> But the real problem is just: too many people, period
Why do you say that? Which resource is insufficient to support the current global population? (or even several times that)?
The problem is a lack of balance / poor management
Why do you say that? Which resource is insufficient to support the current global population? (or even several times that)?
The problem is a lack of balance / poor management
The Earth could support perhaps 10x or even 100x more people - but by support I mean that that amount of people would survive. The real question is how does quality of life depend on population and where's the optimum. When you have a small population (e.g. 10 million), the rate of research is slow, there are not many different products on the market (i.e. you can't choose from hundreds of cars to buy like today), etc. With a large population on the other hand, you have less resources per capita - water, oil, minerals, land, wood.
It matters to the people who die early because we didn't develop a particular medical treatment. Just to pick a random example.
My point was that you need to have some kind of metric (suffering per human per year?), or otherwise the "quality of life" across different population size and time span doesn't make sense.
But it's kind of a specific example of producing something that has fixed costs but can be "consumed" by infinitely many people. For example software, movies, music or even jokes.
At the moment the limiting factor looks like it's going to be carbon emissions. But the real problem is that by the time we know for sure what the limiting factor is going to turn out to be it will be too late to do anything about it.
> The problem is a lack of balance / poor management
Balance? What kind of balance are you talking about? And what exactly would "better management" look like?
Carbon emissions can be (and have been) reduced without culling humans. Effective public transport infrastructure would do more for emissions than limiting the number of humans while still mostly commuting 1 vehicle per person. Alternative energy sources are also an effective solution which is independant on the size of the human population
> Balance? What kind of balance are you talking about?
Equitable trade and a little less nationalism & market protectionism. Farm subsidies and food donations (counter-intuitively) are destroying farming in developing countries
> And what exactly would "better management" look like?
* Less corruption by leadership, and literally "better management" there is more than enough food to feed every human on the planet, yet famines still happen.
* leaders who take a long-term view on development (rather than focussing on the duration of their terms). Sustainable development will increase the quality of life
* less corporatism/oligarchy/crony-capitalism and more people oriented governance which will lead to improved quality of life at the cost of (ill-gotten) profit. Social democracy appears to be a better way (IMO).
Really? That's news to me. When did that happen? But before you answer, take a look at:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/glo_2011.html
> Effective public transport infrastructure
OMG, where are you getting your information? Transportation only produces 25% of the world's carbon emissions, and most of that is industrial transport (trucking, shipping) and air travel and freight. Even if you got to 100% public transit across the globe that wouldn't make even a tiny dent.
> Equitable trade
> Less corruption
How are those going to reduce carbon emissions?
> Sustainable development
Ah, there you have hit the nail on the head. How exactly are you going to do "sustainable development" in the face of an exponentially increasing population?
Yes, really. Between the year 2007 and 2012 in the US. See [1].
> Even if you got to 100% public transit across the globe that wouldn't make even a tiny dent.
I couldn't find the statistics for the US, but this Italian research paper[2] suggests 4% of CO2 emissions from Italy are from (low-occupancy) commuting. 100% public transit might lead to a 3% drop, which I consider much bigger than "a tiny dent". The US is likely to have a larger figure in absolute terms (greater average distances commuted, larger average engine bore, larger population).
> How are those going to reduce carbon emissions?
Nothing! I was answering a specific question you asked which was unrelated to carbon emissions. You question was quoted right before my answers, you couldn't have missed it.
My overarching point is simply reducing the population will not guarantee a decrease in CO2 emissions. Have a look at [3], which shows the amount of CO2 per country. Lets' take the top 2: China emits twice the CO2 (10Gt) as the US (5Gt) with 4 times the population. (Assuming a linear correlation) if we were to half China's population and at the same time 'industrializing' it to same level as the US, then China's CO2 emissions wouldn't change
> How exactly are you going to do "sustainable development" in the face of an exponentially increasing population?
Same as always? Exponential population growth isn't a new phenomenon - take a look at the US population graph (1790-present) some time.
1. https://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=90&...
2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281447764_Commuting...
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
North American emissions are going down, but world emissions are going up. And the population of North America is growing much more slowly than the rest of the world (virtually unchanged from 2008-2013 at 530M).
> I was answering a specific question you asked which was unrelated to carbon emissions.
Well, you asked, "Which resource is insufficient to support the current global population?" and in the same message said, "The problem is a lack of balance / poor management." The answer to your first question is (at the moment) the capacity of the planet to absorb CO2. Unless we get that figured out, civilization is doomed. No amount of "balance" or "good management" is going to help.
> simply reducing the population will not guarantee a decrease in CO2 emissions
No, of course not. But it would help a lot. Total emissions are simply the product of population and per-capita emissions. You can reduce either one or both to solve the problem, but reducing per-capita emissions has a direct impact on standard of living. Yes, the planet might be able to sustainably support 20 billion people if they are all living in poverty. I don't consider that a good outcome.
> Same as always? Exponential population growth isn't a new phenomenon
Actually, it is. Exponential growth is rarely seen in nature. Most of the time you get steady-state or periodic oscillations. The current growth rates in human population -- doubling every few decades -- is unprecedented in the history of multi-celled animals. Civilization has only existed for about 10,000 years, and we've only been producing ridiculous amounts of CO2 for a few hundred. Those are the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. All this is very, very new.
That is correct, I never claimed otherwise
> the population of North America is growing much more slowly than the rest of the world (virtually unchanged from 2008-2013 at 530M).
The growth rate itself is immaterial: this proves my claim that CO2 emissions can be (and have been) reduced without any reduction in the population.
> reducing per-capita emissions has a direct impact on standard of living
This relationship is not a universal, unbreakable rule of the universe, the two can be decoupled by investment in clean energy ("good management").
What has not yet been done is reduce the total world carbon emissions. And that is the only thing that actually matters.
Barring a major technological breakthrough like fusion, you basically have three choices of end-game on this planet:
1. A large, poor population
2. A small, wealthy population
3. The end of civilization due to climate change
I vote for #2.
There is also tech on the horizon to produce food more efficiently, e.g. bacteria can produce sugar much more efficiently than sugar beets.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/12/humans-ha...
Also, resources aren't the only concern of having more people. More people means more governance. The world becomes more complex as the numbers grow. Accountability becomes harder, laws become more extensive.
Which resource is insufficient to support the current
global population?