50 years of fighting population growth...

[GliderGuider]

Last edited Tue Oct 2, 2012, 09:23 AM - Edit history (1)

hasn't worked.


Data from the US Census Department via Negative Population Growth

The only way we can spin this situation as something positive is to play silly buggers with percentages. Population growth has been essentially linear at 75 million per year for the last 50 years.

We need fewer people, not more. We need less fossil fuel burning, not more.
But instead of getting what we need, we're getting what we apparently want: more people, more cars, more industry...

[pscot]

1. It's not so much what want

We're driven by biology. We have to reproduce. Individually we may chose not to, but in the mass, it's not a choice. It's an absolute imperative. Only war, famine and plague have kept our numbers in check, and we've successfully abolished at least 2 of 3.

[GliderGuider]

2. Yeah, I used the word "want" kind of loosely there.

I agree it's not "want" in the sense of us making a conscious, volitional choice. It's a stew of biological and neurological urges that bubbles up from our DNA and is then reinforced by our culture.

We may "think" we've abolished famine and plague, but they've both been held in temporary check by the same force: a glut of fossil fuels. The implications of that are unsettling.

[Nihil]

4. And that leads to the conclusion that it's a losing game ...

> Individually we may chose not to, but in the mass, it's not a choice.

Only the smart will chose not to (or, at least, to limit themselves).

The ignorant, the irresponsible, the wilfully stupid will continue to spawn
without perceiving the limits enforced by the edge of the petri dish.

[GliderGuider]

5. When you're talking about 7/8 of the population of the planet

"Normal" may be a more useful description than ignorant, irresponsible or willfully stupid. We are what we have always been: special animals. Our heritage as animals keeps us behaving in the ways we always have. A few of us sit up on the higher rocks watching the far horizon while the rest continue to eat peacefully below. Should we really be angry with them? What's the point?

Yes, it's a losing game. What should we do with this knowledge, knowing that we will inevitably be among its losers as well? I have no good answer, except for the vaguely Buddhist response of "In all matters, strive to do the right thing."

[pscot]

6. No matter how we rationalize it

we're still animals. You don't blame your dog for being a dog. He can't change his nature. Despite what our cortex tells us, neither can we. We have to reproduce. The green revolution of the last 40 years hasn't solved the problem. Quite the opposite. It has allowed us to to overshoot even further the carrying capacity of the planet. Most people still don't see any need to stop the madness. The great religions still urge their adherents to be fruitful and multiply. Modern capitalism is still based on the premise of endless growth. The Chinese, with total top-down control, have only managed to restrain population growth to .5%, not stop it entirely.. Even at that rate there will still be more than 2 billlion Chinese by 2150. The only effective constraints historically have been famine and disease. We haven't been there in a while, but it's familiar territory.

[GliderGuider]

3. I just spent part of the afternoon bashing the numbers on CO2, GDP and population

I wanted to find out what proportion of the rise in CO2 levels can reasonably be attributed to more mouths, and how much to higher consumption. I used GDP as a poor but accessible proxy for "consumption", with all data series normalized to 1980.

At a first glance it looks like 80% to 90% of the increase in CO2 is directly attributable to population increase, and only 10% to 20% to rising consumption. I'll keep digging.

[phantom power]

7. Speaking purely as a comuter scientist...

Changing O(e^x) into O(x) is a pretty big deal...




Still, given that there are already too many of us to sustain, linear growth is still too much growth.

[GliderGuider]

8. No argument from me.

The fact that we're producing more than a new France every year is distinctly unnerving.

[madokie]

9. You know

if fucking wasn't more popular than dying we wouldn't have this problem don't you

[GliderGuider]

10. Funny how Mother Nature arranged it that way, isn't it? nt