^World Population.....Going up^

[Furrowed Brow]

Tonight in the UK the BBC aired a science Documentary (Horizon) presented by David Attenborough titled How many People can Live on Planet Earth. Plenty of food for thought...or maybe not so much food if projections in population increase are correct (9 billion by 2050) and the finite amount of farming land.

One piece of data stood out. The present population is just under 7 billion. Based on present use of earth resources which is already is thought to have reached unstainable levels if everyone had the standard of living as that seen in America the Earth could only sustain a population of 1.5 billion, or 2.5 billion if the standard is lowered to the level of the UK, however the number goes up to 18 billion to if standards of living drop to Rwandan levels. If all the world resource was shared equally America’s standard of living would fall something like 80% (that is just a quick reckoning on my part).

Not surprisingly I (living in the UK) desire an American standard of living...they have it better than me. So question: is it morally right for the majority of the world to use up limited finite resource preventing some more of us from living the American dream.

[Goat]

Not surprisingly I (living in the UK) desire an American standard of living...they have it better than me. So question: is it morally right for the majority of the world to use up limited finite resource preventing some more of us from living the American dream.

It is not so much 'morally right' as unsustainable and not realistic. I suspect the american standard of living will be dropping drastically .. and I rather suspect that
if the population continues to rise, there will be a population correction event.

[Furrowed Brow]

Not surprisingly I (living in the UK) desire an American standard of living...they have it better than me. So question: is it morally right for the majority of the world to use up limited finite resource preventing some more of us from living the American dream.

It is not so much 'morally right' as unsustainable and not realistic. I suspect the american standard of living will be dropping drastically .. and I rather suspect that
if the population continues to rise, there will be a population correction event.

All that is needed to reduce population size is the number of children surviving both parents to fall below 2, basically smaller families. There is one well known factor already observed that reduce birth rates and this is female education and freedom. The parts of the world with the highest literacy rates for woman tend to have lower birth rates. It seems if woman have freedom and qualifications to secure higher paid employment they tend to have less than 3 kids.


Given this backdrop should organizations that encourage larger families face sanctions?

[Goat]

Not surprisingly I (living in the UK) desire an American standard of living...they have it better than me. So question: is it morally right for the majority of the world to use up limited finite resource preventing some more of us from living the American dream.

It is not so much 'morally right' as unsustainable and not realistic. I suspect the american standard of living will be dropping drastically .. and I rather suspect that
if the population continues to rise, there will be a population correction event.

All that is needed to reduce population size is the number of children surviving both parents to fall below 2, basically smaller families. There is one well known factor already observed that reduce birth rates and this is female education and freedom. The parts of the world with the highest literacy rates for woman tend to have lower birth rates. It seems if woman have freedom and qualifications to secure higher paid employment they tend to have less than 3 kids.


Given this backdrop should organizations that encourage larger families face sanctions?

I would love to see that.. it won't happen though. Too much poltics.

[VermilionUK]

I only caught a few minutes of that documentary, but it was very interesting, and very worrying.

I suspect that our standard of living will decrease sharply within the next 50 years, and furthermore I suspect future conflicts over unoccupied land/resources.

But in regards to using up limited resources to enable a better standard of life, we have to always emphasise that they are limited. In my opinion we should cut back on all our consumption, not because of global warming (I'm not convinced it's human-caused yet ), but because the earth simply cannot cope. As for populations, it may seem drastic and "immoral", but I think the earth needs some "event" to curb populations, or I can see rampant disease and famine in the future, even more than we have now.

[firechild]

This is a huge topic in Australia at the moment considering we have one of the lowest population densities in the world (wikipedia ranks us at 233/239). I would suggest the average standard of living in Australia is even higher than that of the US, largely because of the low population and population density. There are arguements for increasing the population which would make the country more competitive from international business perspective but the big arguement against is resources. Despite such a large landmass and a low population, water is a fast disappearing resource in Australia as it is in many parts of the world. Substantial areas of the country including major cities such as Sydney have been affected by imposed water restrictions for several years. We have oil, we have gas, we have opals and uranium but all this equates to nothing if there are not enough basic resources like water to sustain the population.

Unfortunately the population has slowed down birth rates but the government is countering this by increasing immigration. This means not only that we are slowly losing our identity as a people but we are also not helping to reduce global birth rates which will continue to rise to the point of devastation.