannot manufacture oil or copper. To speak against his concept you'd first have to prove that basic arithmetic is wrong.

we have plenty of room

[verytwistedmind.livejournal.com]

The world has a surface area of 510.072 million sq km. Well clearly we can
not live any where on the surface of the world as the majority of it is
water 361.132 million sq km. The remainer is the land mass 148.94 million sq
km. So what is the population of the human race? Estimate is currently at
6,525,170,264 (July 2006 est.).


Now let us do some translations. For every 148 sq km you get 37,000 acres of
land.


37,000 acre = 148 sq Km meaning that the world has about 3.68*10 to the 10th
Acres of land. I will be using 37,000,000,000 acres for the math below. Now
if you were to split that land up between all the people of the earth and
gave each one a share each would get 5.67 acres of land.


37,000,000,000/ 6,525,170,286 = 5.67 acres per person


That does not sound like a lot does it? Some may say "Much of the land is
unliveable" and they are right so let look at a area where we could make it
nearly totally liveable. The Great State of Texas. Texas has a surface area
of 261,797 square miles.
1 square mile = 3,097,600 square yards = 640 acres
640 * 261,797 = 167,550,080 acres in Texas


Now lets say we move all the people of the world to the state of Texas. They
would each get only .02568 acres of land.
167,550,080 / 6,525,170,286 = .02568 acres per person


That does not sound like alot. But wait how much is .02568 acres?
1 acre = 4,840 square yards
4,840 * .02568 = 124.29 square yards
1 square foot = 1/9 square yard
124.29 * 9 = 1,118.61 square feet


Thusly if we moved every living human to Texas and the split the land amoung
them they would each get 1,118.61 square feet. Now you may say that still
does not sound like alot. But consider the average square footage of a
house

Re: we have plenty of room

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

You are off base

He is not saying that we don't have space on planet earth for us: RIGHT NOW

But if we continue to reproduce at our current rate for 500 years, we will be in a different situation than we are now--similarly true if we kept going for 2000 years. Eventually human mass would be so great it would equal the mass of planet earth--that is absurd and won't happen. BUT it is the inevitable and logical outgrowth of perpetual growth

Which is a myth people have bought into.

Perpetual growth is impossible. Even the universe eventually contracts.

[cory-nickolatos.livejournal.com]

I see these figures for how we could fit everyone on to a small plot of land, but why? What's the point of continuously breeding until every piece of earth is occupied by humans? If we don't need less people, then what do we need?

I guess it's apparent I'm skeptical of the pro-breeding group... Educate me, I suppose, but I'm still pretty convinced that what we need is less people (or at least a stable population) and less consumption...

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

The point is the earth is nowhere near overcrowded today and while less people may certainly make for a nicer environment population reduction is not a necessary goal and we are nowhere near the point where it will be.

As far as the "pro breeding" group, there is none. Rather there is a "pro growth" group for whom breeding and population growth is simply not a factor to be considered because history shows it will take care of itself, as societies get richer their birth rates fall, this has been demonstrated true across all of history.

The real question is whether wealth is sustainable or if it causes demographic collapse as most of Europe is at risk of.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Well, we can nuke them from orbit...

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

^ Winner of the Originality Award.

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

I haven't watched the video, but will try later.

Just wanted to note that our economy is logically limited by our environment. There are only so many resources to go around, and even if we were able to recycle dirt into copper and food we'd need energy, which is also not limitless.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

How come you missed to post yesterday? ;)

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

I was saving my energy for this one . :)

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Sure, but how 'bout if we double in the next decade, given the mega mess we are in at present in spite of all the tech at our disposal?

[gifa.livejournal.com]

I do not have any children... can't have any children...

I really, honestly don't care that much about what happens on this planet 5 years after I die... I simply ask that y'all not fuck it up while I'm trying to live here.

So, I'll have my beef and eat it too. I'll drive my 30mpg car 10-20 miles per week and I'll sit in my 68 degree house in august and surf the net with no lights on.

Remember kids... these ARE the good times to be alive. You think you've got it rough now? Wait till y'all are fighting over food and water instead of oil and politics... LOL!

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Well said !

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Yes (http://community.livejournal.com/talk_politics/547041.html?thread=39364321#t39364321).

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

"If the act of procreation were neither the outcome of a desire nor accompanied by feelings of pleasure, but a matter to be decided on the basis of purely rational considerations, is it likely the human race would still exist? Would each of us not rather have felt so much pity for the coming generation as to prefer to spare it the burden of existence, or at least not wish to take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?" -Authur Schopenhauer

Just about every macro-issue we face today can be solved through depopulation. It is the elephant in the room that everyone ignores.

By far and large the immediate knee-jerk response is both emotional and illogical. Great faith is put in technology and human ingenuity like former inhabitants of Easter Island. I lack such blind faith and wouldn't trust it.

Eugenics is probably a necessary evil, but it is an evil regardless. Just as we should not judge another's worth by colour of skin, we shouldn't make such judgments regardless of quantification. Eugenics is wrong.

Reproductive choices and self-restrictions should be completely entirely voluntary. It is for this reason I have been supporting VHEMT for about a decade.

Overpopulation issues should be announced and proclaimed often. It should be made mentioned during nearly every political discussion. However because it is such an emotionally charged issue, it takes a very rational people to be receptive to the idea, and these are few and far between.

Depopulation is not without consequences either. Where it has been practised has opened Pandora's Box of other issues. Modern China being most famous, but other examples range from Manichaeans to Shakers, to small Adult-Only gated communities.

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

VHEMT ?
Voluntary human extinction movement?
I dunno that we ought to become extinct, but we need to get down to a level wher we no longer threaten the panetary eco systems.

if we had a couple of biillion , say, we would be a viable species but not a danger to other life forms in other habitats. At present , we are in danger of creating deserts where there used to be rainforest.

[reality-hammer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, get rid of those lousy Americans who produce more and keep the world free...oh, wait....

[green-man-2010.livejournal.com]

Well, the guy who said it was an American who was a professor in Boulder colorado. And he qualified it by saying that its Americans who consume too much that needed to be reduced in numbers. Anyone who wants to move to the right hand side of the balance sheet is welcome to do so.