Global overpopulation would ‘withstand war, disasters and disease’

[FreakinDJ]

Global overpopulation would ‘withstand war, disasters and disease’


The pace of population growth is so quick that even draconian restrictions of childbirth, pandemics or a third world war would still leave the world with too many people for the planet to sustain, according to a study.

Rather than reducing the number of people, cutting the consumption of natural resources and enhanced recycling would have a better chance of achieving effective sustainability gains in the next 85 years, said the report published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We were surprised that a five-year WW3 scenario, mimicking the same proportion of people killed in the first and second world wars combined, barely registered a blip on the human population trajectory this century,” said Prof Barry Brook, who co-led the study at the University of Adelaide, in Australia.

“Global population has risen so fast over the past century that roughly 14% of all the human beings that have ever existed are still alive today. That’s a sobering statistic. This is considered unsustainable for a range of reasons, not least being able to feed everyone as well as the impact on the climate and environment,” said co-author Prof Corey Bradshaw, also from the University of Adelaide.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/28/global-population-science-growth-study-wars-disaster-disease

[GliderGuider]

1. At this level, overpopulation is enormously resilient

World population is currently increasing by ~80 million per year. In order to achieve a zero-growth population by increasing the death rate, an additional 80 million people would have to die each year. World War II only produced an excess death rate of ~10 million/year. In order to stop growth and simply maintain the world's population at the current level just by raising the death rate, we would need the equivalent of 8 WWII conflicts going around the world, all the time, forever.

In order to start the population on a significant downward trend, we would also need to cut the birth rate dramatically. Cutting the birth rate in half (in addition to the extra deaths above) would give a population decline of ~70 million per year. Under those draconian circumstances, by 2040 we could reduce the world's population to the level it was in 1995.

If the human population does begin to decline significantly, the attendant suffering will probably be beyond imagining.

Unfortunately for us, it's going to happen whether we can imagine it or not.

[6chars]

2. Great news that we will be in good shape no matter what

well, maybe not

[tabasco]

3. Humans become more and more like rats

as we overpopulate and devastate our natural environment. Wildlife is rapidly disappearing from this planet.

[Anansi1171]

4. Yep. Their WW3 was NOT a global thermonuclear war.

You think 4000-6000 nukes detonated will be simply a speed bump for humankind? Talk about woo!

[FreakinDJ]

6. Dumpster Diving the article like RWer does the bible

Where did it say "Thermonuclear War"

“We were surprised that a five-year WW3 scenario, mimicking the same proportion of people killed in the first and second world wars combined

Just wondering ... if your "Woo" is contagious

[Anansi1171]

9. No, but my WOE is contagious.

The article defines WW3 as causing the sum of deaths from both World Wars 1 and 2.

That is not how WW3, in the popular sense, is often defined. That scenario is of a nuclear exchange between great powers, not of some massive, albeit conventional, global war. Even Albert Einstein noted this in his quip about the kinds of weapons WW4 would be fought with.

Besides, this click-meat says, in sum, that nothing short of an extinction-event will reduce the overpopulation of Earth by humans.

Well, Duh!

Except that extinction events happen, including the one we are in right now.

Not like a RWer, LIKE A BOSS!

[Oneironaut]

5. I think, in a true World (nuclear) War 95% of humans would die.

Most of it would be from starvation. Pretty much everyone in a major city between warring civilizations would be killed in the initial exchange.

Didn't we have some overkill amount of nukes aimed as Moscow during the Cold War? I want to say it was something like 60.

Then, with the world in chaos, everyone else begins to fight and starve. Governments collapse, and food production ceases.

I don't think humans would go extinct (minus a ridiculous amount of unnecessary firepower used, like launching every single nuke we had to carpet bomb all available land, or something like that), but I don't think more than a million or so would still be alive.

[The2ndWheel]

7. We won't know what is or isn't sustainable until it isn't

Short term beats long term. Want to decrease population? Let people die. Not going to do that right? It's not even an option. We keep as many people alive for as long as possible, and deal with the consequences.

Instead of letting people die, we want to give the people alive today more options, so that they have fewer children in the future. That's a long term solution, but we have short term problems, including wanting more of the people alive today to plug into the global economic system, so that they can have fewer children. That will require more resource use. To fix the problem in the long term, we have to keep doing what got us to this point, or else it's not fair to those who haven't had the options yet.

Can't stop, but can't continue.

[FreakinDJ]

8. RWers don't want women in emerging economies to have more options

[geek tragedy]

10. population growth has slowed down everywhere that women have become empowered, childhood diseases

have been eradicated, and education has become universal.

The solution is to pursue those goals, so people stop having litters and start raising manageable families.

[hifiguy]

11. There WILL be a very significant die-off

in the next 100 years. You can't cheat Mother Nature. But the species as a whole should survive.