The begining of the population crisis
 

It's hard to convince people that we are facing a huge population crisis. Actually, most people believe that there is one, the problem is that they assume populations are exploding and we are running out of room.

Just the opposite is happening. Read this article. These numbers should frighten you.

To continue human existence the average births per woman would have to be 2. One to replace her and one to replace her mate. But that doesn't work because that assumes that each of those children will survive childhood and grow up and father and mother their own "next 2." Given early mortality the rate has to be higher than 2. How much higher, I do not know. It depends for every country, I'm sure.

With a rate of 1.29 It doesn't take long for an entire society to collapse. Modern first world economies rely on consumerism mainly by the youth of the nation. With less people, the economy slows down. People are even more hesitant to start families with a poor economy, the cycle continues. populations decline, etc.

There could be good things coming out of this and there could be bad things. As an environmentalist the idea of a smaller global human population appeals to me. less pollution, maybe better living styles and who knows, maybe an end to warfare. a guy can dream, right?

and yet it also makes me sad. there is certainly a dream of metropolises spanning hundreds of miles, and humans boldly stepping into space to colonize and spread ourselves among the stars. we'll have little need for that if populations decline greatly in the next 100 years. it's like the end of a great era.

and there is the possibility that while 1st world countries shrink, 3rd world countries continue to explode in population, multiplying the human suffering, disease, and starvation ten fold.

what do you think?

I would love to see ourselves reach the point of space colonies eventually, but there is still plenty of room on our planet that needs a population first (midwest anyone?).

I hope for a baby boom in Japan for their sake. I don't exactly know the specifics of how a population decline would hurt their economy, but in the long run wouldn't there also be less people recieving money?

If worst comes to worst, I'm sure they could create a legion of robot people at a moment's notice. :)

I'm not sure that this is a horrible thing. Japan is one of the most overpopulated parts of the world right now. The population density is out of control. Its nearly as bad as Mumbai, India (500 million people, in Delaware). There will be the short term problem of an economic down turn, but the market will eventually stabilize as the population does.

As far as college admissions being less competitive, with less of a teenager testing hell. I'm all for that. I freaking hate colleges right now. (Just got through with the admissions process. I'm bitter.)

Well as you said, a lot of people think the problem is too little space, too many people. So they get a mind set that they should have less kids than they would normally want.

To adress the space colonization thing, I honestly think that we need to improve our space traveling technologies before that even becomes an issue. Once we can travel and actually colonize new planets/meteors/moons/whatever we want to colonize, I think people will get out of the mind set that they can't have kids, and start to have as many as they want. Because they'll think that there's plenty of room, so no need to be conservative about having kids. But we need to get to that point first...

I think i'll move to Japan and deseminate my genes as much as I can.

Maybe this can count towards the "community service" i owe to the state?

Really sign me up!

Anyway, yeah there is actually plenty of room left on this little mud ball of ours. I rememeber reading a statistic somewhere that you could fit the entire human population into Tallahasse Florida. It wouldn't be a comfortable fit but you could do it.

That would be one hell of an uncomfortable fit... lol

Hey, if they aren't getting any, then they should put that as part of the curriculum for the study abroad program... definately give a hell of an incentive :p

Discussion forum. Not idle chitchat forum. Get it right please.

All the industrialized countries are now at the fourth stage of population growth/decent. The fourth stage means that there is little or no growth in the population. Germany and some eastern european countries have allready reached stage five, where the death rate is more than the birth rate. All other industrialized countries are currently enterin the fifth stage any year now. While all the so called 3rd worl countries and such are in stage II or even III. In stage two the death rate is lowered a lot due to developed medicine and the birth rate rises high above the death rate. In the third stage the death rate degreases only a litle anymore, but there is a huge drop in the birth rate. Still way more birth's than death's though. Infact it is expected that the USA will be the only so called western country that will have an increase in it's population in the following years. All the rest of the western countries will face a huge problem in the degreasing of the work force.

Just thought I'd give you some information.

Did you read Shiney's warning at all?

As far as I'm concerned, it can't hurt Japan that much to have a negative population growth, since the island is so crowded as it is. If necessary, they could, you know, just open it up to immigration, which they seem reluctant to do. I don't think this is much of a crisis. 3rd world countries, now THEY'RE in crisis.

Oh, and the argument that you can fit all the world's people in "such-and-such" space is extremely silly. Sure, you can fit them there, but the problem isn't just space. It's resources. You can't feed all those people from the resources surrounding Talahasse, Florida, or whatever, and they sanitation situation would just be disastrous.