"Even a Pandemic or Nucular War can't save us!" Topic

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Neither the most optimistic (pessimistic?) projections of the effects of a horrendous pandemic nor nuclear war can "solve" the problems of over population,according to a sinister cabal of … wackos? scholars? Is there any difference?
This is a terrific example of advocacy journalism at its finest, full of "begging the question" (used correctly!).

Well, as the ancient text (accurately translated) from the philosophers of Babylon said, "Eat, drink and have sex, for tomorrow you die."

Malthusianism is alive and well despite all evidence to the contrary.

Global poverty and violence plummeting, more food grown on less land, and a better life for more people than at any time in history.

The 21st century is a pretty good time to be alive.

No one believes you when you say it though…

Well, good news don't sell the paper.

I read a similar artical. We seem to be more than surrounded by agenda driven "academics" these days. I took a graduate class by a renown expert on alternatine energy who had us no nothing students convinced the world would run out of oil, gas and coal in oh…. maybe 15 years ago. At the time a jillion "hardscience" articles could be found to support his premise. You can guess what his agenda was.

Food grown in the wrong place…. People living where food can't be grown, food used as weapons, food diverted from those that need it. Too much food used to make biofuels. Never read mention of those problems in the article I read.

The Russian mafia selling nuclear weapons has my money to get people riled up about next.

Yep, our news is full of foreign murder and mayhem.

Obviously not enough of that sexy news worthy stuff happens locally.

You'll know it's all true when you see the sexy model juxtaposed with the WMDs. Meanwhile, the real scare is the lack of proper quantities of quality hops! Be afraid…soon, it'll be Last Call.

Beat that straw man (or woman).

Given birth rates globally I have to wonder – demographics is a tricky thing

Generally speaking, Nuclear weapons aren't the best form of population control. They ARE good at reducing the population, but due to the radiation that lingers for a long while, the land is unusable, so you can't move in anyway. Plus, people tend to get upset when you start nuking your neighboring country. For some reason, they often think they're next.

Nature always has a way of chopping back human population when it reaches unsupportable levels. We don't have to do a thing.

Meanwhile, as noted, violence and world hunger have been diminishing for at least two generations….

Nature always has a way of chopping back human population when it reaches unsupportable levels. We don't have to do a thing.

Back when I worked in a library, a book crossed my desk that had a big study about population growth and collapse. The basic gist of which is that human population is entirely dependent on our agricultural capacity.

Meanwhile, as noted, violence and world hunger have been diminishing for at least two generations…

I am pessimistic that this trend will continue. The geopolitical framework that supported the previous one is currently strained, and might even be gone already.

Nature finds a way.

On a related note, even rabbits are able to control themselves when overpopulation occurs, so I guess that doesn't say a lot about our intelligence, does it?

Our intellectual superiors who believe in depopulation should publically start with themselves, to give us menial proles a stirring patriotic example to voluntarily follow later!

(Can't believe I just wrote that with a straight face…. )

The planet is plenty big for everyone and we have no problem growing food. In James Dellingpole's "Watermellons" he calculated that the entire global population of 7 billion could live in just part of a state in the USA if they had the population density of NYC. I wouldn't want to do that, but it shows we are not short of land.

We can let governments create their own money, debt free, instead of allowing banks to do this free (and charge us interest!) We can have full employment.

When you create a problem in the right way you can make money from it. This is how corruption works in the third world. Stopping people making money from creating problems is a good start on the right road.

Look at the price of bread. When the poor cant buy bread you have riots and governments change. Bread went up in the middle east and we get the Arab Spring. Now no government on Earth that regulates the price of bread will dare let it go up. They would rather let the country go bankrupt then lose control.

People probably have some time yet. I suspect that most of the world's more magnificent wildlife doesn't

If you read the whole article, the solution is to accept that the population will go on growing and deal with it by sustainable technology like nuclear power, more efficient farming etc.

Ain't no big story really.

If we all die from over population, won't that solve the overpopulation problem?

Soylent Green will solve all these problems.

Yes, as Martin points out, the conclusion the researchers found was not 'oh no, we are all doomed' but rather 'well, there's no point in trying to control population growth so we should just spend time on the stuff we can improve, like cleaner energy production and more efficient agriculture'.

-Will

I read that Africa only uses about 2-3% of its true agricultural potential. The Niger delta alone if properly handled could handle all food needs for the coming population explosion in the next century.

Incidentally poverty, epidemics and poor conditions are the perfect way of ensuring people will breed like rabbits to forestall high child mortality and to make sure at least a few of them live long enough to take care of them in their old age. Improve conditions, introduce a little prosperity and better medical care and birth rates drop almost automatically.

Yes, rising wealth and a decline in birthrate seem to go hand in hand. That in turn has impacts on global growth rates as population growth is one of the main drivers of increases in GDP, technology makes a fairly marginal contribution (on average, over the long run of cumulative decades/centuries etc).

The future appears to a massively populated but low growth world with a tiny minority creaming off a huge chunk of global income and wealth, which will be interesting. Just like Victorian times.

Apologies I found 'Capital in the Twentyfirst Century' quite a compelling read:)

On the bright side, Piketty's conclusions don't match his own data. (Sorry. No link. iOS 8.1 hates me right now. The full criticism is at Bloomberg News.)

I've been meaning to read Goldman's book about demographics. link His contention is that culture (specifically religion) makes a huge difference in the effects that wealth has on birth rate, and I'm kind of interested in his data.