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Will Over-Population become a threat to Civilization? (1 Viewer)

Will Over-Population become a threat to Civilization?

  • Yep!

    Votes: 32 43.2%

  • Nope!

    Votes: 26 35.1%

  • Possibly?

    Votes: 16 21.6%
  • Total voters
    74
Empirica

Empirica

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A good global conflict will nip this in the bud, imo!
 
Global population growth is beginning to level off, however Africa will continue to have high growth rates for the foreseeable future, but those have begun to fall as well.

Global population could level off, barring some sort of catastrophe, anywhere between 10 to 12 billion people, there are some estimates that find this number too optimistic, it could be lower than that if birth rates continue to plummet.

I am afraid I am not educated enough to know how this manifests itself in terms of global resources and the worst case scenarios here, but I do know that it would appear the worst case scenarios thought of the 80s and 90s when it comes to global overpopulation won't come to pass, we ain't gonna get Mega City One or Coruscant because well, there'll never be enough people for it.
 
Thank goodness for abortion,inner city crime,starvation,aids,cancer,obesity.We should be ok for some time.
 
The notion that the world will be overpopulated is nothing new. It dates back at least to the early 19th century when Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population. Back in the day, the world population had just reach 1 billion. The population in Europe and the US were climbing faster than ever due to falling death rates. Before the industrial revolution, birth rates were high but so were death rates (lots of kids died early). Improved medicine and better sanitation standards was largely responsible for bringing down the death rate. Thomas Malthus knew that this was responsible for bringing down the death rate; he wasn’t an idiot. He knew that the industrial revolution increased food production but he also feared that population growth would outpace it. He proposed either decreasing the birth rate or increasing the death rate to prevent what came to be called a malthusian catastrophe. Much later, he was proven to be wrong when food production rose quicker than population and living standards rose for all.

In the 1960s, a man by the name of Paul Ehrlich predicted that the world was on the brink of overpopulation. In 1968 he published a book called The Population Bomb which begins with this quote.

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.
Click to expand...

Then, when that prediction failed, he published its sequel: The Population Explosion.

Between the times of Malthus and Ehrlich, living standards rose tremendously, all while population grew. When Malthus said these things, the world population was only 1 billion. When Ehrlich said then, the population was 3.61 billion. Now, it's a little over 7.7 billion and yet, we are no closer to a malthusian catastrophe than we were back then.
 
Empirica said:
Mahatma Gandhi: "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not for every man's greed"
https://www.goalcast.com/2017/03/20/top-20-inspiring-mahatma-gandhi-quotes/

Pew Research Center: "Today’s scientists are more likely than the general American public to be concerned about population growth"
Scientists more worried than public about world?s growing population | Pew Research Center

What say you!
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I voted POSSIBLY.

It is a possibility that overpopulation by humans could threaten Human Civilization as a whole.
 
It is possible, but by the time that it becomes an actual issue rather than a theory we will likely have expanded into space or some catastrophic event will solve the issue before it becomes a problem.
 
Empirica said:
Mahatma Gandhi: "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not for every man's greed"
https://www.goalcast.com/2017/03/20/top-20-inspiring-mahatma-gandhi-quotes/

Pew Research Center: "Today’s scientists are more likely than the general American public to be concerned about population growth"
Scientists more worried than public about world?s growing population | Pew Research Center

What say you!
Click to expand...

Of course it will, eventually. Though with how much our own kind is in love with killing one another, destroying our bodies and the ability of the natural world around us to outright obliterate our numbers. It will most likely be some time before our population really gets to that kind of point.
 
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Based on the environmental devastation happening, we're already there.

I'm sure this planet could house more humans, but most of us won't be living comfortably or with much social mobility.

Billions of humans vying for 'all the things' is a recipe for disaster.

The only reason for more people is to serve the growth model. Once the growth model caps out - and it will - a lot of people are going to suffer.
 
The problem isn't overpopulation, but overconsumption. More efficient use of resources would alleviate most of the problems people associate with overpopulation.
 
Not "will."

Overpopulation is already a threat to civilization.
 
Lefties have been predicting this for decades. They have been wrong for decades.
 
itsforthekids said:
Lefties have been predicting this for decades. They have been wrong for decades.
Click to expand...

All the Righty, dictator, and resource wars should take care of overpopulation..
 
Will Over-Population become a threat to Civilization?
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absent war, famine, or disease, and given current population growth rates, yes, most likely. however, that's a number of ifs.
 
TheParser said:
Not "will."

Overpopulation is already a threat to civilization.
Click to expand...

Only to people without technology... and not even then. Famines, droughts, etc have been thinning out population forever.
 
Possibly, although China has taken steps to curtail their growth. India is expected to surpass China in population, and that's problematic.

Other countries where this is a serious issue are the middle-Eastern nations. Most of those countries cannot agriculturally sustain their population today, but they still have high birthrates.

The key is agricultural sustainability. Energy and most other resources can be derived from sustainable sources. Everybody has to eat to live. If people can't get food, crime rises drastically.
 
Another factor to consider is modern medicine. Think about how much it has changed in the past 100 years. And think of the efforts put forth to bring it to as many people as possible, even in areas that otherwise wouldn't have access. This is in direct opposition to a great many things that used to limit human population growth. It's only going to become better and better and more ubiquitous, and far more people are going to live far longer than even a single generation ago.
 
Can we all shift gears fast enough?

spud_meister said:
The problem isn't overpopulation, but overconsumption. More efficient use of resources would alleviate most of the problems people associate with overpopulation.
Click to expand...

There's only so much land available to grow crops on.

There's only so much potable water to drink, raise crops & support industrial processes.

A cleaner, more efficient energy source would help. The politics of a solution are difficult - Would the developed countries share food & water, technology & resources with the rest of the World? Would developed countries curtail their caloric intake (give up or sharply reduce meats?) so that the rest of the World could eat better? Would India & China & other rising countries postpone attaining a Western style of living & consumption for their top tier, while we try to get the various world economies to converge somewhere in the middle?

There are options out there - but do we all collectively have the stomach & political will to pursue them?
 
I don’t think it will be a threat, at least not how people usually think it will (running out of land and resources).As countries become more developed their birth rate drops.

As developing countries become more and more developed, and automation and, more importantly, AI advances there will be fewer and fewer jobs for the new low population. Once people no longer can/have to work, will that cause them to have more or even fewer kids? I don’t know. More leisure time does mean more time for knocking boots.
 
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Some scientists think population will level off at around 10 billion. Some think it will level off much lower than that. Doesn't matter who's right. we are already overloading the planet's ability to sustain us.

In the last few years, a couple of billion people have been lifted out of poverty. Some scientists predict that abject poverty will be a thing of the past by 2050.

Even if population remained constant, billions and billions of people all wanting the American middle class lifestyle will destroy the environment.

Before the Age of Oil there were around 1.25 billion people on the planet. After the Age of Oil we will go back down to near that figure.
 
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