Too many people on earth

Originally posted by iori_komei
The fairest way to take care of thinning the population, without leaving the planet, would be for each country to have a lottery, and have half of its population killed.

The misguided presumption that half of some country’s population should be spared is the flaw in this plan. A lottery is far too random, a more "enlightened" form of selection should be utilized, say shoe size or propensity for not buying a round on a Friday night, thus making the world a better place to dance and drink.

Party on.

If you had a lottery now and knocked off 3 billion people it wouldn't be long before you'd need another lottery. You'd only end up with a population equal to what it was in the 1960's. So probably every 50 years at least to keep it lower or even to what it is today.

Random termination is not only unfair, but also works against the possibility of a better future; were this conversation be rational to begin with - which it isn't.

Originally posted by iori_komei
The fairest way to take care of thinning the population, without leaving the planet, would be for each country to have a lottery, and have half of its population killed.

I think that the laws of Malthus apply well enough to prevent actual overpopulation. The above would only apply to an extremely rationalized and entirely pacifistic society that covers the entire globe (and, of necessity would invovle billions of more people than there are now if there was a population problem). If man can't colonize other planets by that time and with those resources and that situation, heck, just kill everyone, man's too stupid to live then!

The Earth is not overpopulated. You're buying the hype told to you by people who are making their decisions based on emotions, not logic.

For example, did you know that you could fit all 6 billion people on Earth in the U.S., and give them all an acre each? The rest of the planet's surface would be free of human influence in that scenario. Do you consider that population density overcrowding?

Very few of the world's countries are densley populated, and even then, those countries still have large areas of land that are virtually untouched by human hands. The U.S., the European Union, China, and India are the main centers of population on Earth right now. The rest of the world's countries are quite rural in comparison to them.

As another example, let's consider the land use in one of the most developed countries on the planet -- the U.S. How much of the land in the U.S. is covered in concrete? Well, the USGS has been keeping these statistics for years. Here is a brief summary of their results:

Land Use In The United States, By Percentage
----------------------------------------------------------
Urban -- 3%
Rural Residential -- 3%
Farmland -- 15%
Pasture Land (for livestock) -- 42%
Forest Land -- 30%
Wasteland (Tundra, for example) -- 7%

Note that 80% of the U.S. population lives in the 3% of urbanized land. That's why many people percieve that everything is urbanized -- they've lived their entire lives on that 3% of the land! Most Americans have never seen the vast natural environments in the U.S.

Also, among the 15% of land in the U.S. used as farmland, 12% is used to raise food for livestock, and only 3% is used to raise food for human consumption.

Land marked as "Rural Residential" is very rural by the standards of anyone born & raised in a city. Most of the small towns in the U.S. are so surrounded by trees & forests that often individual buildings and roads are crowded out by vegetation in satellite photos.

What's the moral of the story? Urbanization is not a problem, and the U.S. is not "running out of wilderness." In fact, if you want to reduce land use by humans, your best strategy is to become a vegetarian!

This is not to say that pollution and urban sprawl are not problems where they occur. But, except on occasions where water currents and wind gusts carry pollution from place to place, the majority of pollution remains local by global standards. And urban sprawl, while a quality of life problem, has had a negligible impact on the overall land use in the U.S.

Anyway, keep in mind that the U.S. is one of the most industrialized, concrete-covered countries in the world, and you see the data there. Imagine what the land use looks like in much more rural countries -- as you can guess, most of the land in those countries remains practically untapped!

Considering food, there is more than enough food already to feed all 6 billion people on Earth, with plenty of food left over; and this isn't considering that many of the world's countries don't know how to use modern farming methods yet. The only reason there are people starving right now are political reasons, such as the war in Ethiopia, where the factions led by warlords have burned all the farmland, and steal food flown in as aid for the civilians for themselves.

We've covered land use and food, now we're left with water. Well, this concern is legitamite, believe it or not! Only 1% of the Earth's water supply is fresh water (99% is salt water), and 0.9% of that 1% of water is tied up in glaciers at the poles. So, all the water used by every living thing on Earth, especially humans, is only 0.1% of the Earth's total water. However, as soon as the process of taking the salt out of large volumes of water becomes easier and economically feasabile, then this will no longer be an issue.

So, whatcha got next?

Wow! Thunder, that was some handful of info you brought to the table.

I see that you are also the show-stopper, as the thread seems to have died.
Murderer!

Originally posted by Thomas Crowne
Wow! Thunder, that was some handful of info you brought to the table.

I see that you are also the show-stopper, as the thread seems to have died.
Murderer!

Don't get me wrong, I really care about Earth's envrionment. I reduce, reuse, and recycle like a madman; I hate wasting anything perfectly usable (for example, I donate clothes, furniture, old electronic equipment, etc. to local schools, Goodwill, and the Red Cross on a regular basis); and I have a severe dislike for urban sprawl and wasted space. However, there are a lot of people who also care about the environment, but are fighting the wrong fights! They're invested in trying to "stop" something that's not really a problem, while ignoring the real environmental problems. It actually does more harm than good when all your efforts are directed at a red herring, after all...