Overpopulation

[PatrickXD]

Colonize other planets, look for more efficient energy sources (fusion anyone?) impose limits on the number of children people can have, and so forth. There are so many things we could be doing that I couldn't possibly mention them all.

We can't be colonising other planets, we don't quite know how to go about that yet. Fusion is in the process of being done actually. 1 nuclear fusion plant would produce enough energy to power the whole world twice =D But it takes the same amount of energy to start as you get out of it, because we can't sustain it for long enough. Impose limits? Yeah, fair enough.

 

[titanium turtle]

Limit each couple to one baby.
Bam, halved the population in one generation and people can still have a baby if they want.

Either that or colonise another planet.

yeah because it worked really well in china

 

[Purplefood1]

According to a sociological textbook I was assigned for one of my courses a semester or two ago, the Earth's population has actually plateaued. This means that this rapid growth in industrialized and post-industrialized nations is being offset by those countries afflicted by famine, natural disaster, and perpetual war.

The planet is equalizing itself, *don't panic*. The Earth can only realistically sustain X number of people on it, and when we cross over that threshold and resources begin to wear thin, *war will break out and lower the population again*.

It's grim and gruesome, but it's true, for the most part.

Oh thats ok then i was going to panic about the possibility of a war that will kill a massive amount of people

 

[Jonluw]

Reinitialize ritual sacrifice. The gods will be pleased and our problem will be solved ;D

On a serious note: Meh, birth control I suppose. It will even out eventually anyways. If we truly overpopulate the earth people will start dying en masse and the problem will solve it self.

 

[Goremocker]

TL;DR

Ok, so I got a bit of what you're saying and I looked at the graph. My opinion? McDonald's and other cheap food sources will poison about 4 billion of us. It will be like a new black plague.

 

[titanium turtle]

The same way we solve every other problem:

NUKE IT FROM ORBIT!

game over man, game over

 

[PatrickXD]

Overpopulation is happening in some places (England, China, parts of the US) but also the funny thing is that the world in the future is going to get underpopulated. I can provide a link if you guys don't believe me.

Yes please

 

[Vitor Goncalves]

Yes, a damn good one, Quite simply, in countries without any population control use a chemical or biological agent to sterilize 60-70% or so of the population, in ones with control only sterilize 20-30% and encourage education.
Right now, due to religious. monetary, political reasons people will not stop having babies in areas that cannot take that many people. Simple, brutal, effective.

that is 110% sociopathic. it goes completely against human nature. your acting like only religious people want to have kids. its part of human life. we have a instictual primative urge to have kids, to reproduce.



btw: it sounds alot like the gynophage in mass effect.

Well, I understood from his comment that he meant people having large number of kids. One thing is having 1 or 2 kids, another is having 10 or 20 (or like Leontina Albina from Chile who had 64 kids during her entire life).

Religious people are against birth control. Yes we have the urge to reproduce but unless you are capable to support a large number of children you would be reckless and irresponsible to make a large number of kids in the 21st century.

Limit the age of the elderly. It really isn't natural that we are living to be 90 years old these days. Plus older people just put a strain on a lot of resources both physically and socially. It's just my opinion. I don't actually play on going around putting down old people.

Life expactancy increase at this stage doesnt have any longer major impact on popultaion increase as it does not increase the fertile period for woman. What does have impact medical wise is the reduction of children mortality rate. The main and primary mechanism of nature to control population is getting rid of as many newborn as posible with diseases, predators, sibblings competition. So nature actually dont aim first the old, but first the young.

In nature no known species as a child mortality lower then 50%, in the human race, no country as it higher then 20%.

But let's not aim child and elder, thats what the nazis also tried to do. The solution is really birth control and its working in most countries, world population growth is slowing down on the poast 15 years. Msain problem now is going to be the aged populations, with many people retired while a smaller slice of population is active to maintain their pensions. That will maker for some rough decades and are one of the major risks to industrialized countries economies (probably the main reason for greek bankrupcy since their retiring age was just 45 years). But we can get over it.

 

[blackhole1]

This probably has been mentioned before, but the solution to this problem is that we need BETTER people, not MORE. I believe for one that we need to take a long, hard look at ourselves and our species and which way we want it to evolve. Before people start throwing insults, rocks, or threats to burn down my house, I would like to say that forcing people to sterilize themselves to prevent their 'bad' genes from being passed on is immoral and impractical. Rather, our governments should band together and start programs, like free basic healthcare to a person with 'bad' genes who gets themselves sterilized. Of course, the problem here is deciding which person has more right to reproduce than others. Some genetic 'defects' like cystic fibrosis or haemophilia are easy choices as they cause diseases that will only hurt, but other issues are not so straightfoward. To that end, an ethical debate should be started. It will be difficult, but in the end this form of directed evolution can be our saving grace.

 

[Penguinness]

It would be better if people turned to adoption before considering babies, it'd at least make lives that are already here better. Forcing the goverment hand on things like pregnancy seems too much, and it gets to a point in some people's lives where they just need to reproduce to carry on their family.. it'd probably end up being that the rich could only repopulate. At least make adopting a better possibility first.

Then the thing about the cost of eating meat, going vegetarian is a good idea. Although the stats on this forum says 42.7% of people would rather give up sex than meat, maybe they should enforce this kind of rule =P You choose either to be able to have sex at some point in your life, or you get to eat meat. But seriously, I'd be up for it (mass vegetarianism/veganism) but not many would.. this would have to be goverment forced and cause too much uproar.

Someone mentioned just letting the chips fall where they are and not helping poorer countries. Wouldn't improving the way of life in africa and places by supplying wells, education and all of that make these areas able to supply food and generally livable be a better option?

 

[Kair]

If every human lived with the same consumption rate as the average Indian, the world could support 9 billion people.

If every human had the same consumption as the average American, we would need 14 Earths to even sustain our current population.

 

[FallenJellyDoughnut]

I suggest we start focussing on off-world colonisation, that way we could just send people to mars.

 

[FallenJellyDoughnut]

Overpopulation is happening in some places (England, China, parts of the US) but also the funny thing is that the world in the future is going to get underpopulated. I can provide a link if you guys don't believe me.

Yes please

Yeah, why would you say that and then *not* provide the link?

ITS A CONSPIRACY!

 

[Vault Citizen]

Limit the age of the elderly. It really isn't natural that we are living to be 90 years old these days. Plus older people just put a strain on a lot of resources both physically and socially. It's just my opinion. I don't actually play on going around putting down old people.

how would you put such a policy into practice? You can't exactly tell people to stop living past a certain poiunt.

 

[Sprogus]

To everyone that has responded to to my earlier post. This isn't some act like "grr I hate old people they should die" It's in most countries by a certain age older people are no longer contributing to society as the working class are. So logically it would make sense for them to not be around. Once again I was asked for an opinion and I provided it.

The same can also be said about prisoners in jail for crimes.

 

[direkiller]

We need to focus on transferred consciousness, the amount of humans isn't the problem it's the amount of energy a human needs to survive. If we can develop further technologically then human reproduction and death will become nonexistent. Instead of focusing on how to maintain our organic forms or how to ration our depleting natural resources we need to focus on understanding our minds so we can duplicate and transfer their information into a mechanical form. If we can get to that point human self evolution will jump ahead by leaps and bounds.

someone likes Ghost in the shell

anyway farming technology is increasing alot we are not close to the breaking point of the world in terms of food. If we dont find a practical substitute for oil in about 30 years and for coal in about 200 years we may have some problems however

fusion power should be here in about 10. but that will make an all out war- whoever owns the reactor, can decide who gets it, at what price. so everyone will want to own it...

I dont think you understand the difference between scientific discovery(fusion that has a net positive energy gain) and practical commercial distribution of that discovery(a working power plant).

for instance yea hydrogen cars work but the distribution system(nozzle for pumping,trucks for transporting,tanks for storing,ecd.) will take several billion dollars and years to put in place. After that you still need the hydrogen car equivalent to the model T and a solution to current pumping systems taking hours to pump hydrogen gas.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Overpopulation is an enormous problem. It doesn't seem so bad right now because fossil fuels are drastically (and temporarily) inflating food production capacity. When we begin running out of cheap, readily available energy, the food yield will return to more reasonable levels - and studies suggest these rates will support no more than 2-2.5 billion people. That's an issue.

Honestly, birth control is the most humane solution that absolutely will work. Expanding to other planets or ecosystems doesn't solve the problem, and relying on disease/famine/war to cull the weak is pretty barbaric. Sure, it's hard to curb our biological imperative to pass on genetic material, but that feels like something we need to grow out of eventually.

There are a lot of people who believe every organism has an unrestricted right to reproduce. I'm not one of them. I think reproduction is a very serious decision, and people shouldn't undertake the practice without sufficient stability and security (emotional and financial) as to guarantee an appropriate environment for any child. Also, no more than two. Period.

 

[James Hueick]

Do nothing.
Charles Darwin already made it very clear that this has to happen in order for a species to evolve. Wouldn't it be cool after this mass death; people somehow gained the ability to fly or read minds (who knows because we only use 10% of our brains anyway).