Post by Elfie on Jul 30, 2005 2:46:49 GMT -5
Consider the factors that determine whether or not a couple has a child: that child's profitability for the family. That is to say, if the cost of a child is high enough, it will prohibit the average couple from having a child. How does this affect population? As the cost of having a child is increased because resources are growing more sparse, it will begin to cost more and more to have a child. Food prices will go up. Gas prices will go up. Life will become more expensive, especially with three mouths instead of two. As a result, people will have to begin worrying about taking care of themselves, let alone their kids, and they will stop having children.
Essentially, the greatest thing we can do to help curb population is to educate people, not about the dangers of overpopulation, but simply for them to be considerate when having a child. As long as people are considering whether or not they can afford to bring a life into this world when they have a child the population issue will control itself. In the end, humanity will reach a natural balance where people will be able to afford to have just enough children to replace the current population. If they have any more the costs will be too high and others won't have kids and if they have any less the costs will lower and people will have kids to bring the system back to equilibrium. It's basic economics: the market always resolves to equilibrium.
Contrary to some more pessimistic views, this will all happen naturally, which will mean the will be no sudden jerk in the system causing pain and suffering. We won't run out of oil someday like a garden hose suddenly getting blocked off. Rather, our resources will run out from their sources, which means they will be reduced to a trickle, and then nothing at all. However, this change will be slow enough that humanity will be able to adapt and population will follow suit. In the end, I hardly believe population growth is something to be worried about at all.
And:
In the case of population, the naturally limiting theory has been shown through studies of acceleration of population to be superior to the traditional view that population grows exponentially. The fact of the matter is that population grows exponentially until it meets with limiting factors. At that point it gradually levels off at an equilibrium where the earth is self-sustaining. That's why population acceleration is currently negative: we're levelling off. If population growth was still accelerating it would be cause for concern, but consider all the major steps forward society has made of the last few hundred years. The agricultural revolution, the price revolution, the first and second industrial revolutions. All of these resulted in major population growth. While we can't establish causality between technological increase and population growth, we can establish a correlation. Population grows as our ability to sustain a higher population grows. As our rate of technological advances made it easier to support a higher population, our population followed suit.
Anyway, the point is that it seems unlikely that we are capable of exceding our carrying capacity on this earth. It's true that disease and famine no longer kill large numbers of people, but rather than being treated as a sign that we're growing too fast, it should be treated as a sign that we've conditioned the earth to hold more people. Many say that the earth can hold a certain number and no more, and while this is true on one level (there is an upper limit), it is misleading. The fact of the matter is that we are constantly pushing this ceiling, and what's more, by the time we even start to approach it the cost of having kids will be so prohibitive that no one will do it anyway.
Bottom line: The decision to have kids is linked to the decision that you can afford to have kids. The decision that you can afford to have kids is linked to whether or not there is room for them. As long as we maintain those links through education, there is no way we can exceed our carrying capacity.
And:
The solution is simply to teach people that too many other people means less for everyone. Most people in developed countries get this. They don't have kids unless they can afford to. We don't need drastic action; we merely need to educate people of the costs of having children. If you point out that if a village in the middle of nowhere has more children it will have more mouths to feed, it might just stop having as many children.
If, however, you give it edicts that it doesn't understand, it's just going to ignore you.
And:
There is no too late point for overpopulation. The strain on the human population will cause us to limit ourselves, by famine and disease if necessary, before the strain on the earth is unbearable or even damaging. If we want to avoid the famine and disease, as I would assume we do, we simply need to get the message out that you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to. Again, edicts are a step in the wrong direction. Education should be the solution to this problem.
And:
We can manage our resources better than we currently are, and we should be, but even so, these resources aren't going to suddenly be cut-off. We will gradually run out. Oil is a great example. In Canada gas prices just went over a dollar, quite high for us. It's not that there's suddenly no oil, it's that it's becoming more and more difficult to make oil profitable. What does that mean? Prices go up. In turn, alternatives become cheaper. By the time we run out of oil the cost of gas will be so prohibitively high that an alternative will have already been introduced into the marketplace. Alternatives have already been proposed and as oil costs more and more, that investment becomes more and more attractive. The same thing will occur with other areas, and we've seen it happen. Farms switching from pesticides and fertilizers to organic farming. Logging companies growing trees in areas they have cut down. All of these are indications of the system slowly beginning to correct itself.
That said, we certainly need initiatives to make our fossil fuels burn as cleanly as possible and to do what we can to preserve the rest of the environment, whether it be our trees or our fields, but while we still have a long way to go, we are making progress. We've been excessive in the fast, but as we've started to feel the effects of our excesses, we've learned to be smarter with our resources. This is all environmental though. On the basic issue of overpopulation, the fact that all of these things that drive us artificially over the carrying capacity of earth will fizzle rather than suddenly stop is an indication that the human race will have the time to adapt to the necessary chages we have to make. Fields aren't suddenly going to stop producing anything. They'll produce less until it makes more sense to use less intensive farming methods, as they're already doing. We won't run out of trees, but those left will be so tough to get at that we'll start replanting them, as we're already doing. We will run out of oil, but it will peder off in a fashion that will force gas prices up and force us to gradually rethink our ways and come up with a solution long before there is any major crisis.
If you want to support something that we cause irreversible damage in, try supporting the fight against global warming. That war is worth your effort.
Essentially, the greatest thing we can do to help curb population is to educate people, not about the dangers of overpopulation, but simply for them to be considerate when having a child. As long as people are considering whether or not they can afford to bring a life into this world when they have a child the population issue will control itself. In the end, humanity will reach a natural balance where people will be able to afford to have just enough children to replace the current population. If they have any more the costs will be too high and others won't have kids and if they have any less the costs will lower and people will have kids to bring the system back to equilibrium. It's basic economics: the market always resolves to equilibrium.
Contrary to some more pessimistic views, this will all happen naturally, which will mean the will be no sudden jerk in the system causing pain and suffering. We won't run out of oil someday like a garden hose suddenly getting blocked off. Rather, our resources will run out from their sources, which means they will be reduced to a trickle, and then nothing at all. However, this change will be slow enough that humanity will be able to adapt and population will follow suit. In the end, I hardly believe population growth is something to be worried about at all.
And:
In the case of population, the naturally limiting theory has been shown through studies of acceleration of population to be superior to the traditional view that population grows exponentially. The fact of the matter is that population grows exponentially until it meets with limiting factors. At that point it gradually levels off at an equilibrium where the earth is self-sustaining. That's why population acceleration is currently negative: we're levelling off. If population growth was still accelerating it would be cause for concern, but consider all the major steps forward society has made of the last few hundred years. The agricultural revolution, the price revolution, the first and second industrial revolutions. All of these resulted in major population growth. While we can't establish causality between technological increase and population growth, we can establish a correlation. Population grows as our ability to sustain a higher population grows. As our rate of technological advances made it easier to support a higher population, our population followed suit.
Anyway, the point is that it seems unlikely that we are capable of exceding our carrying capacity on this earth. It's true that disease and famine no longer kill large numbers of people, but rather than being treated as a sign that we're growing too fast, it should be treated as a sign that we've conditioned the earth to hold more people. Many say that the earth can hold a certain number and no more, and while this is true on one level (there is an upper limit), it is misleading. The fact of the matter is that we are constantly pushing this ceiling, and what's more, by the time we even start to approach it the cost of having kids will be so prohibitive that no one will do it anyway.
Bottom line: The decision to have kids is linked to the decision that you can afford to have kids. The decision that you can afford to have kids is linked to whether or not there is room for them. As long as we maintain those links through education, there is no way we can exceed our carrying capacity.
And:
The solution is simply to teach people that too many other people means less for everyone. Most people in developed countries get this. They don't have kids unless they can afford to. We don't need drastic action; we merely need to educate people of the costs of having children. If you point out that if a village in the middle of nowhere has more children it will have more mouths to feed, it might just stop having as many children.
If, however, you give it edicts that it doesn't understand, it's just going to ignore you.
And:
There is no too late point for overpopulation. The strain on the human population will cause us to limit ourselves, by famine and disease if necessary, before the strain on the earth is unbearable or even damaging. If we want to avoid the famine and disease, as I would assume we do, we simply need to get the message out that you shouldn't have kids unless you can afford to. Again, edicts are a step in the wrong direction. Education should be the solution to this problem.
And:
We can manage our resources better than we currently are, and we should be, but even so, these resources aren't going to suddenly be cut-off. We will gradually run out. Oil is a great example. In Canada gas prices just went over a dollar, quite high for us. It's not that there's suddenly no oil, it's that it's becoming more and more difficult to make oil profitable. What does that mean? Prices go up. In turn, alternatives become cheaper. By the time we run out of oil the cost of gas will be so prohibitively high that an alternative will have already been introduced into the marketplace. Alternatives have already been proposed and as oil costs more and more, that investment becomes more and more attractive. The same thing will occur with other areas, and we've seen it happen. Farms switching from pesticides and fertilizers to organic farming. Logging companies growing trees in areas they have cut down. All of these are indications of the system slowly beginning to correct itself.
That said, we certainly need initiatives to make our fossil fuels burn as cleanly as possible and to do what we can to preserve the rest of the environment, whether it be our trees or our fields, but while we still have a long way to go, we are making progress. We've been excessive in the fast, but as we've started to feel the effects of our excesses, we've learned to be smarter with our resources. This is all environmental though. On the basic issue of overpopulation, the fact that all of these things that drive us artificially over the carrying capacity of earth will fizzle rather than suddenly stop is an indication that the human race will have the time to adapt to the necessary chages we have to make. Fields aren't suddenly going to stop producing anything. They'll produce less until it makes more sense to use less intensive farming methods, as they're already doing. We won't run out of trees, but those left will be so tough to get at that we'll start replanting them, as we're already doing. We will run out of oil, but it will peder off in a fashion that will force gas prices up and force us to gradually rethink our ways and come up with a solution long before there is any major crisis.
If you want to support something that we cause irreversible damage in, try supporting the fight against global warming. That war is worth your effort.