After watching "What happened to Monday" it comes to mind that the Earth will be overpopulated beyond control within a few centuries. Do you think we should implement one child policies worldwide?
This movie is about an overpopulated Earth where inhumane population control methods are implemented. And 7 girls named from Monday to Sunday have to live all as 1 person and have a life only once every week.
It really makes you think.
Look at Australia, nearly all of Australians live by coast. There's so much unpopulated land. I don't think taking away people's right to reproduce is the answer. Building more houses would be a better solution.
The problem right now isn't so much the space. It's being able to produce enough food and the finite supply of fresh water. We even have a big water problem in the US. California already gets much of their water from other states, including Colorado, and Colorado is running out of water.
70% of the earth is water, I can't see how water and food can be such a problem. If we can direct a missile hundreds of miles with pinpoint accuracy then surely we can get food and water to people.
How much of that 70% can you drink? Using the oceans water sounds like a good idea on the surface, and it is used for about 1% of the worlds population today. It is not a cheap process though and as population grows, the need for food grows. It sounds crazy, but did you know it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a bushel of corn? Can you imagine the cost of desalinating that much water on a scale large enough to grow crops? Then there would be the impossible task of getting that water to agricultural areas like Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, etc etc.
http://www.agriculture.com/mach...el_272-ar22678
This looks quite simple and cheap to make. Yet I've never seen one. Have you?
The sea could be full of them. As for transportation, we don't seem to have any trouble transporting oil around the world
There is a big difference between transporting water and oil (gasoline) The average person in Kansas uses 462 gallons of gasoline a year. The average person in the US uses 33,000 gallons of water a year. That's just for personal use, not for livestock, crop irrigation, lawns, plants, gardens etc.
Would you be willing to pay even $1 a gallon for all the water you used? That would be about $33,000. It's just not a practical solution to use desalinated water for a large population and anyone not living on the coast.
There has to be a better solution than telling people they can't reproduce.
I'm not disagreeing with you there. LOL (That would never work) It's just that solutions are often a lot more complex than we are led to believe and there are never any quick, inexpensive fixes.
I lived in Kuwait, total population about 4 million, where all their drinking water comes from a desalinization plant. It works in a country where 99% of the population is within 10 miles of the gulf and they have unlimited funds when it comes to $$$.
Growing population may be an issue. I'm 67 and even way back when I was becoming a Dad, there was ... awareness. It seemed to me that if we had two kids, we were just replacing ourselves - no real growth.
I've heard a lot about what Boz wrote about too - fertility rates declining. So, somehow, 'Mother Nature' is taking care of business. Big populations do take their toll. Besides just the room, people seem to congregate in cities and suburbs and we consistently ruin the environment in ever growing areas. We over farm the land, pushing for greater production, over fertilize with run off poisoning water supplies. My point is, there are lot's of issues that all need attention. And, at this point, I think new Moms and Dads should be encouraged to have smaller families - not by law, but by societal encouragement. We could even reduce abortions the same way if it weren't treated like a method of birth control.
I think responsible people are only having a couple children because that's all they can afford to support. Irresponsible people are pumping them out in large numbers because they rely on others to foot the bil for their kids as well as themselves.
Great point!
You and I think alike. While reading all these posts, that was what was going around in my brain.
One solution to this would be that the government would only support two children, per family, at a time.
No more money for extra kids. It sounds harsh but that is what people should be doing that actually support their children.
Yep. If you can't afford them, don't have them. If you have them to get more freebies from others who have to work, get neutered.
Declining fertility replacement rates are not due to 'Mother Nature', but largely due to things like the trend from women as homemakers to most women today participating in the workforce; fears about "overpopulation", the environment, and resource scarcity; higher overall living standards and the higher costs of raising children today.
You are correct that there are issues that need attention, the problem lies in how we address them. Currently we are doing a piss-poor job. Even if we corrected all the environmental issues and quit squandering resources, though, there are larger issues that will not/cannot be corrected by reducing fertility rates even further. Societal encouragement has placed nearly all of the western peoples on the road to extinction, while having little to no effect in the countries with the highest fertility rates.
I don't know what the answers are, but I think we should focus on finding solutions rather than encouraging the eventual extinction of all western peoples.
Just trying to learn here - not being a dickhead (this time) -
Women leaving the home to work affects fertility? Fears? Living Standards?
Am I thinking wrong that fertility has something to do with the odds of a woman getting pregnant? I don't see a plausible connection if so.
Or, is it more like a woman's desire to become pregnant changing because of those factors?
Fertility replacement rate is the measure of how many births are required to replace a population. The factors I listed, along with few others, led to declining birth rates because they led people to choose to limit the number of children they have or to opt to have none at all.
Currently the rate in western/developed countries is 2.1, the rate is higher in countries with higher child mortality rates. Any sustained birth rate below fertilty replacement rate means that eventually that population will cease to exist. Before that happens, though, there will be a time when the elderly portion of the population will exceed what the young, working portion can support. That will bring a whole new set of problems with it.
China has recognized this and now allows two children per couple, but they are not experiencing the desired increase because (for various reasons) many people are opting not to have a second child. In Singapore, the problem is even worse. In 1965 they had a rate of 4.6 and began penalizing people for having too many kids, as well as encouraging fewer births. That was so effective that by 1987 - just 22 years - they were encouraging people to have three or more children. At this point, the situation is so critical they are paying people $4,000 for the first and second child, and $6,000 for each additional child they have.
I always thought agrarian societies had larger families not only because of infant mortality but because people need help farming the land. I could not find any evidence to support this though.
I have heard that, too, and that it was also cheaper for farm families to have more kids because they didn't have to buy the extra food necessary as people in cities did. Whether that is true or not, I don't know. I think it may have been a factor, along with others.
The areas that currently have higher replacement fertility rates due to higher infant mortality are in areas of extreme poverty, whether agrarian or not.
I'm so glad!
Here's me... being happy!
I don't think the situation is desperate enough to warrant such actions. My guess is that a viral pandemic will do the heavy lifting.
That was going to be my answer along with war.
War is always in my top three.
Perhaps some sort of population control should be implemented worldwide, it's not nice to rob people of the joy to have multiple children but overpopulation will be a problem which will make people everywhere suffer.
Definitely I advocate pop control... No one should have more than 2-3 children...
This sounds a bit like an old movie called Logan's Run, where everyone over 30 was put to death. And then there is an even older movie about making people into bread... called... damnit I forget...Soyient Green...Charlton Heston.
Always a good movie theme...
Is there a way to turn people in garlic bread? I'd love some garlic bread.
Garlic bread is so decadent.
Loved that movie.
Which one. Logan's Run or Soyient Green...
Logan's Run.
I saw it last year...part of it was good...toward the end it got a bit slow.
I think it was one of those movies that was "timely". I saw it back in 76. ( I also hadn't turned "red" yet... <s>)
Let's just blow up the Earth.
While doing it, let's grow some honey and LSD. If the bees are gone, we'll find a way to imagine them. We'll just eat soap instead.
Not the bees
I started to watch that yesterday on Netflix, I couldn't get into it though. In answer to your question I think overpopulation is a myth
Why though? We are already 7 billion and growing, China had to use that policy because they were getting overpopulated. If people have 2 children or more each the population will grow.
That number could be lie. Not only that, but there are parts of the world that arnt populated at all. Overcrowding should be solved by city planners not population controllers.
True, but no one wants to live in sahara or antarctica
No. The earth is not overpopulated. Global fertility rates are in decline, and most developed countries currently reproduce below the fertility replacement rate. Europe, Canada, Australia, and the US are all below replacement rate. Of the 28 nations in the EU, in 2015 only one was above replacement rate. China, which used to limit couples to one child, has changed that to two.