World Population Growth

[Josem]

There's an excellent article on this issue in the current edition of the IPA review that arrived in my post box this morning.

1) GDP per capita of the world over time - see http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/

2) Simply measuring human density is a crap way of measuring so-called "overpopulation." Monaco, at 23,660 people per square kilometre, is the worlds highest density country (source). I doubt that the people of Monaco are deeply aggrieved by this situation.

3) The problem, then, is not an issue of density - it's an issue of living standards. If people can live happily and healthily in the high densities of Monaco, or the low average densities of Australia (2.6people per square kilometre, Source) it seems that density alone is not very well correlated to happiness/healthiness/etc.

4) If the issue is living standards, then the obvious solution, to me, seems to be to improve living standards. Things like free trade, ending the US/European/Japanese farm subsidies, would all go a long way towards fixing this stuff.

5) Typical European cows receive larger subsidies to live per day than African humans (source). If you're a European your taxes are currently being used (indirectly, admittedly) to impose poverty on the least developed nations in the world.

6) The Americans, though not nearly as bad as the European poverty makers, aren't far behind. At least George Bush has the courage to propose massively cutting these subsidies (Source)

[AceLuby]

The issue is that in 3 generations we went from 2 Billion people to 6 Billion people when it took a hundred million years to get to the 2 Billion mark. With this comes more waste. We will have to deal with the massive amount of waste people produce before we'll have an issue w/ space IMO.

[Josem]

While we had huge population growth in the 20th century, you've gotta look at why that happened.

It happened not 'cause people had more kids, but rather, because people died less (esp. at childbirth). I tend to think that reducing infant mortality is a good thing.

Why did people die less? 'cause we had enough wealth to develop and produce medicines. Expected life expectancy went from 30-something to 70-something in many parts of the world.



Thus, we had a population boom because we had plenty of resources. Now, people claim that the population will not keep growing because we don't have enough resources. I'm not convinced that that is based on a very deep understanding of the issues involved.

[econophile]

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Jeff - There is a strong inverse correlation between income and population growth.

You might also want to read up on James Watson (the daddy of DNA) and his views on the issue.

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Are you suggesting that the OP would agree with Watson, or that you agree with Watson? I hope not.

Watson article on race

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so because watson is a racist, you don't believe in the double helix?

[xorbie]

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Technology and world production are both growing much faster than world population. We have no clue how many humans the earth could support in X years. There is a ridiculous amount of unharnessed engergy and unused space out there (the largest state in the US has only half a million people still).

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So what you're saying is that there's a chance we can use even MORE resources and MORE land and MORE energy? Because these are sort of the things we are already using at an alarming pace.

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Who knows what technology will bring in the next hundred years. The singularity? Human uploads? Who the F knows. There are a lot of other problems the world will face that will be much worse than overpopulation and a dilution of evolutionary effects.

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The problems the world faces may be a result of overpopulation. I guess human uploads might be cool but that doesn't mean we ought not work out some sort of backup plan if that turns out not to feasible.

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As far as "evolution" on earth is concerned, I think technology is replacing genetic evolution.

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Probably going to be true.

[Josem]

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So what you're saying is that there's a chance we can use even MORE resources and MORE land and MORE energy? Because these are sort of the things we are already using at an alarming pace.

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Yes, I believe there is a chance that we can use more energy in the future.

Clearly, the physical land on earth is limited, so I envisage that if there is population growth (and that "if" is really dependent on fertility rates, wars, diseases, etc.) future inhabitants may live in more dense living arrangements.

Clearly, the population density of New York City (for example) proves that large numbers of people can live in high density arrangements.

So, it then becomes an issue of supplying all these people with energy - and think how much the energy market has changed in the last 60 years to get an idea of how much it will change in the next 60 years. With technology seemingly developing at such huge speeds, I see no sign that it is slowing down.

There are opportunities in nuclear, solar, wind, hydro (tidal as well as river based stuff) and possibly fusion down the track.

I see no reason to suspect that our energy developments in the next few generations will be slower than our last few generations.

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The problems the world faces may be a result of overpopulation. I guess human uploads might be cool but that doesn't mean we ought not work out some sort of backup plan if that turns out not to feasible.

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I still see no evidence that "overpopulation," per se, is creating problems.

It is the starvation and the poverty that causes problems - so let's fix that instead of trying to stop people breeding.

[TonyRoflmao]

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The vast majority of the world's population live off the intelligence and production of others (to wit, "stupid" and unhealthy people can easily survive and reproduce). Medicine has advanced to the point where "traditional" evolution no longer works right.

In a sense, we are "devolving", yet our population continues to grow.

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Natural selection doesn't tend to occur in large populations, especially given humans' capability to travel vast distances and increase heterozygosity. Even if the "less intelligent," who are really only less intelligent in certain ways, outpace the "intelligent" in relative fitness, the "intelligent" still increase as a population in absolute terms.

Now, if there was a natural disaster, or artificial disaster that suddenly decreased the overall human population, probability would favor the "less intelligent" to survive. Without some sort of major disruption that cuts a small group of humans off from the rest of the world, or a drastic reduction in the overall population of the species, no speciation will occur.

[Subfallen]

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And lets just pretend that east Asians and Jews are higher than whites.

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~800 Nobel Prizes have been awarded. Oddly, 180 (22.5%) went to Jews, who make up ~0.2% of the world population.

But, yeah, the Jews are probably just running good. Positive variance FTW. Definitely no way that Jews are just vastly smarter than Gentiles. No way.

[Ship Ship McGipp]

Hardin wrote about this in the lifeboat ethics paper

[xorbie]

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So what you're saying is that there's a chance we can use even MORE resources and MORE land and MORE energy? Because these are sort of the things we are already using at an alarming pace.

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Yes, I believe there is a chance that we can use more energy in the future.

Clearly, the physical land on earth is limited, so I envisage that if there is population growth (and that "if" is really dependent on fertility rates, wars, diseases, etc.) future inhabitants may live in more dense living arrangements.

Clearly, the population density of New York City (for example) proves that large numbers of people can live in high density arrangements.

So, it then becomes an issue of supplying all these people with energy - and think how much the energy market has changed in the last 60 years to get an idea of how much it will change in the next 60 years. With technology seemingly developing at such huge speeds, I see no sign that it is slowing down.

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You do realize that you actually have to do a little bit more research than looking at a line and extrapolating it out 60 years, right? Besides the question of whether we will be able to physically provide this power, you missed my point which is that doing so is unlikely to be environmentally sustainable.

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There are opportunities in nuclear, solar, wind, hydro (tidal as well as river based stuff) and possibly fusion down the track.

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How much power do you really think wind and hydro will provide?

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The problems the world faces may be a result of overpopulation. I guess human uploads might be cool but that doesn't mean we ought not work out some sort of backup plan if that turns out not to feasible.

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I still see no evidence that "overpopulation," per se, is creating problems.

It is the starvation and the poverty that causes problems - so let's fix that instead of trying to stop people breeding.

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You "not seeing" is likely a result of "not looking". There is only so much land and so many basic resources around. People seem to think that a good goal to aim for is to raise living standards in 3rd world nations to those of the Western world, without realizing that our ecological footprint is so high that such a goal is laughable.