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Population and Health: Not Just Our Own Health, But the Health of the Planet!

[ed. note: Michael Jorrin, who I call Doc Gumshoe, is a longtime medical writer (not a doctor) who writes for us about medicine and health a couple times a month. He has agreed to our trading and disclosure restrictions, but does not generally write directly about investment ideas. His ideas, thoughts and words are his own, and you can see all his past pieces here.]

This is by no means a new concern. At the end of the 18th century, the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus observed that population tended to grow at an exponential pace, while food supply grew only at an arithmetic pace. For example, if a thousand mating couples (2,000 individuals) had three offspring each, that would result in 3,000 children at the end of a generation, and 4,500 children at the end of two generations. In three generations, or about one century, that original population of 2,000 would have more than tripled to 6,750.

That’s more or less what has happened to global population in the past century. In fact, global population was estimated at about 2 billion in 1927, and is now somewhere around 7.5 billion, having passed the 7 billion mark in October 2010, about 12 years after it zoomed by the 6 billion marker. That’s closer to quadrupling in a century than to tripling.

However, the good Reverent Malthus thought that there would be offsetting factors that would prevent the planet from becoming impossibly overpopulated. Because food production could not conceivably keep up with the exponential pace of population growth, there would inevitably be famines. There would also be natural disasters, wars, and diseases. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would keep the population in check.

Malthus was right about the exponential rate of population growth, but wrong about the factors that would offset that growth. Yes, there have been wars, natural disasters, and diseases, as well as famines, but it does not appear that those “Malthusian disasters,” as they are known, have had much effect on slowing population growth.

For example, the Chinese famine during the years 1959 to 1961 may have caused as many as 45 million deaths. (Recent conservative research puts the number at 36 million.) This does not seem to have slowed China’s increase in population by much. In 1959, Chinese population stood at 668 million, and it had increased to 682 million in 1960. Then, in 1961, due to the famine, it declined to 658 million. But by 1963 it had recovered all lost ground and increased to 691 million. The population of China passed the one billion mark in 1982, and now stands at 1.381 billion.

According to the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs, global population is expected to hit 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion by 2100. Those, by the way, are mid-range estimates. The high estimate for global population by 2100 is about 14 billion.

As of 2012, the UN’s projections for the regions of the world in 2100 were as follows:

Asia4.60 billion
Africa3.57 billion
Latin America0.69 billion
Europe0.67 billion
North America0.57 billion
Oceania0.07 billion

This puts the total for the Western Hemisphere at around 1.26 billion, while the Eastern Hemisphere is projected to have a population of 8.84 billion. The largest increase is projected to take place in Africa, whose population of about 1 billion today is projected almost to quadruple. By 2050, the population of Nigeria is expected to top 400 million, exceeding that of the US, making it the third most populous country on the planet after India and China. And it’s projected to reach 760 million by the end of the century. India is expected to be the most populous country on earth, passing China in about five years.

The perils of population growth have been the basis for a good deal of dystopian fiction. I recall a story by Philip K. Dick in which office workers essentially lived in their workplace, sleeping in the stairwells, and subsisting on weird artificial foods. A staple was “chicken little,” an immense rapidly growing mass of an edible substance resembling chicken meat into which artificial nutrients were pumped, and which grew enormous volumes of “meat,” which were daily harvested and fed to the workers.

And currently some nervous members of the super-super rich are already in the process of establishing (or at least planning) totally self-contained and self-sufficient “environments,” in which all necessities for life could be generated, and which would protect them from the surrounding hordes. Farming and raising livestock would be carried out in perfectly climate-controlled indoor environments. Or perhaps their inhabitants could dispense with actual food – liquids containing all the necessary nutrients would keep them fit as a fiddle.

But those solutions are only for the privileged few.

Population: total numbers versus population density

Nigeria is not a tiny country, but if its population shoots up to the 400 million plus marker as expected, it’s going to be pretty crowded. Nigeria’s land area is about 357,000 square miles – less than one-tenth of the US land area of about 3.8 million square miles. And as for India, by 2050 it’s expected to have a population in the neighborhood of 1.7 billion crammed into a land area of 1.269 million square miles, less than one-third of the US land area. In each case, that comes out to a population density about ten times that of the US.

So, what are the effects of population density on health?

There are certain clear advantages to living in urbanized areas rather than out in the wonderful middle of nowhere. I am not speaking here of the Black Hole of Calcutta or the shanty-towns of Lagos or the favelas of Rio, but in general of the metropolitan areas of the world’s large cities. One signal advantage, at least in the more developed world, is that the rate of accidental injury is much, much lower in the more urbanized areas. Yes, there are lots of automobile accidents in the big cities, but most of them result in minor injuries. The fatal crashes tend to be in the rural areas.

And once there’s an accidental injury, whether a car crash or something else, a key factor is how quickly the victim gets medical attention. Out in the sticks, if you fall off the ladder while you’re putting up your storm windows, it might be a while before the ambulance shows up, and another while before it gets you to the hospital. This results in about a 20% higher rate of death from accidental injuries in rural areas.

Also, in rural areas, people may have to travel considerable distances to see a physician that is able to treat their particular disease or condition. If a person living in a remote rural area relies on regular visits to a rheumatologist for the management of a condition such as rheumatoid arthritis, this may entail long trips and may simply be impractical for some people.

Survival after heart attacks or strokes is highly dependent on how quickly the ambulance arrives and how quickly the patient gets to the hospital. If you have a heart attack in downtown Seattle, you have a much better chance of surviving than if your MI happens out near the border with Idaho. In more developed regions, there are sometimes means to overcome the distance factor. For example, J. Walter Schaefer introduced an air ambulance service in California in 1947, for the specific purpose of quickly getting people in the rural parts of the state to hospitals, and similar services are now fairly common.

That being said, there certainly are health drawbacks in living in more densely populated areas. Perhaps the single health factor that is most strongly and obviously linked with population density is pollution. According to a 2012 report from the World Health Organization, air pollution was the cause of 3.7 million annual deaths, two-thirds of which occurred in India and China. In the more-developed world, we think of air pollution as resulting from factors like fossil-fuel-dependent electric generation and automobile exhaust, but in the less-developed regions the main sources tends to be home heating and cooking as well as waste incineration. In New Delhi, a study in about 11,000 children concluded that nearly half of that city’s 4.4 million children between 4 and 17 years of age had irreversible lung damage due to air pollution.

Some diseases spread much more rapidly in crowded conditions, for example, tuberculosis – there were 8.6 million cases of tuberculosis in 2012. Diseases carried by vectors such as mosquitoes spread more rapidly when those creatures find more humans to feast on – Zika and West Nile virus being good examples.

Polluted water is a threat to health regardless of population density, but if the source of the pollution is human waste, as is so often the case, the relationship between crowding and pollution is obvious. The source of the cholera outbreak in Haiti was almost certainly a contingent of UN peacekeepers from Nepal. But what has made the outbreak far worse is the extremely crowded conditions, and the scarcity of clean water, whether for drinking or cooking or for any other purpose.

…but will there be room for all of us on Planet Earth?

That depends on which region of Planet Earth you’re looking at. There’s plenty of room in Turkmenistan and in the steppes of Central Asia. Maybe there’s some spare space in Canada and Australia and parts of the US and South America. However, a few days ago I read in the paper that 450,000 people in Bangladesh left the coastal areas seeking higher ground because of a threatening storm. Where they wound up, the story didn’t say. But there’s not much room in Bangladesh. The population is close to 165 million, and the population density per square mile is 3,279. That’s more than 30 times the population density of the US, which is about 90 per square mile. I remember that about 20 years ago, there was a cholera epidemic in Bangladesh which quickly killed something like a quarter of a million people. The rate of population growth in Bangladesh at that time, close to 2% annually, meant that those quarter of a million departed souls would be replaced by a quarter of a million newcomers to our planet in the space of about six weeks.

(Here I must introduce a positive note: the treatment of cholera in Bangladesh has improved to the point where the great majority of patients survive. Take that, Malthus!)

The population growth rate we have been seeing lately is on a collision course with two other major global trends: resource depletion and climate change. The resource people were most worried about was oil, but concerns about oil have eased. However, other resources may be much more important: water and arable land. Take water: DeBeers (the diamond company) did a study in 2006 which predicted that water in rivers in Africa would decrease by about 40% by 2050. Lake Baikal, in Russia, the largest body of fresh water in the world, is estimated to hold about 20% of the total fresh water on the entire planet. It was thought to be too large to become seriously polluted, but evidence is mounting that industrial pollution, particularly from paper mills, is severely damaging the lake.

Clean water issues are endemic, and not only in Flint, Michigan. New artesian wells in India, drilled with the help of international organizations, have been found to contain dangerous levels of arsenic. The Chinese have attempted to convert marginal land to agriculture, but the desert keeps reinvading it. Here in our country, the Rio Grande hardly reaches the Gulf of Mexico, and almost all Colorado River water has been used for irrigation before it reaches the Sea of Cortez. Wherever humans live, there’s a demand for water, and the more humans, the greater the demand.

As for arable land, the UN projects that in the densely populated parts of the world, there is about 0.1 hectare per person. That’s about a quarter of an acre – a small suburban building lot. What is meant by arable land? The rain forests in South America, forests in the US and Canada and Eastern Europe, and African jungles, are all possible arable lands. But much of that land is not really suitable for crop-growing. The soil is subject to a process termed “laterization,” meaning that the organic matter quickly degrades, and the soluble minerals are depleted, leaving a largely sandy substance that is not hospitable to plant life. Also, turning jungles and forests into croplands would have a large negative impact on the atmosphere, resulting in more carbon dioxide and less oxygen. A healthy planet requires forests and jungles.

Water and arable land are the irreducible essentials to sustain human life, and they are scarcest just where the population pressure is greatest. Consider Yemen. The population of Yemen was just about 5 million in 1950. It has quintupled since then, to 25 million, and is projected to reach 100 million by the year 2100. But as of 2006, arable land in Yemen was just 0.06 hectare per capita – about an eighth of an acre. If Yemen’s population should actually hit the 100 million marker, the amount of arable land per person would be about one thirty-second of an acre – about 1400 square feet, the footprint of a single house. However, that calculation does not take into account the amount of room that 100 million people require just to live, even if they are crammed into very small quarters. So the overwhelming likelihood is that if Yemen’s population continues to grow at the current rate, lots of Yemenis will have to go elsewhere.

Speaking of Yemen, that country is at this time in a state of impending famine, with 6.8 million people (according to the UN) at risk of starvation, and another 10.2 million “in crisis.” That adds up to 17 million hungry people out of a population of 25 million – about two-thirds of the population. Similar conditions persist in Somalia, South Sudan, and Nigeria. Self-proclaimed experts insist that the underlying reasons for this are more political than otherwise – the actions taken by the Saudis against the Houthis in Yemen effectively prevent the nation from importing the food that is necessary to feed the population. But what this demonstrates is that even under stable conditions, Yemen cannot feed its population. Food has to be imported from elsewhere.

Another area where population growth has a major effect is the global economy. In fact, globalization and population growth are at odds in one particular way. Populous countries have what is known as an “absolute economic advantage” in that they have a labor surplus, and can therefore undercut less populous countries with regard to the price of many goods, especially goods that are labor intensive. More developed regions perceive this and look for ways to oppose it. Viewed from a distant perspective, globalization makes a certain amount of economic sense: goods should be made where it’s cheapest. But this can cause economic dislocations. People in developed countries lose jobs, and put pressure on government to take more protectionist positions. In the short term, this might be seen as okay: people in developed countries shift to more skilled jobs and buy cheaper stuff from the less developed world. Meanwhile, wages in the less developed parts of the world rise to levels approximating those in the better developed countries, and everyone is more prosperous.

But it doesn’t happen that way. What is happening, instead, is that the population of poorer countries continues to grow. The result is that there is a huge global labor surplus. Everybody works for less. It’s a race to the bottom, and basically Wal-Mart doesn’t care!

But aren’t birth rates declining, at least in some parts of the world?

Demographers have been counting on something they call the “demographic transition” or the “fertility shift.” It had been assumed that global population would top out at about 9 billion in the year 2050 and then level off or decline slightly. A fertility shift has been observed when the infant mortality rate declines to the point where families can trust that their children will not die in infancy. Also, in agrarian societies, children are an undeniable asset – they can be put to work doing something just about as soon as they can walk. But when children need to be fed, clothed, and, in particular, educated before they begin to contribute to the family’s support, families tend to be more careful about having lots and lots of them. For example in one Chinese province where the authorities have not enforced the one-child policy, Chinese families are still only having one child, because they perceive that the best opportunity for the child lies in receiving a good education, and one child is all they can afford. The fertility shift has already taken place in most of Europe and North America – sometimes even among groups whose religious orientation would seem to oppose the concept of family planning. However, it has not happened in many parts of the world, where population growth is still unchecked.

What will this mean? We, in North America, might think we don’t have a whole lot to worry about. We have plenty of land, and if we avoid being really stupid, we can probably manage our water resources. However, we should not turn a blind eye to the geopolitical problems that will likely come with this kind of population growth.

The refugee crisis that has literally upended the European Union is not a direct result of population pressure, but a result of the civil war in Syria. Most of the people trying to get into Europe, by whatever means, are (probably) legitimately refugees, however that term may be defined.

But here’s an example, recently in the news, although no one has linked this particular issue to population growth. We have heard about the people fleeing Libya who have landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa, with the hope of making it somehow to Europe. The EU is nervous about granting them blanket refugee status, because of the probability – or likelihood – that the current trickle of such migrants will swell to a flood.

Most of the migrants who landed on Lampedusa were not Libyans, but sub-Saharan Africans, who had previously made their way to Libya in search of some kind of decent existence. No one can possibly blame them. There were interviews with migrants who had come from cities such as Lagos, in Nigeria (a very long way from Libya), who said that they would absolutely not go back home voluntarily. Lagos, by the way, (at least according to some authorities) is the fourth most densely populated metro area in the world, where 13 million people live in an area one tenth the size of greater New York.

I do not think it is an overstatement to say that Yemen cannot possibly sustain a population of 100 million, nor Nigeria a population of 760 million, nor Africa a population of more than three and a half billion. Where will they go?

Some – a few of the more resourceful and the more fortunate – will make their way to this side of the planet. We can certainly accommodate some immigrants, but not billions. More will try to go to Europe. European nations may be willing to accommodate a few immigrants. Some commentators are quick to point to “anti-immigrant” sentiment in Europe (as well as here), frequently from the human rights perspective and within the context that immigrants – worthy, brave, hard-working, individuals – have made great contributions to every region that has received them.

However, we are not talking about moderate numbers of worthy, brave, hard-working individuals. We are talking about a human tsunami. Europe has every reason to be extremely nervous. This has contributed to, among other things, the UK’s departure from the EU.

A spokesman for the Population Council here in New York was quoted as saying, “Can we feed 10 billion people? Probably.” It may be possible to create more arable land, by clearing forests and jungles, and possibly also by irrigating deserts, but both have potentially disastrous environmental consequences. And rising sea levels, a likely result of climate change, will submerge low-lying coastal areas and result in salt-water incursions of estuaries. Futuristic schemes have been floated for building gigantic vertical farms, where food crops will be grown indoors under artificial light and nourished with chemical fertilizers. Meat substitutes, grown from non-animal substrates, are being tested. Growth enhancers of all types are already in use, such as those which speed chicken growth from the egg to the supermarket in just a few weeks. And you may have heard about the Chinese farmers that sprayed their watermelons with forchlorfenuron to accelerate their growth. They may have used a bit too much; thousands of the watermelons exploded.

Yes, we can probably somehow feed 10 billion people, although there will likely be famines from time to time. And there will be more disease, as people are crammed together with unreliable water and sanitation. And there will be violence, as the people in village A (or region A, or nation A) notice that the people in village (or region, or nation) B are just a bit better off and decide to even the score. Some economists think that that’s what happened in Rwanda – the Tutsis had more than twice as much land per capita as the Hutu, and the Hutu took the redistribution of land into their own hands. Currently, several nations with concerns about feeding their own populations have acquired huge tracts of land in Africa – South Korea, for example, has bought 1.7 million acres in Sudan, about the size of Rhode Island, to grow wheat. This will place immense demands on Nile water, on which, in turn, the downstream Egyptians depend for life itself.

The spokesman for the Population Council also said, “Will this be the end of the world? No.” No, I agree it will not be the end of the world, or the end of human life on planet Earth. But I worry that it may be the beginning of the end of civilization.

Civilization is expensive. Civilization only emerged when human beings no longer had to dedicate all their resources and all their efforts to keeping alive. Civilization is the fruit of surplus resources. What we have created, as a species, has required huge expenditures of labor and money, as well as imagination and ingenuity. Keeping 10 billion people – or more! – alive on our tiny planet is likely to require all the resources we can muster, leaving precious little for the arts and sciences.

Is this to be the destiny of our kind – to eke out a bare existence on a crammed planet? I don’t believe that anyone wants this to be our fate. I am enough of an optimist to believe that at some point in the coming years, more and more of us will realize that our population trends have got to do a U-turn. This means family planning. An encouraging statement from the UN population division points out that when women in some of the poorest countries are offered information and voluntary access to birth control, they have chosen to have fewer children. However, global aid to pay for birth control has not increased in the past decade, and we in the US are not doing our part.

I realize that a position such as the one I have outlined here is sometimes characterized as being racist and xenophobic. Some would say that it is based on fears that a non-white population will overwhelm people of European descent. I point out that those who will suffer the most are the African and Asian populations. The Americas will likely accommodate some immigration, but its distance from the most overpopulated parts of the world will insulate it. Europe will try to fend off immigration by whatever means. The developed world – Europe and the Western Hemisphere – will fare much, much better than the rest of the planet.

What we and the rest of the developed world cannot insulate ourselves from is the effects of population growth on the underlying health of our planet. Currently, there are about 620 million people in Asia who do not have electricity, more than 300 million in India alone. And 600 million more in Africa, including 97% of the population of South Sudan, 85% in Congo and Madagascar, 81% in Kenya, and so on. What people in India want more than anything else seems to be air conditioning. This is not surprising, given the increasing temperatures that have been recorded in those parts. A high of 123⁰ F was recently recorded in New Delhi. Humans cannot long survive at those temperatures. So, regardless of the best intentions, it seems likely that electricity will be generated by whatever means and at whatever cost to the environment.

I ask myself why this matters so much to me. It is extremely unlikely that our little patch of land will ever be taken over to raise food for 32 or 64 unfortunates. It is also unlikely that our town, or the tiny island where we vacation, or even New York City, where we sing and go to concerts and museums, or indeed, that anywhere that we are likely to go, is going to become unsustainably overpopulated any time soon. So why do I care? Because we need to live on this island earth for a very, very long time, and we need to be able to go on doing the things we do best. Our mere survival as a species, to my view, counts for very little. What counts is what we have created: Civilization. We can only continue to do that if survival is not our sole objective.

So I ask you, my friends, to keep this in mind. People everywhere surely want what is best for their own descendants. Given the means and the opportunity, most people will behave in such a way as to improve their chances. Most people would welcome family planning assistance. We should press our leaders to help make it available. Not less than everything may depend on it

* * * * * * *
I recognize that this piece is something of a departure for Doc Gumshoe, and I will be grateful for any and all comments, including from readers who strenuously disagree, for whatever reason. I will also acknowledge that this piece, more than any I have sent your way, relies on a huge amount of data that I have no conceivable way of verifying. For example, with regard to the figures I have cited regarding the population density of various countries and cities, I have picked what on first inspection appeared to be the most reliable. But there are wide disparities, sometimes depending on the definition of a city: just what is a city, and where does it start and leave off? Those of us living in the so-called Greater New York area are accustomed to thinking that New York consists of the five boroughs, but also recognizing that Greater New York takes in parts of New Jersey (including Newark) and parts of Connecticut. But I have read that the Chinese have plans to enlarge Greater Beijing so that it attains a population of well over 100 million.

However, no matter how we slice and dice, the overall picture, I solemnly promise, is true. Our planet is getting overcrowded, and the effects – for us, mostly long-term, might be genuinely dire. So I thank you for reading my screed and thinking about it.

Doc Gumshoe will be back before long with a piece reporting recent developments on the medical front that I hope will be of interest to you. Best to all, Michael Jorrin (aka Doc Gumshoe)

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Susan
Susan
July 11, 2017 4:24 pm

Sounds to me like population control is a big part of the answer. Family planning.

carbon bigfoot
Guest
carbon bigfoot
July 12, 2017 8:26 am
Reply to  Susan

The waste of Trillions of $$$ by government mandated ” Renewable Energy Schemes” and its negative impact on the environment, e.g., the 40,000,000 acres in the US dedicated to unnecessary corn-produced ETHANOL previous used for world food supply is far more impacting as described in the link
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/05/monumental-unsustainable-environmental-impacts/. All the information that is hidden from the public by the agenized Environmental Extremists and their willing counterparts in the media.
CHEAP ABUNDANT ENERGY PROVIDED BY CARBON FUELS, OIL, COAL AND NATURAL GAS IS THE WORLD’S ANSWER TO POPULATION CONTROL.

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arch1
July 13, 2017 5:57 am
Reply to  carbon bigfoot

I agree and would add that te greatest use of energy will be needed in providing potable water for direct consumption but even more in growing food. There are huge areas of potentially arable land in present day deserts if there was only water available. This Earth could possibly support 50 billion with existing technology and methods. Humans are good at problem solving when needed for survival. Our greatest problems are in overcrowding some areas.

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gordon
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gordon
July 13, 2017 8:02 pm
Reply to  arch1

Archi, do you really want 50B people on this plant?….l don’t so. And the point is to stop population growth, in my view. Better that it’s done in a controlled way through quality of life attitudes and sane pubic polices, than through fatalistic views that someday this planet is going to end, or be catastrophically reduced. I care about this today and about quality of life today for everyone, because it might take eons for man to be cut down. In other words, if the end is approaching, I rather it be a pleasant one, than a miserable one, grinding up against 50 billion sweaty stinky bodies when the asteroid hits, or some other armageddon. Let’s keep the population manageable now, please.

arch1
July 13, 2017 8:32 pm
Reply to  gordon

What I, or you, want is meaningless. I was merely pointing out a fact. In all likelihood the population is likely to have a mass die off before long, not eons. Like it or not we are only a part of nature and nature has ways of taking care of overgrown populations. Famine, wars and pandemics are what is usually thought of but natural disasters could easily wipe out people by the 100’s of millions. such as the impending great quake and tsunami overdue on the Pacific coast of N. America.
A super volcano could occur at any time that would trigger another great ice age That would kill billions through cold and famine. An asteroid like the one that hit offshore Yucatan would cause a mass die off of
many types of life.
No one really knows how many would survive a major nuclear exchange, which could be triggered by such as N. Korea or Iran

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Lulu
July 13, 2017 9:42 pm
Reply to  gordon

I thought I read over n over that western people are having less than 1 child per couple……and other poorer countries are having many children. I say, we were born with two arms to hug two children. With a third, one is left out. Have as many as you like just stop asking me to pay for them.

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Jeff
Member
Jeff
July 11, 2017 4:29 pm
Steve
Irregular
Steve
July 11, 2017 5:09 pm
Reply to  Jeff

Doc’s views are quite out of date. Excellent post Jeff.

jcolby
jcolby
July 11, 2017 5:22 pm
Reply to  Jeff

I understand where the declining-population crowd are coming from, but it seems to be a purely First World view. Sure, the US, EU, Japan and likely South Korea are peaked or declining in population, but that is by no means the norm in Second and Third World countries. The speculation in New Scientist is just as speculative as any other forecast. I wouldn’t say Doc and his views are outdated, just realistic based on the reality that is taking place today.

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arch1
July 13, 2017 6:01 am
Reply to  jcolby

You are correct. The most advanced countries have a sustainable population and must work to help less advanced gain control of growth or face being over run by invasion. As we see in Europe now.

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777stock777
Irregular
777stock777
July 18, 2017 12:33 pm
Reply to  arch1

Actually many do not. The Northern European countries are getting desperate to re-establish sustainability for a number of reasons.

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Enginer
July 13, 2017 4:19 pm
Reply to  jcolby

If you or I needed to provide a necessity for our family, we would simply go out and purchase it, because for most Westerners our economic output exceeds the production cost of those goods. However we have not enougb excees to supplement the almost, zero output of the rapidly breeding families in, for example, Nigeria.

bluesharpbob
July 11, 2017 6:16 pm
Reply to  Jeff

I’d be skeptical of relying on info in articles in New Scientist & it’s website. From Wikipedia-

In September 2006, New Scientist was criticized by science fiction writer Greg Egan, who wrote that “a sensationalist bent and a lack of basic knowledge by its writers” was making the magazine’s coverage sufficiently unreliable “to constitute a real threat to the public understanding of science”.
In January 2009, New Scientist ran a cover with the title “Darwin was wrong”.The actual story stated that specific details of Darwin’s evolution theory had been shown incorrectly, mainly the shape of phylogenetic trees of interrelated species, which should be represented as a web instead of a tree. Some evolutionary biologists who actively oppose the intelligent design movement thought the cover was both sensationalist and damaging to the scientific community.Jerry Coyne, author of the book Why Evolution Is True, called for a boycott of the magazine, which was supported by evolutionary biologists Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers.

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markmc
markmc
July 12, 2017 4:27 pm
Reply to  bluesharpbob

It’s good to be skeptical, but I would be skeptical of Wikipedia as well. Pure Science (not politicized science) is a method of theory formulation subject to peer review. But even after peer review, it’s still just a theory.

arch1
July 13, 2017 5:57 am
Reply to  Jeff

The bomb has not gone away,,, only delayed.

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Dan
Guest
Dan
July 13, 2017 8:53 am
Reply to  Jeff

Trends from post-industrial societies such as Japan and Germany doesn’t mean much for Africa, whoever wrote that article has not actually lived in e.g. Lagos, I can safely say that

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gordon
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gordon
July 13, 2017 7:28 pm
Reply to  Jeff

Most predictions on human population point up, not an implosion down. If you have something to say, say it, don’t turn to articles. But if you do, then at least be so kind as to paraphrase the article and why you think what you think. (I couldn’t access it without subscribing).

D
Member
D
July 16, 2017 4:03 pm
Reply to  Jeff

Population implosion is coming. It’s already here in the developed world. We’re well into the era of the “inverted demographic pyramid” and the conditions that will doom Western welfare states and contribute to low or negative economic growth for years to come. All that keeps it going now is money printing and borrowing against non-existent increases in future income.

The Doc is right about certain poorer countries, but only certain ones. The rate of population growth has slowed everywhere, including sub-Saharan Africa and most of the Middle East. Many such countries already have below-replacement birthrates.

You can check the most recent sources on all this, like the UN or the CIA Factbook.

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James R. Ottesen
James R. Ottesen
July 11, 2017 4:37 pm

Excellent presentation. Honestly, I had no idea of the risks we face on our planet. I will share your thoughts
with my children. While there is not a lot we can do, perhaps our children can start a mission of understanding
that will lead to efforts to minimize the ultimate risk. Hopefully, their efforts will bear fruition before North
Korea does its damage to the world.

Thanks for your thoughts.

JIm Ottesen

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Al L
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Al L
July 11, 2017 4:41 pm

When it comes to food production there is a simple solution. Food is a commodity and all commodities act is a somewhat similar way. When the price goes up, the availability tends to go up, often with some time lag. Note crude oil for example: when the price went up about 5 times what it was for several years, production went up. New methods were introduced that were cost prohibited at lower crude prices, but became profitable as prices rose and became very profitable as prices rose even higher. Then as prices came down again they were able to reduce the cost of the new technology in about half so the new technology was still profitable when crude prices fell about about 70% from the high!!

In a similar way, there are food production technologies available (some have been available for 1000s of years) that are basically prohibited because of cost today. But if food prices went up about 5 times from those about a decade ago, these techniques are likely to become quite profitable. As the techniques become more refined their cost is likely to come down by a substantial amount.

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Rusty Brown in Cda
Member
Rusty Brown in Cda
July 12, 2017 3:26 pm
Reply to  Al L

Your comment brings up the question of “how will those people pay for the food they need?” If they are to buy it from the Western Hemisphere countries, they will have to find some way to pay for it, otherwise our farmers will be expected to work for nothing as a kind of vast international charity to feed the rest of the world.

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Proudly SA
Irregular
July 13, 2017 9:55 am
Reply to  Al L

Well, supply and demand may not always work, at least not in extreme situations. Where would the poorest and hungriest people get the money to pay for food?

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Alan L.
Member
July 11, 2017 4:43 pm

What is so sad (and so unchageable) is that, although the cognitive equipment necessary to understand the population and environmental problem exists in almost all of us, the egocentric drive (me first, me first) always triumphs. Much of the current administration’s environmental actions today are good examples of allowing (even promoting) short term gains to overide longer term realities. For many years I have stated that, if a button existed that would vaporize 2/3rds of the earth’s human populations, I would push it—but that’s silly, as the problem would rejuvenate itself within a few years. Frankly (I’m 83) there’s a piece of my thinking that welcomes the probable fact that I’ll croak before the mess overwhelms the States. Some of overpopulation’s effects can already be seen. I can look back to a time when living was better, more comfortable, more “human”, more fun, less stressed, less fearful (even of atom bombs), and I simply pity you youngsters who have no idea what I’m talking about, and will live to see it get worse.

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Nikki Odegaard
July 11, 2017 4:52 pm
Reply to  Alan L.

Alan, I am “only” 62 and I agree with everything you say here. I thought this was an excellent and very depressing article. Depressing for the reason you state, that the “me first” attitude is so predominant in our society and those who have WAY more than they can ever need or consume largely don’t appear to care about the less fortunate in their own countries, never mind those out of sight, out of mind in Africa or Asia. Heck, the current administration is even cutting NASA’s budget, so we’re unlikely to be finding another planet to destroy any time soon! I fear for my children’s futures.

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BJI
Member
BJI
July 12, 2017 2:59 am
Reply to  Alan L.

The super volcano under Yellowstone National Park is OVERDUE to erupt again. When it does THE ENTIRE WORLD will experience winter for 5 to 10 years OR LONGER killing probably 99.44% of humanity not to mention most plant and animal life on the face of the earth!
If a super volcano doesn’t kill us an asteroid a kilometer or larger in diameter will INEVITABLY strike the earth killing ALL LIVING THINGS on the surface of the earth!
EVEN IF the above calamities NEVER HAPPEN, in 1 to 2 BILLION years the sun will begin to run out of fuel and expand thereby turning the earth into a molten mass and eventually CONSUMING it.
Mankind is INEVITABLY DOOMED no matter what it does in the foreseeable future.

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Steve
Irregular
Steve
July 11, 2017 5:07 pm

“The developed world – Europe and the Western Hemisphere – will fare much, much better than the rest of the planet.”

Actually no, Doc. As a result of views such as yours, the more northern one goes in Europe (and to a degree in North America), liberal whites are no longer having babies. The demographics are becoming swayed older and older. This is happening to a degree that many cultures in Europe are in danger of imploding because of this alone.

jcolby
jcolby
July 11, 2017 5:29 pm
Reply to  Steve

Not sure what Liberalism has to do with having children. The metric seems to be more along the lines of education and financial independence. People understand that it is in their family’s best interest to optimize the number of children they have. I know plenty of Conservatives having smaller families. This is not a left/right leaning issue.

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Steve
Irregular
Steve
July 11, 2017 7:57 pm
Reply to  jcolby

It’s a demographic fact. Draw your own inferences.

Chuck Burton
Member
Chuck Burton
July 11, 2017 5:16 pm

Earth has several times killed off most of it’s organic life forms, usually by means of global warming. and the release of sulfur dioxide. It seems to be in the process of doing so again. Mankind seems to be accelerating the process. Scientists say that human life may become very iffy by the end of this century.

Ron Joseph
Guest
Ron Joseph
July 14, 2017 2:02 am
Reply to  Chuck Burton

Join the discussion Global Warming? omg, EVEN HERE THE CHICKEN LITTLES
PROSTHELIZE! almost every die off has come from planetary winters started by volcanism or asteroid impact. Where do you get it was global warming? When the earth was sub-tropical at the poles the equator didn’t burn up. In fact the fossil fuels were created by the lush growth taking place then.

traydon
traydon
July 11, 2017 5:24 pm

Add to the steady increase in the world’s population the rising per capita use of the world’s resources and you will see even a bigger problem. Yes, we make things more efficiently over time, but as millions of people move from third world economies to more modernized economies in China, India and elsewhere, they are demanding more luxuries than before.

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alpha2
July 11, 2017 5:27 pm

Hi Doc, thanks for writing about this. If I can correct one of your estimations about the refugees arriving on our shores. You surmise that most of them are probably legitimate refugees fleeing from the strife in Syria. If only this were true.

It is estimated that of the one million immigrants that Germany, at the behest of Mrs Merklel, gave sanctuary to, no more than 25% were legitimate refugees as we understand the word. The rest were ‘economic migrants’. These are mostly form sub Saharan Africa and the other failing states of the middle east and North Africa. There are also plenty of Bangladeshis finding their way into Europe by that route as well.

It was reported here last week in The Times that over the previous weekend 12,000 refugees had been picked up off the coast of Libya and delivered to the Italian mainland or islands.

Austria has recently deployed troops and tanks at the Brenner pass border with Italy to cope with and turn back the migrants. Hungary is actively building border fences.

Tragically the droughts gripping the horn of Africa and the rapidly spreading desertification of sub Saharan Africa are accelerating the exodus. Europe did a grubby deal with Erdogan of Turkey whereby he stemmed the flood of migrants across the Aegeans sea to Greece in return for 2 billion euros. For how long that will hold and what exactly he is doing with the would be migrants denied a route no-one seems to know. Like all blackmailers he is now threatening to lift the blockade unless he gets further concessions.

It is almost impossible to discuss these problems in the public forums of the UK without drawing down the righteous indignation of the left amid accusations of racism and of course nazism.

However somehow we have to act to protect our culture and way of life. I live in a truly multi-cultural part of London and it is great, but this is a middle class area. Where there is poverty there breeds fundamentalism, both political and religious of both the right and the left and of Islam and the Western religions. This results in the atrocities we have seen recently on our streets and this is just the beginning.

It seems to me that we would be best served by an enormous pan European initiative to set up refugee camps in all the countries of North Africa to tackle the problem before it sets sail for Europe. To process the genuine refugees and offer them the asylum they need; to help with education and grants the economic migrants, to return to their own homes with hope and a plan for the future.

Oddly enough, it seems to me that crypto currency may be one of the answers. Virtually everybody even in sub Saharan Africa has a mobile phone and in this way the aid can be delivered directly to the people who need it and not to the corrupt aid agencies and governments who squander the vast amounts of aid currently provided.

The answer has to lie in the motivation of the individual, central planning never works.

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Jeff
Member
Jeff
July 11, 2017 6:34 pm
Reply to  alpha2

Germany needs immigrants from Turkey, Syria and really anywhere else to prop up their socialist programs. So does the U.S. (which by the way was founded entirely by immigrants, including the “native” Americans who immigrated from Asia). Eventually the Ponzi scams that are socialism do collapse under their own weight. See the Illinois, California, and other state government budgets. They’re largely taxpayer-funded pension plans for government workers. We all work for them.

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arch1
July 13, 2017 6:09 am
Reply to  Jeff

They don’t need just more people,,, they need good skilled workers who can support themselves with extra left to fund social programs.
Most immigrant/invaders will be a further drain on resources.

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arch1
July 13, 2017 6:11 am
Reply to  alpha2

True

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Peg Palmer
Peg Palmer
July 11, 2017 5:29 pm

Thank you. Someone needed to spell it out.

William Farkas
Irregular
July 11, 2017 6:28 pm

A difficult but critical topic. It always amazes me the way we humans seem to deliberately turn away from bad news, even making it unsocial to broach the topic. In the book War and Peace Tolstoy says that as the French were gathering outside Moscow savouring the moments before their final assault, the people of Moscow had never seen such merriment. We are not programmed for collective rational decision making in times of gathering clouds. About the only mechanism we have for pulling together is a call to arms, ” a war on poverty”.

Frank
Guest
Frank
July 11, 2017 6:29 pm

Doc,
Has there been any discussion of living underground and in submersed cities in the ocean? Of course there is always Mars.

Steve
Irregular
Steve
July 11, 2017 8:41 pm
Reply to  Frank

The land has been quite capable of supporting the people, except where there is war. Power and greed is the acute issue in view here.

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Astrid
Irregular
Astrid
July 11, 2017 6:56 pm

thanks. pop conn, the successor to spg is a worthy place to donate

Maxx
Maxx
July 11, 2017 6:59 pm

It is so wonderful to have a piece on “THE” issue that will eventually either destroy this planet or make it a place where quality of life is reduced to the point where it won’t be worth having a life here at all. If we could just put aside the political, economic, and religious pressures that keep us from actually doing anything about over population. We will soon live on a planet without wildlife, or wilderness. There will only be people and vermin. If we would just stop the madness of having so many children this planet could still heal. Soon it will be too late.

Jeff VerHaar
Member
Jeff VerHaar
July 11, 2017 7:55 pm

The fact that the main world population issues are coming from countries that islamic death cults have murdered any non muslim that did not convert! Within s few generations the sick death cult ships out it’s sick seed to infiltrate blind stupid countries! Even the islamic world terrorist leader Erdogan tells his followers to have at least 8 children! This death cult has been planning the takeover of all non muslim countries for centuries! These islamic do nothing but suck host countries dry of their culture and money! I feel this article was to PC and lacked the obvious observations and facts!

carbon bigfoot
Guest
carbon bigfoot
July 11, 2017 7:57 pm

I respect your medical literary prowess but you have penned an article which is not supportable by the information I read. For starters I recommend a trip down the factual highway in ” The Merchants of Despair” by fellow engineer, Robert Zubrin. Subtitle Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists and the Fatal Cult of Antihumanism. He dispels all the conclusions drawn by the flawed, unscientific references you cite. As an engineer who has studied FAKE SCIENCE for the last 24 years, that espoused by Faux Scientists on all subjects especially those in Climate Studies, I recognize the players. CO2 is greening the planet by 14% in the last 10 years. The gas of life is not responsible for sea level rise or catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming. Subduction by aquifer depletion, shifting tectonic plates and deep sea volcanoes have more blame. The sun is entering a significant dormancy whose effects are yet to be realized–an extension of our current ice-age? Oh and world population has leveled off due to gains in income in previous third world countries. I’ll have more when I resurrect sources far more reliable than the speculative agenized ones you are citing. Stay tuned.

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Trevor
Guest
Trevor
July 12, 2017 4:49 am
Reply to  carbon bigfoot

Thanks for your courage and honesty. That lets you go against the radical element, to give us your views. I look at the places where the sea used to cover etc and see areas where the sea gains area again. This planet is a living moving mass. The climate changes with the moves. And no wrries about overpopulation too much. The nature of this planet will control that in time to come.

gordon
Guest
gordon
July 13, 2017 6:57 pm
Reply to  carbon bigfoot

Take a drive on LA freeways if you think the population has “leveled off”

Ron Joseph
Guest
Ron Joseph
July 14, 2017 2:21 am
Reply to  carbon bigfoot

Join the discussion Gee, if you can read the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics it is very easy to debunk Global Warming based on Co2 levels. HOWEVER take this into consideration. The increase in CO2 is a symptom of our use of stored energy. Overall the suns output is fairly constant as it is a 1% variable. Still, 1% change can do a lot. Anyway, I digress. The rise in CO2 reflects our turning the suns stored energy almost purely into heat. Add the electricity generated from Hydro sources. Again, almost 100% turned into heat. Nuclear energy, same, but the effects are worse because the over riding cause of the excess heat we are experiencing is the water vapor used in steam turbines. Everything we do essentially adds water vapor into the atmosphere anyway and guess what. Good old water, H2O, aqua Pura, Agua, di-hydrogen oxide, IT REALLY IS A GREEN HOUSE GAS! Read that darn handbook. It traps heat, carries heat by the buckets and when combined with pollutants really does make a layer of gas that keeps infra red radiation from escaping to the clear skies.
So what I am saying is that yes, we pave over everything, strip the lands of trees and add billions of tons of water daily to the atmosphere in addition to mega giga joules of heat energy. We are literally heating the planet. Every city is always a degree or 2 warmer than the surrounding countryside, sometimes more. And now metropolitan areas are beginning to dwarf undeveloped lands.
Does anyone get this? This is fairly easy to calculate and the numbers are enormous. Even the heat from charging cell phones is giga joules! It has got to go somewhere folks.
I can see it now, Cap and Trade water vapor tax, water credits…….. Ackkkkkkkkkkkk

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carbon bigfoot
Guest
carbon bigfoot
July 11, 2017 8:04 pm

Hey Doc: World Population by an expert who we lost early this year:
http://principia-scientific.org/hans-rosling-science-population-decline-immigation/

carbon bigfoot
Guest
carbon bigfoot
July 11, 2017 8:11 pm

Monster Quieting of our golden globe entering another Maunder Minimum which precipitated the Little Ice Age. More people die from cold weather than heat —-thousands die in Europe this past Winter I’ll get the figures in time. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/11/monster-solar-minimum-approaching/

Ron Joseph
Guest
Ron Joseph
July 14, 2017 2:23 am
Reply to  carbon bigfoot

Umm, bigfoot, I was there in Europe, it barely snowed in the Alps. It barely even froze for more than a few weeks total in the Alpine.

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gayle
gayle
July 11, 2017 8:27 pm

I read a very well documented piece by James Dale Davidson on why he thinks global cooling is more likely. Did anybody read his book The Age of Deception?

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brown7228
brown7228
July 11, 2017 9:33 pm

U.S. News Elon Musk: The world’s population is accelerating toward collapse and nobody cares Elon points out that there are area of the world like Germany and France will be half of what it is now in the next 60 years. Japan’s woman fertility rate is 1.4 children per woman.

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