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356 comments on Peak Oil, Carrying Capacity and Overshoot: Population, the Elephant in the Room
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I recently posted this somewhere else on the vast intertubes, but it's a more "optimistic" look at the same thing:
"Consider that if it is assumed that 5 billion people is an upper limit to the population that can be sustained (which is optimistic in the extreme by everything I've read, but I want to be optimistic sometimes), and we started trying to get back down to there from where we are (6.7 billion or so), it would take 23 years of a net loss of 200,000 people a day. Right now, about 150,000 people a day die, with 400,000 or so being born. Those numbers would essentially need to reverse. In all seriousness, and a minimum of morbidness: any ideas?"
Now, I acknowledge that 5 billion is likely a ridiculously high number, although I think 1 billion is too low (I've seen 2 billion argued well in the past), but the actual number declined to is almost unimportant. Society can't stop producing young people, especially where manual labour is needed. Discussing this type of thing with people who haven't had the same sort of thoughts is almost impossible. As you say, there's no rational solution here (barring miraculous technology, which I refuse to rule out as possible, but also refuse to count on happening). Living in Canada, which may be one of the few countries living below it's long-term carrying capacity right now (hey, we've got farmland and water everywhere), it's an easy problem to ignore for now. I think one of the assumptions that most people in the world make is that if we really tried to feed everyone, we could (and this is of course true right now). This is another in a long line of assumptions that will change in the near future.
What, are you trying to build a "consensus"? It's not like people will get a vote in the matter. There will be no "stable" population level, simply because it doesn't work that way. It (population ) rises slowly but at an ever increasing rate (exponential) until there is too many for the environment ( local or global ) to support and then there is either a mass migration often leading to warfare between newcomers and existing residents ( ring a bell? - immigration ), a mass die off for whatever unforeseeable reason, or both. Well documented throughout archeology and anthropology, and throughout nature generally.
You think "modern man" can outwit this? Ha! Evolution requires this process to weed out the losers. It's ugly and bloody, and violent beyond comprehension. And NOBODY, NOBODY can predict any of it, including the outcome. Read up on the recent examples (last 2000 years ) in the America's. Is your genetic code up to the task? Will 'your" line survive or perish? That's the only pertinent question.
Our species was down to less than 100,000 individuals (<20k according to some estimates), 65,000 years ago or thereabouts.
Wow, Gene, looks like your about ready to sign folks up for the new Nazi party.. So long as they dont fall in that "losers" category, right?
Watch out. We'll be seeing more and more people coming out of the woodwork with attitudes like this.
That's not how I read his comment at all. He's taling about evolution and genetics, not ideology. Try reading it again while holding your knee still.
You are correct sir. Ideology has nothing to do with it. Except perhaps as a response to whatever environmental conditions exist. I'm using "environment" in the broadest possible sense, not just in reference to any single resource or climate condition.
Cultural anthropology is an interesting field of study which addresses this. Typical question might be; "Why did the Maya practice human sacrifice?" Typical answer might be; "To please the gods."
The real answer goes much deeper than that, and was usually related to the environment in some way that we often cannot fathom today because the culture either no longer exists or has changed dramatically. So the default position is to ascribe such behavior to religion.
Same goes for most food taboo's, and other group behavior. We are a product of our environment, then and now.
An excellent book on what makes human cultures what they are is; "Cannibals and Kings", by Marvin Harris .
Worth reading, especially if one wishes to know the foundations of our modern cultures.
Who are the Mumi's today?
Your right. It is a knee jerk reaction. And my knee is still jerking... Nazism IS the ideology of genetics and evolution.. Remember? Now, if you want to place that ideology in a nice little, sterile container and talk about it as an expression of natural biological imperatives, be my guest. You can focus (morbidly so, in my opinion) on the destructive competative tribal response, but I think it misses half the picture. I would argue that cooperation and restraint are also survival responses to a changing (resource depleted) enviornment. Thats the power of compromise and rationality. The magnitude of the 'population correction' in the face of resource scarcity will be greatly influenced by these factors as well.
Sorry, dabble_doomer, but you are mistaken.
Nazism is an "ideology" that uses so-called social darwinism.
It understands Darwinism not as a process of natural selection of the fittest (not necessarily the strongest!) as originally described, but as an imperative to actively pursue the dominance of a supposedly superior (in case of German nazism arian) race.
Selection of the "fittest" by natural forces, on the other hand, is completely unideological and can just as well affect human beings as any other species on the planet. Humans have no official or god-given grant to be bypassed by natural selection.
That does not mean that humans cannot use their individual intellect and social behaviour to try to mitigate threatening factors. There is just ample evidence that when times get harder, many people tend to abandon social behavior...
Cheers,
Davidyson
Very interesting paper. I guess this is why the government isn't so concerned about saving Social Security.
I put two tomato plants in the ground and one already died. The strawberries look puny as well. I don't think I'm going to make it!!! 1 down, 5 billion to go.
jt
I don't think the government can do much about it