Over Population

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menu
Introduction	The USA
World Population	The Good News
World Population Growth	The Bad News
Sustainable Population	Carrying Capacity
The Habit of Overpopulating	Club of Rome
The American Excuse	Infant Mortality Rates
Action	Books
Sex Selection	Links

Humans are now the most numerous mammal on the planet. There are more humans than rats or mice. Humans have a huge ecological footprint, magnified by their technology.
Dr. David Suzuki (1936-03-24 age:82)

You cannot sustain population growth and / or growth in the rates of consumption of resources.
~ Dr. Albert A. Bartlett (1923-03-21 age:95)

Introduction

world population over the last 25,000 years

world population over the last 25,000 years

Nearly all global problems are made worse by overpopulation.

We have wars fighting over scarce resources and territory.
We destroy the habitat of every other species, pushing them to extinction. In India alone the population increases by 20 million every year. These people have to live and farm somewhere. The increase won’t stop until all the wildlands are gone. Which do we really need more of on earth? humans or the other species?
Dealing with the pollution of our industries and fecal waste is compounded by overpopulation.
Plagues thrive in overcrowded conditions.
We are rapidly depleting our non-renewable energy reserves. Every person in the developed world consumes 40 times as much as in the developing world. As the huge populations of the developing world demand the fruits of development the energy and resource needs will soar.

Yet we refuse to take any sort of action to limit our populations even though our species has hit the planet like a plague of tent caterpillars. We consider ourselves a rational species, but we foolishly overbreed in a race to turn our paradise of earth to a hell. We have no more sense than tent caterpillars, We are as much a slave to our gonads as any insect.

World Population

The population clock above may differ from others since this one is based on US Census data and others may be based on UN (United Nations) data. UN data gives higher population estimates. You are free to include this clock on your own website.

There have never been more people on Earth. There have never been more cows on Earth, nor pigs, nor chickens. We are using more pesticides today than at any other time in history and we are losing a greater percentage of the crops. At the same time, there has never been less clean water on Earth. There has never been less available topsoil, nor fewer fish, nor fewer mature trees. There has never been less cause for optimism for the future of the human race. Our natural resources are disappearing at an unbelievable rate and our so-called leaders offer only cosmetic solutions. The Earth’s population calls for more of everything while the Earth demands time to recover from years of abuse.
~ Howard Lyman (1938-09-17 age:79)

World Population Growth

You can see from this graph of world population growth the incredible extra burden we are putting on the earth’s carrying capacity, especially in Asia and the Pacific.

The growth in population is very much bound up with poverty and in turn poverty plunders the earth. When human groups are dying of hunger, they eat everything: grass, insects, everything. They cut down the trees, they leave the land dry and bare. All other concerns vanish. That’s why in the next thirty years the problems we call environmental will be the hardest that humanity has to face.
~ Tenzin Gyatso (1935-07-06 age:82) the fourteenth Dalai Lama

Sustainable Population

How big a population can the earth sustain? If everyone consumed like Americans, we would need three entire planets to support them. Experts believe that if we reduced consumption, we might be able to sustain 0.5 to 3 billion people.

The Habit of Overpopulating

Most animals don’t need to concern themselves with overpopulation. Predators take care of the problem. For Why the pope promotes overpopulation predators, starvation handles it. On average only two offspring survive to adulthood, even when an animal has millions of young. Yet we humans have developed technology to strip the land bare and pile layer upon layer of humanity, protected by vaccines. No matter how densely we pack ourselves in, we still strive for ever higher populations out of an ancient biological imperative. It shows up in our outdated religious beliefs. They still push for maximal fecundity even though such fecundity is no longer appropriate. People also have children for status reasons. They also have children to provide for them in their old age. Social institutions refuse to adjust to the new reality of overpopulation.

Single cell organisms normally do all they can to split and become two. However, in multi-celled organisms this urge has to be curtailed. When cells refuse to behave and consider the life of the organism as a whole, they reproduce at will and become a cancer. Similarly in civilisations, there are some groups that refuse to curb their reproduction. Christians and Muslims who resist birth control are the analog of cancer on the body politic.

During the Gadafi ouster, a man from Libya mentioned that he had 70 cousins, a number of whom he had never seen. To avoid a population explosion, you must not have more than 4 first cousins.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The American Excuse

Americans tell me that it is not their fault the world is overpopulated. The fault lies in Asia and Africa where people have large families. Yet each American consumes 11 times the resources of someone living in Asia or Africa. Americans import these resources from all over the planet. Every American kid counts as 11 kids in terms of burden on the planetary ecosystem. Not only do Americans need to reverse their population growth, they must reduce their ecological footprint. Each American woman has about 2.07 children, equivalent to a family of 23 children in terms of drain on the ecosystem.

Action

If your parents were environmentally irresponsible and had more than two children, you and your siblings can compensate to correct the mini population explosion by limiting yourself to four children among you.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

We must change the archaic attitudes towards breeding. It must become socially unacceptable. This is quite a revolution in our thinking. The urge to breed is so strong it will prevail against almost any social pressure. There is no worry about going too far. If we do, we can adjust.

For example here are some approaches that have been tried, not all of which are very palatable:

We need massive research on birth control that is cheap to administer that works by default. Both parties should need to do something active, (other than have sex), to allow a pregnancy, e.g. take a pill.
We must provide programs to ensure people are cared for in old age whether or not they have children.
We must get rid of all government subsidies that encourage people to have children.
We should provide large cash incentives for vasectomies and tubal ligations.
We need new technology to attempt to support the huge populations with sustainable clean energy and sustainable agriculture.
We must start making rude jokes about people who have children. We must call them breeders or other nastier epithets.
We must discourage religions that encourage overpopulation by taking away their tax breaks.
We must encourage people to have homosexual relationships wherever possible.
We should encourage people to keep small pets instead of children.
We should continue the Bush approach to AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), namely actively encouraging it. We should create some new plagues as well, ones better aimed at those who have large numbers of children.
We should foment wars to help kill off the young men.
We should not intervene when crazed dictators such as Hitler, Idi Amin and Pol Pot decimate their populations.
We should relax the taboos against inter-species sex.

Not all these approaches are equally palatable. Even I don’t endorse them all. However, if we don’t get serious about the more palatable ones, we will be forced to use the less palatable ones instead. People sometimes write me furious that I would advocate such strange measures. I don’t. I merely list what has been tried or suggested.

The first homo sapiens walked the earth 200,000 years ago.

It took until 1804 for the global population to reach 1 billion.

123 years later in 1927, it reached 2 billion.

33 years later in 1960, it reached 3 billion.

14 years later in 1974 it reached 4 billion.

13 years later in 1987 it reached 5 billion.

12 years later in 1999 it reached 6 billion.

Today it reached 7 billion.

In 2025 it is projected to hit 12 billion.

You can see the problem, called exponential growth. The more people there are, the more people there are having babies and the faster the population grows. The only remotely palatable solution is to lower the birth rate. Each family must have fewer than two children.
~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)

The USA

There are three ways to approach the population problem:

reduce the birth rate.
increase the death rate.
increase the efficiency with which you can sustain a population with limited resources.

Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.
~ Henry Kissinger (1923-05-27 age:94)

America has focused almost exclusively on increasing the death rate. This is a startling thing to say, but look at her actions, not George W. Bush’s fine speeches.

She interfered with condom education in Africa, which does work and forced religious-based abstinence education which has been proven to make the AIDS epidemic worse.
America blocked African countries from making and distributing AIDS drugs to stop the epidemic. Preserving patents was more important than preserving lives.
America is the stingiest country of all the western nations in terms of foreign aid. Even the greedy Saudis are 50 times as generous. It is ironic two of the richest countries in the world are also the stingiest. Canada is the second stingiest western country giving 2.8 times as generously as the USA as a percentage of GNI (Gross National Income). What makes America’s stinginess even more shameful, is American gives the 1/3 her foreign aid to Israel who spends it on their military to oppress her Palestinian citizens. Israel is a relatively prosperous nation. There are many countries more deserving of help than Israel.
47% of the planet’s military spending (i.e. spending on ways to kill people) is done by America. Americans kill more people than all other nations combined. Ostensibly this spending is to protect Americans and to improve the quality of American life. However, it accomplishes this by killing people who live in countries that possess the natural resources America wants, such as Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Zaire.
America backs corrupt political regimes who oppress their people in return for access to natural resources. Let us not forget that it was America who originally helped Saddam, Marcos and Pinochet into power.
American sponsored immunization programs in Africa deliberately reused needles without sterilisation. This spread all manner of diseases including AIDS.
Americans are the most deliberately wasteful group of people on the planet when it comes to resources. There whole culture and status system is built on consumption and waste. Canada is almost as bad.
America encourages ever higher birthrates at home and abroad by discouraging family planning, contraceptives, condoms and abortion.
America encourages ever higher birthrates by destroying economic stability in other countries exploiting workers and destroying unions. Impoverished people have no social security other than a large family.

Sex Selection

In some societies, parents prefer to have male children. It might be wise not to interfere. Why?

They will have fewer children overall, e.g. people who keep having children until they get a boy, can get one on the first try.
With fewer female babies, there will be fewer mothers and fewer babies in future. The excess boys will not be reproducing.
As females get rarer, it is possible their status will rise, as it did in the Gold Rush days. This may be what it takes so shake up some rigid patriarchal societies.

It is hard enough to get people to control their rabbit instincts. Let us not interfere with sex selection as a means of population control that does not need a hard sell.

The Good News

Ever since 1968, when the United Nations Population Division predicted that the world population, now 6.6 billion (2006), would grow to at least 12 billion by 2050, the agency has regularly revised its estimates downward. Now it expects population to plateau at nine billion. That is still 2.4 times higher than the goal of 2 billion.

I have severe doubts that we can support even two billion if they all live like citizens of the U.S. The world can support a lot more vegetarian saints than Hummer-driving idiots.
~ Paul Ehrlich (1932-05-29 age:85)

Many western countries have achieved a negative population growth if you discount immigration.

Even in North Africa, regarded as the great exception to the shrinking population trend, birthrates have dropped somewhat. Egypt’s, for example, went from 5.4 births per woman in 1970 to 3.6 in 1999.

If all you do is teach people how to use birth control and provide women with access to it, you don’t need any coercion. In Africa people still have large families, but that is because there is no old age security other than children. When that security is provided, family size automatically shrinks because birth control frees women to other things besides raise babies.

The Bad News

Can you think of any problem, in any area of human endeavor, on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?
~ Dr. Albert A. Bartlett (1923-03-21 age:95)

Corporations have magnified the power of human greed to widen the wealth gap. They have encouraged conspicuous consumption. Religions are still goading their adherents to breed faster than any other sect. At the same time the power of the earth to sustain is waning through the end of oil (upon which the green revolution is based), the erosion of soil, pesticide and chemical contamination of soil and water, urban sprawl into the prime farm land and global warming which is destabilising climate and rain.

Too many things have to go right for us to get out of this one without massive pain. It is just not going to happen. Most of the world are like pigs in a trough trampling the environment not thinking about anything other than their immediate gratification. All we can do is try to make it not quite so awful, to preserve at least a few acres from the ravening caterpillars that humanity have become, so that at least there will be islands of life to reseed the earth after the human plague has passed. We humans are the biggest extinction event in the history of the planet, wiping out even more species than the asteroid that hit earth and ended the age of the dinosaurs. Being proud of being human is like being proud of being an Ebola virus.

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
~ Joni Mitchell (1943-11-07 age:74), Big Yellow Taxi

Earth’s Carrying Capacity

In 1961 the earth had 3 billion people. They were using 0.5 of the sustainable resources of earth.

In 1986 the earth had 5 billion people. They were using all of the sustainable resources.

Ever since we have been running that might be called an environmental deficit budget which is only sustained by plundering our capital base.

By that I mean:

overexploiting fisheries.
overgrazing to the point of desertification.
destroying forests.
polluting the waters and atmosphere, including greenhouse gases.

You have seen the results of Bush deficit budgets. The same sort of thing is happening on a planetary basis.

At the rate we are going, we would need 2 whole planets to sustain our rapacious appetites in 2050. Something has obviously got to give — most pleasantly our wasteful use of energy.

Club of Rome

A group of scientists known as the Club of Rome back in the 1970s attempted to predict when population would outstrip resources. They predicted serious problems much too soon. The data they were given about energy and mineral resources seriously underestimated the untapped wealth of the earth. They were basically right, but got the timing wrong. In contrast, today we know exactly how many pollutants of each kind are being released into the atmosphere with great precision. Further because of extraordinary improvements in computers, the mathematical predictions are now much more accurate. People afraid to look at the serious problems facing humanity like to bury their heads in the sand by telling themselves scientists are always wrong because the Club of Rome’s timing was off. Of course they trust scientists in nearly ever other instance, from pharmaceuticals to aeronautics.

Infant Mortality Rate

The usual measure of a country’s health care system is the IMR (Infant Mortality Rate). the number of infant deaths per 1000 births. There are some surprises taken from this table compiled by the CIA. Countries near the top of the list have the best healthcare systems. Even though the USA spends more on health care than any other country it has the worst IMR of any first world country. Even third world Cuba beats it. Canada spends about 1/3 per capita of what the USA does on health care, yet Canada ranks 24 to the USA’s 51.

Canada dropped from rank 23 to 43. The USA dropped from rank 43 to 51.

Americans are paying more than anyone else in the world and receiving third world quality health care. Clearly they are being ripped off, but Americans are too proud to admit it. They live under the delusion their health care must be the best in the world simply because it is the most expensive and has the most TV ads touting it.

Countries of the world ranked by IMR Infant Mortality Rate in 2012
Infant Mortality Rates 2012
Rank	Country	IMR	Notes
1	Monaco	1.80	best in the world
2	Japan	2.21
3	Bermuda	2.47
4	Singapore	2.65
5	Sweden	2.74	So much for the canard that socialised medicine does not work.
6	Hong Kong	2.90	Not quite what you would expect.
7	Macau	3.17
8	Iceland	3.18
9	Italy	3.36
10	Spain	3.37
11	Finland	3.40
12	France	3.40
13	Anguilla	3.44
14	Norway	3.50
15	Germany	3.51
16	Guernsey	3.52
17	Malta	3.65
18	Belarus	3.70
19	Czech Republic	3.70
20	Netherlands	3.73
21	Andorra	3.76
22	Ireland	3.81
23	Switzerland	3.90
24	Jersey	3.94
25	Israel	4.07
26	Korea, South	4.08
27	Slovenia	4.12
28	Denmark	4.19
29	Austria	4.26
30	Isle of Man	4.27
31	Belgium	4.28
32	Liechtenstein	4.39
33	Luxembourg	4.39
34	European Union	4.49
35	Australia	4.55
36	United Kingdom	4.56
37	Portugal	4.60
38	Taiwan	4.60
39	Wallis and Futuna	4.61
40	San Marino	4.65
41	New Zealand	4.72
42	Cuba	4.83
43	Canada	4.85	Rose from 4.69 under the Conservative Harper government.
44	French Polynesia	4.88
45	Greece	4.92
46	Hungary	5.24
47	New Caledonia	5.62
48	Guam	5.70
49	Northern Mariana Islands	5.70
50	Faroe Islands	5.94
51	United States	6.00
52	Croatia	6.06
53	Bosnia and Herzegovina	6.10
54	Lithuania	6.18
55	Serbia	6.40
56	Poland	6.42
57	Slovakia	6.47
58	Cayman Islands	6.49
59	Gibraltar	6.55
60	Qatar	6.81
61	Estonia	6.94
62	Virgin Islands	7.10
63	Saint Pierre and Miquelon	7.29
64	Russia	7.30
65	Chile	7.40
66	Kuwait	7.87
67	Puerto Rico	8.10
68	Latvia	8.24
69	Macedonia	8.32
70	Ukraine	8.38
71	Nauru	8.51
72	Cyprus	9.05
73	Costa Rica	9.20
74	American Samoa	9.40
75	Saint Kitts and Nevis	9.43
76	Uruguay	9.44
77	Sri Lanka	9.47
78	Greenland	9.83
79	Bahrain	10.20
80	Botswana	10.49
81	Argentina	10.52
82	Fiji	10.73
83	Romania	10.73
84	Grenada	11.12
85	Brunei	11.15
86	Mauritius	11.20
87	Panama	11.32
88	Seychelles	11.35
89	United Arab Emirates	11.59
90	Barbados	11.63
91	Turks and Caicos Islands	11.63
92	Palau	12.10
93	Dominica	12.38
94	Saint Lucia	12.39
95	Aruba	12.51
96	Libya	12.70
97	Bahamas, The	13.09
98	Tonga	13.21
99	Moldova	13.65
100	Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	13.86
101	Albania	14.12
102	Antigua and Barbuda	14.17
103	Jamaica	14.30
104	British Virgin Islands	14.43
105	West Bank	14.47
106	Malaysia	14.57
107	Georgia	14.68
108	Montserrat	14.69
109	Oman	14.95
110	Syria	15.12
111	Cook Islands	15.30
112	Lebanon	15.32
113	Saudi Arabia	15.61
114	China	15.62
115	Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha	15.80
116	Jordan	15.83
117	Thailand	15.90
118	Colombia	15.92
119	Bulgaria	16.13
120	Gaza Strip	16.55
121	Mexico	16.77
122	Solomon Islands	17.25
123	Vanuatu	17.90
124	Armenia	18.21
125	Philippines	18.75
126	Ecuador	19.06
127	El Salvador	19.66
128	Honduras	19.85
129	Venezuela	20.18
130	Viet Nam	20.24
131	Brazil	20.50
132	Uzbekistan	21.20
133	Dominican Republic	21.30
134	Belize	21.37
135	Peru	21.50
136	Samoa	21.85
137	Nicaragua	21.86
138	Paraguay	22.24
139	Marshall Islands	22.93
140	Kazakhstan	23.06
141	Turkey	23.07
142	Algeria	23.40
143	Micronesia, Federated States of	23.51
144	Egypt	24.23
145	Tunisia	24.98
146	Guatemala	25.16
147	Cape Verde	26.02
148	Korea, North	26.21
149	Maldives	26.46
150	Morocco	26.49
151	Trinidad and Tobago	26.73
152	Indonesia	27.00
153	Zimbabwe	28.23
154	Azerbaijan	28.76
155	Suriname	28.94
156	Kyrgyzstan	30.80
157	Tuvalu	33.55
158	Guyana	35.59
159	Mongolia	36.00
160	Tajikistan	37.33
161	Kiribati	37.68
162	Iraq	40.25	Under American occupation
163	Eritrea	40.34
164	Turkmenistan	40.89
165	Ghana	40.90
166	Bolivia	40.94
167	Iran	41.11
168	Timor-Leste	41.40
169	Papua New Guinea	42.05
170	Bhutan	42.17
171	South Africa	42.67
172	Nepal	43.13
173	Kenya	43.61
174	Namibia	45.61
175	India	46.07
176	Tanzania	46.50
177	Madagascar	47.40
178	Burma	47.74
179	Bangladesh	48.99
180	Gabon	49.00
181	Togo	49.87
182	Sao Tome and Principe	51.83
183	Haiti	52.44
184	Djibouti	53.31
185	Lesotho	53.44
186	Yemen	53.50
187	Cambodia	54.08
188	Senegal	55.16
189	Sudan	55.60
190	Laos	57.77
191	Mauritania	58.93
192	Western Sahara	58.96
193	Guinea	59.04
194	Swaziland	59.57
195	Cameroon	59.70
196	Benin	60.03
197	Burundi	60.32
198	Ethiopia	60.90
199	Pakistan	61.27
200	Rwanda	62.51
201	Cote d'Ivoire	63.20
202	Uganda	64.20
203	Comoros	68.97
204	Gambia, The	69.58
205	Zambia	70.60
206	South Sudan	71.80
207	Liberia	72.71
208	Congo, Republic of the	74.22
209	Nigeria	74.36
210	Equatorial Guinea	75.18
211	Congo, Democratic Republic of the	76.63
212	Sierra Leone	76.64
213	Mozambique	76.85
214	Malawi	79.02
215	Burkina Faso	79.84
216	Angola	83.53
217	Niger	89.70
218	Chad	93.61
219	Guinea-Bissau	94.40
220	Central African Republic	97.17
221	Somalia	103.72
222	Mali	108.70
223	Afghanistan	121.63	Under American occupation. Worst in the world.

Ironically, where IMR is lowest, population growth is slowest, so it pays to improve infant mortality to reduce population.

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.
~ Gore Vidal (1925-10-03 2012-07-30 age:86) on overpopulation.

Solutions

Scientists have discovered four solutions to overpopulation:

Education of girls.
Women’s equality and civil rights so they are not bullied into pregnancy.
Women having access to means to limit fertility.
Higher child survival rates. This sounds paradoxical, but with higher survival rates people have much smaller families.

Books

recommend book⇒The Coming Population Crash: and Our Planet’s Surprising Future

Fred Pearce

978-0-8070-0122-6

paperback

birth

1951 age:66

978-0-8070-8583-7

hardcover

publisher

Beacon

B003DZ1116

kindle

published

2010-04-01

The title is a bit of a misnomer. The author predicts population will top out at about 8 billion in 2040 and then gradually drop. The women of all the countries of the world are voluntarily having fewer babies so they can join the work force. Italy has already dropped its birth rate to 1.1, less than needed to sustain. The earth’s population is aging. This is a good thing since older people tend to be more willing to make the sacrifices needed for a green planet and, of course, they don’t have more babies.

Online bookstores carrying The Coming Population Crash: and Our Planet’s Surprising Future
	abe books anz	abe books.ca
	abe books.de	amazon.ca
	amazon.de	Chapters Indigo
	amazon.es	Chapters Indigo eBooks
	iberlibro.com	abe books.com
	abe books.fr	amazon.com
	amazon.fr	Barnes & Noble
	abe books.it	Nook at Barnes & Noble
	amazon.it	Kobo
	junglee.com	Google play
	abe books.co.uk	O’Reilly Safari
	amazon.co.uk	Powells
	other stores

Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder.

recommend book⇒Our Plundered Planet

Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr.

978-0-316-66608-4

hardcover

birth

1887-01-15 1969-09-16 age:82

publisher

Little, Brown

published

1948-01

The most important thing about this book is that it was published in 1948, 14 years before Rachael Carson and Silent Spring. It focuses on over population, soil erosion, invasive species, massive water control projects and the rapacious practices of corporations. These problems were apparent even back then and we did almost nothing about them. There is also a paperback version of this book, but it does not have an ISBN.

Online bookstores carrying Our Plundered Planet
	abe books anz	abe books.ca
	abe books.de	amazon.ca
	amazon.de	Chapters Indigo
	amazon.es	Chapters Indigo eBooks
	iberlibro.com	abe books.com
	abe books.fr	amazon.com
	amazon.fr	Barnes & Noble
	abe books.it	Nook at Barnes & Noble
	amazon.it	Kobo
	junglee.com	Google play
	abe books.co.uk	O’Reilly Safari
	amazon.co.uk	Powells
	other stores

Greyed out stores probably do not have the item in stock. Try looking for it with a bookfinder.

Links

abortion
New York Times article: Demographic Bomb May Only Go Pop!
Population clock
Population Speakout
reader feedback on this essay

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