World to hit 7 billion mark on Oct 31st

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-crowded-earth.html
Crowded Earth: how many is too many?
Already straining to host seven billion souls, Earth is set to teem with billions more, and only a revolution in the use of resources can avert an environmental crunch, experts say.
October 23, 2011 by Marlowe Hood and Richard Ingham

File photo shows commuters in a congested street in Kolkata, India, on World Population Day on July 11, 2011.

As our species has expanded, so has its devouring of the planet's bounty, from fresh water and soil richness to forests and fisheries. And through the coal, oil and gas that drive prosperity, we are also emitting greenhouse gases that alter the climate, potentially maiming the ecosystems which feed us. "From soaring food prices to the crippling effects of climate change, our economies are now confronting the reality of years of spending beyond our means," GFN's president, Mathis Wackernagel, said.

French diplomat Brice Lalonde, one of two coordinators for next June's UN Conference on Sustainable Development, dubbed "Rio+20," said Earth's population rise poses a fundamental challenge to how we use resources. "In 2030 there will be at least another billion people on the planet," Lalonde said. "The question is, how do we boost food security and provide essential services to the billion poorest people but without using more water, land or energy?"

For some experts, voluntary birth control is the key. Many economists, though, argue that the answer lies more in reducing poverty and boosting education, especially of women.

Even so, at summits that seek to shape Earth's future, tackling population growth head-on is almost taboo. "When I attended the UN environment conference in Stockholm (in 1972), the No. 1 item on the agenda was out-of-control population growth," recalled Paul Watson, head of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a radical green group. "When I attended the 1992 conference (in Rio), it wasn't even on the agenda. No one talked about it any more." But for some critics, population measures are synonymous with the mistakes of coercive sterilisation in India in the 1970s or China's "one child" policy, which has led to a gender imbalance in favour of boys.

It looks like China will be ending the restrictions on one-child only (not that it was followed to the letter anyway): http://www.turtlebayandbeyond.org/2011/ ... ld-policy/

Despite our advances in medicine, vaccines are limited in efficacy and antibiotics are increasingly becoming ineffective as bacteria become resistant. Bacteria and viruses are still great at adapting and becoming highly contagious and lethal, so chances are that evolutionary forces combined with incomplete surveillance and ineffective world-wide quarantining procedures in place will take care of the overcrowding problem for us as living conditions deteriorate with overcrowding and food/water shortages becoming more prevalent.

HEARTLESS wrote: We, as a nation, can't solve the world's problems. But we need to address our nations problems that we can affect. It isn't just about limited resources but the quality of life in our country for ourselves and future generations.

And while we aren't responsible for fixing the world's problems, you have to realize that it is all interconnected. No country is entirely isolated anymore - our food production/consumption/usage for non-food production causes prices to rise everywhere, for example. We have contributed the largest amount of CO2 to the atmosphere historically and our continued non-effort at curbing our GHG emissions affects the whole planet, not just our own country. The movement of illegals is a horizontal shift in global terms; while I understand that it's a matter of importance to you, and do not wish to take away from that, it is not so much to me - I'm more worried about the bigger picture.

BadgerKustoms wrote: I've always thought of human kind as a good definition of a virus, we've spread rapidly, become medically resistant to many things that use to kill us off over there years, adapted, overcome, and are depleteing this 'host'. Yep, we sound very much like a typical virus.



Badger

We do fit the description in many ways, yes. In that light, pandemics are the natural order of eliminating the problem of "us", or at least reducing the load to tolerable, less-damaging levels. In historical times, pandemics were much smaller in area, but still affected a large percentage of a concentrated group of humans - we've expanded our habitat so the scope of the pandemic will expand accordingly. C'est la vie.