[Tapas]

The mother of all problems stem from a single source - Human Overpopulation. With a worldwide population of 6.5 billion and growing by 78 million each year, we are in serious overshoot. We have exceeded the natural carrying capacity of this planet, which is estimated around 1 to 2 billion.

Energy is the essence of life. Without energy there can be no life. As our source of cheap energy from fossil fuels dwindles, our excess population in overshoot will gradually die off from starvation, famine, and pandemics exacerbated further with global resource wars.

Our collective human activities of this Industrial Age have degraded the environment beyond repair. The methane and CO2 emissions are causing Global Warming which is responsible for the severe climate changes and the melting of the polar ice caps.

We have hit the Peal of Oil production at around 86 million barrels a day. We are at the top of the bell curve. Production is expected to fall around 2 to 8 percent per year, while global demand is rising at the rate of 3%. This difference between supply and demand will make the price of oil skyrocket. Rising energy costs will have severe ramifications on our society.

Our planet was gifted with a bounty of 2 Trillion barrels of oil, a resource that took nature millions of years to create - a product of ancient photosynthesis. Since the first oil well was dug in Pennsylvania in 1859, the world has consumed around 1 Trillion barrels to date. About another Trillion barrels still remains under the ground. We are just about at the halfway point.

The world now consumes 86 million barrels of oil each day. The proven reserves of 1 Trillion barrels will last for another 32 years, if production remains constant and demand does not rise. Both assumptions are false.

Once we cross the mid-way point, the production drops off while demand for energy keeps going up from a rising population load. The ramifications of an energy crunch is felt not when the last drop of oil is gone, but much earlier when we hit Peak Oil - the maximum rate of oil production.

The years ahead do not look good. Our national debt is $8.28 Trillion and growing by around $2 Billion each day. This is a significant amount considering our GDP is about $11 Trillion. Our Total Debt (Government + Private + SS/Medicare) is around $86 Trillion, which is higher than the entire World GDP of $55 Trillion!

The Housing Bubble has popped in most US Cities while Bird Flu is expected to hit in a few months. This Real Estate market crash could bring about a second Great Depression like the 1930s.

We probably have another 6 years of normal life. After 2012, we will begin to see the unfolding of the Industrial Age as power Grids begin to fail wordwide and we see permanent black outs.

Can all this be avoided?

If we could galvanize all of humanity on a single cause, a single mission, with a desire to save mankind and our planet, and agree to change our lifestyles and power down, we may have a chance. Six and a half billion humans have enormous potential. If we could drop our religious and political differences and look beyond racial and national boundaries and perceive all of mankind as a single species in harmony with nature, we could begin the healing process. It may take a miracle for this to happen.

Tapas

[grillzilla]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t may take a miracle for this to happen.

[backstop]

Tapas -

I know that it is "received wisdom" in America that over-population is the central problem,
but before further pushing this idea on this global site I think you'd do well to stop and consider whether it is true.

As had been said numerous times, had Ghandi succeeded in bringing the world to a respect for humanity and for nature,
I would suggest, first, that we would not now have a population of 6.5 Bn, and, second,
that we would be living simply but adequately while having transformed our integration with the planet.

The reality is that the present population, and the terracidal policies towards the planet driven by the wealthiest nations,
are only a symptom of a malign, usurious materialistic ideology, which is effectively the antithesis of human nature.

America is the present homeground of that ideology, which is a large part of the reason why you've been taught that population is the problem -
it puts the culpability somewhere else.

So I suggest you try galvanizing America to change its ways - the rest of the world could do very well at sorting out the global problems
if America were to just stop blocking the solutions.


Regards,

Backstop

[gego]

You had it until you got to the last paragraph.

Maybe this is too much reality for you, and you needed to sound a little less out in left field by putting in some lala land bull about the 6.5 billion riding off into the sunset with just some little adjustment in lifestyle.

Are you just trying to be polite to the 5.5 billion excess population, not wanting them to be confronted with post peak death?

[marti252]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')ince the first oil well was dug in Pennsylvania in 1859, the world has consumed around 1 Trillion barrels to date

[whereagles]

Geez.. this "overpopulation" argument is getting rather overrated. Even if the oil tap is turned off smoothly, I can hardly belive we'd go back to 1900's population levels.

There is simply so much more technology today than there used to be. That surely must have an influence... just look at medicines.

[killJOY]

To crudely paraphrase Shake-speare:

"First, kill all the catholics."

I'm not interested in participating in that step.

Therefore, we're all f*cked.

[backstop]

Gego -

maybe you're under the delusion that an aggressive tone makes you sound more mature or somehow more authoritative ?

In reality, it just sounds a bit shrill and disconcerted.

I wrote nothing about "some minor adjustment" - in my view what we face globally is a massive concerted transformation to a declining population,
or a spiral of mutually destructive devil-take-the-hindermost fragmentation and collapse.

That Neocon America is actively blocking the options for transformation, and avidly promoting its malign ideologies, seems to me patently obvious.

That there is a fair chance of the world pulling together were America to come to its senses may not be obvious to you,
but then you haven't been in amongst the international campaigning and diplomacy for the last 20 years, have you ?

As neither of us were born with crystal balls, there's no way of forecasting just what human population the surviving ecological resources will carry,
using what volumes of what energy resources, under what cultural, climatic & epidemiological constraints, by which year.

Lovelock puts the eventual population at a few thousand, you put it at a billion, others at two billion. All based on virtual crystal balls.

I go so far as to say that I doubt we'll continue to increase much past seven billion.

Fair enough ?

regards,

Backstop

[Daculling]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tapas', 'I')f we could drop our religious and political differences....
Tapas

[Falconoffury]

If the world was mostly Taoist and Buddhist, I think it would be a better world. Maybe people would realize the reaction of their actions. Maybe people would understand the importance of balance with ones environment.

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('backstop', 'T')apas -

I know that it is "received wisdom" in America that over-population is the central problem,
but before further pushing this idea on this global site I think you'd do well to stop and consider whether it is true.

As had been said numerous times, had Ghandi succeeded in bringing the world to a respect for humanity and for nature,
I would suggest, first, that we would not now have a population of 6.5 Bn, and, second,
that we would be living simply but adequately while having transformed our integration with the planet.

The reality is that the present population, and the terracidal policies towards the planet driven by the wealthiest nations,
are only a symptom of a malign, usurious materialistic ideology, which is effectively the antithesis of human nature.

America is the present homeground of that ideology, which is a large part of the reason why you've been taught that population is the problem -
it puts the culpability somewhere else.

So I suggest you try galvanizing America to change its ways - the rest of the world could do very well at sorting out the global problems
if America were to just stop blocking the solutions.


Regards,

Backstop

[gego]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('backstop', 'G')ego -

maybe you're under the delusion that an aggressive tone makes you sound more mature or somehow more authoritative ?

[backstop]

Gego -

my fullsome apology for assuming your post, which followed mine, was addressed to mine, with which it meshed rather precisely.

The morals are to state to whom you're posting at the outset, and to not reply to a post lacking such an addressee.

With regard to tone I would say that it's rare that ascerbic language adds anything useful to a discussion - it normally only accelerates a decay into futile argument.

Your assertion of being endowed with crystal balls, in the form of statistical analysis, looks to me a very questionable blessing in terms of false confidence.

Could you for instance tell me whether, and if so when, we will achieve a treaty to halt and reverse the growth of GHG emissions ?
And just what will be the full-term loss of fertile topsoil and climate stability that permits productive agriculture in the case that we do so ?

And precisely what will it be in the case that we fail to do so ?

And as you run for your personal "lifeboat", leaving the untold numbers to drown as a result of your country's leadership and lifestyle,
before you jump, in just remember how fragile those crystal balls are.

Mind how you go !


regards,

Backstop

[Peak_Plus]

Thanks NiK for bringing a bit of Reality into the discussion
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tapas', 'T')he mother of all problems stem from a single source - Human Overpopulation.

[holmes]

citiots believe EVERYTHING is normal. LOL. the cities are just the next mayan empire. Got too big. overpopulation will be the only problem soon enough. LOL. call it competition for scarce resources. Ur going to wish we had 100k on this finite sphere. LOL. Overpopulation not a problem and then saying to get some reality in this thread. specious thinking to say the least. city urban dwellers telling folks reality. as theya re piled on tp of one another dependent on far away food sources. LOL. thats like giving the keys of the asylum to the mentally ill. the swarm grows. envirovore's hunger never ceases.

[capslock]

Here's how it is playing out, here and now, as the subsidized green revolution hits a brick wall in poor, overpopulated countries. Expect stories like these more and more frequently as rationing by price kills off vast numbers of those living on $2 per day or less:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')k 200 cr annual loss on subsidy: Fertiliser crisis persists [Bangladesh]

Fertilizer crisis continues causing hardship to millions of farmers across the country despite Agriculture Minister's claim that such problem is the creation of the media.

Reports from different areas of the country said that farmers particularly from northern region of the country are the worst sufferers of inadequate supply of Urea fertilizer to their respective destinations.

Official records shows that BCIC has been incurring loss of Taka 200 crore annually to sell fertilizer at subsidized rates, According to the records, the BCIC is selling per ton of Urea fertilizer at Taka 4,800 against production cost of Taka 6, 500 per ton leading to financial loss of Taka 1700 per ton.

In the current year the farmers face crisis as the importers stopped distributing fertilizer to demand payment arrear subsidy involving in Taka 1,000 crore so far.

[lateStarter]

Ok, I know this is coming from left field, but what if somehow the secular powers all somehow agreed that 'religion' is bad and a major contributor to all of the problems mankind is facing (admit it - religions certainly don't help except at a personal level) - what would be the logical next step?

The worlds major religions make it very difficult to advance birth control/contraceptice practices, most are focused on the 'afterlife' - leads to all sorts of counterproductive behavior, and they certainlt don't have a positve historical record. Of course, I am being polite!

Serioulsy, how much different would the picture be without religion? Or would greed/profit still be to much for the human race to deal with?

Just curious....


[Edit] Sorry, I just notice that this was in the 'serious-only area'. My response would be more appropriate for 'Off-Topic'. My apologies...

[gego]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Peak_Plus', '
')That is the <b>biggest load of crap</b> that the we have been believing for the longest time.

One billion was the population as Malthus was writing his works BEFORE the Industrial Revolution.

Well over 2 billion (2.5 Billion?) was the population by 1900 BEFORE the age of oil came.

We could probably carry two to three times the present population at present energy consumption.

We could probably carry the present six billion without oil, although I will admit that twice that number would be a great difficulty.

So, now I ask you - do you want to bitch about Peak Oil? Or would you rather open up a childless commune?

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Peak_Plus', 'T')hanks NiK for bringing a bit of Reality into the discussion
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tapas', 'T')he mother of all problems stem from a single source - Human Overpopulation.