Hi Jennifer,
Now that we have left global warming behind us (almost unanimous agreement that it is the result of human activity or rather over-activity, and that its here to stay unless something is done about it urgently) we can concentrate on the real issue, which is, as I believe over population both at the global and local levels.
It seems like the balancing forces of nature, biotic potential and environmental resistance (in the ecological sense), have lost their balancing character in favor of biotic potential. World population has been soaring in the past few centuries in spite of wars, diseases, epidemics and so forth. I have attached an illustrative reference, which shows how world population has increased over the years and how it will reach about 8 billion by 2020. The animation included is really gloomy (Australia does not seem to be effected).
I strongly believe that, unless something is done about human over-breeding very urgently (like having an international agreement on limiting populations on a rational basis) the whole world will be overpopulated in such a manner (like some countries already are!), that the developing countries shall not be able to reach a standard of living of the so called developed countries. Further, because of the continued depletion of resources, the standards of living in the developed countries will reach such levels that severe intra-specific competition (sometimes referred to as “innovation”) will be dominant in every aspect of our lives. Not to mention that present day international conflicts will be much more widespread. So far, we humans have been clever overcoming environmental resistance, it did not work out, let us try to be wise from now on (not wise guys!).
Regards, Haldun
This is the "butterfly effect" or "chaos theory". Eventually the human race will over populate the earth, thus using all of its natural resources, man made resources, all food sources and taking up all of its space. We have no natural predators to control our population increase and we continue to breed at exponential rates that will become dangerous to our species in less than 2000 years if we continue to follow our current trend.
We will be living in such cramped conditions that diseases will spread; we will be fighting each other for food or AS food and all life will die along with our planet. Our species needs to die back to allow the planet to re-heal and create more natural resources and try to learn from our mistakes. We are over evolving and becoming our own greatest threat and we must stop ourselves before it’s to late. Some might say I’m crazy amongst other things, but either we as a species have got to "cull" ourselves or the planet has to!
Uh! Today, Most Wanted Kids Recieve Only Lip Ser. 2 The T.L.C. Thing, 2 mention the millions of unwantedkids by the individuals who buy the crack etc, i.e. their unwanted "parents" eye call em the "I Luv U" Kids, Nut Mention The street Kids and sex slaves! the pt. is, even a casual obzurvur could & would tell anybody that cared enough to think a moment or 2 or a half hour to see the real difficulty is in unwanted, most unexpected also false petence kids actually pose, [Actuarial about 3: 1 +- ] to, shall I say, "to the life of the planet or as we know it anyway" we could go on an on an yet our own solution is the problem! know another "no brainer" write! Riight On! The Subjerk. Cu2 Ok.
Nitrogen fertilizer prices have hyperinflated 40% in 3 months to a world record high. This is a serious development for the world of food because it increases the % of the world's agricultural land that will be classified as marginal. Meaning the risk profile of trying to grow input intensive crops such as cereals (what the world is growing short of) will actually work to discourage production in these areas. Futher worsening food production prospects. I am a classic example. I have removed 120 hectares away from traditional cropping across to a tree farming system (sandalwood nuts) anticipating my marginal soils would become too risky to produce on. I will have to accept lower food output on the marginal soils but then again I don't have the cost of the input so dont need to yield as much. But a trend you'll continue to see and a bad development for those who like cheap food.
Hi Pinxi, yes I agree with you that a key issue in overpopulation is basic education and its availability. This is so true for the third world. I think the the UN should put more effort in that respect.
The intention in sharing my thoughts in Jennifer's web log was that the platform here being ecologically minded would take the course of putting ideas for sustainable populations throught the world starting with the first world.
My obsevations from world statistics is that unemployment in Europe is high, pollution levels are not as desired, and inflation is at a higher level than planed(by them), although there are no problems there with education and technology. It seems that having more exports and imports is not a solution (at least for the long run).
So could it be that some time in history, their population had jumped up to a level that is burdenning their ecosystems today (although their populations have been rather stable,at least for the past 50 years or so)? Given a particular ecosystem could we find a sustainable level of human population at a specified standard of confort and leasure for a life time? (dont any one out there think that I am aiming at a "utopia"! I am well aware of the laws of the jungles and there effects upon us).
I have a hunch that we could start a model by considering basic human needs from birth to death. We could quantify these needs say in terms of Kcal/capita/year, the efficiency with which we can provide this energy, and its availability. I believe that the key word from now on should be "sustainable population" rather than "abortion".