World Population to nearly double by 2050

welsh

welsh

Junkmaster
According to recent news, the world population will be between 9 and 11 billion people within 50 years and this will mostly impact developing nations. world population to double

What effect? People used to say that this was a major issue. Overpopulation would overtax environmental resources leading to mass problems. Check for brief discussion

Or is this just the big Overpopulation myth?

Seems all Malthusian?
Or maybe just another example of what Garrett Hardin called the tragedy of the commons which frames many of our environmental issues.

What do you think?
 
Last I heard was 9 billion by 2050 and that wasn't news a few years ago.

No real effect. Just the same old times two.

However I do think we should find ways to a) stop all those poor Third World citizens who can't even afford their own life from spending so much time on procreation and b) find ways to NOT base our financial systems on infinite population growth so we can stop telling people to breed like rabbits just to fix our economy.

The only problem we have right now is that world population doesn't increase evenly and especially does so where MORE people is a really Bad Thing (tm).

The outrages about underpopulation in western nations are retarded. The decrease of world population is a Good Thing (tm), we just have to fix our broken economy so it can play along.

... unless you want to ignore the problem until it's too late (Soylent Green anyone?).
 
50 years from now, I will hopefully have a quiet life somewhere with a house, a farily new car, a grand piano and maybe even a wife if I can afford one. Some 15 years later when I'm 85 I plan to die.

Point being that as that first article wrote, virtually all the growth will be in the developing world, especially in the 50 poorest countries. Call me an asshole, but I don't really care about world problems that do not affect me, my family or my friends directly. There are way too many problems to worry yourself with in the world. I try to make my existence as bearable as possible by only concerning myself with the issues of top priority to me, and this is not one of them.
 
And that's precisely one of the many things that are the base of this and many problems, nobody gives a rat's arse about something that's not going to directly affect them now. :roll:

People will never change, nobody cares about the common good when there are all those individual rights to protect. Whether we do anything or not, wars, famine and natural disasters will more likely take care of the problem for us.
 
Yep, but it's natural. People are first concerned about their own self-interest. What happens beyond those interests are, at best, secondary. At least Luke is honest about it.

Sometimes, the way things are can't but force a person to do what's in there individual self-interest even if they don't want to. This is a point raised, in my opinion, brilliantly by Marx, but comes up in many of the problems of collective action. Individual actors may, despite themselves, do what is individually best but destructive in the aggregate.

If you consider that one of the problems in the developing world. Political unstability often comes from folks that are feeling marginalized and are not working, the unemployed.

The more people, the greater your unemployment, the greater your political instability.

Furthermore, where people are unemployed and countries are poor, there are often more children. Overpopulation is a consequence of poverty which, in the end, perpetuates proverty.

Now add that the developed world depends on the developing world for primary products- the coffee and sugar, the petroleum and uranium, the bauxite, etc, greater instability in those parts of the world creates greater instability for developed countries dependent on those resources.

Instability in the flow of goods affects commodity markets, monetary values, corporate profiles which percolate to your individual quality of life.

Thus, in an indirect way, it does relate to your life and that of your children.
 
welsh said:
Thus, in an indirect way, it does relate to your life and that of your children.
Click to expand...

True, true. We all live on the same planet; the same planet that your kids (though not Doves) will be living on. Quite naturally, if I ever get kids, I will want them to have as good outlooks in life as possible - the question is only how to give them that. Caring about what will affect their direct environement pays off much more than caring about bigger issues like world pollution, HiV, etc, that will only affect them in an indirect way in the long run. (By 'caring' I don't just mean 'nod sympathetically and exlaim that you think it's horrible', but to actually do something about it.)

I have asked myself what good I could do for the world, as well as what I would benefit from it. I have come to the conclusion that I can't do very much, and that donating money to charity etc, isn't very lucrative. As for the problem of the planet becoming overpopulated, I have no clue as to what I could do to prevent it. Adopt instead of make my own offspring? I think not, that would for me ruin the point. I don't want any random kid to awake me screaming in the middle of the night, piss on me in the tv sofa and barf on my clothes. I want my kid to do that stuff.
 
I think mabe a more interesting notion is that the world population by 2050 will be half of what it is currently.....due to the Nuclear holocaust that will mark WW3...........and i think we need to be worrying about what to do with all those bodies.
I mean think about it, the way things are going right now in 45 years the world will have gone apeshit.....
 
I plan to have no more than two children. If I do that, I'm not obligated to care at all about the problem because I'm not contributing to it right? :?
 
bob_the_rambler said:
I think mabe a more interesting notion is that the world population by 2050 will be half of what it is currently.....due to the Nuclear holocaust that will mark WW3...........and i think we need to be worrying about what to do with all those bodies.
I mean think about it, the way things are going right now in 45 years the world will have gone apeshit.....
Click to expand...

45? You're exaggerating a bit. I won't give the modern world more than another 20 years.
 
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