UN Chief Ban Ki Moon just highlighted your concerns precisely- he has recently said the following:
1) At current population growth rates, if the human population is to survive, international food production needs to increase by another 50% by 2030.
2) Food export and trade tariffs need to be reduced/lifted. The price of the world staple, rice has risen a shocking 70% since the beginning of 2007.
I am not exactly sure what he means by 1) to be honest, but that in itself gives us another issue: how does one produce more food? By taking up more resources. Is the increase in production of food sustainable? No, it isn't.
When we start turning our attention to "we need to increase food production but we have to think about how to produce food" then you know the issue has become a really desperate one.
well with the increasing need for food, that will be VERY true, but if there is too many people than there will not be enough space for everyone, so basicly, WARS everywhere fighting for land
No. People who study population trends say that the population will cap at around 12 billion, then take a sharp decline to the point where under-population may be a problem.
In third world nations, having children is actually profitable as the kids will start working young and bring in money. When nations industrialize, the cost of raising kids shoots through the roof. As more and more nations industrialize, people are going to have less children. In fact, in every Western country, the death rate is higher than the birth rate. In Germany, Russia, Bulgaria, and Hungary, the governments had offered thousands of dollars to women who had babies because of population decline. South America is close to hitting this point, and parts of Asia already have. Once these areas and Africa industrializes, the population will drop rapidly and underpopulation will be a problem.
There's a problem on the smaller level; families that can't afford to support children have the most, and families that can support many children only have a few. Population and wealth, which can be translated to access to food, are grossly misapportioned.
If countries become affluent such that incentives to having children decreases, and the birthrate decreases, this causes disproportionality in the age groups. Labor workforce declines and infrastructure suffers as a result, making it more difficult on the whole. Whether this means collapse or consolidation I dunno, but perhaps the latter is more likely. That's where I foresee problems as they apparently are already surfacing.
You know, perhaps it might be a good thing to separate the notion of monogamous relationships out into its components- raising kids and having relationships. This human social institution never was all that suited to humans in the first place, and secondly it would go a long way to solving those 'incentive problems' that we've been looking at. Looking back at old models, reinstilling the value of 'child bearing as a civic duty' just might provide some basis for a more manageable population control.
But I anticipate much opposition from Family First groups.
I mean a genetic bottleneck, where there are very few mated pairs. And undesirable traits such as genetic abnormalities, recessive diseases that would get concentrated through only a few individuals.
Ahar, sweet, I thought so. Figured we oughta make it clear to everybody, though.
And yes...unless we experienced a nuclear holocaust that blew most humans away and left the rest in a post-apocalyptic wasteland...yeah. I guess that's highly unlikely :P
Like the end of the Neon-Genesis Evangelion films. It almost goes without saying: "My god, that was whacked out."
well i'll admit that the world gets pretty full. but i don't think food will be an problem now, maybe later but iam not sure. i even watched an programm about cloning animals too stop the hunger in africa and overpopulated cities. the cloning is working for 15% they said. but still its not good enough and it cost alot money too clone an animal so i think the problem isn't gone be so bad at all if the cloning works an full 100%. next they wanted too try cloning humans but i rather keep it on animals because cloning humans won't help an thing too the foodproblem, if there's gone be one.
Unless we push global climate change to its limits and have a consequence such as The Day After Tomorrow. Which actually is pretty accurate to what will happen. Granted it won't happen over the span of 3 months or whatever... but we are totally gonna screw up Earth's weather patterns through the shut down of the thermohaline circulation belt, and tons of people are gonna get wiped out. Fo sho!
but then we were overdue for some sudden tectonic shifts, so it's inevitable.
Noooooo not yet!! I am living directly on the San Andreas fault right now... and it hasn't gone since 1906. Well due for the next one. Kinda freaks me out, not gonna lie. But I am moving in a week, so if it happens hopefully it won't happen before then!
I'm not the environmental expert- are the two statements above actually related?
