Hmm, how much do you stand by that answer?

Physical land/space on earth isn't even remotely a problem.

Food isn't a problem as a resource because we can farm and with technology we can farm very efficiently (other countries just haven't all caught up)

Not sure if water is a problem due to my post above

Wood and building materials aren't infinite but we can grow wood and won't run out of stone/concrete

Why can't we keep going? (trying to trigger more info from you)

Yeah, but that water isn't gone, it's just somewhere else.

Know what I mean? That water wasn't "used" it just moved. Through bodies, through the sky, and back to another area.

Right?

No water does not disappear. Mass doesn't disappear.
But it could go into areas where it's just not economically and energy viable for us to retrieve it.
If it's stuck in the atmosphere, in another area of the world, in certain biomass (like trees or grass), or in the sea, wastes, or in polluted bodies of water - then that's not very good for certain regions of the world.

In this sense, it's "used up" because we can no longer easily access it. We can't take a straw and suck the water back out of those trees and muds, air, etc... And we can't ask other countries on the other side of the world to give it back.

Again, seawater may become viable in the future. As of now, we still consider it too energy intensive and prohibitively expensive on a mass scale to fulfill our current demand.

Bacteria is an actual threat, absolutely.LolSmart response. Education and growth of the world economy could curb birth rates

look at the birthrates for 3rd world countries, they are through the roof (ex: Niger, Uganda, Chad, etc)

fertility rate by country

Sure, so we've gone from "we're wasting water" now to "it's may not be as easy to get".

That's not a huge problem, sure it's a problem but a solvable one. The water doesn't disappear. Third world countries struggle with a lot of things, so I can see how it may be a problem for them to retrieve but countries that are developed should be OK.

I also don't think too many trees is a problem for us, unlikely that's our downfall because they absorbed too much.


http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/04/health...able-seawater/

Seawater may soon be accessible for drinking after filtering.

So, sort of back to the original question, what's the major risk of overpopulation, or is it maybe not as dire as it sounds?

the world already produces more food than it theoretically needs. if agricultural productivity in regions like sub-Saharan Africa was at say Mexican levels there wouldn't be starvation period.

water is increasingly an issue in parts of the world but if desalinization technology keeps progressing then it might just be something else that won't be contentious.

africa's demographic density is less than half of asia's (counting Russia), plenty of room for people there still.

as seen when oil prices spiked, there are still a lot of recoverable non-renewable energy deposits to exploit and we're many generations from exhausting them.

if world population peaks at 10-11 billion we should still be fine. main threat is more about whether the environment can take it if the number of people living the American-Way-Of-Life keeps growing. as in, scarcity of rare metals, accumulation of garbage, global warming, things like that.

establish birth control in those third world countries. The elephant in the room regarding western countries forgoing having kids are the culture itself. Nobody wants to settle with some quick-aged hot sloot from college who put out for 20+ guys. We got people in this forum parroting this sloots gonna sloot and its true all the way to the grave. That's why western people like myself won't have kids because girls my age are chit.

Now regarding the food, have you seen the Chinese and Indians and how they eat? the Indians worship cows and so the meat industry is dead over there. The Chinese rely on simple ancient recipes that keeps those guys full of energy, healthy, lean, and functional well into their 90s or 100s.


Those people aren't gonna die anytime soon.

edit: in terms of technological advance and culture issues, this is kinda a bad thing because the Indians are very religious while the Chinese believe in some form of Taoism and Confucianism. The Indians aren't gonna do something that their spirits won't like such as putting a plastic bag over a ding-a-ling just so one can plow or have a girl get an abortion just because she can't keep her legs closed. For the Chinese, they are very intelligent but they lack creative power because most of their inventions and current government were improvements from stuff that was already invented by Europeans a lot time ago.

Wasting water is the same thing as making water inaccessible. It's the same thing.

Water must come from somewhere, and we must be able to easily access it since we need so much of it. If we can't easily get it, then we must make sacrifices to our consumptions of goods.

The biggest problem for water again is climate change, environmental destruction, pollution and factories/heavy industries using up our freshwater supply.

It's the most immediate problem. And I saying, AGAIN, that OVERPOPULATION is not a real issue we're facing for the foreseeable future. We're not heading to Dystopia because of overpopulation. It's been overblown during the 70s, and this crap has been propagated everywhere in our culture - but that is not the issue.

Overpopulation is NOT a real issue. Most of these problems can be fixed with more technology or better infrastructure.

Good post.

Quick question though, what water is inaccessible to countries with technology?

Also, developed countries are creating laws where we plant trees at the same rate we destroy them. I think honestly the big risk right now are the countries without developed laws that are destroying the forests, and killing of many species of animals because they just don't care, along with polluting the earth.

What's scary is once a giant country, say India, develops and starts building major factories without regulations.

War, as lower IQ people continue to flood the gene pool.





































































IDK talking out of my ass.

It kind of makes you think that our saving and good jobs might actually be important one day, doesn't it. This mess could come in our lifetime and our resources might protect us and our family

Overpopulation is really just a resource problem. The best way to solve it is finding new resources & developing new tech like hydrogen fusion reactors.

Overpopulation is a myth

With current technology. But again, Israel and other countries have been working with Desalination technologies to make it more economically viable. But bear in mind that there are other economic issues we have to face. Water isn't just used for our drinking.

We'll have find ways to transport it long distance for farms in in-land states, factories, etc... so at least for the near future, having a good body of freshwater, lakes, canals and rivers around is still going to be important to keep costs down and our consumption of goods going. China right now is facing this issue due to heavy pollution, soil erosion and drying up of rivers. They're even contemplating completely diverting the river source in Tibet right now to help with this problem.
If they do this, they'll benefit but will completely **** up the people West of the Himalayas - the Indians, Bangladesh, etc...
True. Planting trees is a must - but government policy about Environmental solutions must be directed and advised by scientists. Too often, governments IGNORE scientists when they make policies.
For example, Scientist A says we must plant Trees in Area B and remove some vegetations in Area C.
Politician, due to different interest, only hears about the feel-good message of "Planting Trees" and does it half-asses in Area Z and remove trees from critical areas in Area D that's holding back soil erosion from a desert.

There are unintended consequences to actions, so don't just listen to 10% of their message. Digest the message in whole.India is already doing this. They're a country that is seriously overcrowded, lack proper infrastructure for their population and the political will to fix the problem, and have the most polluted cities in the world both on the ground and in the air.
If you want Dystopia, look no further than India. A polluted overcrowded

Sounds like it's going to be an Africa problem. Lack of resources = it will fix itself.

and good smart response from you. That's crazy.

Another thing, I've heard that planting trees in place of cut down trees still isn't as good as not cutting them down, because it reduces variety. It's much better than just cutting down like many less developed countries are doing, but it's definitely not a perfect solution.

According to a quick YouTube video I watched, don't know how accurate or up to date that is.

Well, the current superpowers won't stay the same. We just happen to see the world and it's countries in the current state. If you look at the breeding rates of African & Middle Eastern immigrants in Europe compared to natives, it's obvious which way the population is going.

I stand by that answer 100%. Useful land/space on earth is a problem. The inhomogeneities of the land introduce competition and scarcity conditions which will contribute to economic and political strife. Food is very much a problem. To grow the food, we need fuel and nutrients. The fuel is getting used up at a pretty extraordinary rate. The nutrients manufacturing also requires fuel. The central problem is energy consumption. Barring some extraordinary new technology to meet our energy demands, we are looking at a serious lapse in energy supply possibly within the next few generations. Technology has diminishing returns. We have been working on a fusion reactor for about 60 years, and we are no closer. Fresh water isn't a huge issue right now, but it will be. Wood and building materials again require fuel to grow and harvest. The energy is the limiting factor. Technology allows us to bump the limit slightly, but there is a limit due to the laws of physics and the constraints imposed upon our planet.

People are always working on solutions, and they are indeed progressing the technology, but it is not growing fast enough to keep up with this population explosion.

Often people talk about food as if it is no issue. How do we get the food? ENERGY. Energy is and always has been the limiting factor here. When our energy sector collapses, you will see everything else soon follow suit because it all depends on our ability to obtain useful energy.

That's definitely true. It depends on what the goal of your conservation is, but overall it's definitely not as good as not cutting them down in the first place. Not only in terms of the species and genetic diversity of the trees, but size and age of the trees matter.

First of all i'd like to point you in the direction of the wonderful book by Julian Simon "The Ultimate Resource.

I'll just copy pasta the wikipedia overview:

"The overarching thesis on why there is no resource crisis is that as a particular resource becomes more scarce, its price rises; this rise of price creates an incentive for people to discover more of the resource, ration and recycle it and, eventually, develop substitutes. The “ultimate resource” is not any particular physical object but the capacity for humans to invent and adapt."

This idea, and the sound principles of economics on which it is based are why Malthusian predictions of "peak (resource)" and overpopulation are wrong.

One of those sound principles is the difference betweenscarcityandfiniteness. Unintuitively, and even paradoxically, no resource is actuallyfinitein any meaningful way (at least on human scales, fuk off physics boys). But resources arescarcesimply because if I am using them at one point you cannot also be using the exact same ones at that exact point in time.

Any of you dudes been to singapore? I get the vibe that these asian powers are already preparing for it. Control population by building vertically. These super scyscrapers these days.. it will be like a mild version of the show futurama, with the common folk on top and the peasants in the slums down under. And when we get flying cars shiiit.
This is all of course only if we have enough food erc

What's our earth population? anybody knows?

The thing is that book is relying on the serendipitous optimism of the past without accounting for the economic nature of diminishing returns on technological progress. The physics boys are right. There are finite quantities of resources accessible to us in any reasonable prediction of human technology based on our current understanding of physics. There is only so much useful stuff we can get and use. Time is the ultimate limiter. We use technology to efficiently do things in time so that we can convert resources to products. The economy can create a tremendous incentive for new technology to be invented that would resolve the problem, but not all problems are physically resolvable. The bacteria in the petri dish has every incentive to escape and colonize elsewhere, but it remains trapped in the dish, and once the resources are gone, ALL OF THEM DIE. Contrary to the proclamations of *******s everywhere, there is a limit to human adaptation and invention. We are not gods, and we are not going to violate the laws of physics. We may discover new things, loopholes, etc. We may bump the line. But make no mistake, there IS a line.

We in the West with long history of self-criticism should stop having children immediately.
Im sure the rest of the world will follow in our example given their extensive histories of self-criticism...

stop giving medical aid to Africa and other places that tend to have a tonew of kids, it made sense to have 10 kids when most didn't make it to adulthood but not any longer. there needs to be population control laws in place in order to get that money

I don't think human beings are smart, strong and altruistic enough to manage that. Every country is too selfish and arrogant and just wants to outbreed the other ones. Also, medicine and technology are huge problems, keeping alive even the dumbest and most useless humans which would otherwise die in a natural selection. Nature stops overpopulation with viruses, diseases and famine, but humans always interfere and thus allow overpopulation. Unless all the world countries unite and globally bring the law of 1-2 children per family, overpopulation won't stop unfortunately. You could make big taxes for families with more children than that like China had until recently or encourage less children by providing tax benefits for families with less children. Anyway, governments do the total opposite and give welfare to people with more children so you have Turks in Germany for example having 8 children per family and living comfortably on welfare only so yeah, I don't see overpopulation going away since governments are corrupt and it's in their interest to have as much cattle, I mean people, as possible. Realistically, only a big war can stop overpopulation at this point.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...s-still-wrong/

"The problem with Malthusians, Bailey writes, is that they “cannot let go of the simple but clearly wrong idea that human beings are no different than a herd of deer when it comes to reproduction.”

"The solution to overpopulation is not to force people to have fewer children. China's one-child policy showed the futility of that experiment. It is to raise the poorest nations out of poverty through democratic governance, free trade, access to birth control, and the education and economic empowerment of women."

I phucking lolled. The libcuck agenda is to hide the simple consequences of the laws of physics behind generic "feel good" optimism about our species and its future. What a phucking joke. We are lifeforms, and we are not exempt from the calculations simply because we think. We can change our carrying capacity by technology, but not by enough to offset the enormous population increases we are seeing. Just because we enjoyed the serendipity of the industrial revolution and the subsequent economic booms that followed during the rise of computing does not mean we are equipped to deal with these challenges for perpetuity. We were lucky and early. Things are only going to get harder. Those new discoveries will come more slowly now as one can expect diminishing returns on investment into technology. It's like the people saying we will just leave the Earth and colonize other worlds. Yes, we would eventually have to do it, but more than likely, we won't have the technology when we need it. There may be physical constraints that will prevent us from ever being able to do so.

I sometimes wonder if we will end up leaving a legacy in the form of sending off microbes that we engineer to have extraordinarily low metabolism during space flight and resilience to tolerate extreme temperatures on small crafts off to worlds we think may potentially support life. Humans are obviously ill suited to colonize other worlds or survive, but perhaps a more resilient, basic form of life can survive? I imagine that this will be our bittersweet legacy, and while humans will eventually go extinct, the legacy of life on earth might have a chance at survival.

have not read thread but, if youre broke no kids, if youre poor, one kid, any more and social services takes them and put them up for adoption.

also, pull back foreign aid budget (srs) i know poor people dying in far away countries and its a tragedy, whats also a tragedy is when people are dying of starvation in first world countries and there governments are sending billions to try and stop people dying in 3rd world countries. BILLIONS ffs

Came to post this

The homeless that arent drug addicted trash or mentally ill will band together and live off the land. More people will get sick of all the bs and go buy property in the middle of bumblefuk.