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Overpopulation

CapelDodger said:
What the argument leaves out is that communities will impose themselves on individuals in defence of common interests. Sustainability is a common interest.
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Not if those individuals can bribe the leaders of the community to only think of the short interests.
 
I didn't read everything, but I agree with the o.p.

All the talk of ingenuity and techno-advancements is a mere postponement of the essential unpleasant dilemma:

What is an optimal population?
Do we really want 30 billion people on the planet, just because it might be possible?

If there was any sense of agreement on an upper limit, how would we propose to stay within it?

Eventually, no matter how sophisticated our technology, we will be faced with death control...the flip-side of birth control. If we mostly beat diseases, war, starvation, etc; we will become a nightmare world of the old. This could be circumvented, in a morally decent manner, but it is an amazingly unpopular subject.
 
It feels like I killed this thread.
I was hoping to start a dialog, as I've put some thought into this subject.
 
Suppose there was some Kyoto-type global agreement about a maximum population; not an insane idea, compared to the alternatives...

Suppose we gained sophistication; made things safer; had better medicine; overcame war...all do-good stuff. Including people having longer lives.

If you do the rudimentary math, at, say 10 billion people...as the top...well,
no new people can come on board until an old one leaves.

If we are sucessful enough to even reach this point we will soon be faced with this demon. The alternative fantasy is that we will stretch out into the heavens, and populate other planets; never be faced with this.

That is a bunch of woo, imho...that we will travel beyond the solar system, if that.
And if we don't, we will need to address what it is I'm getting at.
 
quarky said:
I didn't read everything, but I agree with the o.p.

All the talk of ingenuity and techno-advancements is a mere postponement of the essential unpleasant dilemma:

What is an optimal population?
Do we really want 30 billion people on the planet, just because it might be possible?
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Most projections of global population (based simply on past experience) predict a peak of 9-10 billion which subsequently tails off. Native populations in the developed world have followed that pattern, so constant increase is by no means inevitable. Global population will most likely be self-limiting, even without environmental constraints.

If there was any sense of agreement on an upper limit, how would we propose to stay within it?
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The Chinese model provides an example we can learn from. The lessons are mostly negative ones, IMO, but it's what we've got.

Eventually, no matter how sophisticated our technology, we will be faced with death control...the flip-side of birth control. If we mostly beat diseases, war, starvation, etc; we will become a nightmare world of the old.
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As a person of the more aged persuasion (class of '54) I rather resent that :mad:.

My generation of Brits has, in fact, been spared famine, plague, deprivation and war in a way that no previous generation was. For which I am inexpressibly grateful.

This could be circumvented, in a morally decent manner, but it is an amazingly unpopular subject.
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True, but it's not a pressing problem. In the UK (and elsewhere) the population question connects immediately to immigration control, not birth- or death-control.
 
CapelDodger said:
Said leaders will not be able to hide what's going on from the community and will be ousted, with or without extreme prejudice.
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It's that a bit naive? It makes many assumptions.
1. That the people notices it.
2. That the people have the power to oust the leaders.
3. That they do so before it is too late.
 
AWPrime said:
It's that a bit naive? It makes many assumptions.
1. That the people notices it.
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People take an interest in their common property. Put an extra sheep on the common and people will notice.

2. That the people have the power to oust the leaders.
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If they don't then they've lost control of the commons already. They are merely sheep to be shorn.

3. That they do so before it is too late.
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It doesn't take long to notice and remove a sheep.
 
quarky said:
It will become a problem, one that will require some foresight.
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I disagree. I'd expect global population to peak and then go into long-term decline. That's been the experience in the developed world, and I don't see why it won't happen when development is general.

People are already having smaller families in the developing world. Population is increasing because of the demographic mix, which is heavily skewed towards the young, family-building end. That will take a generation or two to play out, after which it's downhill all the way to voluntary extinction in a few thousand years.
 
AWPrime said:
No, that would be air and food. The most basic necessities.
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Water can be quite handy as well.

Opportunity must present itself before it can be seen and chosen.
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As the saying goes - "Opportunities are just an obstacles waiting to jump out and bite you.". Or something like that.:)
 
CapelDodger said:
People take an interest in their common property. Put an extra sheep on the common and people will notice.
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Such unsupported innocence...... You likely never even considered that all the players may be greedy.

If they don't then they've lost control of the commons already. They are merely sheep to be shorn.
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Sure blame them, if your assumptions fail.

It doesn't take long to notice and remove a sheep.
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Do you really think that the people have calculated the maximum amount of sheep and take careful note of how many there are? Of course not, and normally the side-effects only show up when it too late.
 
AWPrime said:
Such unsupported innocence...... You likely never even considered that all the players may be greedy.
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All the community members would still police each; the greedier the individual the more suspicious they'll be of others.

Sure blame them, if your assumptions fail.
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I'm laying no blame, just pointing out a fact. If community cannot jointly administer a common property it's no longer a common property.

Do you really think that the people have calculated the maximum amount of sheep and take careful note of how many there are? Of course not, and normally the side-effects only show up when it too late.
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People can do that, yes, and communities have in the past managed common land sustainably for many generations. Some still do - in the New Forest, for instance.
 
Darkhole said:
I agree on overfishing, for the rest I hold my tongue... yet.

The Northsea, I fish there, is almost empty comparing with 50 years back.
http://overfishing.org/
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I think it's the state of the oceans that will bring us up short. Apart from the insane level of exploitation there's acidification and climate change chipping away at the ecosystem. Yet relatively little attention is paid to the problem.

I guess the damage isn't visible enough. Rainforest degradation we can see and relate to, but not so much the oceans. Being a fisherman yourself, it's not invisible to you.

Estimated for 2050 : 9,294,000,000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population_estimates
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Which assumes, of course, that other things remain equal. Which they won't, especially as regards the protein we can collectively mine from the oceans. That, IMO, will bite before 2050.
 
quarky said:
Suppose there was some Kyoto-type global agreement about a maximum population; not an insane idea, compared to the alternatives...
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Unnecessary
Suppose we gained sophistication; made things safer; had better medicine; overcame war...all do-good stuff. Including people having longer lives.
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Developed world already has all that -- and guess what? Population of all developed countries is shrinking. In agrarian economy children are a labor boon, in modern industrial economy they are a financial drain. Hence people have fewer children. It is a universal trend -- when prosperity rises, birth rates drop, ALWAYS. Population problem solves itself.
 
...except that it only works if you can get prosperity first. And in many places, the population density is already too high for that to happen now, or the countries in question just won't get prosperous for a variety of other reasons.

Then, the next limit you run into to keep the population from rising infinitely is the area's absolute carrying capacity.
 
Miss_Kitt said:
I wish to offer a clarification, since at least two posters have misunderstood what I meant by the term "tragedy of the Commons". Please check the source below.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/TragedyoftheCommons.html

To paraphrase, when a good is held in common and used by all--as grazing land for a community--but the benefits accrue to individuals, over time the good will be overused because the gain for an individual of taking more of the common good will be greater than their share of the loss due to the overall degradation of that. It is in the villager's interest to add another sheep or cow to the common grazing ground; the damage that overgrazing does will be shared among all the animals (and their owners) but the benefit of the additional animal will be solely his.

Hope this clarified it, MK
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That article spends far to little time on the fact that “tragedy of the commons” is really “tragedy of the unmanaged commons”. This is one of the most common deceptions perpetrated when citing the tragedy of the commons. It’s only when the common isn’t managed that problems occur.
 
CapelDodger said:
All the community members would still police each; the greedier the individual the more suspicious they'll be of others.
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Wrong. they will only put more effort in exploiting the commons to maximize profit.

I'm laying no blame, just pointing out a fact. If community cannot jointly administer a common property it's no longer a common property.
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An interesting interpretation but on what is it based? You are talking about a mere correlation.

People can do that, yes, and communities have in the past managed common land sustainably for many generations. Some still do - in the New Forest, for instance.
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They can but that doesn't mean that they will. And you argument is based on that they will, which is clearly not the case.
 
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