Ways to deal with overpopulation
- Thread starter noobium
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Colonising space is flat out not going to work as a solution.
Lets suppose that it is relatively cheap and easy to send people to Mars. To make a difference to world populations, you have to send out many million people, and keep doing so every year. You can't just send a few people out once, it has to be a massive, continuing process.
Additionally, those Martians will breed on their own, even if you left them to their own devices the planet will also end up having the same situation as the Earth.
Though, if you're not worried about the Earth, but the species, if the problem is the effects of over-population on our one planet, spreading the species around a bit will mean some are likely to thrive somewhere.
Lets suppose that it is relatively cheap and easy to send people to Mars. To make a difference to world populations, you have to send out many million people, and keep doing so every year. You can't just send a few people out once, it has to be a massive, continuing process.
Additionally, those Martians will breed on their own, even if you left them to their own devices the planet will also end up having the same situation as the Earth.
Though, if you're not worried about the Earth, but the species, if the problem is the effects of over-population on our one planet, spreading the species around a bit will mean some are likely to thrive somewhere.
I forgot to mention that I was think about the worse case scenario and we you be dead long before this became a real issue but what you are saying is a possibility. Also, I created this thread for a social debate to see how people would justify or rebut the concept of population controlUltratwinkie said:
If you want to look more in to it here's a link to a report published by UN's Department of Economic and Social Affairs back in 2004. http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf
According to U.N. Statistics (the moderate stats mind you, the high estimate is around 11 Bil) the world pop will be around 9 billion people by 2050, and that is actually not so bad seeing as we are already at 7 Billion.
I think that so long as we have some sort of cheap energy we will be able to feed everyone, especially here in the U.S. where we have a lot of good farmland and advanced tech.
Mind you if all the sudden we had no fossil fuels there would be food riots within the week... everywhere.
anyway, I think space won't be a problem for quite some time, and so long as we have some form of cheap energy people will be fed and sheltered long into the future, though certain other things may become scarce.
Of course, this is all based on the presumption that there will always be cheap energy of some sort. This however does not seem to be the case the way things are going.
That said I totally think we go to space. This planet's wealth/resources has been divided up (pretty unevenly at that I'd say) and going to the stars would open a whole new frontier of opportunity for... well everyone.
I think that so long as we have some sort of cheap energy we will be able to feed everyone, especially here in the U.S. where we have a lot of good farmland and advanced tech.
Mind you if all the sudden we had no fossil fuels there would be food riots within the week... everywhere.
anyway, I think space won't be a problem for quite some time, and so long as we have some form of cheap energy people will be fed and sheltered long into the future, though certain other things may become scarce.
Of course, this is all based on the presumption that there will always be cheap energy of some sort. This however does not seem to be the case the way things are going.
That said I totally think we go to space. This planet's wealth/resources has been divided up (pretty unevenly at that I'd say) and going to the stars would open a whole new frontier of opportunity for... well everyone.
We could try pouring resources into third world countries. Studies show that industrial and post-industrial societies have a lower number of children per couple, i.e. around 2 which is a stable population rate.
About a third of the world's population lives in Asia, mostly China and India. Overpopulation is an immediate problem for them, sure. But Europe, America, Australia and Africa have plenty of room to grow for now, though for the Aussies I guess it's a bit tougher to move out from the major cities because 99% of everything in Australia will eviscerate/poison/lay eggs in you if you so much as look at it.
As said earlier, its not really an overpopulation problem but a population distribution problem. There's plenty of space just everyone tends to crowd together. There are plenty of third-world nations that need better education and infrastructure and it's up to the more developed nations to provide this. If we could get these poor nations onto their feet and quit bickering over who has power - hint, hint, nudge, nudge most of Africa - they could begin to supply their own resources and wouldn't need to have developed nations send over stuff.
People will do less stupid things when they realize that they aren't necessary.
Birth control, both medical and educational.
Infrastructure build-up
Spread farming
develop uninhabitable areas into habitable ones, heck we can even start to develop Vault-esque structures underground (who says humans can only live on the surface)
and if all of that doesn't work, if a new disease pops up in the third world areas - more than 80% likely due to unsanitary conditions - I'm sure a huge portion will not survive
this should be used as a lesson on both sides - the developed need to learn that a third-world nations problems are theirs and they need to be solved by those people, and the third world nations need to learn to shape up
China, at the very least is working to solve their population problems but India seems to be taking up the fallen slack - more children doesn't mean much when you're struggling to feed every mouth
People will do less stupid things when they realize that they aren't necessary.
Birth control, both medical and educational.
Infrastructure build-up
Spread farming
develop uninhabitable areas into habitable ones, heck we can even start to develop Vault-esque structures underground (who says humans can only live on the surface)
and if all of that doesn't work, if a new disease pops up in the third world areas - more than 80% likely due to unsanitary conditions - I'm sure a huge portion will not survive
this should be used as a lesson on both sides - the developed need to learn that a third-world nations problems are theirs and they need to be solved by those people, and the third world nations need to learn to shape up
China, at the very least is working to solve their population problems but India seems to be taking up the fallen slack - more children doesn't mean much when you're struggling to feed every mouth
I don't World war 3? Though I like that get those poor counties up and running. Have to get ride of the corrupt leaders though. In our nations first then we can go after the ones in Africa and the eastern block. Course we have to do more than throw money at it.
Also I'm not for this for the population control, just sounds like a good idea. People seem to forget that people in poorer nations have more children because the kids are less likely to live is long, if you live to 40 over there they kill you for withcraft(not really just making a point). While in the U.S we have an overwhelming elderly problem. Not so much as in they're a problem(respect your elders!), but if were all going to live longer might as well work longer too, once the baby boomer generation is gone, the gap of youth and elderly will shorten hopefully, and if we could get the Government to stop dipping into social security. Seeing as how we have less children now, so we should hit a steady stride.
Going to have to switch up our economy system. We live in the motherfucking modern age people. Labor and factory jobs should be a thing of the past. We need to get down and dirty and solve the education system so it spits out more scientist, doctors, and ugg lawyers I guess? Not to mention the entertainment, as I said we live in the modern age. With the Internet and light speed Entertainment industry we should be able to have enough free time for the creative people in our world to all be expressing themselves.
Man won't it be cool to live in a world consisting of doctors, scientist, artist, and scholars? Also robots.
The future is gonna be sweeet. Still looking forward to mining helium 3 on the moon and colonizing mars. Which could be done thanks Darwin and his ascension island project. It wasn't really Darwin all the way but I can't remember the other guys name.
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=14217
Also I'm not for this for the population control, just sounds like a good idea. People seem to forget that people in poorer nations have more children because the kids are less likely to live is long, if you live to 40 over there they kill you for withcraft(not really just making a point). While in the U.S we have an overwhelming elderly problem. Not so much as in they're a problem(respect your elders!), but if were all going to live longer might as well work longer too, once the baby boomer generation is gone, the gap of youth and elderly will shorten hopefully, and if we could get the Government to stop dipping into social security. Seeing as how we have less children now, so we should hit a steady stride.
Going to have to switch up our economy system. We live in the motherfucking modern age people. Labor and factory jobs should be a thing of the past. We need to get down and dirty and solve the education system so it spits out more scientist, doctors, and ugg lawyers I guess? Not to mention the entertainment, as I said we live in the modern age. With the Internet and light speed Entertainment industry we should be able to have enough free time for the creative people in our world to all be expressing themselves.
Man won't it be cool to live in a world consisting of doctors, scientist, artist, and scholars? Also robots.
The future is gonna be sweeet. Still looking forward to mining helium 3 on the moon and colonizing mars. Which could be done thanks Darwin and his ascension island project. It wasn't really Darwin all the way but I can't remember the other guys name.
http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=14217
The Nazi's actively practiced eugenics in an effort to improve the gene pool of Germany by eliminating the mentally handicapped, homosexuals and other undesirables. Completely ignoring the moral questions, it can only be viewed as a failure since there is no evidence the rates of homosexuality or mental handicaps were lowered.
Probably the best way to slow the population, from a moral and practical perspective, is to try and raise the standard of living of every country on Earth. There is an inverse correlation between a country's standard of living and its birth rate. Generally speaking, the higher the wealth the fewer the number of babies made each year. Look at countries like Japan and South Korea. Of course this does not always hold true since there are some very poor countries with low birth rates but its a good rule-of-thumb to hold to when trying to control the world population.
Probably the best way to slow the population, from a moral and practical perspective, is to try and raise the standard of living of every country on Earth. There is an inverse correlation between a country's standard of living and its birth rate. Generally speaking, the higher the wealth the fewer the number of babies made each year. Look at countries like Japan and South Korea. Of course this does not always hold true since there are some very poor countries with low birth rates but its a good rule-of-thumb to hold to when trying to control the world population.