<p>So as of yesterday, the world population was estimated to have exceeded 7 billion. The net population growth in the world is decreasing. I think it’s safe to say Earth is reaching its carrying capacity, even though its based on logistic growth I learned in basic biology. So what’s going to happen?</p>
<p>The Earth has the capacity to hold signifcantly more than it is currently. If you just drive around the United States you’ll see so much empty space, that its almost ridiculous. I do not know who began the rhetoric that the World is overpopulating but to be quite frank, its not true in the least bit.</p>
<p>It’s a matter of natural resources (like food) more than anything else. Space has nothing to do with it.</p>
<p>And what can you with that extra space?</p>
<p>^what? Using the definition of carrying capacity as, “The maximum number of individuals of a population that can be maintained indefinitely by the environmental goods and services generated by a given area,” we can safely determine that the world is overpopulating. Food production has been tracked as linear; population growth is exponential. Anyway, populations have long been recorded as fluctuating around their carrying capacities. I don’t think anything apocalyptic will happen. People will die as we overshoot, and once the line on the graph drops, it will begin to rise, only to inevitably fall again: fluctuation until either density-dependent factors wipe us out (e.g. diseases), we consume ourselves in a nuclear holocaust, or we exhaust our supplies of food and water.</p>
<p>Although, barring sustenance, Occupy Wallstreet could trigger global unrest – it already has in many cities – which could accelerate our civilization’s decline. I really doubt that their movements will produce any meaningful reform; the political and economic elite are too detached from the working class to understand the type of pent-up frustration millions feel toward a system which disenfranchises the average citizen and empowers the oligarchs. It’s going to be an interesting couple of years.</p>
<p>In my view, the idea that the earth can’t handle many more people is more PC thinking, and with all due respect, is not very well thought out.</p>
<p>There are vast areas down here in Florida where no one lives.</p>
<p>We pay farmers NOT to grow food, because they produce too much of it.</p>
<p>Further, since a lot of you believe in global warming, that means that cold areas, like Canada, will soon be fit for growing food, or as places to live.</p>
<p>Further, in case you haven’t noticed, in some places, humans build UP (i.e., high rise apartments). We could build high rises in Montana too, if we ever needed to.</p>
<p>Once again, it’s not really about if the Earth is big enough, or how tall our buildings are. It’s about whether there’s enough food to go around. We’re a LONG ways away from Canada actually cooling down enough such that we can grow crops there. Also, assuming global warming is real, climate change is the more immediate effect, not the actual warming. Change in climate is never good for farmers. With more severe weather, crop yields will suffer, and for cash crop states such as Iowa, that means less food and higher prices. We pay farmers Not to grow food because if we do, then the soil would be depleted way too fast, so it’s a matter of sustainability.</p>
<p>Russia and Ukraine have negative population growth at the moment. But they’re not starving or anything. It’s probably their generation of baby boomers kicking the bucket. so I too think there won’t be an apocalyptic period. What I’m curious about is how the world might be different, if at all.</p>
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<p>This is false. We pay farmers not to grow because it keeps prices of food up. Farmers are smart enough to not ruin their own land.</p>
<p>It’s also about things we don’t think about- place to put our garbage, place for natural habitats to flourish so that they maintain equilibrium, etc. Just because we’re building up doesn’t mean that that person requires that much less ecological resources. Yes, they take up less room and use slightly less electricity, but they’re still eating the same amount whether they’re living next to someone or on top of them, therefore they still require the same amount of land to grow their food. And just because areas in FL have some open area doesn’t mean that we’re below our carrying capacity. Many, many areas are well over their carrying capacity and they’re using resources from far away. Think about how many people want to use the Great Lakes’ water (thousands of miles away) because they’ve depleted their resources. </p>
<p>I think Earth has already exceeded its carrying capacity, we just haven’t seen the full effects of it yet.</p>
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<p>I kind of worded my sentence wrong. Farmers need to be able to support themselves. Therefore, they can’t afford to buy too much fertilizer, irrigation, etc. That’s why they are paid to not farm, as well as why their soil would be depleted if they do. The higher prices are also aimed at allowing farmers the livelihoods they have. It’s still a sustainability issue.</p>
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<p>landfills are a little bit of an issue, although there’s still plenty of space. What we should really do is recycle more of it, as in simply burning them, sometimes for energy, as oppose to burying them and letting it sit there for decades. And given the lack of resources, building 1000 mile long pipelines doesn’t really solve the problem. If you factor in maintenance and energy cost, you’re pretty much flushing money down the toilet.</p>
<p>There is plenty of good farm land in this country, sitting unused, or being used to build shopping malls on. There is plenty of land down here in Florida that while not top notch farmland, is decent farmland, that at the moment is being unused, but that could be used. I drive by such land every day. No need to use that land at the moment, when corn and wheat can be imported from other states. But it could be used. It once WAS active farmland. It could be again.</p>
<p>There are deserts that can be reclaimed to grow some types of food, as the Israelis have done.</p>
<p>There are still vast forest areas around the world which could be cleared to grow food, as the pioneers did in America. </p>
<p>There are vast areas of Africa where farming is still primitive. Technology could no doubt triple output, but we don’t need to do it, because currently, we have enough food (in the Western World, of course).</p>
<p>You guys remind me of Malthus.</p>
<p>^ did you just suggest we cut down all the forests? i hope you realize what a horrible idea that is.</p>
<p>I think he’s saying we should modernize third world countries so they don’t have to walk 5 miles to get water. In addition, we modernize them so they have a little more stability in their livelihoods so that they can focus more on production and civilization, as oppose to keeping themselves in one piece.</p>
<p>And Cutting a couple of trees to create a farmland is a net gain, considering you can get a lot more from a farm than you can from a jungle. When lumberjacks cut trees, they don’t grow back, and as a result it becomes a wasteland. That would be a problem</p>
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Japan has 0.1 acres of arable land per resident and is 50% self-sufficient. Germany has 0.4 acres of arable land per resident and is 90% self-sufficient. The US has 1.5 acres of arable land per resident, much of it being unused. Hard to claim that we are anywhere near carrying capacity, even as far as agriculture is concerned.</p>
<p>Nature has a way of balancing itself. It could be through an epidemic, more natural disasters, who knows? We just need to use our resources wisely and be prepared.</p>
<p>b@r:</p>
<p>Very good post.</p>
<p>Down here in Florida, there is an area called Yeehaw Junction, between Orlando and West Palm Beach. There is literally nothing there. Before the real estate crash, there was talk of developing the area into thousands of homes. Now that is unlikely to happen for another generation. My point is that there are still plenty of new places in America to farm or to live.</p>
<p>And plenty of old places we could return to farmland. For example, I understand that 1/3 of the City of Detroit is going to be essentially shut down, and plowed over. </p>
<p>I suspect that some of the kids who have posted messages on this thread are city kids, and have not spent much time in the vast heartland of Middle America, where huge areas of the country are experiencing a DECREASE in population growth, not an increase.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean that they COULDN’T live there, if need be. </p>
<p>I am sure that many people in 1940 probably said the same thing that some of the above people have posted. “Boy, it sure is getting crowded in New York. It sure is getting crowded in Los Angeles. And that was true”. But then Phoenix and Las Vegas were build in the middle of nowhere, and now, millions of people live there. </p>
<p>By the way, after we build about ten thousand more skyscrapers to handle all the people who are supposedly over-populating existing land, we can start building DOWN. We already see this in cities like Toronto and Minneapolis, where they have underground tunnels because of the weather, complete with stores and restaurants.</p>
<p>And when I was a kid, there was a lot of talk about farming the sea. To date, it hasn’t panned out, but again, it could.</p>
<p>In Colonial Times, about 90% of Americans were farmers. Now it is something like 2%. Yet we have more food NOW, then back then. We could put people to work as farmers if need be. True, we would have less lawyers and psychologists, but I think the country would survive this loss.</p>
<p>The same thing that happens in a vial of bacteria. Sudden exponential growth, leveling off, massive extinction.</p>
<p>I don’t see how self sufficiency really relates to food availability when you compare countries with some of the best lands in the world. USA, Japan and German are all among the biggest exporters of food because they have good land, and the resources to turn it into food, and GDP. Most countries aren’t like that.</p>
<p>We could have more farmers, but note that pioneers didn’t have tractors, so it’s not like we can all just become farmers and still be able to live profitably. Besides, we’re only talking about the US, one country. There are many other countries.</p>
<p>Also, how then would explain the decline in population growth? And why do people say that we’re going to need to increase food production by 70% by 2050, or something along that line. It’s not like that’s going to happen.</p>
<p>I think we just need to teach certain groups of people what a condom is and we’ll be fine. :)</p>
<p>Oh you know, nature will take care of the overpopulation problem. There will be an outbreak of disease or something of that sort. Nature works in mysterious ways. Technological innovation can only increase the carrying capacity for so long.</p>
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