I remember reading the Population Bomb as a kid. Was kinda scary. But the book completely failed to predict how much more productive (food/water, etc) we could become, and therefore able to support an increasing population.

In terms of population, the issue seems somewhat self controlling. As standards of living go up, and as countries become less agrarian, birth rate drops. This supports a nice win-win trend of developed countries welcoming immigrants from poorer nations.

There's always a pendulum swinging. In the 70's we were told to be frightened about over population and global cooling. Fast forward a couple generations and now we're told to be scared about not enough babies in Western countries and global warming. The common thread is that someone is always trying to rile folks up over the impending crisis.

---

Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

What the fuck do you think the immigration controls are about? Without immigration Europe and the US would be right around population replacement.

Nuclear War between China and India will reduce population dramatically. And yes I see a war between them in my lifetime, maybe not nuclear, but a good bloody one over resources.

People staying alive longer but behind our little screens we're probably living far less.

I came out of school as a mechanical engineer. I've taught HS physics. I don't hate science. But I do remember in HS that people were talking about global cooling.

Here's a reprint of a Newsweek article from 1975.

http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm


I'm not saying that global warming being caused by man is bunk. What I am saying is that it's interesting that within our lifetimes the peril that was supposed to alarm us was the opposite.

---

Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

Not in our lifetimes. The only way something like that would be possible would be an emergency that threatens millions of lives. As long as microwave popcorn and beer are readily available there is no need for change.

---

"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

In my travels around the US all I see is open spaces - we could fit 7 billion people just in this country! There is plenty of space for people to live.

I understand that it's a bit of warm fuzzy to watch 3rd world children die, but I doubt, in the long run, it's very effective population control. Self-sustaining population control seems to correlate mostly with education levels and standard of living.



I'm not quite sure what you're talking about there. Either in terms of a "craze" or a desire to help countries "grow." There have been various "liberal/left-wing" factions promoting population control. One of those factions tried to take over leadership of the Sierra Club (and failed to do so). I wouldn't call it a "craze" though. And it's died down somewhat. Unless I'm missing something recent.

And there are certainly various wealth distribution schemes among some liberal/left-wing factions. But I haven't heard that any of those schemes involving increasing birth rates or increasing population. They mostly have to do with promoting "sustainable" practices in agriculture, manufacturing. And promoting education, particularly for women.

There may be population pressures in certain parts of Africa and in Asia (Southeast and Southwest, along with China, but from what I can see, much of the West as well as Japan and Russia is slowly dying out from a lack of population growth. Japan may actually be a lost cause, in fact.

In Russia, they give a kind of modern-day "Hero of the Soviet Union" award to married couples who have many children. And in Spain, the government there just recently announced the appointment of a 'Sex Tsar' in a bid to boost a declining population. This raises "take one for the team" to a whole new level. ;-)

Some of Europe's problems with in-migration also appear to be a result of various governments there casting about for ways to rapidly create instant population growth, in hopes that the migrant population will boost GDP through productivity and the paying of taxes, etc. That's the trouble with rich social welfare programs: you need a steady population increase, creating new taxpayers in the process, in order to afford all those perks.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spain-sex-tsar-population-crisis-baby-parents-demographic-government-a7599091.html


Some of this worry about supposed population growth seems a bit Malthusian to me. One thing that's been proven time and again is that humans always find a technological solution to such issues. The Green Revolution from the 1930s to the late 1960s, for example, greatly increased food production worldwide, especially in the developing world or periphery countries. There's been no let-up since, either in food or water procurement (through desalinization and other fresh water-creating opportunities) or in our ability to develop classic fossil fuels.

There's been no "peak oil" or "peak food" -- or "peak population density," from what I can tell. Given a lack of such dire portents and omens, I'm fairly at ease with where the world's headed -- as long as we don't trip and end up blowing ourselves up, that is. If I'm not mistaken, humanity is enjoying a level of wealth that's elevated billions from true, grinding poverty (which was the natural state of humans for much recorded history), the likes of which hadn't been seen before about 1805 or so.

---

"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I have heard this about Canada, too. The problem may be that immigrants won't
go to those empty spaces. They will go to big cities where everybody and his dog goes. If we could restrict where immigrants could go that would probably help. But, once they are in, they are in and have all the rights and freedoms like everybody else.

Ad Muncher

How long before we see first world countries grow a pair and start addressing the issue, perhaps not as blatant as the one-child policy, but in other forms?

In fact I would say we are seeing just the opposite. Western countries are seeing two trends that are at odds. Decreasing replacement population, I.E. voluntary reproduction control, and ever increasing long term "Social contracts". The later relies heavily on an increasing population and expanding economy. Without an expanding population, SS, Medicare, increasing national debt etc etc becomes largely unsustainable in short order.

For those that realize this you will see them supporting looser and looser immigration law. We need people to pay more taxes so we can continue to give their money away to the people that we already promised it to.

~Matt

Do you think that the "peril" was based on scientific consensus? Or maybe a sensationalist press?

Dude. Calm down.

---

Long Chile was a silly place.

Chiming in about mis-stating the issue. Western countries that accept immigration (and draw the most diligent folks) are winning, in that their are being revitalized and social systems can continue to be funded. There is vast segregation along geographical lines in several countries (US, UK, etc.) which is fueling a misapplied backlash against immigration. This segregation leads to strong economic growth in many urban areas (with downsides of affordability/congestion/inflation), and depressed activity in other areas (stagnation/lower tax base/deflationary pressures). Developing nations are where population growth continues to be a bigger problem.

But technological advancements are reducing the need for low income labor.

1st world countries probably need fewer and fewer people, except to fund the government (especially social programs).

Star Trek already covered this...We still have a ways to go.

As I see it the world is already overpopulated. There are more humans than the earth can sustainably support at a high standard of living. Most of mankind live in hunger, squalor and hopelessness. Food yields are already being adversely affected by climate change. Crop failures and food shortages will lead to a major die off in 3rd world countries. If we dont' find a way to limit our numbers nature will in a much more brutal way.

On the other hand there's never been so many humans with significant leisure time, food/water/shelter, and so much security. Your doom and gloom paragraph uses a measuring stick of what? Some utopic fantasy? The history of our race is not pretty. It's mostly folks killing each other. That's the objective measuring stick.

---

Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

Exactly, it will sort itself out and man will evolve. It always does.

this very topic is where my crazy comes out. quite awhile ago, 10 or 15 years ago, i ran a series of articles on climate change and on the state of the ocean fisheries, i interviewed a lot of leading scientists on both topics, and it became obvious to me that overpopulation is the root of just about all our large societal problems.

as a consequence my political priorities somewhat changed, and my whole outlook on what a "problem" and a "solution" look like. for example:

1. why do we reward those who choose to have large families with tax deductions? i don't mind if you want to have 7 kids, i just don't know why you should be financially rewarded for kids after, say, your third.

2. i don't know why we insist on an economy that only works on the basis of growth. i don't understand why a company, or an economy, that has zero growth can't be a strong company (or economy). i don't care what investors "want".

3. if we can't manage our entitlements in a zero population growth, or even mildly falling population, we need to reorder the way we look at entitlements.

4. the discussion of GMOs has centered around whether they're healthy or not. granting that GMOs, as well as insecticides, modern farming techniques, etc., have been a tremendous saver of lives as regards the ability to feed so may more people off an acre of land, at some point we ought to talk about why we need to be feeding so many people.

5. advances in healthcare, like advances in farming, have given us such long life spans that we have new problems: one is overpopulation; two is that we now live long enough to die of dementia. as the trump budget contemplates a 30 percent cut in medicaid it behooves us to remind ourselves that more than half of medicaid is paid for nursing homes, and that's only going to go up as dementia becomes more and more the way we spend our out years.

i'm not recommending we decide to NOT farm more efficiently, nor should we take backward steps in health care, rather we need to realize that our positive strides have given us a new set of problems, overpopulation chief among them.

---

Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

What you say is largely true. However, we are already in decline. My dad lived the American dream. He grew up in a poor family so he started working at 12. He barely finished high school but worked hard his entire life and built a big house in the country that he paid off before turning 30 and growing up we enjoyed all the trappings of upper middle-class America and after his plant closed he could afford to retired early at 60. I have a college degree and am at the top of my field but in most ways I'm worse off than my dad. There are more billionaires than ever but there is also much more suffering.

We had baby bonuses for a while starting (from memory) in the early 2000's. The problem was that the people taking advantage of this were predominantly the low socio-economic citizens and that money was being spent on big screen TV's etc rather than nurseries. Those kids are arguably less likely to grow up and be of benefit to society through no fault of their own - due to the selfish motives of their parents and the morals (or lack thereof) passed on to them.

Overfishing seems like something that could lead to conflict, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Countries are pushing the boundaries as to how far beyond their own boundaries they can fish and get away with it. China building the artificial islands in the South China Sea appears to be causing a lot of grief with neighbouring countries and fishing rights is a big part of that. Aquaculture seems ok in small doses right now, but I don't know what impact it will have on coastal marine ecosystems in the years ahead.

My OP was somewhat flippant and the wording did imply it was focussed only on our own shores. As many have pointed out the numbers are showing stagnation/regression of local populations in many western countries. Regardless of whether its at the hands of immigration or not, populations of North America, UK, Oz etc are still managing to climb. Doing so to ward off the financial implications of social welfare etc is (in my opinion) bringing with it too many negative consequences. The new homes that are being built are too expensive and getting further from the CBD's, stretching infrastructure beyond its means, bringing further congestion etc.

People we are bringing in as the solution seem less likely to integrate than the immigrants of the past. But I think immigration is often more detrimental to the countries of origin. Western countries typically cherry pick the cream of the crop (naturally, these are of most benefit to us). In a way this is raping and pillaging of developing countries, delaying their own coming of age. I think that its through education that populations stabilise. So by taking away their brightest the countries that currently grow the fastest continue to wallow. The cynic in me believes its in our own self interests to keep those countries down because heaven help us if they all start wanting access to the same resources and privileges that we have. Plus we will have to pay the sweat shops higher wages!