Thought experiment

[Little John]

if a family doesn't have access to resources, isn't it just dividing them up further by breeding more?

if humanity can't figure that out... breed less to concentrate the resources you have...

Darwinian pressures seem not to have worked like that. Many species, when faced with increased competition for scarce resources, will increase their reproductive rate, not decrease it. It's a numbers game. If you can manage to throw more mud against the wall than your competitor, you will end up with more of your mud on that wall than your competitor. When push comes to shove, quantity often beats quality. And it's no use berating mankind for this breeding tendency. It's how we are wired.

[biffvernon]

What is the relevance to this debate, Biff?

Hey what's with the aggression again UE? I was just positing the Iranian example as a possible place to look for solutions to the seemingly intractable dilemma that you posted at the top of this discussion.

Surely, when faced with a hard problem, it's worth studying places where steps have been taken to solve it. I'm not in any way saying the problem is solved.

[RenewableCandy]

Point, Biff. I'd say it's extremely relevant to the debate! Apart from owt else, it shows that religion needn't be a showstopper for this kind of commonsense. However, it'd be more useful still if we knew anything about the food situation in Iran. It's far from all-desert and they do grow things, the questions are what, and is it enough?

[UndercoverElephant]

Point, Biff. I'd say it's extremely relevant to the debate! Apart from owt else, it shows that religion needn't be a showstopper for this kind of commonsense. However, it'd be more useful still if we knew anything about the food situation in Iran. It's far from all-desert and they do grow things, the questions are what, and is it enough?

Iran is not typical, culturally, of that region. It may be an Islamic country, but it is 90% Shia has a long history of doing things rather differently to its Sunni neighbours.

Islam, especially the Sunni version, has demonstrated itself to be the most potent means of blocking progress of every imaginable type, unfortunately.

[Atman]

I'm interested both in whether or not people agree with this theory, and what the implications of it are in terms of policy and what is ethically acceptable in this situation.

Agreed.

Implications are grim in various degrees depending on a/s/l.

Step 1 of solution = fire up the printing presses, pump all money into a one-shot irreversible male pill-for-life with no other side effects. Bribe as many men as possible to take said pill with whatever works.

Step 2 = ???

[RenewableCandy]

A male pill would be a disaster! Any bloke who wanted to get laid would just say he'd taken it. The population would skyrocket, and honest men, plus bright women, would die out.

[Atman]

But wouldn't women still be concerned about STDs? Thinking some more, many/most/all men would certainly use this tactic often to get laid.

How about poisoning the water with contraceptives? Anyone in with the inner circle will take an antidote.

[biffvernon]

However, it'd be more useful still if we knew anything about the food situation in Iran. It's far from all-desert and they do grow things, the questions are what, and is it enough?

Last time our Iranian friend turned up he came carrying all sorts of exotic spices and he cooked us a wonderful meal. He says they have at least eighteen varieties of rice and can't understand why the English put up with such a dull and limited range of food.

[biffvernon]

Iran is not typical,

Quite so. That's why I highlighted Iran as an example to be studied. If the world continues in the 'typical' way we may be in trouble, as you original post suggests.

[jonny2mad]

if a family doesn't have access to resources, isn't it just dividing them up further by breeding more?

if humanity can't figure that out... breed less to concentrate the resources you have...

Darwinian pressures seem not to have worked like that. Many species, when faced with increased competition for scarce resources, will increase their reproductive rate, not decrease it. It's a numbers game. If you can manage to throw more mud against the wall than your competitor, you will end up with more of your mud on that wall than your competitor. When push comes to shove, quantity often beats quality. And it's no use berating mankind for this breeding tendency. It's how we are wired.

steve you get it
Humanity doesnt think as a collective of all humanity, no animal species thinks like that it would go against how evolution works .

Animal species are in conflict for resources not just with other species but within species, thats human history .

The problem with most people is they dont seem to know who they are, they are given this crazy disney view of the world well if that ever existed its about to really end hard .

I would say 99% of people who know about peak oil dont get it, they talk about some sort of world plan or not having kids when there isnt going to be a world plan and if there was the smart would cheat to put their near kin at a advantage

[peaceful_life]

if a family doesn't have access to resources, isn't it just dividing them up further by breeding more?

if humanity can't figure that out... breed less to concentrate the resources you have...

Darwinian pressures seem not to have worked like that. Many species, when faced with increased competition for scarce resources, will increase their reproductive rate, not decrease it. It's a numbers game. If you can manage to throw more mud against the wall than your competitor, you will end up with more of your mud on that wall than your competitor. When push comes to shove, quantity often beats quality. And it's no use berating mankind for this breeding tendency. It's how we are wired.

steve you get it
Humanity doesnt think as a collective of all humanity, no animal species thinks like that it would go against how evolution works .

Animal species are in conflict for resources not just with other species but within species, thats human history .

The problem with most people is they dont seem to know who they are, they are given this crazy disney view of the world well if that ever existed its about to really end hard .

I would say 99% of people who know about peak oil dont get it, they talk about some sort of world plan or not having kids when there isnt going to be a world plan and if there was the smart would cheat to put their near kin at a advantage

You've not explored symbiosis then?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiosis

[featherstick]

Let's imagine that by some miracle the world's political leaders get together to agree a much more equitable distribution of wealth, both within countries and internationally. As a result, 95% of the population have access to physical security, sufficient food, clean water and sanitation, basic healthcare and education. And as a result of that improvement in living standards, most of them can now expect to live into their 70s. Let's also assume another miracle occurs: as a result of their improved living standards, from now on people choose only to have 2 children (on average).

What happens next?

My suggestion is that not only would the human race still be heading for an ecological and humanitarian catastrophe like nothing in our previous history, but that we would end up on course for a worse catastrophe than the one we're currently heading for. Why? Because people have children, in general, in their 20s or early 30s at the latest. And in most of the world, there are far more young people than old - it is only in some parts of the old developed world that we have a glut of elderly people and "not enough" people being born. And that means, if all other things were equal, that the population would continue growing until the first of the 2-kids-on-average generation started dying - i.e. not until the end of this century.

It looks to me as if this scenario would end up worse precisely because it would delay the start of the inevitable die-off and cause the peak level of human population to be higher. As things stand, the population will peak earlier because the large number of people at the bottom the "global wealth pyramid" will run out off food, security and access to decent healthcare long before the majority in the more developed parts of the world suffer this fate.

It seems to me that even though for most of human history it has been the case that a greater amount of equality (internationally) was a pre-requisite to solving the Big Problems humans face, the very fact that we're now so close to an inevitable catastrophe has turned this situation on its head. It is too late for that strategy to be part of the solution, and were it to be implemented it would actually end up making the ecological problems even worse.

Thoughts?

I'm interested both in whether or not people agree with this theory, and what the implications of it are in terms of policy and what is ethically acceptable in this situation.

Read Fred Pearce and look up Hans Rosling for good predictions of what will happen to world population in the next 100 years.

Briefly, birthrates are falling rapidly, converging around replacement rates of 2.1 - 2.4 everywhere in the world. Population will continue to rise to a max of 9 billion as kids that are born now have their own replacements. After that population will start to fall. The world will have a lot more older people in it and may well be nicer and kinder as a result. We can still feed 9 billion people if we sort out some of the grosser inequities and injustices of our current way of running the world.

[biffvernon]

Read Fred Pearce and look up Hans Rosling for good predictions of what will happen to world population in the next 100 years.

Briefly, birthrates are falling rapidly, converging around replacement rates of 2.1 - 2.4 everywhere in the world. Population will continue to rise to a max of 9 billion as kids that are born now have their own replacements. After that population will start to fall. The world will have a lot more older people in it and may well be nicer and kinder as a result. We can still feed 9 billion people if we sort out some of the grosser inequities and injustices of our current way of running the world.

Which is why I think global warming is a bigger threat than pure population numbers.

[UndercoverElephant]

Let's imagine that by some miracle the world's political leaders get together to agree a much more equitable distribution of wealth, both within countries and internationally. As a result, 95% of the population have access to physical security, sufficient food, clean water and sanitation, basic healthcare and education. And as a result of that improvement in living standards, most of them can now expect to live into their 70s. Let's also assume another miracle occurs: as a result of their improved living standards, from now on people choose only to have 2 children (on average).

What happens next?

My suggestion is that not only would the human race still be heading for an ecological and humanitarian catastrophe like nothing in our previous history, but that we would end up on course for a worse catastrophe than the one we're currently heading for. Why? Because people have children, in general, in their 20s or early 30s at the latest. And in most of the world, there are far more young people than old - it is only in some parts of the old developed world that we have a glut of elderly people and "not enough" people being born. And that means, if all other things were equal, that the population would continue growing until the first of the 2-kids-on-average generation started dying - i.e. not until the end of this century.

It looks to me as if this scenario would end up worse precisely because it would delay the start of the inevitable die-off and cause the peak level of human population to be higher. As things stand, the population will peak earlier because the large number of people at the bottom the "global wealth pyramid" will run out off food, security and access to decent healthcare long before the majority in the more developed parts of the world suffer this fate.

It seems to me that even though for most of human history it has been the case that a greater amount of equality (internationally) was a pre-requisite to solving the Big Problems humans face, the very fact that we're now so close to an inevitable catastrophe has turned this situation on its head. It is too late for that strategy to be part of the solution, and were it to be implemented it would actually end up making the ecological problems even worse.

Thoughts?

I'm interested both in whether or not people agree with this theory, and what the implications of it are in terms of policy and what is ethically acceptable in this situation.

Read Fred Pearce and look up Hans Rosling for good predictions of what will happen to world population in the next 100 years.

Briefly, birthrates are falling rapidly, converging around replacement rates of 2.1 - 2.4 everywhere in the world. Population will continue to rise to a max of 9 billion as kids that are born now have their own replacements. After that population will start to fall. The world will have a lot more older people in it and may well be nicer and kinder as a result. We can still feed 9 billion people if we sort out some of the grosser inequities and injustices of our current way of running the world.

I have seen a talk by Mr Rosling. Quite frankly, I think he's an extremely dangerous fool.

We are heading for declining living standards everywhere, not a world where another 2 billion people on top of those already here live happily ever after. From my perspective, people like Rosling are the population equivalent of climate change deniers.

I guess the fundamental problem I have with his viewpoint is that I think the 7 billion alive today is already far too many. Not just a few too many, but well over anything remotely sustainable. So I can't accept that 2 billion more is "nothing to worry about".

Just found this:

http://www.economist.com/node/14743589

Modern Malthusians tend to discount the significance of falling fertility. They believe there are too many people in the world, so for them, it is the absolute number that matters. And that number is still rising, by a forecast 2.4 billion over the next 40 years. Populations can rise while fertility declines because of inertia, which matters a lot in demography. If, because of high fertility in earlier generations, there is a bulge of women of childbearing years, more children will be born, though each mother is having fewer children. There will be more, smaller families. Assuming fertility falls at current rates, says the UN, the world's population will rise from 6.8 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050, at which point it will stabilise (see chart 1).

Yes, basically. I do not believe 9.2 billion humans can be alive in 2050 without the vast majority of those people living in absolute misery.

[AndySir]

Yes, basically. I do not believe 9.2 billion humans can be alive in 2050 without the vast majority of those people living in absolute misery.

I assume that conclusion is based on extensive study and knowledge of crop yields, land use, the effect of climate change on the local climates of the major agricultural areas, solid economic models that span the next hundred years and an estimate of resource depletion rates and energy use over the same time scale. Plus being able to predict the path of technological progress over the next hundred years and the impact of that on all of the above.

I mean, you're not just looking at two trees here and going 'Thon's the biggest'.

Are you?

Less sarcastically, I know we're dead set against the 'Dude, technology will save us' mindset - and I agree it's a poor basis for planning and policy making - however the old Malthusians were wrong because they failed to prophesise Fritz Haber's contributions to feeding people and then killing them horribly.

Making predicitions is tricky - particularly about the future.