The problem is that there are too many people
 

When I think about pollution and the social ills the world has it occurs to me that much of it is caused because there are too many people. If there were a lot fewer people driving cars we would not have air pollution. In areas where the population is sparse they don't have emission inspections. Denser populated area have a higher crime rate than those areas with fewer people. Fewer people needing electricity would mean less coal burning. And so on. We had a lot fewer issues when we an agrarian society. So what drives us in this direction? Corporations needing more consumers for more profits? China recognizes this over population issue therefor it limits the birth rate. Maybe that is what is needed. Japan's population is actually predicted to decrease significantly because people there are not having children. Maybe this whole thing will eventually take care of itself.

Inefficient use of vehicles without any local government oversight = too many cars and trucks in city centers.

China pumping out cheap goods and the world sopping them up = unchecked industrial pollution output.

China has eased its one child policy. Both China and Japan, and Germany are in big trouble as their populations age rapidly.

As Motion stated, there are countries with shrinking populations and they are very concerned about their own future, some practically begging their citizens to make babies.

On the other hand, yes, some of the urban centers are too crowded.

The other thing you have to consider is that in most parts of the world, the cultures could care less about cleanliness and conserving resources. IMHO, 90% of the world is a complete dump. The governments and people don't care one bit about having quiet, clean cities and conserving resources. They are hell-bent on accumulating wealth, which you cannot fault them for at all. Cheap Chinese products and cheaper energy have allowed that to happen.

Do you have a modest proposal ?

LOL, well....

Electric autonomous or ride-sharing cars & trucks mandated (increasing scale year-to-year) by local governments would go a long ways.

Bicycle share systems installations would also help a lot.

Time... as the developing world achieves parity, they will begin to address their shortcomings.

Ban all believers from using airplanes. All future climate conferences will be done over skype, not flying a bunch of hypocrites into tropical locales for a 0.5%er party, paid for by everyone else.

We don't need less people. We need more earth.

We need a good epidemic!

You mean pandemic.

You can tell most posters here don't drive across country. They take to the air. There is actually plenty of land and resources for more people yet.

fenatyl started to thin the herd up here.
in Vancouver, property valuations just went up 30%, for property tax purposes.
the extra tax dollars generated are being used to administer narcan.
the first thing the addict does upon being brought back to life?
you guessed it. off to look for more fenatyl.

the mayor has also decided that the drug addicts deserve water front condos. the tax payer is on the hook.
meanwhile, working stiffs are paying 2500/month to rent a decent studio apartment.

IMO, We're on borrowed time. I really hate to make predictions but at some point something huge (Non conventional war)
will happen and the worlds population will be devastated and nothing will be the same afterwards.

I really hope I'm wrong but looking at the state of the planets politics I can see no other long term outcome.

No worries.

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/...-Earth-012.jpg

^^^this

I've never been to India or China but I don't understand how they've been able to have a vastly larger population than the rest of the planet without there being a huge pandemic or starvation to bring their population closer to the rest of the planet. It leads me to believe the planet can sustain significantly more people than it does now.

The population growth rates in the last couple hundred years is so much larger than it had been for the previous thousands of years that we may quickly find out what the maximum population is.

The entire planet's population could fit in the state of Texas, if NYC people density were possible there.

The issue is, as I see it, that most of the world's governments allow unchecked development and do not have stringent controls on what is developed. Because of this, you see absolutely insane use of land over much of the world.

Global population is expected to rise to about 13 billion by the end of this century, mostly due to sub-Saharan African growth.

whatever happened to ZPG?

A lot of what drives this is the spread between the haves and the have nots. The top .01% do anything they want to accumulate more while the rest do anything they can to survive.
India is living proof of what happens when no systems, other than letting everyone do whatever, are in place.

"The earth is gonna' shake us off like a bad case of fleas."

"The earth is fine. PEOPLE are fuc*ed."

George Carlin

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Yes..even more surprising is a statement I read a while back. It said that if every person on the planet were given a 2x4 ft area of ground to stand on, then all bunched together it would equal an area smaller than Jacksonville, FL
Hard to believe, but true.

8 sq ft x 7.4 billion = 2,123 square miles. A bit larger than Jacksonville, but still a surprising small amount of space!

The Human Being experiment is a failure. We don't deserve to live on this planet. The earth will survive...mankind won't.

There are too many people, no question. Food may become a problem, access to water surely will. We have a lot of land but not all of it is arable.

Population growth is excessive among certain ethnic, religious and socioeconomic groups and it's usually the people that have to work the hardest to survive that multiply the fastest. It bothers me when people cling to ridiculous views of the world and aren't smart enough to see the need to change. I don't see them changing their ways soon, if ever and their problems will one day becomes ours.

The pollution problem bothers me, in that large chunks of the world do nothing to curb it, while we pay an increasingly higher price for diminishing gains. Want to level the economic playing field? Renegotiate the trade agreements to force the countries that want to trade with us to bring their industries under control.

Then, do something about the pollution from shipping this crap across the oceans. Do a Google search on how much pollution the largest seagoing ships put out.

JR

Guys like Elon Musk want us to colonize Mars. Seems crazy (I wouldn't want to live there), but if we get taken out by an asteroid we'd have a place to (and we can screw up Mars).

Soylent Green is people!

How do you pick who gets to go to mars? The best and the brightest? What about "fairness?" Oooh

Seems like there's plenty of room. Drive across country. The US is basically deserted.

2/3 of the Earth's surface is water, so no people there.

Food is plentiful.

I do agree an exception is third world/underdeveloped countries, who continue to propagate at a rate that exceeds their economic capacity.

I was reading an article about Alzeimers and degenerative brain diseases and apparently they are becoming more frequent in older people in China. The forecast in China in 30 years is for there to be more old people than young. The govt there is having a hard time supporting(if at all) the older folks and their diseases as it is now.....

Death penalty for parking violations!

Living on Mars sounds cool, but the environment is so hostile it would literally be like living in Hell.

I don't see them solving the problem of colonizing Mars. It's a pipe dream.

JR

Mars? That's ridiculous. There is very little atmosphere (0.6% of Earth's air pressure), and what there is of it, is 96% carbon dioxide with only trace amounts of oxygen. The atmosphere problem is due to a lack of a magnetosphere. Another consequence of no magnetic field is no protection from solar radiation.

So humans are going to render Earth so uninhabitable that Mars is a better option? I don't think so. It seems it would be easier to start over on a planet that has a magnetosphere, oxygen, and a sufficiently high barometric pressure to keep our blood from boiling. I guess we could hide out on Mars for a while in fancy tents, in the event of an asteroid, but we can't screw it up any more than it already is.

I guess Elon Musk figures he could rake billions into his coffers if he can just get the government to believe him.

If you ever read a world atlas, the population projections are scary. I have no idea how humanity will feed itself. We will run out of food before we poison the Earth.

Not to worry about mother earth. MRSA and other antibiotic resistant bacteria will cull the human population within the next 100 years. The increase in AB resistant infections is a huge concern for the CDC already. There are few promising new AB's in the pipeline and many strains of bacteria are evolving faster than we are.

A Plan For New Antibiotics | In the Pipeline

Boring forum I know...But it's my world.

I believe his thinking was that if an asteroid (or whatever) wipes out the species there would be humans on Mars to carry on the human race. They'd be living inside a colony (like hamsters), no walking outside barefoot with the sand between your toes.

Looks pretty good to me.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1481418425.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1481418439.jpg

The super bugs are already here, especially in hospitals:
Super-Superbugs: Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria May Be Deadlier
'Superbug' Outbreak at California Hospital, More Than 160 Exposed - ABC News
U.S. sees first case of bacteria resistant to last-resort antibiotic | Reuters

We are messing with our own food and DNA:
https://www.undergroundhealth.com/how-gmo-foods-alter-human-dna/
Antibiotics and the Meat We Eat - The New York Times
The use of IgG and IgA antibodies in the diagnosis of food allergy

We are made of a lot of non-human stuff:
You are your germs: Microbe genes got into human DNA - CNN.com
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603085914.htm
Humans Have Ten Times More Bacteria Than Human Cells

Not only are there too many people, we don't get along. Multiculturalism is a pipe dream. People like to be with those that are like themselves. That is why we're all here.