7 billion and growing

[allhatnocattle.livejournal.com]

"It's no use reducing your carbon footprint if you keep increasing the number of feet,"... "Any resource shortage is in part a population longage" -Roger Martin, chair of Population Matters (UK)

The United Nations says that the world's population will reach 7 billion people this month. This milestone has produced many articles and opinion pieces. Some sound optimistic citing that the global human reproduction rate is slowing significantly. But many are pessimistically blaming the world's environmental crises on overpopulation.


In New York's Times Square, a huge and expensive video declares that "human overpopulation is driving species extinct." In London's busiest Underground stations, electronic poster boards warn that 7 billion is ecologically unsustainable.

More, the same or less? More humankind means fewer wild places and biodiversity. A stabilized human population gives us hope. Fewer people means a better more sustainable world.

But most of the 7 billion are not strip-mining, deforesting, endangering species, and all out polluting. Most environmental destruction is caused by corporations that care more about profit than about humanity's survival. The wealthiest 1% own a majority of all corporate equity, are therefore are directly responsible for most environmental destruction.

British organization, Population Matters (formerly Optimum Population Trust), recently chided David and Victoria Beckham for adding a fourth child to their jet-setting brood.

But I can't blame the wealthy. For nobody gains a fortune without "earning it" off the backs of those less wealthy then them. Even Posh Spice had to sell records to somebody to afford her yacht. I mean there would be a lot fewer wealthy people if there were a lot fewer poor people. 1% is 1% regardless of the sum total.

Do you remember when the world hit 6 billion? That was 12 years ago in 1999. The world seemed so much brighter then. Clinton was President. 9/11 hadn't happened yet. The global economy was on the rise. Hunger and poverty seemed beatable. Oil was $13/barrel. Food prices at historic lows. Heck, we were even signing accords to stop carbon emissions.

In 1999 global population, er over-population, wasn't on anyone's radar. If it grew higher, we could overcome the associated problems. If it declined, we could handle that too.

But out population did continue to swell. The direct consequences are mostly environmental. Even if you don't believe that, you know the very last Vietnamese Rhinoceros was killed EXTINCT just last week (and captured on film to add insult to injury!!!) The direct consequences of population are economical, political and biological.

Like the Kyoto accord is for carbon emissions, the UN-FPA`s Millennium Development Goal sets 2015 as the target year for achieving it's goal universal access to family planning services) And like Kyoto the 2015 target is far from being met.

Family planning has had remarkable success in Thailand, Bangladesh, and Ireland (not to forget China). Not just at stabilizing population growth but giving remarkable economic boosts as well. However there are just as many failures of stabilizing populations globally. The global economic downturn of 2008 has setback advances in family planning, most notably in Haiti, Pakistan and central Africa.

There are several NGO's like Population Matters which lists "PopOffsets" as a program that lets you "offset" your family's carbon footprint by funding family planning elsewhere.

Not sure there is a conclusion to this issue. In future, our hindsight will be 20/20, with all the amusing answers fairly evident. Right now it seems fairly obvious that reducing global population will solve most if not all the issues we're facing, from the energy shortages to food shortages to property shortages.

Comments

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Things that will be said or at least thought by some in response to this:

1. On the contrary, we need to breed more. Look at Europe, there they have a decline in babies, and who'll take care of the elderly that live longer!
(there is an obvious answer to this, but not that many say it)

2. Blaming the 1% means that you envy them in reality. (simplicity is always good in an argument where agreement is lacking!)

3. Family planning equals government oppression. (Freedom to doom ourselves over anything else!)

/sarcasm

I guess I should say it's a good post, because it is. I'm just weary.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

1: Make 'em work or let them starve, alternately re-enact Logan's Run.

2: Ohhh the ose evil corperations with their products and their energy and their industrialized agroculture. Humans should live in tree and die at the age of 30 as god mother nature intended.

3: FREEEEEEEEEDOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!1111111!!!!ELEVENTY!!

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

For nobody gains a fortune without "earning it" off the backs of those less wealthy then them.

Oh joy. More "you can't earn a lot of money ethically" nonsense.

[prisoner--24601.livejournal.com]

Personally I find the idea that Posh spice has somehow climbed up the backs of the oppressed 99% by selling derpy pop songs to teenagers and fancy overpriced clothes to rich people pretty hilarious.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

A nuclear winter should solve this issue right quick, eh?

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

There does seem to be a disturbing anti-humanist vibe to the whole thing.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I for one welcome our new beetle overlords....

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Oh f-ck me. Happy monday!

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Yes I agree, 7 billion is the number that makes it go all bad. 6.999 million? No biggie, but large round numbers? Now that's serious business.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The human population will continue to grow until it stops.

I fail to see how this is a problem.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Probably because of what is foreseen as likely mechanisms for that human population reversal - famine, plagues, ecological devastation, etc.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

I remember some futuristic "science" books of the 80s where it was claimed that at the rate the population was growing at the time, by 2000 there would be no room left on Earth and people would have to stand on top of each other's heads. That kind of didn't work out.

The problem with such extrapolations is that they don't seem to be good at taking all demographic factors into consideration.

[lilenth.livejournal.com]

Because not being born in the first place is better than starving to death in a world that cannot feed people.

In short we can ignore it but that means dooming future generations all over the world to problems that are rife in many 3rd world countries already, or we can proactively tackle it and build a system that works and prevent mass famine.

How much biomass is needed to feed 7 billion humans?

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The "Malthusian Disaster" is complete and utter bull.

Available calories per capita has been steadily increasing around the world. despite the fact that population has been climbing and the percentage of land devoted to agriculture has remained stable

http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/3_foodconsumption/en/index.html

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but those extra calories have come at the expense of deforestation and desertification. The OP's stance is that it isn't sustainable.

[prisoner--24601.livejournal.com]

Wow, that article about Posh and Beckham is pretty amazing. Especially the part about the textbooks being slipped into classes. It's pretty freaking messed that a book like this is being pushed in Michigan public schools, in my hometown of Kalamazoo no less: (http://www.mlive.com/opinion/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2011/10/do_people_like_david_and_victo.html)

The science kit, "A Hot Planet Needs Cool Kids," "holds up Al Gore as an ‘eco-hero,'" reported the Kalamazoo Gazette, "promotes organizations such as Greenpeace and Rainforest Alliance; urges children to persuade their parents to ‘Vote Green' and buy organic; cautions against new-home construction, the plastics industry and conventional agriculture, and notes ‘many people believe that it is best for the earth for families to have no more than one child."

Really? REALLY? It's the job of the public schools to decide how many children it's moral for people to have and teach it in their science class? To push for a particular political party? Let me just say, I'm so freaking glad I don't live in Kalamazoo anymore and my kids don't go to those schools.

And also, I love how liberals are all for "reproductive choice" as long as a woman chooses not to reproduce. But when a woman does in a way they don't approve, they feel free to trash her.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Newsflash: People disapprove of things they don't like - amazingly this crosses all ideological lines.

Also, reproductive rights and overpopulation are different issues.

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

By the way the 7bn'th baby seems to have been born. Various conflicting reports attribute this honour to either China, or the Philippines, or Kaliningrad (Russia).

http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Various-7-billionth-babies-celebrated-worldwide-2244298.php
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-20127743/7-billionth-babies-celebrated-worldwide/
http://en.ria.ru/russia/20111031/168282585.html

[dv8nation.livejournal.com]

The idea that anyone could actually slap a name on number 7 billion is bullshit.

[lilenth.livejournal.com]

To control overpopulation we need do no more than provide education for everyone, make sure everyone is well fed, secure reproductive rights, tackle infant mortality and make sure everyone has choice.

Educated people with the ability to control their reproduction and whose children don't die extremely young of a bad environment don't tend to have as many children.

Two or three generations ago the western world was having bigger families because many children still died young, now infant mortality has been fought, more people are educated and have access to care and contraception and the western birth rate is falling because of it.

What Is Overpopulation?

[russj.livejournal.com]

I would like to hear if anyone in this community can say what the optimal human population of the earth is?

Is the earth already overpopulated, at 7 billion?
Are we way past the optimal?
Or can it easily support a much larger number of people?

I'd say that the answer is probably more complicated--
I'm sure that the earth can support a larger number of people, but at the cost of a lower standard of living.
It could also support a smaller number of people, each enjoying a higher standard of living.

---

For fans of speculative fiction:
Both extremes are explored in Isaac Asimov's detective novels "The Caves of Steel" and "The Naked Sun". Here police Detective Bailey and his Robot sidekick solve murders on two different planets. One is characterized by a population so high that every part of life is strictly regulated. On the other, a few humans live in luxury and isolation--each on their own vast estate.

[eracerhead.livejournal.com]

It is interesting to note that western population growth is largely due to immigration. Without this, by most estimates western populations would either be stable or declining. This includes the US.

The western world isn't the problem when it comes to population growth, it is the less developed countries. Western countries have the problem of excessive consumption. Population issues are solvable without having growth solve itself through resource scarcity (starvation, etc).

World programs focusing on both educating women, promoting women's equality and elevating them from dirt-poverty have been proven effective in reducing birth rates. If you improve the economy and give women the power to control their own destiny, they choose to have fewer children on their own. Funny how that works.

OTOH, excessive consumption is largely a technological problem. Western countries are extremely good at technology, the economic problem is externalizing much of the costs of that consumption. If things get either more expensive or more efficient, consumption will be reduced.

Population growth is an economic issue, not a moral one. Focusing on moral or cultural solutions is a distraction.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that the simplest solution would be some form of neo-imperialism. Start building up the third world.

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

Hold on...how does anyone keep track of birth/death records in poorly developed nations enough to determine whether we've hit 7 billion people on this Earth or not?

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

There is some very rudimentary record-keeping done by international organizations (if not the UN outright, I dunno) but pinpointing the 7 billionth birth is obviously impossible. It's just a media spectacle of numbers for those making the claims.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It's one thing to say reducing global population is an inevitability if humans aren't going to self-destruct. It's another thing to actually propose ideas that would resolve this issue and do so in a meaningful fashion, and do so in a fashion that's not another round of "Hey, poor countries, we're going to help you, you poor benighted slobs while we do nothing of what we tell you to do ourselves." Like with climate change most suggestions made for people in poor countries from people in rich ones are very seldom, if ever, actually done in the rich countries by the ones who advocate them, much less the totality of the people living there. As a result what is common sense when advocated becomes simply a political football and less solution and more circlejerk.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

Right now it seems fairly obvious that reducing global population will solve most if not all the issues we're facing, from the energy shortages to food shortages to property shortages.

I don't think I agree with this at all. Even if there were global population reductions, they're most likely to come from poverty stricken, low resource intensive areas anyway. The US has a proportionally small population compared to the 20-25% of the world's resources it uses.

What has to change is HOW we use our resources.

[pastorlenny.livejournal.com]

Right now it seems fairly obvious that reducing global population will solve most if not all the issues we're facing, from the energy shortages to food shortages to property shortages.

If history has taught us anything, it has taught us that life is always better when there are fewer people alive.

[nevermind6794.livejournal.com]

Well, not always, but each person has a marginal benefit and a marginal cost associated with him/her. The question is, at what point is that cost higher than the benefit?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

occupy the moon!

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

/snark.

seriously though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

yea

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Here's the recipe:

- empower women
- educate women
- do not prevent women from controlling thier bodies.

Population growth will slow.

Start in India and Africa.

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

I'd amend that a bit. Change "women" to "people". Men need these things every bit as much as women do.