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Originally Posted by
TheFifthElement
This is a really interesting debate Virgil, it mirrors a similar discussion I had with my husband quite recently. I think it is a very difficult subject to discuss unemotionally, which is the stand point I get the impression you're coming from. My husband is convinced that we will have a massive war soon (does this place him in the apocalyptic camp?) and I have the feeling he's on to something.
Haha, yes your husband is another apocalyptic one. ;) Yes there is turmoil in the world today, but the major countries of the world have never been so interlincked and supportive of one another. Can you envision a major war in Eruope today? Even the terrorism issue is no where as potentially dangerous as the cold war. Like I said above during the cold war world powers had thousands of nuclear missiles aimed at each other. Today there are a handful of rogue nations who have no such power. Yes they may have one or get a nuclear weapon, and that can cause a lot of heartache and destruction, but nothing apocalyptic as we had from 1948 to 1989. So your husband is just being a worry wart. :p Frankly this is my other pet beef, that jounalism today reaches for the worst nightmares to present and given the round the clock news of cable this apocalyptic thinking has permeated the culture.
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A number of people posting here have made reference to population growth, and particularly population growth which is unchecked. However, no one so far has indicated a method by which you can stop the growth of the population which is not 'inhumane'. It has been acknowledged that population control measures used in China, for example, have implications which result in 'inhumane' activity, and the other possible measures: enforced contraception/sterilisation/abortion are considered unpalatable. What other options are available to control population growth? It's also not at all clear where population growth is occurring (regionally in the world I mean) - it appears, from what I can gather, that the majority of the growth is occurring in the developing world - how would you 'intervene' to stop that?
I believe that people should be free to choose how many children they want. I believe that is a fundemental freedom. Any forced population control would be immoral as you say, but, even more appalling to me, would be fascist.
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But I think it is a mistake to think in terms of populations being 'unchecked'. If the world population is not sustainable then it will become sustainable either because vast numbers of people will die of starvation, disease or some other form of deprivation; or, as my husband believes, the human race will resort to war in order to claim ownership of those resources needed in order to sustain a 'regional' population. The likelihood is that the more technologically advanced regions will win such a war, although that is by no means certain. It is interesting that with the current oil crisis there has been an announcement that production is set to increase in Iraq, and that Iraq is considered a largely untapped resource in terms of oil production. Perhaps the process has started already?
Excellent!! I absolutely agree. The word's population will adjust when saturation hits. There is no evidence that saturation has hit. The world's population continues to grow.
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Another thing to consider is the implication of improvements in medical science. This has affected both sides of the age scale. Taking the UK as an example, in 1900 the infant mortality rate was 140 per 1000 births, as at 1999 this had reduced to something in the region of 10 per 1000 births. (interestingly, the child mortality rate in UK in 1900 was still more that the current infant mortality rate in, say, Ethiopia where the infant mortality rate is 90 in 1000 births). At the beginning of the 19th century and even up to the period shortly after WW2 many families had more children because the probability of a child dying before the age of 5 was quite high. Now the probability of child death is slim, and the majority of families do not exceed 2 children, if they have children at all. This bears out with my own experience: when I was a child it was no uncommon for families to be 2 adults, 4 children, now this is a rarity. In the UK population growth has slowed - at the beginning of 19th Century population growth was approximately 1%, now it is 0.2% and, following countries like Italy and Japan, given the better standard of living available to all the probability is that we will see a slip into negative growth over a period time. When I was born it was extremely unusual for a woman to have a child so 'old' (my Mum was 36) but now it is increasingly common for women to wait until they are in their 30's to have their one, or two children.
Again we are on the same wavelength here Fifth. (A refreshing change I must say. I feel guilty sometimes disagreeing with you so often. :) ) Infrastructure such as hospitals are possible with large populations. I tried looking up the number of hospitals in New York City and I couldn't find the exact number but it's several hundred. And that's not including the ones in the suburbs. And because so many hospitals exist, many specialists come here and over all have made the New York area possibly one of the top health care areas in the country. A lot of medical innovations occur here. Compare that to some rural areas where the nearest hospital is miles and even hours away and very few doctors are in the vicinity. Large popultions support many things which lead to advances.
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At the other end of the scale life spans have increased, again due to improvements in medical care and standard of living. Again, taking the UK as an example, in 1900 the life expectancy for men was 45 years, for womens 49 years, now this is more like 78 for men, and 83 for women. Virgil perhaps this puts your 'generation who never wants to grow up' comments into a different context?!!
Yes. :lol: Maybe everything has shifted forty years. :D
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When there are these improvements in standard of living and medical care it takes some time for the population to rebalance. Natural events control population growth and, whilst we may see some periods of relative hardship whilist this rebalancing occurs, the likelihood of the human race being able to grow to a level which is unsustainable is slim to non-existent. The likelihood is that if an 'apocalyptic' event occurs which results in the extinction of the human race, that this will result from outside sources for example asteroidal impact, or as a result of human ingenuity in killing each other off.
Again I agree. Such balancing will always occur. So there are steps forward and back but the aggregate trend seems forward. But we also have developed to a point where I hope we could detect such an asteroid and intercept it with a missile.
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Perhaps an option for correcting population growth would be to cut off aid to developing countries? Another unpalatable option but if you were serious about it this would be the only option, taking (again) Ethiopia as an example, their population is just over 78m, and growing at a rate of 2.23% compared to the UK population of 60m growing at a rate of 0.276%, being unemotional about it it doesn't seem very logical to support a growing population which is unable to feed itself, and has little to no technological/medical capabilities. If we diverted the resources currently going into aid to the UK population this could increase the standard of living for many, albeit not by a great deal, and the population of Ethiopia will naturally reduce to a 'sustainable' level. Is that what the people who support population control are advocating? I suspect probably not, and emotionally/morally it doesn't really feel 'right'.
Well, I couldn't advocate cutting off third world countries. A better solution would be to absorb their population into the developed world. Unfortunately it can't be done instantaneously; it requires assimilation. So I advocate slow absorbtion while trying to educate and modernize their countries. It's just those damn dictators which really put up road blocks.
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Whether increased in population results in an increase in technological advancement I'm not so sure about. I can see that, on the surface, there appears to be an argument for it, but I also find it difficult to put myself into a different time context and judge how much 'advancement' we have currently compared to an earlier, less populous period in time, as opposed to how much 'refinement' we have of existing technology. Take for example the lunar landings. There are many who would judge this the pinnacle of human achievement, however compared to the likes of Colombus who were venturing out across the seas not knowing what was on the other side, or whether they might fall off the edge of the Earth, perhaps it is not such an achievement after all? It does seem to me that, at the moment, we are all children of advertising, and we seem to have a lot of things we don't need. Perhaps we are advancing technologically, but emotionally/spiritually I'm not so sure.
We do have things we don't need, but we also have more free time for self fulfillment and live healthier and longer lives, travel faster and to countires in the world our grandparents never imagined. Improved standard of living is a measurable thing.
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I agree with you, Virgil, that technological advancement will allow us, in many areas, to deal with the problems we have at the moment - the lack of renewable energy sources being one of them. I do believe that the likelihood is that we will solve these issues via technology, perhaps through a blend of the things that we use becoming more energy efficient, and improvement in renewable energy technology. Whilst none of these are 'free' we could certainly capture energy in more effective ways and use it in more effective ways. With the current apparent pressure we're under in this respect the likelihood is that suffient resources will now be moved into the appropriate areas of science and engineering to allow the minds needed to work on, and resolve those problems instead of, perhaps, working on the latest model of mobile phone.
Yes I agree. You know I am not convinced of man-made global warming or how detrimental it might be, but if it were truely a problem I have every confidence we can solve it.
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Is population growth a good thing? I'm not so sure you can answer that either way. It is a thing, it is happening and if it's a problem you can be sure that 'nature' will intervene. It creates problems, but then trying to slow population growth also creates other problems. Intervention makes monsters, non-intervention makes disasters. People die either way, there's no stopping that.
I continue to think it's a good thing. But nonetheless it is a real and on going thing. Wait until China drops the fascist one child rule. And it eventulally will. Then what will the population of the world climb to? I beleive China will be thee world power and not just militarily. It will have a huge population without these environmentalists to slow them down. It will be a cultural and intellectual power. They will be the engine that drives the world.
