Population

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Over population has to be considered in the mix of solutions to global issues. This group is dedicated to discussions of how population size and growth rates impact all of the other issues being discussed.
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Is high population a problem or an amplifier of other problems?

by Daniel LaLiberte

Jul 4, 2009

I have a friend who believes that the high population of the world is a problem in and of itself. I maintain that the population is not the right thing to focus on and that the real problems are elsewhere.

Certainly having a higher population means that if each person is, on average, net-negative with regard to resource usage, waste production, etc, then multiplying up the population only magnifies the real problems that much more. But if, in contrast, the average net impact is zero or positive, then population is irrelevant, or (when positive) even better.

So if it is possible to be net-positive on average, and if we need to get there anyway, then why are we concerned about population so much? A legitimate question is how fast can we change the world's population to be net-positive. Then we have to look at what parts of the population are the worst offenders, and then we come to the realization that the worst offenders are a relatively small number of people living off the hard work and resources of the rest of the world, namely us in the western "civilized" world.

Another factor to consider is the birth rate vs death rate in various parts of the world, and it turns out that the high birth rates are often balanced by a high death rate, but that has been changing, and most of the world is now enjoying longer lives, and lower birth rates.

Another relevant observation is that the parts of the world with the lowest population increase (equals births minus deaths) also have the highest education and standard of living. In fact, many countries have a negative growth rate. In other words, over population is self-correcting with education and a higher standard of living. We do have to be careful about simply raising the standard of living without changing the habits of making more babies than we can support, but education seems to work well there.

So we get to the ultimate question of how many people can the world actually comfortably support, if we are all, on average, net-positive? I don't have an answer, but I doubt that the current population of about 7 billion would be a huge problem. The problems are all caused by stupidity and political inequities that we need to fix anyway.
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    Oren Robinson

    Hi Daniel,

    I'm unsure if classifying resource usage as being net positive or negative is the right approach. In our lifetimes we will leave some resources depleted (breathe in oxygen) and leave others more plentiful (breathe out CO2). A balance can only be viewed at the eco-system level. So to definitively work out if there are too many people or not we need to work out the carrying-capacity of our planet. Efforts in biospheric science (the Biodome, the Biodome II etc) have shown how difficult this is to work out.

    I understand what you're saying in that this carrying capacity would be vastly different, depending on how we live our lives. I would suggest however that even if we abandoned the global economy, and all polluting activities and lived more like animals there would still be a carrying capacity that we could reach, if we're not there already. In this situation it would be population that was the problem, and I would have to agree with your friend. At that carrying capacity, we would be eating much less, and competition would be fierce.

    My idea of utopia would include living some distance below this level, a stable role for us in our ecosystems with a buffer to blunten competition for resources. I often wonder how we can get to there.

    Education is essential as you suggest. But I'm not sure if we would all agree on what should be taught, and if top-down lessons would be appreciated and assimilated into various cultures. Cultural shifts that work against our pro-creation biological imperatives or any other biological imperatives are a unique challenge that only we as humans are capable of. But it is a huge ask. I too have seen the (very) recent leveling-off of population growth rates in developed nations, having been walked through various population models and economic theories in a Developmental Economics paper and am not convinced that we are witnessing a significant trend in the context of human history. If you have ever tried to discuss the pros and cons of large families and their impacts on other people with somebody who thinks large families are desirable for religious reasons, you will have some insight as to some of the difficulties we face.

    I think this is a fascinating topic, and hope to hear from people from all perspectives. Would the use of limitations on children (like the former policy in China) ever be condonable if we knew, knew we were over our carrying capacity? Is it ok to have more than five children? What would we teach if we wanted to affect cultural change in your community?
    1

    Sep 29, 2010

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      Steven B Kurtz

      Huge problem for whom? ;-) Every human, no matter how simply she lives, displaces habitat for other life forms except human parasites and those that thrive on our waste. A robust, diversified biosphere provides the best long term habitat for our progeny and future generations of ALL species. In the opinion of biologists, the quadrupling of the population of a large mammal in approximately 5 generations from a previously gentle growth curve constitutes "Plague Phase." 

      See Reg Morrison's _Plague Species_ (first issued as _The Spirit in the Gene._) Forward by Lynn Margulis, microbiologist and co-developer of gaia theory.

      My review is the second link here:

      http://peakoilandhumanity.com/kurtz_folder/steve_kurtz_page_main.htm

      Last comment: changing the biological predispositions of humans which were selected over thousands of years is extremely difficult to expect in a century or two. (not impossible)

      "If we don't halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity- and will leave a ravaged world."

      -Nobel Laureate Dr. Henry W. Kendall

      8

      Mar 6, 2013

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        Steven B Kurtz

        See this short piece on Thermodynamic Footprint:

        Paul's comment on above article:
         

        This concept came out of a lot of work I'm doing to wrap my head around a new law of thermodynamics that was published in 1989 by Rod Swenson. The law is called the Law of Maximum Entropy Production (LMEP). It basically says that if you open a window in the winter your house cools off faster than if you leave the windows closed, because the heat flows out through the window.
        That little bit of "Duh!" turns out to have profound implications for the ordering behaviour of the universe. It seems to be the principle that is behind the appearance and steady increase of form, structure and order in the universe - all the way from galaxies and stars, through life itself and on to drive the development of all human culture. The appearance of that 130 number is evidence for the validity of the hypothesis.
        The whole thing is a lot bigger and deeper than a FB conversation, but I've become certain over the last month that this one law of thermodynamics actually explains everything from the Big Bang to the Exxon boardroom. All the things we think are unique and special about life and being human amount to "domain-specific expressions" of this single law and its order-producing effect.
        I'm still trying to digest this elephant, but the TF concept is the first thing that has fallen out of it.
        For anyone who wants a deeper understanding of WTF I'm on about, this paper is as good a place as any to start: http://philosophyofscience.net/NYAS.pdf
        Figure 1 from that paper is what prompted me to come up with the TF idea.  And yes, Rudy, so far it works better as a measure of globally aggregated human impact.  That's the level I'm operating at most of the time these days.
        I’m realizing that the concept of “sustainability” contains some invalid assumptions, specifically about the nature of reality and human action within/upon it. We create our environment, yes. But according to what template do we create? Is the template one of our own devising? I used to think so and as a result I saw our problems as failures of understanding, morality or our inherent nature - human beings were either stupid, bad or broken.
        I no longer think that we devise our own templates for action in the world. We may be more like skilled and clever draftsmen who draw up blueprints to implement an architecture that has been embedded in reality since the universe began. We do appear to have a failure of understanding, but the understanding that seems to be missing is not the understanding that if we do X, then Y will happen. It seems to be much deeper than that – we don’t understand how the universe really works. Instead, we understand how we think it works, which is not at all the same thing.
        Paul

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        Mar 10, 2013