[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lighthouse', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'Y')ou cherry-pick the high end estimates from another set of studies other than the one the link refers to...

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lighthouse', '[')
Can we move on, now that you have "proven" that half of us must die a horrible death to save the other half.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lighthouse', ' ')Can we move on, now that you have "proven" that half of us must die a horrible death to save the other half.

[Lighthouse]

....

[yeahbut]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lighthouse', '
')We are 6.7 billion humans right now. Half of our food production is wasted. We have an obesity epidemic on our hand and you are telling me we have overshot our carrying capacity? Even most of the experts say we have not reached it yet. Just look at the figures I quoted.

[Lighthouse]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('yeahbut', 'L')H, I've been enjoying your vigorous defence of your corner for a while now(altho some of the squabbling over tiny points of detail got a bit old), but even I as a newbie can see that overshoot isn't just about having the ability to feed ourselves. It's about about environmental sinks, soil degradation, water scarcity, AGW, loss of bio-diversity, the whole environmental shebang. The ability of the ecosphere to sustain us.

I am 100% with you on the need to switch to less wasteful, less damaging food production, but I think it might be time you at least conceded that overshoot isn't just about food, even if theoretically we could quickly implement permaculture practices onto every farm on the planet- which, to be fair, really isn't looking that likely right now.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lighthouse', ' ')I said all along that I agree with Monte on most of his points. The only one I disagree are the figures.

[GreyGhost]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'M')an, you are off the charts.

[steam_cannon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Lighthouse', '[')
Can we move on, now that you have "proven" that half of us must die a horrible death to save the other half.

[zeugen]

Regarding "die off" or a drastic reduction in the human population spread over the next few decades to c. 2050 and beyond. At current growth rates the UN estimates global population stabilising around 9 billion or an extra 2.5 billion people over the next 4-5 decades. The worst case guesstimates for a die off and the reduced carrying capacity due to loss of fossil fuel inputs and increasing biosphere destruction will see that growth go negative with a loss of around 4 billion by the middle of this century and later.

This doesn't necessarily mean a sudden cataclysmic die off, although I'm sure the worst will happen to the poorest nations as us wealthy moderns concentrate the diminishing energy wealth around our struggling military industrial complexes. Historically speaking war, famine and pestilence are the three great destroyers of humanity and these will no doubt take their toll. The current genocide in Iraq is a case in point with 1 million dead already simply because they are sitting on too much oil.

However even these destroyers will be hard pressed to reduce our global population unless we unleash mutually assured destruction (MAD). The bulk of the reduction will probably come about through declining fertility rates and lowered life expectancy as we all adjust to a "sustainable" way of life and the alternative energy sources that will support it ... in the context of the biosphere destruction that will still be rolling through the ecosystem due to global warming and our other long term environmental problems.

At the moment, in very general terms, about 2 people die somewhere on earth every second and 4 are born for a net population increase of around 2 souls per second. Decrease the global birth rate below the death rate and we go into population reduction. Spread that over several decades and we get towards a manageable global population that minimizes the reduction enforced by natural constraints.

It sounds simple enough, the only trouble is how do you "equitably" reduce birth rates and avoid the political problems of nationalism and predatory eugenics in the context of a long term planetary emergency? The Nazi eugenics program planned for certain populations to thrive while others would be allowed to "die off". Similar nationalist policies were followed by the British empire in its subjugation of the "poor celts", the Australian Aboriginal peoples and native Americans in favour of the "racially superior" western Europeans.

The population problem is intractable, and I'd guess nature will lead the way as we learn the actual practical limits of our local carrying capacities, with political "solutions" being implemented on an ad hoc basis after the fact. How we balance our predatory nationalist instincts with our moral humanist ideals remains to be seen.

I would hope for a truly humanist and internationalist approach based on equitable scientific principles to manage the ongoing "long emergency" but our modern history would say otherwise. A general awareness of the problem through public education might help, but I also think many of us would gladly vote for the hawks over the doves when the problem is no longer "theirs" but has come home to roost.

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Duende', '[')b]Lighthouse wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')ven 200 years on, modern Malthusians like Montequest are still espousing the theory. In the Sixties, Paul Ehrlich, the author of Population Bomb, and Lester Brown, the founder of the Worldwatch Institute, predicted that the "dramatic consequences" of our "throwaway lifestyle" were only a McDonald’s carton away.

[wisconsin_cur]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Duende', '[')b]Lighthouse wrote:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'E')ven 200 years on, modern Malthusians like Montequest are still espousing the theory. In the Sixties, Paul Ehrlich, the author of Population Bomb, and Lester Brown, the founder of the Worldwatch Institute, predicted that the "dramatic consequences" of our "throwaway lifestyle" were only a McDonald’s carton away.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('zeugen', 'T')he current genocide in Iraq is a case in point with 1 million dead already simply because they are sitting on too much oil.

[Dezakin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('wisconsin_cur', 'F')orgive me if I am being a bit dense, but a question. is the sentence,
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')heres a difference between growing forever and growing untill the resources of all the stars in the galaxy have been rendered for the whims of civilization.

[AWPrime]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', 'T')here's an ultimate limit to growth, but the notion that we're due to run into it in the next century is a tad bit silly when you consider how little of our total resource base we actually use.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Dezakin', 'W')e're talking about millinea into the future in an interstellar civilization here.

[Dezakin]

Whats with the strawmen allready? Who said anything about 'these days'

It'll take hundreds of years to advance to an interplanetary civilization.

[LoneSnark]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t has yet to be shown that the earth ecosystem could survive if humanity manages to use the total resources on earth.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GreyGhost', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'M')an, you are off the charts.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('zeugen', ' ')At current growth rates the UN estimates global population stabilising around 9 billion or an extra 2.5 billion people over the next 4-5 decades.