The was also the "global cooling" alarm some years back. Gloom scenarios are important for stability: they are what used to be called "opium for the people". It keeps people's minds away from real issues.
The Population Bomb?
11–20 of 41 posts
Re: The Population Bomb?
#12The whole essence of overshoot and die-off is due to running into limits in a finite world.
Any sophisms detracting from that basic facts are criminally insane, or just criminal.
Re: The Population Bomb?
#13One of the things that keeps me going is a connection to nature & outdoors. When it gets severed or disrupted, perhaps by a move to a crowded area without access to trails and open spaces, I get very depressed. Looking at footage from the video, I would be very depressed living in such crowded conditions. Maybe even suicidal. I wonder if part of our ecological crisis is that people are so disconnected from nature, th…
I think I agree with you. The world seems overcrowded to me. I've never been much of an out of doors person but sometimes I'd just like to get away from it all. That seems difficult these days. Anywhere you go in the US it seems like the land is either privately owned or government owned with tons of regulations that nobody really wants to deal with. Those regulations are probably at least somewhat needed because without them the sheer number of people visiting government lands would probably do great damage. Anything above about 1 billion people on this planet seems probably suboptimal to me.
Re: The Population Bomb?
#14There's a nicely illustrative video by Hans Rosling here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTznEIZRkLg on the population growth.
There are a lot of unproven assumptions there, such as that the education is a decreasing factor of population growth. That is only a correlation. I don't claim to know exactly how things are revolving in this matter, but as an educated guess I can say that, outside the necessary physical conditions (like enough nourishment and such), the culture of family is the most influential here. The education and the opportunities it opened for a better life just happened to be seductive enough to attract the individuals out of that family culture, but I wouldn't take this effect for granted.
Re: The Population Bomb?
#15One of the things that keeps me going is a connection to nature & outdoors. When it gets severed or disrupted, perhaps by a move to a crowded area without access to trails and open spaces, I get very depressed. Looking at footage from the video, I would be very depressed living in such crowded conditions. Maybe even suicidal. I wonder if part of our ecological crisis is that people are so disconnected from nature, th…
I think I agree with you. The world seems overcrowded to me. I've never been much of an out of doors person but sometimes I'd just like to get away from it all. That seems difficult these days. Anywhere you go in the US it seems like the land is either privately owned or government owned with tons of regulations that nobody really wants to deal with. Those regulations are probably at least somewhat needed because wit…
Some people think it should be 500 million:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones#Inscriptio...
Re: The Population Bomb?
#16One of the things that keeps me going is a connection to nature & outdoors. When it gets severed or disrupted, perhaps by a move to a crowded area without access to trails and open spaces, I get very depressed. Looking at footage from the video, I would be very depressed living in such crowded conditions. Maybe even suicidal. I wonder if part of our ecological crisis is that people are so disconnected from nature, th…
I think I agree with you. The world seems overcrowded to me. I've never been much of an out of doors person but sometimes I'd just like to get away from it all. That seems difficult these days. Anywhere you go in the US it seems like the land is either privately owned or government owned with tons of regulations that nobody really wants to deal with. Those regulations are probably at least somewhat needed because wit…
Not overcrowded, just spread out too thin. The reason the US looks like it looks is that everybody wants an acre of land around their house, so they chop down forests and build suburbs instead. If people gave up on that notion and where willing to live in cities then there would be an abundance of unspoiled nature.
Re: The Population Bomb?
#17Forecasting is a art - I think the Population Bomb (and other predictions made ~ that era - Hubbard Peak Oil? Ozone holes? Space Travel? Robots?) are subject to the initial conditions of the prediction.
Why were mothers in India having so many children compared to to those in Europe and North America? The model assumed static conditions that would continue the trend. Economics (cost of raising children, no need for extra farm help) and social factors (women's education and access to birth control) changed trends.
Population growth does continue to be a problem and concern for the future - both from over-use of resources and pollution of the environment.
But I think this does show an important point of not putting too much weighting into future predictions. The process of planning is very important, but the plans themselves are useless.
People worry about running out of oil. While not an excuse to be wasteful, I think its likely we will move to alternative energies before supply becomes overly constrained. Mega-batteries (reported today in Japan and proposed by Tesla) could be a key to make other energies feasible, and would not have been predicted even a few years ago. The future is exciting times!
Re: The Population Bomb?
#18Is this article meant to be sarcastic? The world population has quite literally doubled since 1968 when there were 3.5B people worldwide. Yes, the population has doubled since most of your parents were born.
Re: The Population Bomb?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think I agree with you. The world seems overcrowded to me. I've never been much of an out of doors person but sometimes I'd just like to get away from it all. That seems difficult these days. Anywhere you go in the US it seems like the land is either privately owned or government owned with tons of regulations that nobody really wants to deal with. Those regulations are probably at least somewhat needed because wit…
Not overcrowded, just spread out too thin. The reason the US looks like it looks is that everybody wants an acre of land around their house, so they chop down forests and build suburbs instead. If people gave up on that notion and where willing to live in cities then there would be an abundance of unspoiled nature.
Every place is pretty much owned in America. Land is valuable. And there is admittedly little or no unspoiled land left.
But don't blame houses. People in America still live on a tiny fraction of the land. Its all about farming and grazing and mining.
Re: The Population Bomb?
#20Is this article meant to be sarcastic? The world population has quite literally doubled since 1968 when there were 3.5B people worldwide. Yes, the population has doubled since most of your parents were born.
Which implies an interesting statistic: the majority of people who ever lived, are still alive.