Cosmoline

Overpopulation is clearly not the problem. The Malthusian predictions were flat-out wrong, and we're seeing birth rates slow and even head into negative territory in most of the world. The problem is resource abuse. We burn more oil than we can replace, even if we're not having more children than we should. If people lived within their means on a globla scale, we could have far more people and still abide with the planet. You don't have to have superhighways, shopping malls or urban sprawl to survive. And we need to find a better way.

ericy

Really? How did you reach this conclusion?

wrafl

It's not only the planet in peril, it's mankind and other animals alike. Maybe not in the current generation but the future in which we won't know then. Reports of the ocean rising and lake fresh water levels drying out is not far from the future.

rschulze

Over population is the problem of most everything wrong today. From the lack of fresh water, to global warming, to the price of gas, housing market prices......

It was best stated in the "Matrix", mankind is a virus that is just spreading and consuming until one day, not to long from now, there won't be anything left to consume. We're all gonna die, at least most of us.

The way our government is going and the rest of the world, I would bet against more than 60% of the worlds population ever seeing a morning ten years from now. I'm not trying to be dramatic, I just think we're all screwed. We have a lot of problems in the world and breeders popping out babies like they're going out of style is one of the big ones.

Please do your new born kids a favor and teach them knife skills and how to purify water from urine, it'll help them survive thirty years from now if they make it that long.

jonathan180iq

Roody understood what I was getting at with my previous post, while GWD was a bit off. The point was that rich nations over consumer while impoverished nations are forced to consume and sustain themselves on far fewer resources. Nothing else was implied.

GWD,

The problem with what you are suggesting is that by only looking at sustainability nubmers, future decisions would be one sided. I agree that it's a necessary factor, but it doesn't stop there. If you only consider the numbers and eliminate things like emotion and attachment and all of the other volatile aspects of human decision making, you are essentially also removing what it means to be human. In the daily life of Joe and Maude McFarmer, global sustainability is not an issue.

I completely agree that the numbers and sustainability tables must be considered. But, on the global scale, the only way a change, as you are suggesting, would happen would be if one like minded group of people ruled the world.

It just isn't going to happen.

jonathan180iq

While I don't agree that Thomas Malthus was looking in the wrong place, I can certianly agree with the rest of this post.

It's a lot more complex than just over population. If we stopped populating, the current population would still be overusing and abusing resources. It's more about consumption habits than anything else.

The same can be said for carbon emissions and global climate change.
Even if all carbon emissions suddenly stopped, what's there is still there and the change is already happening, depending on what you believe.

Simply removing one part of the problem doesn't balance the equation.

ericy

But here's the problem. The world's population has skyrocketed in the past 50-100 years or so, and to a large degree this was made possible by the green revolution. By this I mean that cheap energy from petroleum make it possible to use mechanized farming. Petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides made it possible for crop yields to increase even further. And cheap transportation fuels have made it possible to have fresh produce at all times of the year. I have seen estimates that for every calorie of food that we eat, it takes 10 calories of fossil fuel energy.

Now consider what will happen to crop yields in the absence of fuel for tractors and petrochemicals? Will there be enough to feed all of the humans that currently live on the earth? I have seen estimates that once fossil fuels are gone, that the sustainable human population of the planet is 1.5-2 billion .

Sirrus Rider

Here is the problem. The "leaders" you here about in the green movement like Al "I burn more Electricity in one month than most people do in a year" Gore or the left coasters like John "My house is an Airport" Travolta is they are complete charlatans. On the other hand those who truely live green, who ride bikes to work, keep their own gardens, etc. are not heard from because they are actually doing what needs to be done.

If were are to save the planet EVERYONE needs to cut back including the overblown sacks of air on the west coast and in politics. Part and parcel with this is the whole world needs to limit the number of children as we're where we are from advances in agriculture and both are outstripping the carrying capacity of the planet. This the first part that is the biggest problem. How do give the human animal the will power to overcome the urge to breed?? Secondly, who decides who can procreate and who can't??

At the local level it's someone else's problem for as it's pointed out Global Warming won't evoke change untill we can't breathe anymore, the lights go out, and gas is $100 a gallon.

I agree that life will go on on this planet until the sun consumes us; however, it's likely that mankind and society will implode down to a more sustainable level. Likely when the oil is gone.

oldguy52

Word

I used to hear (60s - 70s) quite a lot about population control. Now, I rarely hear it mentioned.

You are right. This is the core of the problem.

JusticeZero

The population isn't skyrocketing because people are having oodles of kids... The population is skyrocketing because old folks AREN'T DYING.
None of the First World nations are even close to replacement rate on their childbirth figures. Places like Japan are having somewhere around 1.2 children for every couple. Do the math on that. last I checked, the U.S. was in the area of 1.8 - freakishly high for a nation in it's class, explained mainly by immigration. In Australia, the Government has asked parents to "Have one for him, one for her, and one for the country" without success; birth rates have plummeted and have been well below replacement for ages. Canada offers incentives to have extra children, also not successfully. The third world has shown their population growth rate plummeting as well - those are still above replacement rate, but dropping like a rock as living conditions improve. The issue is simply that we have more generations sharing space than we ever have before.
Malthus was blown apart long ago, and is now in the same category of theory as spontaneous creation of life, IE the theory that maggots are created spontaneously from rotten meat. The U.N.'s projections show a population curve which tops out at about 12 billion as lifespans stabilize and birth rates meet the present trends, then plummets like a rock with no end in sight. We can actually produce enough food for 12 billion without too much issue; the issue has always been distribution, not supply. During some of the most gruesome famines in the past several decades, audits and examination have shown that there was enough food available, rotting in warehouses in the disaster area, to keep everyone in the country fed without outside aid (which was generally stuffed into warehouses to rot as well).

ericy

But without petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides we can no longer produce anything like these quantities of food. I have seen estimates that in the absence of oil, that the maximum sustainable human population is closer to 1.5-2 billion.

JusticeZero

We will not RUN OUT OF oil. We will have less than we want. There is a difference; when it comes down to the hard choices, agriculture will win.

ericy

In the long run, we will reach a point where there will be so little oil that the quantities produced will not be of any economic significance. When will we reach this point? Hard to say for sure as it will be a gradual process, but that will be the ultimate outcome.

In the nearer term, when the world demand exceeds that which producers can supply, the price will rise - perhaps rather sharply. Given the heavy usage of petroleum for food production, then food costs will also rise.

I am not so sure that when it comes down to hard choices that agriculture will win. There are unfortunate historical precedents - during the Irish potato famine, Ireland was reportedly exporting food while people starved. Whomever is willing to pay the most will win. If agriculture can pay the going rate then they get it. Ultimately agriculture will have to wean itself off of petrochemicals as best they can, and the likely result will be lower yields.

JusticeZero

The point at which oil production will get to the near-zero numbers which you are talking about are after the point at which the projected world population dips below 1.5 billion and dropping, and thus sustainable without petroleum. I don't see why this is a matter to be concerned over.

ericy

I don't see it as that far out in the future at all. It will take many generations for population to decline to those levels, but there are some that make a very good case that oil production has already peaked, and overall production will begin to decline at ever faster rates in the coming years.

JusticeZero

yes, oil production has peaked. That doesn't mean it will fall to zero, it means it is tapering off gently even while demand is skyrocketing. There are a lot of oil reserves that are not viable to go after, still, and a lot of inefficient oil sources. Especially when you start getting to the stuff that takes more ENERGY to extract than it's worth if used FOR energy.
So we won't RUN OUT. But we are going to have shortages. Serious shortages. You're also forgetting that we have a lot of untouched wind and solar to utilize that we haven't touched. There's lots of resources of petrochemicals that opens up if you assume that you will be pumping a lot of power into it to get it out.

acroy

incredibly true....

planetary change happens so slowly, we are pretty much unaware of it in our daily life. The universe has been around a looong time... and our liftimes are 50-100 years. Just a blink of an eye, the lifetime of a mayfly, in relation to the cosmic course of history.

one side of me says "why bother" - we're all very insignificant in the big picture, so why not maximize our enjoyment while we're here, let future generations deal with their own issues.

the other side tells me to be responsible & be a good steward. So i ride my bike to work & try to live reasonably.

cheers

jonathan180iq

For what it's worth, at the current global consumption rate, the world's recorded oil reserves will be exhausted in 43 years.

There are, according to several different studies, 1.2 trillions barrles of guaranteed crude oil left in the ground. (This is the sum of each contry's recorded oil supply) World crude consumption currently sits at 76 million barrels of oil per day, as recorded in 2003. What is 1.2 Trillion divided by 76 million? 15,789 days. That equals 43 years. So, assuming that global oil consumption doesn't increase, we're looking at the end of oil sometime in February, 2050.

Of course that's not exact, but it gives you an idea of how wasteful we are and how far away we are from living a sustainable lifestyle. ("we" meaning people)

I would assume that when it gets close to crunch time, there will be governmental restrictions on the use of oil. And, I agree that farming and agriculture will get the nod over mundane tasks like driving.

ericy

Yeah, but it isn't that useful to look at it that way. Oil reservoirs aren't just a big underground cavern that is filled with oil. They are porous rock of one sort or another, so getting that last bit of oil is hard.

Past experience has been that once you use about half of the oil in an oilfield, the overall production drops off, and there isn't anything you can do about it. You can drill like crazy, and it helps to stem the decline somewhat, but still the overall oil production from an oilfield does decline.

This sort of rule of thumb best applies to oilfields where there haven't been artificial constraints that limited the overall production. Things like wars, production quotas, and the like.

Roody

Where did you see these estimates? They are probably from BP, and they're definitely BS. Organic farms, properly managed, have higher yields per acre than the old fashioned petroculture farms. Try not to believe every lie the industrial marketers tell you!

jonathan180iq

Like I said, those are guaranteed cuantities of oil. The stuff that is unreachable isn't recorded in the data.

Still, that makes my point even more relevant. Of that oil, not all of it will be used, thus limiting the time-line.

My point was just to show how over-the-top we are in our consumption. How long have we using crude en masse? 60 years?

That's not a very long time, considering how many million years it takes the make the stuff.

jonathan180iq

Yeah, there are all types of different farming methods that don't produce tons of agricultural run-off or require tons of fertilizers. They just need to be taught and implemented on a large scale.

rhm

Roody, while you're absolutely right, that ericy should state the source for his data, it goes both ways. Where did you see your estimates?

ericy

No, definitely not BP - from several books that I have been reading. Some of which I have already given away to others, others of which are packed away in boxes right now. Let me see if I can find a couple of good references. It isn't just food that is the limiting factor, although that is a major one.

Roody

The world already produces much more food than is needed. Most of it rots or makes people obese. Starvation is caused short term by weather crises and wars, and long term by social injustice and inefficent markets.