Everything You Want to Know About Population
May 18, 2017
NOTE: Images in this archived article have been removed.
World population passed the 7.5 billion mark in the Spring of 2017, and it could rise to 11 billion by the turn of the century. If we keep adding over 200,000 to the population every day as we do now, and we don’t suffer a “massive die-off,” that figure will be closer to 30 billion.
Population Media Center President Bill Ryerson corrects misconceptions, debunks myths, and shares a variety of surprising facts about overpopulation, population growth, fertility rates and human reproductive behavior in the first of a two-part conversation. Ryerson has spent 47 years in the reproductive health and population fields. He is also Chairman and CEO of the Population Institute in Washington D.C.
Originally posted at Conversation Earth.
How much damaging growth is too much?
Our Number ONE PROBLEM may be our culture of ETERNAL GROWTH. Let’s grow up!
Our culture of looking to (eternal) growth is the SOURCE of most of our problems, NOT the solution. The USA doubles its GDP every 40 years and adds a Chicago to its population every year (mostly immigration). Growth overwhelms all else we try to do to help the environment and our society and to achieve true sustainability. Climate Change is one of the many symptoms, as is crowding, overfishing, pollution, loss of species, the need for franken foods, always more housing and sprawl, and the anthropocene. So is income inequality, loss of quality-of-life, and always more revenue needed by individuals and government to accommodate quantity rather than quality.
Population is the great multiplier!
“Anyone who believes in unlimited growth is either a madman or an economist”. – Kenneth Boulding
Sign onto CASSE at http://steadystate.org/, or better have your organization sign on; see also http://www.growthbusters.org/.
Excellent points except for one huge omission – the weight of our livestock on the planet (60% more than that of humanity, just for cattle) and their gigantic footprint on all our resources is not mentioned even once! Livestock population is growing twice as fast as human population and taking up much more space, requiring vast quantities of water and land, polluting the air and waterways, often eroding the soils, causing deforestation and climate change, making us very sick (which I guess might be the only ‘positive’ point when we look at overpopulation!). There are many studies to read on the subject but here is just one article: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/planet-of-the-cows
There is a one absolute good point here, and that is poverty and lack of resources causes population increase. Why this is happening ? Of course answer is, lack of education. But we shouldn’t think this is only problem there are plenty of problem that causes population increase.
If you care, in this blog you can find answers:
http://thinkandsay.net/population-increase-and-its-implications/