Overpopulation is a scam

Originally posted by Maslo
reply to post by John_Rodger_Cornman

 

With our current technology level we can free up more space to live. Even in those "unliveable" areas.

Repeat after me: "Overpopulation is not about space." .... "Overpopulation is not about space." .... "Overpopulation is not about space."

Overpopulation is about all the resources and our ability to utilise them. Modern technological society requires vast amounts of various resources. Do we (in the present, science fictions visions need not apply) have the necessary resources and also the ability to utilise them to sustainably sustain 7+ billion people at high living standard?

What if we spent billions to build several aquatic floating city-states?

Who is going to pay for it? And why, we have enough space.

edit on 19/2/12 by Maslo because: (no reason given)

edit on 19/2/12 by Maslo because: (no reason given)

With energy harvesting arrays in orbit we can create massive ammounts of reusable energy.
We can grow food(like Soy and Corn) horizonally instead of laterally.
We can use our waste to create fuel.

With the current techologies we have we can support many times the world's current population.

Overpopulation is a con.

reply to post by John_Rodger_Cornman


Yes, energy (also with breeder reactors) and food are one of the easier problems, there are massive amounts of energy available for us, the problem is just to tap it. Fuel is not so easy, I am skeptical about how much fuel can waste provide, but with vast amounts of energy we can synthetise hydrocarbons or ammonia fuel from air and water, so that can also be solved, assuming we solve the energy scarcity. Or we make our transportation fully electric so we wont need a lot of fuels.

What is not so easy are materials, mineral resources, ores, rare earths, inorganic phosphorus etc.. This is where I am skeptical. Massive recyclation programs may alleviate the shortages once the deposits start to run out. But the only long-term solution is economical asteroid mining. On a large scale. Which would be HARD, if even possible.

Originally posted by ignant
Actually overpopulation is just a matter of time as mortality rates drop and life expectancies rise (or remain same).

So, its far from a scam, but inevitable. The first argument was one of land mass percentage, which has little to do with each human's huge carbon footprint in this age and forward..

Check out population rate growth worldwide. In the 1960's the growth was 3.5% it is now 1.1% or so. The trend is for the growth rate to fall .1% every 5 years in the last decade. Africans are the only ones breeding, they are still increasing at 3% or so.

Humans unless something changes will never reach 10 billion people. Governments may need to start paying us to have children, just so they can have someone to vote for them.

Honestly, who wants to live in a planet with more people in it at this point?

There's no promise that with more people we'll all have our needs met.

You have more people feeling lost and lonely. It just magnifies our current issues.