The Biological You

[Silver]

Humans are plague on Earth

The television presenter said that humans are threatening their own existence and that of other species by using up the world’s resources.
He said the only way to save the planet from famine and species extinction is to limit human population growth.

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now,” he told the Radio Times.

Sir David, who is a patron of the Population Matters, has spoken out before about the “frightening explosion in human numbers” and the need for investment in sex education and other voluntary means of limiting population in developing countries.

“We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/ea...rough.html

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Sex Ed and, importantly, the emancipation of female sexuality are the keys, and often go hand in with both better education and ultimately lower birth rates.

I haven't got the figures to hand but it's no mystery why populations in Europe and other developed nations are broadly in decline whilst those in LEDCs are trending upwards. Female emancipationnisnfar, far further down the road here, and almost non-existent in those parts of the world.

I don't think it's easy as saying 'don't have kids', though. But he's right, it's simple economics that the more mouths you have to feed means scare resources become even scarcer. I'm not here to judge people for having what some might say is 'too many"' children (I personally dont care for them and don't want them) but it's certainly not inhuman to put 2 and 2 together and at least consider that too many people might be a contributing cause to ecological and environmental issues. I've always been skeptical of the whole agent smith 'humans are a virus' thing. We are 'of' the earth, of the universe. Our nature may be flawed but I'm not so misanthropic that I dislike other human beings.

[chimp3]

How many decades have we been talking about overpopulation? There was a book called "The Population Bomb" written in 1968 that caused a bit of a stir. We were at 3.7 billion that year.

[vorlon13]

Go read The Mote in God's Eye, and The Gripping Hand for a very plausible outline of a potential outcome for any technically advanced civilization confined to a single solar system.

Imagine what Darwin can accomplish with a surplus of humans in all ecological niches on the planet if given enough time. Then imagine humans interfering with that process while it is happening . . .


We (the rest of us) might start breeding a strain of humanity for foodstock if all the cattle and other animals we like to eat are squeezed out of existence. I'd say overweight vapid children are actually headed along that evolutionary path . . .

[Silver]

We (the rest of us) might start breeding a strain of humanity for foodstock if all the cattle and other animals we like to eat are squeezed out of existence.  I'd say overweight vapid children are actually headed along that evolutionary path . . .

Soylent Green!

[vorlon13]

Early puberty, tendency to put on pounds with a grossly substandard diet, high fertility, appearance of non-sentience . . .

Not hard to design a human spinoff that might be pretty damn tasty, and the rest of us might not have too many qualms about eating if that was the only source of meat.

[ignoramus]

The fleet of antonovs with infertility chems is on runway 5 ready for takeoff.
Just say the word....

[brewer]

The fleet of antonovs with infertility chems is on runway 5 ready for takeoff.
Just say the word....

Might as well go out with a bang, right?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Someone (may have been Asimov, not sure) wrote a treatment yonks ago that the Earth could plausibly support as many as 500 billion-with-a-b humans. Of course, this would come at the expense of most other life forms, and would require both a lower standard of living and some significant technological breakthroughs. As I recall, the upshot of the piece was that the planet isn't as much overcrowded as it is mismanaged.

Boru

[robybar]

Here is how i see it.
Human population growth is a false problem: our increasing rate has been decreasing (sic) and we are going to slow down, peak (by the next century maybe) and then slowly decrease until we find a balance with our environment. This may take some hundreds years, maybe lots of people will die in horrible ways meanwhile, but i'm pretty sure this is what will happen to us as a population in the very long term. No sudden catastrophes or climate changes will make the population plummet in few years, it's just a matter of time.
Just look at the milestones of the human growth:
We reached the 2 billions in 127 years (from 1 billion),
33 years to get 2 then,
14 years to get 3 billions,
13 years to get 5 b,
12 years to get 6 b, and.......
Other 12 years to get 7 b!
The current rate of increase is expected to make us reach the 8, 9 an 10th billion in 14, 18 and 40 years.
We are clearly slowing down, and our population won't just stop rising at one point and stay there. We will be too many. One day we will start decreasing. And with the population, the rate of extinction and the air pollution will decrease too. Also, more space will be left to nature and new forests (the number of trees worldwide is already increasing) will completely absorb the exceeding CO2 and reset (roughly) to the pre-industrial age the average temperatures of the atmosphere.
Then, we will find a balance and our civilization will potentially be eternal. Until the next ice age/asteroid/invasive species/really bad luck of any kind.

Okay, i admit, maybe all that stuff won't happen and we will keep growing indefinitely or be wiped out all of a sudden or whatever, but as far as i know from my population dynamics studies this is, to me, the most likely scenario of our future.