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Will Earth Expire By 2050?
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Jul 07, 2002 07:22 PM
from the check-the-due-date-on-the-card dept.
from the check-the-due-date-on-the-card dept.
_josh writes: "Will overconsumption force humanity off this planet in less than 50 years? It may sound sci-fi, but according to the WWF in this story at the Observer, it's entirely possible. Maybe now I can convince my brother not to buy that SUV ..." Take with as large a grain of salt as you think appropriate.
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WWF (Score:4, Funny)
WWF! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:WWF! (Score:3, Funny)
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Earth community when the WWF confirmed that the Earth will be uninhabitable by 2050. Coming on the heels of a recent National Academy of Sciences report that the average temperature has risen yet again, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The Earth is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Galaxy-Wide species diversity test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict Earth's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Earth faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Earth because Earth is dying. Things are looking very bad for Earth. As many of us are already aware, Earth continues to lose species. Extinction flows like a river of blood.
The rainforest habitats are the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of their area. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time species black rhino and tiger only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Earth is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Earth leader Bush states that there are 7000 species left. How many mammals are there? Let's see. The number of mammal versus amphibian posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 mammal species. Rainforest reptile posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of amphibian posts. Therefore there are about 700 rainforest reptiles. A recent article put mammals at about 80 percent of the species market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 mammal species. This is consistent with the number of mammal Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of the rainforests, abysmal slash and burn agriculture, the drug war and so on, Columbian rainforests went out of business and was taken over by Brazilian rainforests who sell another troubled rainforests to international logging interests. Now Thai forests are also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Earth has steadily declined in wilderness and species. Earth is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Earth is to survive at all it will be among human dilettante dabblers. Earth continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Earth is dead.
Flamebait? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
You consumption weenies better watch out! (Score:4, Funny)
Another option? (Score:5, Insightful)
The report offers a vivid warning that either people curb their extravagant lifestyles or risk leaving the onus on scientists to locate another planet that can sustain human life. Since this is unlikely to happen, the only option is to cut consumption now.
Okay, does this strike anyone as leaving out the most likely option? It's highly unlikely we'll massively change our ways. It's also highly unlikely that we'll colonize other planets in the next 50 years.
What's that leave? Simple! Massive resource wars! Woohoo!
It just amazes me that the whole article ignores the inevitable outcome... we'll all fight over dwindling resources, thus thinning the population down to sustainable levels.
Re:Another option? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Another option? (Score:5, Insightful)
This reminds me of an econ assignment in high school that I "failed". We were given a set number of resource units, and told to distribute them throughout the town. Most people gave food to everyone, TVs to most everyone, and luxury cars to a few. I gave two or three luxury cars and TVs to a few people, and let something like a third of the town starve to death.
I defended my homework as a more realistic portrait of the world than any of my neo-socialist classmates, but I still failed since my solution wasn't "nice". So sad...
Parent
Committed to education (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Another option? (Score:5, Insightful)
*evil grin* - well-done! (I'd have tried to set up an auction system within the confines of the game. Them that has, buys. Them that can't buy, starves, leaving more for the rest of us! ;-)
In History class in high school, we had a teacher who broke us up into groups to play "Diplomacy", two moves a day, for a week. I started out as Britain - good mobility, but horrible logistical problems.
First move: Tell the French I won't take the English Channel if they don't, because Germany's the real enemy.
Actual move: Take the Channel, of course.
France to teacher: "That wasn't fair!"
Me to teacher: "Hey, Fog of War, these things happen, right?"
Teacher to class: (Brief explanation of the object lesson - things like this might be accidents, but might not be, and it's up to the players to judge their risks accordingly when they decide whom to trust.)
Second move: Apologize profusely to France in private and to players I see France hanging around. Blame the Germans for tricking me into thinking he was going to go after the Channel despite our agreement not to. Suggest he take North Africa while I withdraw from the Channel and head towards Denmark.
Actual move: Figure he's fallen for it again, and invade France. Yup, he fell for it again. Oldest trick in the "Diplomacy" playbook.
France to teacher: "That's not fair!"
Me to teacher: "Napoleon said God was on the side with the greatest battalions. Voltaire disagreed and said that God wasn't on the side with the largest battalions, but with the best shots. Thanks to my opponent not listening to his generals or his philosophers, now I have both."
Teacher to class: "Some of you weren't paying attention last turn. 'Fair' is determined by who can do what, to whom, when, and with how much materiel. [...and with that, he had an easy segue into WW2 history and Barbarossa...]"
The game got easier from there. By the end of the week, over half of Europe was mine. 2/3 of the class was at war with me and losing badly due to infighting amongst themselves, and the other 1/3 had been eliminated.
> I defended my homework as a more realistic portrait of the world than any of my neo-socialist classmates, but I still failed since my solution wasn't "nice". So sad...
Bummer about your econ teacher. I was lucky enough to have a cool enough History teacher that I got an "A" for my treachery :-)
Parent
Re:Another option? (Score:5, Funny)
My econ teacher (referenced above) was also my government teacher. We had a Mock Congress. I chose to be a Republican after losing a week-long fight to be a Libertarian ("No, we're only doing the two real parties", she says).
So I'm the Senate Minority Leader, with 22 Republicans (this is Northern California). I manage to get my friend elected as the Senate President Pro-Temp, primarily by telling all the Democrats I knew that I would *hate* for her to get elected - so they voted for her.
She then turns around, and to be "fair", gives the Republicans HALF of the committee chairs. Not none, like in real life, or even 20% as a fair ratio, but 50%! As you can imagine, the committee chairs killed every single Democratic bill.
When we got to the floor, I used every trick in the book to kill bills. I made sure my two whips were the student body leader and the football team captain and suddenly Democrats were defecting left and right. I even pulled off a fillibuster.
End result: Two bills passed that Senate. And they were both Republican bills. That's with 22 out of 100 members... pretty darn successful.
And my grade? I got a D. Why? Because, in the words of the teacher, "I wasn't being cooperative and participating in a constructive manner.."
I was the MINORITY leader!! Since when am I supposed to be cooperative?!?!?!
Anyways, sorry for the long rant, but some of these teachers... some of them are great, but others just need to learn about the real world before trying to teach it to others.
Parent
Re:Another option? (Score:4, Insightful)
If a turn lasts an hour, you'll spend 40-50 minutes talking strategy with your enemies and/or allies. (i.e. doing "diplomacy" in the real-world sense of the word). This is the meaty (and the fun) part of the game.
Then you write down your orders for your troops, and everyone reveals their orders at once (usually to cries of "you bastards!", "oops!", or both) When the orders are unsealed, it's deterministic - no random elements; things "work" or "don't work" based on whether you've been able to persuade your allies to go along with your plan, or misled your adversaries into traps.
Real-world example - History of WW2/Europe written as though it were a game of "Diplomacy":
Thankfully, all three leaders in '45 were smart enough to realize the difference between bits of wood on a cardboard map and 50 million dead (on all sides) plus another 20-30 million to "finish the game".
(And also thankfully, when you're playing Diplomacy, it is just bits of wood on a cardboard map, so you can just "go for world domination" with a clean conscience :-)
Parent
Re:Another option? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Another option? (Score:3, Interesting)
The food is there, and will continue to be there. Oil, coal, wood (fuel & construction) and clean, fresh water are where the shortages will be. There are going to be large problems, especially as poorer and less stable nations become nuclear powers. It's going to be an interesting century- maybe more so than the last.
Re:Another option? (Score:5, Informative)
You better go talk to some small farmers, because they see hardly any of that cash. It actually ends up in the hands of large factory farmers, etc. more than it ends up in the hands of small local farmers. Not enough people know this, and believe what you just said, which is why the folks in DC vote for these subsidies. They win votes, and distribute pork to their already wealthy buddies. They do nothing for small farmers.
Parent
Re:Another option? (Score:3, Insightful)
it is unlikely (Score:3, Insightful)
Putting people in space will take alot of resources, and not gain us much. How much fuel would it take to bring back a useful amount of grain from Mars? The article really doesn't give justification for this claim.
They fail to note that we don't need to only use farms, in the conservative sense. If things really get that bad, there will be a massive switch to hydroponics, which would yield a huge yield per unit land. Want meat? It isn't hard to raise huge numbers of cattle and pigs in stalls that are the same size as the animals. It is considered inhumane (and illegal in the US) now, but if mass starvation is the alternative I think this will change very quick. To say that the surface of the earth cannot support us in 50 years is stupid.
This reminds me of an article that said that at the current rate of consumption, the plants chocolate comes from will be extinct by (i think) 2008. Well duh. Does that mean that it really will become extinct? No, it means we will make plant more to match the increasing rate of consumption. As I said above, space isn't close to being a limiting factor.
Another thing; it is alot easier and cheaper to mow down civilians than to set up farms on mars. Do you really doubt places like China would hesitate if they felt it was necessary?
That said, I don't thing that things like 'resource wars' will come about anytime soon (bigger than the current ones I mean; we already have had wars in the middle east over resources). People will just switch to more costly but higher yield/more efficient alternatives. It is cheaper to do so than to start a war or randomly kill people.
2 Words... "Soylent Green" (Score:4, Funny)
Come on, we all know what's going to happen, and there's even been a documentary about it.
Two words for ya... Soylent Green. [scifi.com]
Parent
World Wrestling Foundation? (Score:3, Informative)
I, for one, have -never- heard of the World Wildlife Fund before this, and I'm sure there are others like me, who thought why the fsck are we believe the World Wrestling Foundation these days?
Re:World Wrestling Foundation? (Score:5, Funny)
~jeff
Parent
Re:World Wrestling Foundation? (Score:5, Funny)
Which is PRECISELY why I haven't cleaned out my fridge in over 3 years... I'm just trying to do my part for the cause!
Parent
How much salt? (Score:5, Funny)
I'd do that, except with the amount of salt which would be appropriate, the world would likely run out of salt long before 2050.
Re:How much salt? (Score:5, Funny)
It's a shame that most environmental groups that once were (at least somewhat) legitimate are now a bunch of ideologically driven radicals. WWF did some useful work in the 70s & 80s. Now they're reduced to publishing this kind of tripe. They especially should know better.
As much of the report's methodology as can be gleaned from the Observer article seems inherently flawed. Comparing wildlife populations from only 1970 to today is disingenuous at best, deliberately misleading at worst. Some animal populations have surely declined, but others have increased. More importantly, due in part to WWF's earlier work, some animal populations were drastically declining, and have since increased or stabilized since 1970.
People have been predicting the imminent demise of the Earth for as long as there have been people. One of the most famous this century was Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb in 1968. He predicted massive, worldwide food shortages and starvation within 30 years. Unfortunately (for him at least) this obviously didn't happen, but somehow he still has funding and a faithful following, Al Gore among them.
Anyone who makes such broad, sweeping predictions as Ehrlich, or WWF in this report, either has an ulterior motive, or smokes a lot of dope.
Parent
Consider the WWF's motivation (Score:5, Insightful)
However, when reading this, keep in mind that the WWF subsists on donations from people interested in saving the environment. As such, the WWF's existence is dependent upon people being concerned about the state and future of the planet's environment. If they release a report saying "the environment's future is looking better," then donations will decrease. So of course anything they're going to release publicly will be about how the environment is deteriorating and more donations are needed to help things out.
I don't think this necessarily invalidates their conclusions, but it certainly is germane to consider the motivations of the issuer when evaluating a report.
In a related story... (Score:4, Interesting)
WWF = World Wildlife Fund (Score:3, Informative)
I also believe their new slogan is "Get the 'F' out."
the short answer: no (Score:3, Insightful)
As the lyrics to an In Flames song goes:
Species come and species go, but the Earth stands forever fast
Past predictions were all wrong, why believe this? (Score:5, Informative)
And of course Thomas Malthus predicted imminent mass starvation in the early 1800s.
In the 1970s, they predicted:
"The world as we know it will likely be ruined before the year 2000
and the reason for this will be its inhabitants' failure to comprehend
two facts. These facts are (1) World food production cannot keep pace
with the galloping growth of population. (2) 'Family planning' cannot
and will not, in the foreseeable future, check this runaway growth."
"Agricultural experts state that a tripling of the food
supply of the world will be necessary in the next 30
years or so, if the 6 or 7 billion people who may be
alive in the year 2000 are to be adequately fed.
Theoretically such an increase might be possible, but it
is becoming increasingly clear that it is totally
impossible in practice."
Except, here we are in 2002 and those 6 or 7 billion people are eating better than any of their ancestors in all of human history, even in the poorest countries.
For more info, see The Ultimate Resource [juliansimon.org] by Julian Simon [juliansimon.org], and The Skeptical Environmentalist [cambridge.org] by Bjorn Lomborg [lomborg.com].
AMEN!! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with the alarmists who think we'll run out of oil are only considering the idea that the last deposits of oil will be in the Persian Gulf.
How wrong they are! Considering the following factors of the last 12 years:
1. The oilfields of the former Soviet Union are now being exploited on a very large scale by Western oil companies. There are massive oilfields in Siberia and Kazakhstan have barely been touched, not to mention we haven't even begun to exploit the Caspian Sea oilfields on a large scale.
2. China has large oilfields in Xinjiang Province that haven't been exploited due to transportation issues.
3. Afghanistan is potentially sitting on top of a big oilfield.
4. The Gulf of Mexico--according to British Petroleum engineers--have an amazingly large amount of oil yet to be exploited. The only reason why we haven't gotten more is the high expense of drilling for oil well into the Gulf of Mexico.
5. Canada has huge tracts of oil tar sands that could yield enough oil to equal all of the Persian Gulf states combined.
6. The Saudis are only concentrating their oil production on the oilfields near the Persian Gulf, not yet exploiting oilfields in other parts of the country. Tests by ARAMCO engineers have shown there are large oil deposits in the southern part of Saudi Arabia (called the Empty Quarter), but the Saudis have yet to tap these oilfields.
As for the issue of food production, the very rapid development of farm machinery, agricultural chemicals and better means to store and transport food has increased the amount and variety of food available to everyone on a scale that is mind-boggling. Think about it: compare what is available at your local food market in 1902 versus 2002, and you can eat foodstuffs today from literally all over the world.
In short, the alarmists don't know what they're talking about--a classic case of junk science.
Parent
Liberal's Delimma... (Score:4, Insightful)
About 15 years ago I remember the "Skeptical Environmentalists" saying that the temperature of the earth won't even go up one degree by 2050. Well. It appears as if they are wrong. In some parts (the artic regions) we are anywhere from 4 to 7 degrees warmer. As I remember, it may have even been Julian who made these predictions (or who re-quoted them).
It's clear that we are seeing an acceleration in global warmth which is going to dramatically change our climate (and is doing so as we speak). What are you going to do about it? Close your eyes and say that we humans will adapt? Do you have that much faith in technology... I don't. How can you be sure it doesn't warm even faster?
I don't know about you, but I'd rather err on the "conservative" side of things and take action now rather than wait till it becomes a crisis. No?
Parent
No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting they compare the United States' use of resources to that of Burundi. This comparison is truly startling. For those who enjoy startling statistics, allow me to offer a few others:
The population of Burundi is expanding at three times the rate of the United States. The percentage of people in Burundi infected with HIV/AIDS is 20 times that of the United States. The average lifespan in Burundi is 31 years shorter than that of a person living in the United States. The literacy rate of Burundi is 35%. 1 in 3000 people have Internet access. (Statistics courtesy of CIA World Factbook).
Are you still interested in reducing your resource consumption by a factor of 24? Personally, I'm not interested in selling my pickup, as I don't think it has any connection to the fact that the number of black rhinos has fallen from 65,000 to 3,100. Considering that my "extravagant lifestyle" doesn't involve poaching, I don't think I can help.
As an aside, this article brings one more thing to mind: every environmentalist needs to understand that he is not "saving the Earth." He is only saving himself and his descendants. The Earth will recover from every incosiderate act man has done to it in the blink of an eye (relative to its lifetime), and graciously replace us with other species if we destroy our way of life.
And Timothy, you might want to encourage your brother to go ahead and buy that new SUV. If his current car is more than five years old, that new SUV will be adding less pollution to the atmosphere.
Re:No. (Score:3, Interesting)
Populations, however, do not reach the line by steadily growing in number and tapering off, treating the carrying capacity as an asymptote. Think of the line as a horizontal line on a graph, the horizontal axis representing time, the virtical representing population. Population grows with an exponential function until it overshoots the carrying capacity, then it starts to die off until it is below the capacity. The population level oscillates around this level with a logarithmic function, looking somewhat similar to a sine wave, and as time goes to infinity, the oscillations become smaller and closer to the carrying capacity.
This is a fact of nature. It happens with mice, antelope, fish, bacteria, and apes. Why would people think it wouldn't happen to humans? Sorry, creation scientists, we're animals too, and though we use different resources, we're not immune to laws of nature because of divine providence.
Some interesting things to note: The carrying capacity is not always constant, it changes, for example, over seasons. More animals die off in winter because of this function.
Also, animals that take better care of their young grow the population graph somewhat slower - as it takes time to care for and train an offspring, you produce less offspring. Introduce a pair of mice to a situation where they are far below the carrying capacity of the environment, and they will reproduce extremely rapidly, overshooting the line by quite a lot.
But, anyway, the long and short of this is that one, people have been predicting this for years, since at least the 50's. It hasn't happened yet. And so what if it does? It's a fact of nature. Live goes on, or the cycle of life does. I am unconcerned.
My girlfriend is an animal science major, pre vet. We have some interesting conversations.
~Will
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
Examples? How about fish in Canada. [columbia.edu] Or oil. Or whales. Or clean air. Or clean water.
Fish stocks in many parts of the North sea are so depleted as to be almost clean. Yet fishing boats are still subsidised to go out and fish what little is left.
Oil supplies are down to the point where serious proposals are made to mine for shale-oil [chemlink.com.au] -- basically oil-soaked dirt.
Calling 'But they have cried wolf before!', and ignoring the evidence is madness.
Parent
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
I disagree. They REALLY aren't that nice, they handle like a cow, they accelerate like a brick wall, they stop like a falling piano, and they soak up gasoline like a sponge. Does that make them unuseful? No. Not at all. Granted, they're VERY useful if you tow a boat. Most people don't have boats. SOME of them have wonderful offroad capabilities, most don't. Esspecially not the really big luxury variety, which tend to do the worst off of the road. They only win awards for reasons like space for fitting your kids and groceries or number of televisions for the passengers, and not stuff like ground clearance or horsepower at the wheels. They can't be winning awards for those things, because if they WERE then the ones that would be winning you will strangely find are the ones that seem the least luxurious (the ones that have been around the longest).
You see, you say "GET THE SUV" assuming everyone is going to use it the way you do. Here's a bit of reality that I'm going to stick in your eye like a hot stick sharped to a point. ALMOST NOBODY will use it the way you do. Almost everyone WILL use it as an Urban Assult Vehicle.
I live in an area where people actually NEED these kinds of vehicles, and they STILL treat them like minivans.
It makes me sick right up until I see that one with 6 feet of ground clearance, 4 foot tall tires, a ladder to climb into the cabin, and an inch of mud all over the entire thing. Then I can't help but smile.
Parent
Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
We passed by at least 5 SUVs of the type that are made and marketed to those who never take it on a rougeher road than their driveway, all stuck helpless in the snow while our fucking MINIVAN was having no problems.
Tim
Parent
Different Solutions to the same problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The Chinese want to go to the Moon [slashdot.org].
And the U.S., in classic Bush-family fashion, wants to go to Iraq. The casualties on both sides, combined with whatever nearby countries Hussein manages to hit with his chemical/biological weapons should allow us to stay on Earth until at least 2055.
The rest of the world seems more or less content that we will not be forced off the planet. Those who can't find food won't be able to eat and balance will be maintained.
some salt, some truth (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether it's 50 years or 500, we are currently using resources faster than they are replenished. And the U.S. does consume a disproportionate amount of the resources in the world.
100% accurate or not, reports like this aren't going to change the way the U.S. lives -- we're too comfortable in our lifestyles to make big changes. It's going to take some catastrophic change that impacts the U.S. directly to get us to wake up. Unfortunately it's developing countries which are going to feel those changes first.
Re:some salt, some truth (Score:4, Interesting)
Some sample problems:
- Resources are not constant. Some replenish themselves. The amount of wheat that I consume is a virtually irrelevent point, because that amount of wheat can be grown again. Much the same goes for many other products, such as wood and any chemical that can be produced by a lifeform.
- Resources are not a constant. Resources can be recycled, re-used, and re-allocated. We may not be doing the best job of this... or are we doing such a horrid job? The true answer is difficult to ascertain and cannot be done with such a limited analysis.
- Resources are not constant. Improved extraction and refining techniques effectively increase the amount of any given resource that can be extracted from the Earth. Linear analysis can not correctly predict this. Remember how we were supposed to run out of oil by 19x0? Well, we did, we just found more. It may not be reasonable to suppose an infinite supply exists, but again, it's not reasonable to project linearly, either. There may be enough to last us two hundred years, assuming the population growth is slowing as it seems to be in some ways. Or there may not be enough, in which case the economy will throw significant non-linearities into the equation as it raises the price of oil. Linear analysis can not correctly predict this.
- Resources are not constant. Any space activity in the next few decades completely throws everything off. More realistically, any new refining technique increases resources, any new genetic engineering technique increases resources, any new drilling technique or location technique or recycling technique increases resources. As technology improves, so does efficiency, the moreso if anybody cared. Linear analysis can not correctly predict this.
- As a consequence of much of the above, resources are created, not found. Oil no longer wells up out of the ground, and all the easy resources are long gone. The US may use a 'disproportionate' share, but by being the technology leader, it also produces a vastly disproportionate share of the world's resources, both directly and indirectly. Better oil-finding technique benefit many people, not just the US, and the agricultural research done in the US benefits Third World countries astoundingly. Arithmetic analysis does not lead to understanding this issue. Linear analysis can not correctly predict the effects of this.
It's going to take some catastrophic change that impacts the U.S. directly to get us to wake up.We have woken up. Personally, I worry more about everybody's use of linear or God help us all, constant projection techniques in understanding these phenomena. We'll stupid ourselves into the cosmic grave yet...
Parent
Re:some salt, some truth (Score:5, Insightful)
We aren't sitting in the dark. Alternative sources of light were developed. The distillation of Kerosene from Petroleum turned worthless black goo into a valued resource. The development of Coal gas created a new source of lighting, gas lights that were better than the oil lamps and used a resource that was far more plentiful than Whales. Natural Gas replaced Coal gas, turning a hazzardous substance that was found while looking for oil into a resource. The electric light turned waterfalls into a resource that could be used for lighting.
Before these developments Petroleum, Natural Gas, and Waterfalls were NOT resources. The first two were natural hazzards that decreased the value of land that they were found on, and the last decreased the value of rivers as transportation sources.
This is nothing new. In the Stone age Flint was the prefered material to make tools out of. Copper Ore was a worthless rock that didn't have the properity of flaking evenly that was needed to make tools. The discovery of smelting turned those worthless greenish rocks into a resource and averted a tool shortage caused by flint being a finate resource.
Today having a full landfill on your properity is NOT viewed as a resource. It's a nucance that decreases the value of the land. That landfill may be like having oil on your land in 1850. New technology may transform that worthless land full of garbage into a new resource.
Parent
Hmmm... perhaps a bit overblown. (Score:3, Interesting)
1) The highest per-capita consumption occurs in the first world. (see below)
2) The population of the first world is rapidly shrinking, and will amount to a small fraction of the total world population by 2050. (According to the UN. See this link [bbc.co.uk] for details.)
3) By 2050, even the 3rd world population is expected to reach equilibrium, so that the entire world population will actually begin to decline.
Taken together, it seems unlikely to me that the conditions stated by the WWF may actually come about, unless the 3rd world population increases its consumption dramatically, or the UN study is substantially incorrect. This is because, even though the world population is expected to increase from 6 billion to 9 billion by 2050, that additional growth will occur almost exclusively outside of Western nations. Significantly, the population of the first world will actually diminish. Now, the report itself states
"America's consumption 'footprint' is 12.2 hectares per head of population compared to the UK's 6.29ha while Western Europe as a whole stands at 6.28ha. In Ethiopia the figure is 2ha, falling to just half a hectare for Burundi, the country that consumes least resources."
So if indeed the third world consumes a large factor (an order of magnitude!) less "footprint" than the Western nations, it would seem to me that the world might actually be better off by 2050 : they are, quite simply, more efficient at using existing resources.
Bob
Tragedy of the commons (Score:3, Informative)
Aaaah, a beautiful example of the 'tragedy of the commons [dieoff.org]'.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that globalisation et al are wrong, as long as you take *all* aspects of it, not only the short-term ones like make-money-fast and the-next-generation-will-solve-this. If you go for a certain approach, take everything including the messy parts, not only the easy gains.
Take it with a grain of salt (Score:5, Interesting)
Only catch is, each person would have 12 cubic feet, or six feet by two feet by one foot. Now imagine that you're at the bottom of the cube.
What is overlooked time and time again in the "you can fit x people into ____" argument is that just because you can fit a population into an area doesn't mean that area can support it. The most common example is Texas, at least in America. But what about arable land? As for space, let's say people will be transplanted to Mars by 2030. The world population will be 8.1 billion by then (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldpop.html). In order to maintain current population levels, we would have to devise methods to transplant 2 billion people within thirty years. At a round trip of two years to get to Mars at the optimal revolution of the planets around the sun, with 50,000 people making the trip each time, you would need to make 40,000 trips before you could transplant 2 billion people, over the course of 80,000 years, at which point you might see H.G. Wells and his time machine where London once was.
What's my point? Look for answers close to home. Keeping your head in the clouds can be fun, but not always productive. Rather than trying to find solutions to the effects of overpopulation, one should try to find solutions to the causes of overpopulation.
For those interested, let's say we started sending people now and wanted to make sure we were at 6 billion people in 2030; the number of trips that could be made is 15, at 133 million people per trip. The maximum number of people to send at today's capability per ship is about ten. That's 13 million ships being sent every two years, plus enough food and water to feed people for the ten to twenty years it would take to allow for food to be grown on Mars. Put the cost of sending each ship at 20 billion dollars (http://www.miami.com/mld/miami/news/world/360734
Who Cares? The world will end in 2038 anyway (Score:3, Funny)
Economics (Score:3, Insightful)
You can bet that once prices start to rise to check consumption, the government will step in "in the name of the people" and fix prices.
Hell, it happened in the 1970's with Nixon's price controls on gas and gave us long lines at the pump and gas shortages.
The truth is that, when the market gives people economic information they don't like, they try to use the political process to make it go away instead of making changes in their habits.
When prices go up, instead of conserving, they'll bitch about those "evil greedy corporations." Hey, just like on Slashdot. The fact is, people don't change unless it hits them in the wallet, and they'll do everything they can to stop that from happening.
If the market suggests they be paid less for their out-dated skills because of less demand, they'll blame someone else. It happens over and over. People want it all for nothing.
I think what will happen ultimately is that the democratic process will force us all to drown together.
Figured out why .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of helping the "third world" countries with infrastructure, stable government, and ways NOT to pollute, they want to take the "first world" countries and take wealth away from them and give it to the poorer countries (of course, they'll help do the redistribution ... one for you, one for me)
Go ahead and mod me down for this, because it is a different angle on this type of story.
The Population Bomb (Score:3, Informative)
-Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, 1968
There's a long history of vastly misguided prophets of doom by now- starting with Malthus, I guess, but the most revealing example is probably Paul Ehrlich, who's been writing books since the sixties (The Population Bomb, The Population Explosion, etc.) about how the world will be swamped by an exploding population and run out of resources, all in the (ever-postponed) near future. In the sixties he thought that we'd be starving in the seventies, and that Great Britain would no longer exist by the nineties. I don't know what he thinks now, but he's still writing along the same lines.
Ehrlich also famously made a bet with economist Julian Simon, in 1980, that five raw materials picked by Ehrlich would be more expensive (because they would be rarer, per capita) ten years later. In 1990 Ehrlich was wrong on every pick.
An awful lot of science fiction has been written along those lines, as well: Disch's 334, Harrison's Make Room, Make Room (filmed as Soylent Green). But in the real world, I'm not too worried. We may kill off all the black rhinos, white rhinos, sumatran rhinos.... And that would be unfortunate, but it would not constitute a threat to human survival.
Also, incidentally, shipping people to other planets is not likely to be an effective way of dealing with excess population. Can you imagine the amount of chemical fuel involved in lifting just the quarter-million people born every day away from the earth?
Re:Bah... (Score:5, Funny)
"It's a self correcting system...The Planet is fine.....The PEOPLE are fucked!"
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Re:predictions... (Score:3, Informative)
WWF is another environmentalist group that takes turns with others in releasing "impending disaster" type predictions. This is still somewhat "hip" but I get the feeling that even the media is getting a little tired of the gloom-and-doom-oops-we-were-wrong-again.
The good news is that, for the most part, no-one really listens to these fools. They see the panda logo, hear their spew, and then say "Oh, that's too bad" and buy an SUV. Good! That's about the level of importance that should be attached to their rhetoric.
Re:denying the statistics, preaching to the choir (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly, with only 1/3 of the earth land, and even less than that actually habitable, I think the first thing we'd run out of given enough technological innovation is a place to stand.
What will happen will be this - eventually we will run out of oil... rather - the cost of getting more oil out of the earth will outweigh the value of the barrel of oil you could extract. I hope fervently for this day, since while everyone equates this with disaster, this will solve the vast majority of our problems. This will stop the pollution that makes me wheeze. Nuclear waste is amazingly insignificant when compared with burning coal and oil. Just build a big lead thing, deposit the (amazingly, amazingly small) 30,000 tons/year, and keep it around for a thousand years, by which I'm sure some bright boy will have developed a way to use electricity to power am effecient railgun, and fire it off into space a bit at a time. Then just keep on keeping on until we either run out of room to stand, or run out of material to power a nuclear power plant. By that time (upsettingly far in the future) well, someone else can come up with another damn idea.
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Re:All the 'used' resources are still here (Score:5, Interesting)
But hold on, how are you going to build them if all the energy you need for the launch vehicles has been used up already?
This is a bootstrapping problem. You have to invest energy to get more. If you don't have the initial amount of energy to invest, then you're stuck.
If we burn all our fossil fuels in SUVs etc., and not in building the solar power stations, that's it, game over.
We live in a unique period in history. We can either invest the energy we have easily available at the moment to ensure a large future supply - and perhaps have some generations of hardship while that's happening - or we can go on using up the local resources living a good life, and sealing the fate of future generations. This takes conscious planning, and is not something that a blind 'market solution' is capable of, because that always works on a much shorter timescale.
I don't see anyone taking this long view and doing something about it, so by 2050, we may be stuck on this planet forever.
Now that's a believable solution to the Fermi Paradox.
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