Population control Isn't it about time?

i want to excerpt parts from a thread i wrote earlier that touches on this topic:

With the extent of technology today, there's no logical reason that space programs all over the planet haven't erected entire space cities for the advancement of various types of science. I don't understand how we have the money and resources for constant wars but can't manage to create thriving space communities where people from all walks of life can find exciting jobs for the betterment of mankind and advancement of the species.

There's no logical reason that people with master's degrees in engineering are being forced to work at McDonald's or digging ditches in Somalia, because there are no other jobs. Say what? We have the technology to do something about this.

Every nation can change the dire situations of their people if they'd just get their heads out of the "you're a different race/religion/skin color than me, so i'd rather buy a gun and shoot ya!" mindset.

Screw that! Stop worrying about what i had for breakfast or didn't have or who my ancestors were or weren't, and start thinking about how we can get this species out of the mire that is threatening to drive us all into behaving like angry mobs of animals, killing each other over our differences.

I'm not suggesting we encroach on each other or force a new world order on each other, all I'm saying is nations the world over would benefit themselves and their people if they started thinking about UP a bit more instead of down in the grave or the gutter.

it's not hard to see why people feel space programs are too expensive and outrageous when people are starving to death and homeless, but the more we focus on creating whole communities in space, the fewer people would be starving to death and homeless. it creates a positive chain reaction:

people get jobs.
people without jobs get education so they can get jobs.
once educated, they start taking responsibility for their procreative activities, which = slowing population growth.
almost all of the negatives we currently see all stem around lack of education, which in itself, lowers quality of life and at the same time, accelerates population growth.

it's proven that the better educated a society is, the more the population growth slows. this is primarily due to understanding the causal relationship between our activities impact on our families, our planet and our society. but people living in abject poverty can't even begin to entertain such notions. they're too busy just trying to survive.

not only that people who aren't impoverished learn the benefit of laws, and law enforcement would protect the citizens from being victimized by the drug lords in poorer countries like somalia and ethiopia. this whole thing is all going right back to education and jobs. and the fact we are just not thinking....."three dimensionally." (to quote captain kirk)

To Reaper:
Since when has growing your own food become illegal? Maybe it was a sarcastic remark on how most people are dependent upon major grocery chains, possibly I missed the sarcasm, but if you're being serious...what?!

Regardless, I agree with the other posters who have stated that we just do not use our resources
wisely. We are comfortable where we're at, we're comfortable with how our lives are and how our lives operate. Too many people are afraid of making a change in their lives or fighting for a change on a national or global basis. Yes, I'm sure many are tired after their 40+ hour work week, but it is truly quite simple to grow enough food for you and your family to live off of with a small amount of land. It takes a good deal of effort to start a proper functioning garden, but after that it kind of just works for you, with slight manipulation needed on your end.
I've been living off of my own food for about 3 years now, and I live in a seasonal enviornment. One of the only things I go to grocery stores for that involves a food product is milk. Once my harvest season is done, I go to a local cannery and have them can any vegetables I've grown that I'm not going to pickle, and I can usually make it through most of the winter with minimal stops at the grocery store.

Population control is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. Just learn how to make the earth work for you.

If anyone else is as interested in gardening as I am, Epcot is doing some amazing things! Epcot Greenhouse

The truth is, the population of our species is overwhelming to the point of it being a serious concern. However, due to famine, natural disasters, and viruses/diseases, population control doesn't have to happen at the hands of some ruthless dictator or even warfare.

The planet will clean itself off every now and then leaving some kind of small % of us wiped out.

Originally posted by sleepypoet


Population control is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. Just learn how to make the earth work for you.

If anyone else is as interested in gardening as I am, Epcot is doing some amazing things! Epcot Greenhouse

agreed. i think people will naturally slow their own population growth once they are educated. as i mentioned in my post above, we need a new frontier to generate job growth and industry, and it has the pleasant side effect of slowing population growth.

space communities increase jobs. manufacturing jobs, science jobs, medical jobs, etc.
jobs require knowledge, which inspires the drive for education.
education resolves to higher quality of life, better survivability (under most circumstances) and slower population growth. people have to be taught to respect themselves before they can be taught to respect anything else such as their families or their citizens. right now, it's almost the complete opposite.

reply to post by Reaper2137

We are well over the Earths carrying capacity of 2 billion

Says who? The Fire Marshall?

reply to post by kindred


My thoughts exactly. Everything today is done for "profit". That is root of our problems. We need another geat awakening.

Originally posted by type0civ
reply to post by kindred

 

My thoughts exactly. Everything today is done for "profit". That is root of our problems. We need another geat awakening.

there's nothing wrong with earning profit. where the problem resides is our nature. forcing global hive mind or global socialism is not going to resolve into anything but abject poverty for everyone except a small elite. and that's where we've been heading for awhile now. that IS the problem, not earning your days wages.

each country needs to stimulate growth jobs economy and education for their people by building communities in space. problem solved.

reply to post by kro32


That's BS and you know it. Just because some reilgions zealot claims earth can hold 20 billion doesn't mean we should try it. I'm with the op on this one, we DESERPATLY need population control, we control populations of every other species, why not our own?

I don't mean killing innocent because simple minds can only bring that up as an example. Instead limit births. Like birth control becomes mandatory, genetically inbred are not allowed to procreate, that dumbs down the species.

Anyway, this is something the UN needs to look in but we all know they won't, they stopped caring about real issues.

reply to post by undo


That's exactly my point, some people rather see the world burn then be happy and living in space.

Some Christians have even made it against their religion to talk about space, why must religions demand for loyalty? Like that's #ed, believe in what I believe or I'll kill you. There is no logic in that.

I'm hoping for the future, one where I go in space, it has always been home to me, and we must explore our home. Or else what good are we?

You know, I've never given much thought about actual space communities. You have enlightened me to a new possibility. Makes a lot of sense. Almost all of our debt (this is my guess, I'll research it more thoroughly in a moment) in the U.S., and I'm sure plenty of other countries, comes from war. We act like children on a playground, we just replaced the playground with the Earth, and the sticks and stones with missiles and armies.
My god, most cruise missiles cost $500,000 + EACH. Why are we wasting our money on this stupid #?

Population control is not the answer (although mother nature might do the work for us), we just need to be better educated and give up the childish violence and move on to truly bettering our species.

To answer the problem of population, I think we should all start living by the good ol' adage:
work smarter, not harder.

it's not population control it's thinking about the future - try making 18 month birth control shots cheap and available and people will use them - try making it a crime of child endangerment to be poor and jobless and having 16 kids and people will stop being reckless.

I am a very charitable person but take this fact for instance - several years ago a study was done that 13 million dollars could save 660,000 Africans lives by purchasing and installing mosquito nets to stop malaria - that's about roughly 20 dollars per person - well hell let's spend the money right - but if there own lives arent worth 20 dollars to them why should we ? And what are those 660,000 poor people likely to do - create 1.2 million more poor hopeless people.

Why should we open the borders to mexico when poor, unemployed, sick and despondant people continue to pump out half a dozen kids each and then demand we care for them.

It's not that we don't have the resources to help people live, we do it's that at some point life simply won't be worth living if you have to work your ass off so that you can pay for everyone else that will require charity.

current population is not 9 billion, its 7 billion...

Text

Hello there ATS'ers,

First of this will be my first response as I have just registered with ATS. Next off I would like to mention to you that what I am about to tell you is easily researched so please be so polite as to familiarize yourself with the subject before throwing hate comments my way.
While I was at University I have spent a lot of time studying Ecology, Biology, Chemistry and other
Earth Sciences thus I would like to say IMHO that I have a decent grasp on the Issue. In order to show you please visit one of the projects I have published on the WWW as a result of the courses taken at Dalhousie University as it relates to this topic.

molecularevolutionproject2008.weebly.com...

Now to make my point about the issue of population control I will provide you with some sound facts about nature concepts;

1st Ecological Overshoot
2nd Buffer System
3rd Biological Displacement
4th Gradual vs Exponential Growth

Now to explain how these four concepts relate to humanities presence on the globe. In order to guide to the point I will be making I will start with concept # 4. The biggest problem humanity is facing is that we grow at an exponential rate of 2.5% I believe, which indicates a doubling time of our population of about 15-20 years. This type of growth has started during the industrial revolution in the early 19th century. It was the result of shifting population dynamics allowing for the growth of industrial and service complex. What I mean by that is prior to this event (industrial revolution) about 85% of humans were “employed in food production” the other 15% percent made up industry and services. However in the years following these numbers reversed allowing 15% of the human populous to produce enough food for the rest. This enabled sudden technological advance (look around you), by doing so allowing for more efficient production of food, medicine etc. This in turn has increased population growth substantially allowing for exponential growth rather than sustainable or gradual growth. Proper reasoning for that is presented on my website project.

Now to concept #3 Biological Displacement, what does this actually mean? In very simple terms for every bit of earth we occupy and use for our own needs we take something away from another species/ecosystem. We change water flow causing droughts, deforest the rainforest drastically affecting local eco- and climate systems, etc. What this means on a grand scale is that the assertion made earlier in this thread that we would eventually live in a world populated by us and farm animals is essentially correct.

Which brings us to concept #2 a Buffer system; you might wonder now what that is? Here we go as I was though in so many chemistry classes, a buffer system is a system which can withstand input into the system only showing minor change until the input reaches threshold levels. Once this level reached drastic change in the system will occur. This concept applies universally in chemistry as well as in biology. But what significance does this have to population control. Let me enlighten you! Due to our continuous need to maintain exponential growth of humanity our need of faster extraction of resources from the ecosystem Earth is equal to the input into the buffer system, however as above mentioned that will only last up to a certain degree.

Which finally brings us up to concept #1, and this is where it gets interesting. Ecological overshoot and the implications of this concept are hard to handle as they indicate a rather fast collapse of our population and were not just talking about a few million were talking about billions. So this is how it works:
One species goes into exponential growth (ie Humans) and by doing so is depleting the ecosystem it inhabits (biological displacement). This will last for a while until the ecosystem in question experiences a collapse of the food chain as a result of the pass down effects produced by the strong population growth of the species in question. When this collapse happens the population which grew exponential will collapse until it drops under the production rate of the ecosystem and levels itself again.
What does that mean are you asking, well let me enlighten you again. Through the past 200-300 years humans have spread around the globe making it productive for our needs. By doing so we have sped up extinction rates through several different processes explained on my website. Now we are at a point where we are occupying ever piece of productive land on earth barely able to sustain the human populous and its need. Why am I saying “barely able” well go to the WHO and look at the shrinking world food reserves.

This brings me to my conclusion about population control:
Nature will do it for us if we don't.

Thx for reading.

If you have any question concerning this I'll be happy to elaborate.

Always the question left unanswered is “how to we do it” … that’s usually left to the imagination of the reader.

There's a little under 7 billion people, not 9 billion. Just thought I'd drop that in there.

Originally posted by SirMike
Always the question left unanswered is “how to we do it” … that’s usually left to the imagination of the reader.

Very easy a two child policy, replace yourself with another. This maintains a stable population without growth.

Glad to see some sanity here.

If you think we need population control go off yourself and be part of your own solution.

Originally posted by criticalthought

Originally posted by SirMike
Always the question left unanswered is “how to we do it” … that’s usually left to the imagination of the reader.

Very easy a two child policy, replace yourself with another. This maintains a stable population without growth.

oh now its a 2 child policy is it? put into place by who? people that have 5+ kids?

Originally posted by criticalthought

Originally posted by SirMike
Always the question left unanswered is “how to we do it” … that’s usually left to the imagination of the reader.

Very easy a two child policy, replace yourself with another. This maintains a stable population without growth.

And if I refuse to comply?

Originally posted by Anthony1138
reply to post by undo

 

That's exactly my point, some people rather see the world burn then be happy and living in space.

Some Christians have even made it against their religion to talk about space, why must religions demand for loyalty? Like that's #ed, believe in what I believe or I'll kill you. There is no logic in that.

I'm hoping for the future, one where I go in space, it has always been home to me, and we must explore our home. Or else what good are we?

ah, i'm not seeing christians saying they are opposed to building things in space. where did you read this? sounds like just another thing to blame on christians when the fact is, the reason we aren't doing things like building in space is because people are starving. but they are starving because we are moving away from the idea of jobs, education and being paid for your labor, into having the government dictate everything including what we eat. a mature populace doesn't need government to monitor everything they do because they are educated enough to monitor themselves.