Earth Officially Home To 7 Billion Humans 473
New submitter arcite writes "It's official: planet Earth is now home to over seven billion ugly-bags-of-mostly-water (otherwise known as humans). We're adding ten thousand new humans every hour, or one billion every nine years. Head over to 7 Billion Actions (put together by the UN with the help of SAP) and check out the population map data. Short of adopting a strict diet of Soylent Green, what viable solutions will enable us to survive on this increasingly crowded pale blue dot? What will the role of technology be in supporting this many people?"
Wow... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
No, in the long term population expansion will cease. The per capita birth rate in nearly every nation on earth is falling. In some cases (Europe, Japan and the non Hispanic parts of the US) below 2 children per woman. Human population will likely plateau around 10 billion and stay there.
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you forgot the 1 child per family china, and the majority of those families are having males. More Males mean less kids.
In 40-50 years china's population will start to contract massively.
compare with the Western world which is having less kids later in their lives. means that the separation between generations is increasing.
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you forgot the 1 child per family china, and the majority of those families are having males. More Males mean less kids.
In 40-50 years china's population will start to contract massively.
compare with the Western world which is having less kids later in their lives. means that the separation between generations is increasing.
Not to mention the fact that resource wars and wars caused by having too many unattached men on the planet are likely to take care of some of the population...
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With world population set to rise to 10 billion, the addition of oil and gas expected to be recovered and burned from tar sands and fracking, at the current rate of carbon burn per individual accounting for the differential rate of carbon burning and assuming that the balance of present growth trends will not widely deviate from their present geographical distribution, the planet will be to warm to support life in as little as 350 years, except for the most thermophilic bacteria.
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I just realized - those numbers actually indicate a very linear increase (though I doubt this will be true in the long-term) ;-)
Right. It used to be exponential, now it's more linear, and if current second-order trends continue, it will eventually halt and start to backslide. Already has in many developed nations.
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oblig.
"The most important video you'll ever see"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY [youtube.com]
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I am one in a million and there are 7,000 people exactly like me.
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find them and start a being Abstrackt (609015) club !
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>>but the rate of acceleration itself is picking up in a scary way.
The UN population estimates show the earth peaking in about 40-50 years and then declining after that.
Of course, standard disclaimers about trying to predict the future always apply.
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Actually, the growth rate has been slowing for the last 50 years or so.
Right now, we're looking at only 1.5% growth rate per year, as opposed to the 2% gorwth rate we were seeing in the 60's....
Guaranteed solution (Score:3)
This is only one solution to population control that is 100% successful -- affluence. Only poor people can afford to have kids. Rich people don't need them.
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Affluence means increased consumption. Increased consumption - ie, what the land can actually maintain - is the only 'real' problem, here (long term).
You need poor people for the affluent to consume. (How do you think the West has maintained its charade? By outsourcing their poverty to the 3rd world.)
When you figure out that the moon is a valuable mineral-rich oil grape, you can disregard my post. :)
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Plus, without poor people, how are the rich going to know they're rich?
I guarantee, if everyone but the top 1% by wealth suddenly disappeared, the first thing that would happen is that the wealth of 99% of the people who are left would very quickly start to decline.
It's not enough to be wealthy. There have to be sufficient numbers of poor people around to remind you how well-off you are.
I believe something happened to the human race in the past half-century.
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You miss my point. Yes it's better than the 13th century, but the US now has less economic mobility than any of the EU countries, for example, or Japan, or any current developed country.
Economic mobility is part of the myth of American Exceptionalism. Except it's a lie. The economic mobility in the US is bad and getting worse.
Re:Guaranteed solution (Score:4, Informative)
Here you go ShakaUVM - Some data to support my assertion from that well-known Socialist organization, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston [frb.org]. I know that may not be as authoritative as the Wikipedia entry that you provided so triumphantly, ShakaUVM, but it's probably a little more reliable since it's less likely to have been edit-bombed by a bunch of interns at the American Enterprise Institute trying to work off that grant from the Koch Foundation.
For those of you who don't want to clickthrough and download a PDF file from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's website, the paper is called Trends in U.S. Family Income Mobility, 1967 - 2004. I'll give you a little taste from the abstract:
I added emphasis to the most important part because ShakaUVM tends to be a little thick. He likes to rely on Wikipedia when some really good primary sources are very easy to find.
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This is only one solution to population control that is 100% successful -- affluence. Only poor people can afford to have kids. Rich people don't need them.
I think you got it backwards, in many countries poor people can't afford to not have many kids because if they don't they're screwed as elderly. That old people can live off their retirement benefits and have a modest 1-3 children rather than 4-10 that they used to is what has slowed growth in the west the last 100 years. And if you think western and that children are a huge expense, not so much in poor countries where they're put to work early, no luxuries, inherit clothes and the biggest expense is food t
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Maybe if the GP had used a few more double-negatives it would have been clearer to you. "If they don't not have many kids, they're screwed..." Huh?
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Only poor people can afford to have kids. Rich people don't need them.
After devoting your 20's and 30's to education and a career, it's much more difficult to get pregnant.
Oh i wouldn't worry (Score:2)
It's self-regulating.
Or as the great 80's thrash band Nuclear Assault put it, "apathy creates despair"
virtualization (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously the solution is to transition away from the current paradigm, where every person has their own physical hardware. We must move to a new architecture, where a single body can concurrently run numerous minds, greatly increasing overall efficiency and reducing waste.
I would come up with a clever acronym, but schizophrenia has way too many letters.
The obvious (Score:2)
12 Monkeys !! (Score:2)
Time to drag Bruce Willis back into the fray, so he can get shot at the Philly Airport, and David Morse can release the plague that will force us all to live underground...
We will survive the same way we have been.... (Score:2)
With the help of people like Norman Borlaug.
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With the help of people like Norman Borlaug.
Bad news for you is he died approx 25 months ago. Probably the most important person no one has ever heard of.
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One can only hope there will be others who stand on the shoulders of that particular giant. Feeding hungry people is good. Helping hungry people feed themselves is great, and Borlaug was great. It's a shame most Americans don't know that one of our countrymen was responsible for saving a possible billion lives.[citation] [washingtontimes.com]
The malthusians amongst us may argue whether or not this is a good thing. Not being one of them, I heartily think it is. People not starving is good.
Silly (Score:2)
Balancing out (Score:2, Insightful)
Progressive people: It will balance itself!
Conservative people: It will balance itself.
The growth is slowing (Score:4, Informative)
Human population is projected to peak at 10 billion.
Re:The growth is slowing (Score:5, Informative)
http://overpopulationisamyth.com/
Or thereabouts. By 2100 we'll be back down to 7 billion and it won't be because of a pandemic or zombies. Population growth is naturally slowing down. It may seem like 1 billion was a lot but relative to recent growth it's actually slowing down. The math is done in one of them fancy overpopulationisamyth videos.
Overpopulation is not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The UN estimates of world population now indicate an increase until around 2075 (9.2 billion), and then a decrease after that.
Birth rates in all developed nations are falling fast, many are under replacement rate already. The US population would be lower than the replacement rate right now if it weren't for immigration.
The problem with Malthus is not the math, it's the model. Anyone can pick assumptions and make a model, and from there make predictions. Mathus erred in assuming that things would not change. An exponential curve is indistinguishable from a bell curve at the long tail beginning, so the evidence seemed to support his prediction.
What's changing is the demographics. Once raised out of poverty, people naturally start having fewer children. There are a variety of proposed reasons for this, and the evidence is very strong.
The prediction now is that once everyone is reasonably above the poverty line (mostly Africa, with some contribution from SE Asia) population growth will reverse.
Interestingly enough, in 75 years time there may be the reverse problem - population *shrinkage*.
This is not a problem. We can all relax about this particular issue, and focus on solving the other issues, on some of which population is dependent.
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Until we get under 3-4 billion, I wouldn't worry about population shrinkage, mind you. Unless it all happens at once, then you should worry, as it probably means a zombie horde.
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Interestingly enough, in 75 years time there may be the reverse problem - population *shrinkage*.
We were in the pool!
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"The problem with Malthus is not the math, it's the model. Anyone can pick assumptions and make a model, and from there make predictions. Mathus erred in assuming that things would not change. An exponential curve is indistinguishable from a bell curve at the long tail beginning, so the evidence seemed to support his prediction."
I read that Malthus recanted his position in a later edition, but no one pays attention to that.
http://conservapedia.com/Robert_Malthus [conservapedia.com]
"There were other contemporarie
Overpopulation is a local, not world, problem (Score:2)
Correct, there is no "world" overpopulation issue. For more info, see the Wikipedia page on world population growth [wikipedia.org]. A few areas of the world have a massive growth rate (mainly central Africa, plus a few countries in southwest Asia), and many of those are almost certainly overpopulated (since they cannot really support themselves).
But most of the world is around the replacement rate or lower. In many areas, the current population will go extinct if current rates continue. Even in the U.S. [wikipedia.org], the total f
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Will Africa ever improve? The way America keeps dumping free food on markets, driving out farmers and making the people complacent and reliant on foreign aid, I don't see it happening soon. Maybe China will finally do it with their investments into African infrastructure.
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"Wealth" is not static. Wealth is natural resources transformed into a useful state by action of labor and energy. As population rises, labor available rises and the rate of transformation of resources into wealth increases. Does it increase as rapidly as population? Maybe, maybe not.
I would also point out that it would only take a few percent of the worlds deserts covered in solar plants to provide enough energy equal US consumption for the entire human population.
More Predators. (Score:2)
Bring back saber tooth tigers.
Or we could go the high tech route. In every 7th grade on the planet put a pole that has a metal ring at the six foot level that has a million volts at 100 amps.
Do not put a fence or railing around it but put signs in every common language for the area on the pole saying, "Warning one million volts at 100 amps if you touch it you will die."
That or invent the Rubic's Condom and put them on every male at the age of 14.
Food, Water, Energy, Housing (Score:3)
Eventually we're going to end up a lot like Japan. Japan is a small place with a lot of people. Over time, we'll have small places in which to live, with fewer, more general purpose devices in the home that consume small amounts of energy. We'll eat smaller meals. In general, we'll make do with less because there's a finite supply of resources and a lot more people gobbling them all up.
We have quite a bit of time before that happens in the USA or Russia or China - those places have a LOT of vacant land - but we'll get there eventually.
We'll likely have to rely on growing "super foods" that are very dense with calories and nutrients. Lots of renewable energy sources. I'm betting Solar and Bio will be the big ones, with Biofuels being one of several solutions to the massive amount of human waste (poop). It is possible that more and more countries will start to enact incentives regarding breeding - either something very strict (you can have 1 or 2 kids, then you're sterilized) to something more flexible (you can have 2 kids, but any more and you lose certain benefits).
While food and energy are a concern, so are economies. With technology allowing people to do so much with so few people, what kind of work will people be able to find? Society needs only so many farmers, factory workers, etc., and with technology replacing hundreds and thousands of people... Where will we find work? What to do when a population is so incredibly productive that, say, only 30% of the population is needed to produce and service everyone?
Or, of course, with resources being strained with so many people, eventually People A are going to look at People B and say, "Hm, you know what, we need that fresh water supply more than they do..."
Perhaps we'll solve our population problems on our own and we won't have to worry about extreme population support.
Dizzying speed (Score:2)
a math comment (Score:2)
Remember, folks: Just because the function, locally, looks linear doesn't mean it's globally linear. Many, many functions (all the one's in your standard calculus text) can be locally approximated by linear functions, but globally act radically different.
Peak Population crisis? (Score:2)
As I suggest here, the solar system does not have enough people: :-)
http://p2pfoundation.net/backups/p2p_research-archives/2009-August/004174.html [p2pfoundation.net]
As Julian Simon suggests, the more people, the more creative ideas:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/ [juliansimon.com]
How else would we get the idea to grind up rock to fertilize soil?
http://www.remineralize.org/ [remineralize.org]
Or to make solar power cheaper than coal?
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/ [cleantechnica.com]
Or to invent the compu
Soylent Teriyaki (Score:2)
The problem is lifestyles, not people (Score:2)
With every major population growth story, you can guarantee there's going to be a lot of misanthropism, blaming the developing countries, so forth. Malthus is will be quoted. Then people will respond to that in anger, maintaining the false choice between insane growth and brutal population control.
In terms of consumption, the average Canadian needs a third less of resources, the average Italian 55% less - they don't lead a lifestyle substantially less comfortable than the US citizen. The average East Ind
Easy. Or is it? (Score:3)
copy movies 1-2 child's max per family / women (Score:2)
copy movies 1-2 child's max per family / women.
Been done in many movies or is part of the back round of the stories.
Watch the starving in 3D HD! (Score:2)
tiller of fate (Score:5, Interesting)
In the earth's long biological history, my take is that whenever an organism stumbled upon a giant resource, the organism either exploited the resource or was soon replaced by one that could. Humans have done with oil what any other species on the planet would do if they managed to stick their long snout into an underground ocean of glucose.
Unlike most any other species, we've invested perhaps 10% of this windfall wisely: primarily in the form of information technology and reading the genetic code. The energy intensity of those technologies is constantly falling (the intensity of progressing those technologies is another story).
Also unprecedented in biological history: we're discussing the consequences of our giant slurp well before the consequence arrives in dire form (excepting the extirpation of megafauna biodiversity, which started long before we found oil, and has subsequently accelerated).
In fact, I'm pretty sure we're the first species on the planet to conduct a census to determine if our numbers were getting out of hand.
If god lobs another rock at the planet--like a late-popping popcorn kernel--I'm sure we'll give Deep Impact the old college try, notwithstanding that this would be our biggest intrusion on the cosmic plan ever and not lose too much sleep over the philosophical implications. Yet here we are doing what every successful species does (expand into the available niche) and wringing our hands as if our current circumstance is some grand exception to the history of life on earth.
Since the way of things seems to be cycles of boom and bust, if we succeed in pulling off the soft landing following our trillion barrel feast, we will all deserve a nice pat on the back for turning a trick not yet achieved by life on this planet. Many people seem to think the task at hand is to address a deviant transgression; I think the deviancy lies in our future efforts to mitigate the consequence of behaving exactly as mother nature made us. The biological tiller of fate has been swinging wildly for many billions of years. Only now do we propose grabbing onto it and taking the helm.
Pretty much the standards solutions I figure (Score:2)
War, pestilence, famine. The classics never get old.
The people who say we should "consume less" seem to discount people's pesky habit of eating and how we're gleaning the land and oceans bare.
Intelligent population control? He, he. That's a good one.
NO VACANCY (Score:2)
1.5 children per person, maximum. Thank you. The doctor will see you now.
War over Food, Fuel, Land & Water Yields FAMIN (Score:2)
It has happened in the past over thousands of years, and it will happen again and again.
Lesser Countries will never agree to stop doing anything to restrict population growth, as they want to be "bigger countries".
Hence, we run out of something and ...
Logan's Run (Score:2)
We can enjoy renewal at the carousel.
Of course, it may not be needed since we are all killing ourselves with fast food, soda, and alcohol.
This planet could easily support 40 Billion (Score:2)
Earth could easily support 40 Billion people and still have a stable and working eco-system. Earth wouldn't even be very crowded. It was here on slashdot where someone proved that todays entire population would easyly fit into Texas, and even then Texas wouldn't be particularly crowded.
Waste, bad education and crappy management are what put the world in the sorry state it is in now. Bad distribution of food, bizarely huge amounts of resources wasted in aggriculture, huge damages done with pesticides and cle
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The problem is obesity.
I don't mean dietary obesity, but financial and resource obesity.
What do you call someone who consumes far more food than their body needs? A fat fuck.
What do you call someone who hoards far more resources than they need to take care of themselves for the foreseeable future? A success!
Why do people look at the Buffets, Gates and Forbes of the world differently than they do the massively overweight guy who's stuffing his face with the fourth Whopper of the day?
short answer, bottom line (Score:4, Insightful)
Get off this rock.
Hans Rosling on TED talks... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Thats 167 rounds per minute, which isn't really that fast of a cyclic rate for a modern automatic weapon.
The trick is getting them to stand still while you reload.
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But after you perform that trick, what happens when someone higher and more comfortably ensconced in the social order decides that you become the one who is expendable next?
Re:So... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:So Bad Things Will Happen Unless Good Men Unite (Score:2)
Why do Americans generally tend to think that the problems in other parts of the world won't somehow find their way here, especially disease and famine. If global warming produces enough erratic weather it is not all inconceivable that one could get one or two consecutive growing too dry or too wet or possibly both Springs that essentially eliminate the growing seasons of most food crops, particularly now that vast infestations of numerous insect, fungal, and bacterial species from the tropics have largely
The Only Problem With Your Thinking Is (Score:2)
that you presume that you will be on the top of the food chain. That guy Ghadaffi thought the same thing, along with a history book full of others.
As the realities of Darwinian evolution close in on humanity, one has to wonder what species are we related to and does their fate tell us something about our own? Remember we are not really talking about other species but very much components of ourselves, especially when those who starve are human.
Re:Bird Flu (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe I'm a bad, horrible, terrible person, but I hope that you'll get it first.
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With so many people living in squalor, it's only a matter of time before some new killer disease goes on a rampage and kills untold millions of people. Although, there are untold millions sitting around with nothing to lose. All it's going to take is a kook with delusions of grandeur to whip them in a frenzy, getting all of those people to run amok trying to take over the worlds resources. That kind of potential for global war will certainly cut down the population as much or more than a big outbreak of
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Bird flu is here to help!
Re:We're lucky at Russian Roullette (Score:2)
Do you really think that bird flu is going to stop at the border and tell the difference between you and Ruppert Murdoch? Some of the most recent cases have occurred in the upper Midwest and Northeast.
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Nature makes excess with the expectation they will die off.
Pointing out this applies to humans because we are part of nature is Politically Incorrect As Fuck, but it's also accurate.
If only we could be so lucky (Score:3)
When we realize that we will be forced to make the politically incorrect the topic of central discussion, what will it do to our own perceptions of ourselves?
When seeing millions die elsewhere as we expend little effort to prevent it, knowing that is almost certainly to result in a threat to our safety of our own families, what will this motivate us to do?
It makes a person question our own effectiveness of our own humanity, for what it is worth.
One can only be left wondering, is my and humanities number up
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We're lucky as hell that the extra billion people live in starving, uneducated, under-developed or developing countries. Because if they didn't, the planet would have gone to hell
Why would the planet have gone to hell with an extra billion non-hungry people living in rich, educated, developed countries?
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Don't you think we should try to help them so that as they try to be like us we all don't wind up killing each other one way or the other as we collectively stomp all over the few remaining bits of planetary ecosystem that sustains us all?
Slashdotters really better get their sh#!! together or all the best gamers and problem solvers will loose, big time.
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What you can do is the only thing that reliably lowers the birth rate: Educate women and girls.
In some places places like Japan and Australia, there are more deaths than births. Japan's population is shrinking. Australia's would be too were it not for immigration.
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Your head is in the sand, I think. Here's a land use chart for Iowa, tell me how its only 1% developed.
http://extension.agron.iastate.edu/soils/CLU_tables.html [iastate.edu]
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Yes, because Iowa is the perfect model to represent the entire world.
Re:We're lucky (Score:5, Insightful)
Everytime I see this argument, I question the educational background of the person posing it.
That field of weeds and trees does have significant value exactly as it is. Contrary to many people's opinions on the matter, rampant destruction of biodiversity to develop farmland has a significant detrimental effect on the quality and viability of the total biosphere, human requirements included.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/20091204/Habitat-destruction-and-biodiversity-loss-can-increase-the-incidence-of-infectious-diseases.aspx [news-medical.net]
This means that such so called "undeveloped areas" serve a fundemental and necessary function for society exactly as they are, other than mere asthetic and entertainment values. They are NOT "worthles unless exploited".
The lack of total biodiversity is one of the reasons why the biosphere 2 project failed so miserably. The idea of a giant citywide metropolis like those from science fiction is not sustainably realistic, and human carry capacity of the planet is not merely bounded by bulk storage and nutritional requirements. The earth's biosphere is a terribly complex thing, and treating it as though it weren't and without due caution invites very serious consequences.
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Miles and miles of land squandered for the sole purpose of growing food... for livestock. It's not very efficient for society, nor is it beneficial for the environment.
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See our periodic infestations of the black plague, influenza pandemics, etc.
Antibiotics are useless against virii, all they do is pacify frustrated mothers.
There is a "well known" racial difference of malaria susceptibility vs sickle cell anemia. Also some disease like HIV/AIDS seem to have nearly wiped out countries of certain races much worse than countries of other races, although its all very politically incorrect to even think about it, much less discuss it. Finally funny you should mention corn, as
Re:Corn is too high... (Score:4, Informative)
"There is a "well known" racial difference of malaria susceptibility vs sickle cell anemia"
There is a relationship between malaria and susceptibility to sickle cell anemia because having the sickle cell trait is beneficial in the presence of high concentrations of malarial mosquitoes. It is the condition, which is a heterozygous trait, is benefitcial to those in areas of high incidence of malaria. It results from by a single base pair difference leading to a single base amino acid substitution in a haemoglobin subunit and is associated with partial collapse of the erythrocyte wall giving the phenomenon its name. Unfortunately, for homozygotes the condition can be fatal.
However, the relationship is not racial, except in the sense that the frequency of the haplotype varies among people of different races that live in different areas where there is a high presence of malaria.
Re:There are only a few choices... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Reduce the populations in India, Central America, China, Muslim countries, and Africa.
[citation needed]
Population density is really diverse in Central America. There are local foci of very high density (Mexico City, parts of Guatemala), but overall it is less populated than, say, Europe. Same goes for Muslim countries. The only clear case of overpopulation in an Arab country I can think of is Bangladesh, and even that case I am not sure it is worse than e.g. the Netherlands.
2) Reduce consumption. The only way to make this happen is to actually decrease production.
I disagree with the later statement. The 5% of the population that the US represents, consumes 25% of world resources, approximately. If that extra 20% isn't enough to solve this problem, I am sure it would contribute.
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I think any and all concern is paranoid fear-mongering bullshit as fertility rates on all continents have been dropping for almost half a century and show n
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Yet, consumption is growing with the population decreases. That's the problem, not the population rate of increase or decrease.
China's population has not been shrinking for 50 years, by the way.
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Yet, the populations in those countries is still growing (or, in the case of Mexico/Central America, coming to the US... and growing there.) Therein lies the point.
re: #2, if you were to have US consuming a percentage, per its population, it would revert the US to 3rd world status immediately. Birth control would not be affordable. Populations would increase, requiring more food - requiring more arrable land. Not only that, but agriculture would revert to 3rd world toil-in-the-fields work, and there would b
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Actually if the world got rid of more Americans, there would be room to pack even more in as non-Americans consume so much less than Americans.
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There are really only two options.
1) Reduce the populations in India, Central America, China, Muslim countries, and Africa.
Central America?? There are only 41 million people here (says Wikipedia). Each of your other examples is 1 billion or more.
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Nope. Let's see:
* WWI (WWII may not have even been fought, as Germany would've been surpreme after prolongued fighting). Japan would own China and they'd have started industrialization much sooner than they did.
* WWII (there'd be many fewer Russians and Europeans than today, after many years more fighting). Russia would rule Europe.
* Korean War (they'd probably still be fighting, if one side hadn't decimated the other)
* Tens+ of thousands of Kurds and Sunnis are alive today who would've been genocided by Sa
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They might say that, but they would be wrong. The region hasn't been "stable" for millennia. The only time I can think of when it's been stable is under foreign autocratic rule.
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He's not. US is not philantropic, and has been involved in numerous relatively small-scale conflicts like Iraq or Afghanistan (to name the recent ones) strictly to protect its interests, but so long as Pax Americana is in place, we don't have large-scale total wars along the lines of WW1 and WW2.
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I will try to remember that when here in Mexico we found -again- another mass grave and found -again- that the DEA and ATF sent thousands of weapons to the drug lords.
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The population will crash and rebound.
The crash will likely leave behind a world suitable for goat herders and not much of anything else. As for growing your own food, that will work out like it did for the peasants under Chairman Mao.
Re:Food Shortages Non-existant (Score:5, Insightful)
I see vast open space on my commute to work and every time I travel.
I've seen almost the same words on several post, how can so called "educated" people be so ignorant about where their food comes from? The empty space you see is called "farmland", there would be no city for you to commute to without it. Globally, we have run out of new farmland, food prices have sky-rocketed over the last decade [rba.gov.au] causing food riots [google.com.au] in many places, including Mexico which borders the US. The only thing that will stop this from becoming worse as our population grows is a new green revolution [wikipedia.org] that does not depend on oil to create fertiliser.
Re:Food Shortages Non-existant (Score:4, Insightful)
You have probably been watching Fox News haven't you?
Yes, like in the US there is lots of open space. Its just that much of it is at high altitude or desert, with very little water to support life.
One can never ceased to be amazed by how little Biology the average slashdotter knows. They have no idea what would happen if they turned ever square inch of the planet into a factory or a farm. Humans would be extinct in short order from the consequences.
Re:Time for Eugenics (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck.
You.
The problem is (Score:3)
that there aren't nearly enough of them to constrain the greed and gluttony of the average anti-environmental conservative.