Unrelenting Population Growth Driving Mass Extinctions, Rapid Climate Breakdown

[hatrack]

Human population growth over the last 12,000 years. Population has exploded since around 1500.

It took humans around 200,000 years to reach a global population of one billion. But, in two hundred years we've septupled that. In fact, over the last 40 years we've added an extra billion approximately every dozen years. And the United Nations predicts we'll add another four billion—for a total of 11 billion—by century's end. Despite this few scientists, policymakers, or even environmentalists are willing to publicly connect incredible population growth to worsening climate change, biodiversity loss, resource scarcity, or the global environmental crisis in general.

"We are already to a point where our population size is unsustainable," Jeffrey McKee with the Ohio State University told mongabay.com. "In other words, we are already beyond the point of the biological concept of 'carrying capacity.' Millions of people go hungry every day, and an unfathomable number don’t even have access to clean drinking water. A world of 11 billion people would be regrettable to humans as well as to other species."

McKee has recently studied the intersection between human population and biodiversity decline, finding a direct correlation between the rate of population growth and the number of endangered species in a country. Meanwhile another researcher, geographer Camila Mora with the University of Hawaii, recently argued in a paper in Ecology and Society that overpopulation was exacerbating global warming, the biodiversity crisis, as well as creating large-scale economic and societal problems.

But if our population is already beyond sustainable, why has the subject become almost taboo? And not just in political circles, but even in environmental circles? "There are multiple reasons including historical flip-flops about [overpopulation's] importance," Mora told mongabay.com. "However, the fact that were are not interested in talking about it it does not make less critical."

Ed. - emphasis added.

EDIT

http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0626-hance-overpopulation-climate-biodiversity.html

[NYC_SKP]

1. Indeed, reminds me of the messages of the Georgia Guidestones:

According to the Guidestones, the following ten principles are offered to ensure humankind's future survival:

1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule Passion — Faith — Tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/georgia-guidestones

[CrispyQ]

3. I'd never heard of that. Very interesting.

Thank you.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. Thanks--I hadn't known about the Guidestones.

And what a wonderful update to the Mosaic Commandments.

[colsohlibgal]

6. Responsible Population Parameters

I've always thought that people who have 7,8, 9 or more children are being pretty irresponsible. I've never understood the need, at least in this century, to do that. I had two and had no desire to have more.

We of course need to reproduce so we don't die out, but it would seem necessary and prudent not to go overboard. There is not an endless supply of resources, at least till we get to a time where we find other places in the solar system to live.

[Fairgo]

28. A quiver of children

One religious group uses breeding as a strategy for conerting humanity to their belief. They refer to the obligation of the family to produce a "quiver" of offspring...the military metaphor is not accidental.

[chervilant]

2. Population growth is an

excellent example of exponential functions. I can tell how math illiterate are the majority of our species when I make observations about exponential growth, and I get a blank look -- or the glazed glance of utter confusion.

That's just the way our corporate overlords want us -- ignorant, and vulnerable to whatever propaganda furthers their hegemony.

[Fearless]

4. It will balance out

People will suffer in the meantime but nature doesn't really care about that.

[Jackpine Radical]

7. "Nature" doesn't really care about the biosphere either.

Nor about music, art, poetry or science.

I'd be a little bit saddened to see humanity go extinct.

[Fearless]

17. Within the species it does care about those things

But when it comes to living or dying we become more primal.

[tularetom]

8. If we've added 4 billion in the last 40 years and it's going to take us 86 years

to add the next 4 billion, it appears that the rate of population growth is slowing considerably. If you extrapolate that slowdown over the next 4 or 5 centuries is it possible that a point of equilibrium with respect to resource depletion could be reached?

I realize that this would take the earth's population far beyond the 11 billion that the scientists say would be "regrettable", but it's quite obvious that things are going to have to get worse before they get better. So the question is how much leeway do we really have?

Is there wiggle room between the gloom and doom predictions of knowledgeable climate scientists and the head in the sand attitude of the willfully ignorant?

If we're already beyond the carrying capacity of the earth we shouldn't even bother to talk about cutting back on fossil fuel consumption and water conservation. The discussion should be about how to get half of the earth's population to voluntarily off themselves so the rest have a fighting chance of survival.

In other words my question to the scientific community would be, OK you were right. Now what do you propose to do to solve the problem?

[Fearless]

18. The problem is solving itself

Many areas of the world are seeing population decline. The rest will eventually follow.

[earthside]

9. The root cause of our biggest problems.

Overpopulation is without doubt the reason for global warming; for resource depletion; for social and political disruptions; for inadequate infrastructure; etc.

And we can't talk about it.

Take legal and illegal immigration into the U.S.

The last thing we need are more people on this planet with the American carbon footprint -- yet even liberals and progressives who understand the emergency of climate change just cannot let themselves admit the connection between an increasing U.S. population, immigration and global warming. It is politically and socially taboo to link U.S. population, immigration and environmental degradation.

Of course, any serious discussion of overpopulation immediately brings condemnation from religious conservatives of virtually any sect or denomination.

Overpopulation will be the end of us.
I suspect that the planetary ecosystem will extract a collapse of the human niche when our numbers get too far out of proportion to sustainability.

Human overpopulation is an intractable problem -- there aren't any good solutions -- and we can't even really talk about it.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

21. yep. Well said......and KnR to this whole thread

Overpopulation kills...don't breed......used to be in my Sig line for years.

Trying to discuss it even brings on attacks from the liberal minded as well. I've personally experienced that at DU. It's threatening to some, they see overpopulation discussion as an attack on the sacred individual right to unlimited breeding.

At least the reactive hostility on DU is less now, compared to 10 or so years ago--and several billion people fewer-- than when I first joined, and frequently brought up the subject.

(I was FizzFuzz at that time, and got pizza'd for speaking of my feminist and population views, and defending them against the frequent and predictable ugly attacks.

A lot of feminists who dared to defend themselves against the lady-baiters got booted around the same time, 2005? 2004? maybe?

Oh well. Whatever. That part's not hugely important.....just interesting)

[Dustlawyer]

10. Republicans have a solution. Free market, law of the jungle, everyone for themselves!

They have the guns to survive!

[hughee99]

11. People aren't hungry or thirsty because

There's not enough food or water on the planet. It's a distribution issue.

[Auggie]

12. Money issue too. It's very complicated. But let's distribute condoms along with all that food.

[hatrack]

13. I think of what you describe as somewhat different - the first of two speed bumps, if you will

Political and economic realities are always going to create distribution problems - to say nothing of the vagaries of weather, transportation, and geography. As population growth and the associated resource depletion gather speed, these distribution problems will likely grow worse over time. That's the first speed bump.

Beyond that first barrier looms a far bigger one - absolute resource depletion, though many, from the Julian Simon Brigade down to anyone hoping for high elected office, will deny its existene to their dying breaths.

[hughee99]

14. The OP suggested we've already gone beyond our resources because so many

people already don't have food and water. I'm not saying that the earth's population won't outgrow it's carrying capacity at some point, it's just not there yet.

[pscot]

20. Carrying capacity is based on sustainability

Fossil fuels have let us increase our numbers far beyond the sustainable capacity of our environment. We've been in a condition of overshoot for the last hundred years. Look at the graph above. There's only one way to go from here, and that's down.

[hughee99]

22. Fossil feuls?

If I understand correctly, ENERGY has allowed us to do this, whether it comes form fossil fuels, or other places. If you're going to use a "peak oil" argument here, you'd also have to argue that other fuels are NOT capable of picking up the slack.

[pscot]

25. At present, other sources of energy

aren't able to take up the slack. Our current economic arrangements are based on fossil fuel use. We would need to renew and reorganize from top to bottom in order to run the global economy on renewables. We aren't yet doing that or even thinking in those terms. In the meantime we're apparently facing between 2 and 5 degrees C of warming, with its attendant perils of sea level rise, water shortages and crop failures. All in all we should probably be taking this stuff a lot more seriously than we are.

[hughee99]

27. I think we're defining things differently

You are correct. At present, we don't produce enough energy to remove fossil fuels from the equation. However, there is more than enough available to meet our needs. We don't have to "find" more sun or water or wind (like with FF), what we need and far more already available, we just need to make use of it

[Spider Jerusalem]

29. Other energy sources are less dense, non-portable, and don't provide raw materials.

Plastics and synthetic fibres come from oil. Everything we do with pretroleum byproducts, now? 150 years ago was made of wood and metal and leather and glass and silk and wool. We can't realistically replace oil with anything else and maintain anything like our present standard of living.

And the return on energy investment of conventional crude oil is in the range of 10:1 (ten barrels oil equivalent for every single barrel of oil equivalent expended in production). Fifty years ago that was more like 20:1 or even 50:1.

[nolabels]

15. Bingo!

As much as we are born to cooperate, it's probably just same gene on the other side of coin that brings out the selfishness.

I have seen the enemy, and he is us.

[gtar100]

19. This, as more and more animals keep taking the brunt of feeding so many more billions of people

who have an insatiable appetite for meat. Institutionalized, inhumane, grotesque practices carried out day after day to exploit and slaughter billions of creatures annually for humans to eat. At some point we need to ask ourselves exactly what kind of world we want to live in. Traditions and cultural practices carried on today that were of little consequence a hundred or even a thousand years ago are triggers for catastrophic failures when practiced by billions of people. What we consume is steeped in our traditions and cultural values. Who is personally willing to change those things and adopt practices that are more sustainable? Not many it seems. Asking people to change is fraught with difficulties and it seems we're going to just let nature take its course in taking corrective measures because we are not respecting its limitations.

[kardonb]

23. 0ut of control population growth

bring that to the attn. of all those against birth control measures ! Especially the Catholic Church and Republican politicians , that are so virulently against any form of birth control . But then again , facts don't seem to bother them anyway , its always just doctrine and " belief" .

[BrotherIvan]

24. Why can't we talk about it?

I have experienced the absolute fury when bringing up overpopulation. Like religion, it's one of those deep-seated superstitions that people ought to reproduce as they like unimpeded. Back when half of your children died from infectious disease and you needed to breed your own farmhands, large families might have been necessary but they aren't now. The same kind of prosaic thinking goes into the anti-choice campaign, that the world needs every human it can get or the fundagelical drive to have as many children as possible in some kind of deluded idea that they can outbreed the heathens and brown people.

In many countries, birth control is not available at all, and men do not wish to use it. In India, the government tried a campaign to reduce their out of control population by trading something useful to each man willing to get a vasectomy: a bucket. There were some takers but not many. As birth control through the male is far far easier than through females, it only makes sense to deal with the issue through that route. But our old superstitions rear their heads again. Men are not considered virile if they can't impregnate lots of females. Caveman thinking.

We have not progressed very far in our beliefs so now we are in a perilous situation. Overpopulation of humans mean animals and ecosystems are pushed out or stripped. We need to start some new way of thinking where people are not isolated and full of harmful superstitions. Some kind of community building and what it means to be a good member of that community would help. And #1 should be the development of 100% effective, easy-to-use birth control. We have all these technological breakthroughs and yet can't manage that? Bollocks. That would be a true gift to the world but there has to be the will to make it and to accept it.

[valerief]

26. But what's the human to non-human ratio history? Humans are replacing other species.

I'm not saying that's good (because of the danger humans pose to the planet) but from a breathing perspective, it's kind of tit for tat, right?

[Nihil]

30. The old Petri dish is filling up ...

... yet the techno-cornocopians & other wearers of rose-tinted glasses will happily
assure us there is plenty of space because they have no concept of exponential behaviour.