Peak oil? Global warming? No, it's 'Boomsday!': 5 Reasons 'population explosion' is ...........

[marmar]

...... the world's biggest economic problem.



from MarketWatch:



PAUL B. FARRELL
Peak oil? Global warming? No, it's 'Boomsday!'
Five reasons 'population explosion' is world's biggest economic problem

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch


ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- Six years ago, Peter Orszag, President Obama's new budget director, co-authored a Brookings Institution study that concluded: "Balancing the budget would require a 41% cut in spending on Social Security and Medicare, a 47% cut in discretionary spending, or a 17% cut in all non-interest spending." It's getting worse: Today entitlements eat up 40% of the federal budget and are growing.

No doubt Orszag's earlier thinking had a lot to do with why Obama picked him. But it's also a signal of what we can expect when a Social Security reform bill is sent to Congress during Obama's "first 100 days." And that will trigger a brutal battle. Why? Because AARP's 35 million members will fight all benefits reductions while young voters who put Obama in office will fight any new Social Security taxes.

Bruising battle? It won't matter. In the long term, reforming entitlements will be like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Remember, Obama's adding a $1 trillion stimulus package on top of what Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz calls a "$10 trillion hangover" of debt left by former President Bush and the economic meltdown. And all that's on top of the massive $60 trillion to $75 trillion of unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities.

To get perspective, let's shift our thinking into a parallel universe: Into Chris Buckley's satirical novel "Boomsday," which goes way beyond acceptable government policies. He offers a bizarre solution to reforming Social Security, a solution that forces all of us to focus, and not just on the out-of-control economics of retirement entitlements. He forces us to focus on the one core problem overshadowing all other global economic issues: Population growth. .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Five-reasons-population-boom-biggest/story.aspx?guid=%7B66A7D394%2D5E73%2D4D74%2D8C22%2D4E1BC7BFB98B%7D

[jwirr]

1. One thing to remember is that the younger generation will be taking

care of their parents and grandparents no matter which way it is done. Through Social Security or out of their own pockets. Or are they just going to leave them out on the streets to die?

[FarCenter]

5. The former Soviet Union solved this problem

Male life expectancy dropped to about 65 in the early '90s.

They have a much healthier demographic situation now.

[bridgit]

2. Yep, learning to embrace The Malthusian Nightmare in a world over populated...

with drunken sailors, ever-dwindling resources, and entrepreneurs without any new ideas or hats

http://desip.igc.org/mapanim.html

http://desip.igc.org/malthus/conflict.html

The Core Principles of Malthus:

- Food is necessary for human existence.
- Human population, if not checked :wtf:, tends to grow faster than the power in the earth to produce subsistence.
- The effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal.
- Misery is the mechanism that balances human requirements and available resources.
- Nature's requirement that the imbalance between demand and supply be resolved forms the "strongest obstacle in the way of any very great improvement of society," and thus makes "the perfectibility of man and society" a theoretical and practical impossibility.
- The Principle of Population, i.e., the inevitability of misery due to the power of population to overwhelm resources, provides the mainspring behind the advance of human civilization by creating incentives for progress.

Oligarchs love this guy. When he was asked if he believed in reincarnation, Prince Philip answered, "Yes." When asked what he cared to be reincarnated as he answered and I paraphrase, "A particularly deadly virus."...so that he would be able to modulate the population of the world...they love this Malthus dude

[greyl]

3. Straw argument. Malthus doesn't have anything to do with the OP.

Familiar with Jared Diamond?

[bridgit]

7. The link to the piece offers population growth as a core ill, and it is;

Yes, by way of a wink to: Global Wars, Global Warming, Peak Oil, Alternative Energies, and 'mythological math', but in an over arching sense population growth as a societal ill Malthus himself addressed quite some time ago.

Jared Diamond? Of course, I graduated UCLA. But the piece in the OP is touching not upon matters so Diamond as Dickens, and the societal ills approaching vis-a-vis unchecked entitlement programs. A set of programs it should be mentioned 'the right' is forever pointing to when they assert their greater goal of 'starving the beast'. They want all such entitlements to be stricken from the memory in that they feel in many cases that only they are entitled i.e. the Bush family, no-bid crony war profiteers, witness the run on the U.S. Treasury...it's gone and they're good with that. The rest can fend for themselves

The uber-rich are very keen on such views and the ways in which they maintain the so-called lower classes right where they are, can be seen and dealt with on terms not of their own but their overlords...it's a closed loop system, very little if ever really trickles down and they knew that all along

"His best-known work is the non-fiction, Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997), which asserts that the main international issues of our time are legacies of processes that began during the early-modern period, in which civilizations that had experienced an extensive amount of "human development" began to intrude upon technologically less advanced civilizations around the world." -- if easier to reconcile population growth here with: "human development" that's fine, but a rose by any other name still smells like the impact of population growth upon civilizations, and those civilization's access to the scarcity of, in too many cases; finite resources ~

"Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power." ~ Diamond, yet the wealth continues to be siphoned, the power resides elsewhere, and the population of the world is exploding so that it would seem we have several decades yet before even Malthus bears any fruit...but the image is forming, the clock is ticking, and oligarchs get a little jolly watching people fight over entitlements

MarketWatch.com, a wholly associated subsidiary of WSJ.com; a wholly associated subsidiary of Rupert Murdock, is here to setup the same ole 'us v. them', 'AARP v. young Obama people', 'up v. down', 'back v. forth', 'salt v. pepper' smack-down and it's working already

There is, however, no doubt about it either way...we need to be managing our resources much better than we have been

[greyl]

8. Ah.

I'll leave with our agreement on your last sentence, then: "we need to be managing our resources much better than we have been".
That's a good place to start.

[Lorien]

4. Biggest problem facing the planet today:

Earth 'will expire by 2050'
Our planet is running out of room and resources. Modern man has plundered so much, a damning report claims this week, that outer space will have to be colonised

The end of earth as we know it? Talk about it here

Observer Worldview

* Mark Townsend and Jason Burke
* The Observer, Sunday 7 July 2002
* Article history

Earth's population will be forced to colonise two planets within 50 years if natural resources continue to be exploited at the current rate, according to a report out this week.

A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to be released on Tuesday, warns that the human race is plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life.

In a damning condemnation of Western society's high consumption levels, it adds that the extra planets (the equivalent size of Earth) will be required by the year 2050 as existing resources are exhausted.

The report, based on scientific data from across the world, reveals that more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by humans over the past three decades.

Using the image of the need for mankind to colonise space as a stark illustration of the problems facing Earth, the report warns that either consumption rates are dramatically and rapidly lowered or the planet will no longer be able to sustain its growing population.

Experts say that seas will become emptied of fish while forests - which absorb carbon dioxide emissions - are completely destroyed and freshwater supplies become scarce and polluted.

The report offers a vivid warning that either people curb their extravagant lifestyles or risk leaving the onus on scientists to locate another planet that can sustain human life. Since this is unlikely to happen, the only option is to cut consumption now.

Systematic overexploitation of the planet's oceans has meant the North Atlantic's cod stocks have collapsed from an estimated spawning stock of 264,000 tonnes in 1970 to under 60,000 in 1995.

The study will also reveal a sharp fall in the planet's ecosystems between 1970 and 2002 with the Earth's forest cover shrinking by about 12 per cent, the ocean's biodiversity by a third and freshwater ecosystems in the region of 55 per cent.

The Living Planet report uses an index to illustrate the shocking level of deterioration in the world's forests as well as marine and freshwater ecosystems. Using 1970 as a baseline year and giving it a value of 100, the index has dropped to a new low of around 65 in the space of a single generation.

It is not just humans who are at risk. Scientists, who examined data for 350 kinds of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish, also found the numbers of many species have more than halved.

Martin Jenkins, senior adviser for the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in Cambridge, which helped compile the report, said: 'It seems things are getting worse faster than possibly ever before. Never has one single species had such an overwhelming influence. We are entering uncharted territory.'

Figures from the centre reveal that black rhino numbers have fallen from 65,000 in 1970 to around 3,100 now. Numbers of African elephants have fallen from around 1.2 million in 1980 to just over half a million while the population of tigers has fallen by 95 per cent during the past century.

The UK's birdsong population has also seen a drastic fall with the corn bunting population declining by 92 per cent between 1970 and 2000, the tree sparrow by 90 per cent and the spotted flycatcher by 70 per cent.

Experts, however, say it is difficult to ascertain how many species have vanished for ever because a species has to disappear for 50 years before it can be declared extinct.

Attention is now focused on next month's Earth Summit in Johannesburg, the most important environmental negotiations for a decade.

However, the talks remain bedevilled with claims that no agreements will be reached and that US President George W. Bush will fail to attend.

Matthew Spencer, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said: 'There will have to be concessions from the richer nations to the poorer ones or there will be fireworks.'

The preparatory conference for the summit, held in Bali last month, was marred by disputes between developed nations and poorer states and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), despite efforts by British politicians to broker compromises on key issues.

America, which sent 300 delegates to the conference, is accused of blocking many of the key initiatives on energy use, biodiversity and corporate responsibility.

The WWF report shames the US for placing the greatest pressure on the environment. It found the average US resident consumes almost double the resources as that of a UK citizen and more than 24 times that of some Africans.

Based on factors such as a nation's consumption of grain, fish, wood and fresh water along with its emissions of carbon dioxide from industry and cars, the report provides an ecological 'footprint' for each country by showing how much land is required to support each resident.

America's consumption 'footprint' is 12.2 hectares per head of population compared to the UK's 6.29ha while Western Europe as a whole stands at 6.28ha. In Ethiopia the figure is 2ha, falling to just half a hectare for Burundi, the country that consumes least resources.

The report, which will be unveiled in Geneva, warns that the wasteful lifestyles of the rich nations are mainly responsible for the exploitation and depletion of natural wealth. Human consumption has doubled over the last 30 years and continues to accelerate by 1.5 per cent a year.

Now WWF wants world leaders to use its findings to agree on specific actions to curb the population's impact on the planet.

A spokesman for WWF UK, said: 'If all the people consumed natural resources at the same rate as the average US and UK citizen we would require at least two extra planets like Earth.'

The world's ticking timebomb

Marine crisis:
North Atlantic cod stocks have collapsed from an estimated 264,000 tonnes in 1970 to under 60,000 in 1995.

Pollution:
The United States places the greatest pressure on the environment, with its carbon dioxide emissions and over-consumption. It takes 12.2 hectares of land to support each American citizen and 6.29 for each Briton, while the figure for Burundi is just half a hectare.

Shrinking Forests:
Between 1970 and 2002 forest cover has dwindled by 12 per cent.

Endangered wildlife:
African elephant numbers have fallen from 1.2 million in 1980 to half a million now. In the UK the songbird population has fallen dramatically, with the corn bunting declining by 92 per cent in the past 30 years.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/jul/07/research.waste

[Johnyawl]

6. Yes, population growth IS the number one crises facing the world, however..

...there are so many asinine assumptions in that article that it's rendered incomprehesible.

[HamdenRice]

9. A few things the OP leaves out and gets wrong

1. The most important is that his demographics are flat out wrong. The population is projected to be just below 9 billion in 2050.

More importantly, the most striking thing about demographic projections over the last few years is that population growth is crashing, not exploding. The 8.9 billion projection for 2050 is now believed by most experts to be global population peak after which population will entire a long slow decline. The reasons for this decrease in population are various, but the most important is the continuing emancipation of women (giving them more choice in how many children to have), the availability of birth control, public support for family planning, and the decline in infant mortality (which means fewer people world wide think they need to have lots of children to ensure that some survive). Obviously western and eastern Europe, as well as Japan are seeing replacement rate population growth (or below). What's less obvious to western readers is that the replacement rate demographic is spreading around the world much faster than any demographers would have predicted just a few years ago. The US has achieved replacement rate (excluding immigration, the US would have zero population growth). Even Ethiopia's urban areas are approaching replacement rate demographics. Most demographers believe that managing zero population growth is going to be a bigger challenge than managing population growth -- hence the problems with programs like social security.

2. The next factor the article doesn't examine is footprint. Much of the remaining population growth is taking place in countries with much less per capita environmental footprint. An American has an environmental footprint that may be 60 times as great as an Asian or African. That means that limiting wasteful consumption here can have 60 times the impact per capita than limiting birth rates over there.

3. Lastly, and most annoyingly, and closely related to (2) is that all these estimates of what we can and can't afford, of looming entitlement crises, US public debt and the like assume without question, our continued fantastic waste of resources on the military (plus interest on the debt attributable to borrowing to maintain the military). If you take the entire military budget plus the intelligence budgets, plus all the military and intelligence expenditures that are scattered (and hidden) in supposedly civilian parts of the budget, we are now spending well over $1 trillion per year. If we reduced our budget to European levels, it should be no more than $100 billion per year. If we created effective international institutions for peace and negotiated multilateral disarmament, military budgets world wide could go into free fall.

4. All these stupid, economically illiterate scare stories about unfunded Social Security and Medicare liabilities fail to mention that these are liabilities spread out over many years, and are based on frozen budgetary allocations (see 3), a frozen tax structure, and non-responsive market prices. If we had $900 billion per year freed up per year from reduced military spending, or $9 trillion per decade, the unfunded liabilities don't look so bad. Throw in a return to progressive taxation and medical cost controls (stupid things like allowing the government to bargain with drug companies), then the so called unfunded liabilities disappear. These scare stories simply never look at prices. It's kind of like saying that Chinese workers have increased the amount, quality and cost of the meat they include in their diet by 10% per year. Oh my God -- in 10 years 100% of their diets will be meat and they won't be able to afford it and will starve.

These are exactly analogous to the mistakes Malthus made. It's why Malthus was wrong over and over again, and why modern economists don't take him seriously.

[raccoon]

10. People in industrialized country using way too many resources is the other side of the coin. nt

[The2ndWheel]

11. Any organization worth a damn always wants and needs more people

Since there are plenty of people not currently hooked into the global economic system, or at least not in the "middle class" part of it, we don't need more people as of today. Just get the rest of humanity hooked in. However, once we get to the point where all of humanity is living under one umbrella, and it will take increased consumption to get to that point, then we'll need more people, or else growth will stop. As we've seen, a lack of growth and consumption is a bad thing economically.