Mankind is an epidemic, how do we cure it?

[The Fear]

So mankind as a species is an epidemic. Earth will run out of resources as we are increasing at alarming rates.

In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living. The world population was estimated to have reached 7.6 billion as of December 2017. The United Nations estimates it will further increase to 11.8 billion by the year 2100.

The strange thing is that any real answer to this problem sounds horrendous, cruel, extreme. But if we continue to multiply the way we are, then that too will be horrendous for future generations.

Even the UK is over 65million now. I'd argue a country this size should be half that.

An unsolvable problem?

Obviously in days gone by there was a higher infant mortality rate, more died in childbirth, old people didn't live so long, people with illnesses would have died (Id not have survived back in the day!) and wars took far larger numbers of people. And of course, there were plagues that wiped out many as well.

I wonder if the planet, or us as a species will at some stage have something to bring down our numbers.

Logic says you don't treat people over a certain age. You don't save people with illness etc.

But of course, we have empathy and couldn't do that.

It's a perfect dilemma isn't it?

 

[The Fear]

200 years ago there were less than one billion humans living on earth. Today, according to UN calculations there are over 7 billion of us.1 Recent estimates suggest that today's population size is roughly equivalent to 6.5% of the total number of people ever born.2 This is the most conspicuous fact about world population growth: for thousands of years, the population grew only slowly but in recent centuries, it has jumped dramatically. Between 1900 and 2000, the increase in world population was three times greater than during the entire previous history of humanity—an increase from 1.5 to 6.1 billion in just 100 years.

https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth

 

[Stephen Jay Hawkings]

I do wonder if nature will intervene and sort itself out. We are part of nature too after all.

Maybe in a weird way, nature creates us, we create global warming, global warming wipes a huge number of us out in catastrophic weather events, and old mother earth is happy again. It was all a plan.

But I'm guessing we're going to have to find some nearby very earth-like planets soon and get out of here because this can't go on.

 

[HeathfieldRoad1874]

Has anyone else read Inferno, by Dan Brown? That has a solution. I can't give too much away, in case I give an spoilers, but I loved the villain!!!!!!

 

[BodyButter]

You are in a cheery mood today, Fear.

Why do you think the correct population for the UK is 32.5m?

 

[Villan Of The North]

Personally I don't accept that mankind is an epidemic however I do accept that we are currrently acting irresponsibly and killing the planet. This is something that will ultimately be limited by nature due to missuse of water resources leading to famine and war, overreliance on meat as a food source (veganism requires approx 1/32nd of the land area to feed a person) leading to deforestation and further poisoning of the environment, or disease brought about by overcrowding in certain areas combined with the overuse of antibiotics, or possibly a combination of all o f these.

Responsible social politics could resolve all of this but currently there is no, or too little will to do so, money and individual/national convenience/desire is standing in teh way and I fear that it will take a major disater to bring about a correction in thought and actions, and even then some will not accapt this.

 

[CDX_EIRE]

The world can support this many and more but it can't support this many or even half the number living a western lifestyle.

Food production is through the roof but again there is an ethical question over the current factory farming. Hydroponics are an answer for increasing production without increase the footprint of production as well and the 'synthetic meat' malark will be an interesting thing.

The driving force of this world is capitalism and endless growth is the only way it can function. We're not evolve enough to really consider the consequences of our existence on its current and future impacts.

Even allowing for say 20% of people truly understanding the issue even those people do something small here and there which is terrible for the environment. A lot of people do try to recycle and all the rest but theres is always going to be something you can't do a lot about or something you'll take the easy road.

It'll be really interesting to see what happens when people in power over 40 are pushed aside.

 

[HeathfieldRoad1874]

Villan Of The North - 10/2/2018 02:07

(veganism requires approx 1/32nd of the land area to feed a person)

Where are you getting that from, Ian? I can't find anything to substantiate it, and there is a huge amount of land not suitable for crops, so it's a very simplistic viewpoint.

 

[Villan Of The North]

HeathfieldRoad1874 - 10/2/2018 09:03

Villan Of The North - 10/2/2018 02:07

(veganism requires approx 1/32nd of the land area to feed a person)

Where are you getting that from, Ian? I can't find anything to substantiate it, and there is a huge amount of land not suitable for crops, so it's a very simplistic viewpoint.

To be fair I forget now, I've read is 2 or 3 times. Even if it's eronios in its speceficity the principle stands, meat production requires a lot more land. Interestingly the majority of the land use for meat production is actually used fro raising crops to feed the livestock, so actually the majority of the potental reduction in land use is land suitable for crops and therefore not as simplistic as would seem apparent. Incidentally the same applies to water usage. Whilst we are on the point of livestock for meat production methane is the biggest problem when it comes to greenhouse gasses and the vast majority of methane being released into the atmosphere is from cattle, so reducing eating meat would also help the environment in that way too. I'm a bit of a hypocrit about this though as I'm not a vegan, I'm just pointing out a few of the things we could change to make oour stay on eath rather less damaging to the Earth's ecology, socially responsible politics and liufestyles would make a big difference to our overall impact.

 

[Villan Of The North]

Not that this gives the specific comparison that I was looking for but the following repport seems to be a fairly serious and well compiled one, with no discernable bias. It backs up the concept of my statement and provides some figures to look at. I've not had time to more than skim read it so a more detailed look at the figures would be interesting, I'll post the conclusion here and a link to the full repport:-

Both the meat-based average American diet and the lactoovovegetarian diet require significant quantities of nonrenewable fossil energy to produce. Thus, both food systems are not sustainable in the long term based on heavy fossil energy requirements. However, the meat-based diet requires more energy, land, and water resources than the lactoovovegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet.

The major threat to future survival and to US natural resources is rapid population growth. The US population of 285 million is projected to double to 570 million in the next 70 y, which will place greater stress on the already-limited supply of energy, land, and water resources. These vital resources will have to be divided among ever greater numbers of people.

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/660S/4690010

 

[Pride of Lions]

I don't want to come across morbid, but looking at those figures (7.6 billion by December 2017), can you just imagine what the figures would be if there was no WW1 & 2?.... and more since then.

Then we have natural disasters...... Lord help us.....

 

[HeathfieldRoad1874]

Villan Of The North - 10/2/2018 08:33

HeathfieldRoad1874 - 10/2/2018 09:03

Villan Of The North - 10/2/2018 02:07

(veganism requires approx 1/32nd of the land area to feed a person)

Where are you getting that from, Ian? I can't find anything to substantiate it, and there is a huge amount of land not suitable for crops, so it's a very simplistic viewpoint.

To be fair I forget now, I've read is 2 or 3 times. Even if it's eronios in its speceficity the principle stands, meat production requires a lot more land. Interestingly the majority of the land use for meat production is actually used fro raising crops to feed the livestock, so actually the majority of the potental reduction in land use is land suitable for crops and therefore not as simplistic as would seem apparent. Incidentally the same applies to water usage. Whilst we are on the point of livestock for meat production methane is the biggest problem when it comes to greenhouse gasses and the vast majority of methane being released into the atmosphere is from cattle, so reducing eating meat would also help the environment in that way too. I'm a bit of a hypocrit about this though as I'm not a vegan, I'm just pointing out a few of the things we could change to make oour stay on eath rather less damaging to the Earth's ecology, socially responsible politics and liufestyles would make a big difference to our overall impact.

I agree on the methane, and funnily enough, I think Elon Musk is involved in something trying to breed cattle that don't produce as much. Kangaroo's, for example, eat grass, but don't produce any methane, so they are looking at how.

As for land used for feed, it's pastureland that can't be used for anything else. It's all about balance. I was brought up on a mixed farm just outside Lichfield. We had land that was great for Barley, Potatoes, Parsnips, Sugar Beet etc, but some of it just couldn't be used for that, so we used it as pasture for sheep and Cattle from the Welsh hills during the winter. They also eat bi-products from other crops, which reduces waste.

It's about balance, rather than going all out for one route. It also reduces the risk of famine, by having a varied diet, if one species is affected in some way, we have others to eat.

 

[Villan Of The North]

The thing is Bob, it's not pasture land, ok so in the UK it may will be but there are far more cattle raised in North and South America than the rest of the world combined and they do 2 things, they deforest to make room and they keep their cattle in pens and feed them on produce grown for the purpose, this cattle, and much of it around the world otherwise, is not pasture fed.

 

[HeathfieldRoad1874]

Those forest would need to be cut down for arable crops. Either way, it's all due to overpopulation and pressure to produce food.

South American crop production is at record levels. It's even threatening US domestic produce.

Farmers know what they are doing. They make best use if the land they have. If they could grow more crops on pastureland, they would. It's quite scientific these days.

 

[Villan Of The North]

HeathfieldRoad1874 - 10/2/2018 12:20

Those forest would need to be cut down for arable crops. Either way, it's all due to overpopulation and pressure to produce food.

South American crop production is at record levels. It's even threatening US domestic produce.

Farmers know what they are doing. They make best use if the land they have. If they could grow more crops on pastureland, they would. It's quite scientific these days.

You're missing the point though Bob, the vast majority of arable production goes to feed livestock. If people didn't eat meat the arable production would be reduced from today's levels.

 

[HeathfieldRoad1874]

I understand, but my point is it's all creating a problem. Whatever we do, we destroy forests, biodiversity and environments just for our own needs.

A third of arable land is used to feed livestock, so that leaves a possible increase of 50% if that switches to crops. That isn't enough to replace meat, especially as much of this is a shallow soil that can only sustain grasses.

Would a reduction in meat production be good for the planet? Absolutely. Would a change to vegan diet be possible for everyone? No. We've gone beyond that now, and we need to utilise every resource available to us.

This ignores the economic impact as well. Developed nations could possibly move more towards a vegan diet, but many developing countries would become impoverished and starvation would we a regular image on our tv screens.

 

[Gazgecko]

Easy. Build some enormous spaceships to evacuate the entire population to a new world (there’s bound to be a few, that Brian Cox is always banging on). Each ship holds specific sections of the population:

Ship 1. Thinkers and doers. Scientists, academics, legislators, farmers, medics etc.
Ship 2. General population. Normal people.
Ship 3. Irrelevants. Lawyers, hairdressers, football journalists, children’s tv presenters, Nigel Farage.

The ships are pre-programmed with galactic satnav to get to the new planet, except Ship 3 which gets sent to the opposite end of the universe (ssh, don’t tell them). Job done. Population reduced.

Feel free to add more groups to ship 3 and I’ll accommodate them into the plan. I’ll start you off: Man U fans.

As Mayor Vaughn said in The League of Gentlemen; “You’re very f*cking welcome.”

 

[BodyButter]

Overpopulation really isn't a problem in the developed world. If anything the developed world has the opposite problem. Birth rates are declining rapidly across the developed world and without immigrants to prop up the population, there will be serious problems.

Only Africa and Asia suffer from overpopulation and even then it's specific regions of those continents.

Overpopulation is a huge challenge to India because they struggle to feed all of those people and they can't provide an adequate standard of living to the population they have. In the mean time, their population is still growing putting further and further pressure on their systems.

China can deal with their population challenges as long as their economy is growing. A serious recession in China will have huge and far reaching consequences.

 

[BodyButter]

Oh, and we are not an epidemic by any definition you choose.

 

[The Fear]

BodyButter - 10/2/2018 00:44

You are in a cheery mood today, Fear.

Why do you think the correct population for the UK is 32.5m?

LOL.. yeah, I thought that after posting and posting the plastic one. Honestly was cheerful, just an interesting debate.

Just think about half of what the population is now would make it a nice country, more space, less pollution, far less gridlock driving.

No scientific basis !