Damn..Sure Is Crowded Around Here

[lenguy]

How many of you live in or near a big city? How many of you have been in these cities during the rush hours? Have you taken the time to look around and think to yourself..shit..thats a lot of fucking people. How does everybody manage?

There are approximately 6.7 Billion inhabitants on this planet, and growing. Thats a lot of people and the numbers only going to get bigger. It is estimated that that worlds population will grow to about 9-10 billion people by mid century, most of this strain on the poorer nations. Chine has the largest population with about 1.3 billion, India coming in close with about 1.2 billion. For comparison. The United states is currently in 3rd with only about 321,021,000 people. The Greater Tokyo Area(consisting of Chiba,Kanagawa,Saitama and Tokyo) in japan has approximately 35 million people, that's more people than the entire nation of Canada(roughly 34 million).

Spoiler

United States 439 million, Pakistan 309 million, Indonesia 280 million, Nigeria 259 million, Bangladesh 258 million, Brazil 245 million, Democratic Republic of the Congo 189 million, Ethiopia 185 million, Philippines 141 million, Mexico 132 million, Egypt 125 million, Vietnam 120 million, Russia 109 million, Japan 103 million, Iran 100 million, Turkey 99 million, Uganda 93 million, Tanzania 85 million, Kenya 85 million and United Kingdom 80 million.

With the population ever increasing that leaves many potential problems that humanity could be faced with. Food shortages, insufficient amounts of fresh water, Dwindling resources such as fossil fuels. As we become more wide spread there could be lose of land. Our impact on the environment could skyrocket. Below I put together another list containing other problems that we could face if something doesn't change

Spoiler

# Inadequate fresh water for drinking water use as well as sewage treatment and effluent discharge. Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, use energy-expensive desalination to solve the problem of water shortages.
# Depletion of natural resources, especially fossil fuels

# Increased levels of air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and noise pollution. Once a country has industrialized and become wealthy, a combination of government regulation and technological innovation causes pollution to decline substantially, even as the population continues to grow.

# Deforestation and loss of ecosystems that sustain global atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide balance; about eight million hectares of forest are lost each year.

# Changes in atmospheric composition and consequent global warming

# Irreversible loss of arable land and increases in desertification Deforestation and desertification can be reversed by adopting property rights, and this policy is successful even while the human population continues to grow.

# Mass species extinctions. from reduced habitat in tropical forests due to slash-and-burn techniques that sometimes are practiced by shifting
cultivators, especially in countries with rapidly expanding rural populations; present extinction rates may be as high as 140,000 species lost per year. As of 2008, the IUCN Red List lists a total of 717 animal species having gone extinct during recorded human history.

# High infant and child mortality. High rates of infant mortality are caused by poverty. Rich countries with high population densities have low rates of infant mortality.

# Intensive factory farming to support large populations. It results in human threats including the evolution and spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria diseases, excessive air and water pollution, and new virus that infect humans.

# Increased chance of the emergence of new epidemics and pandemics For many environmental and social reasons, including overcrowded living conditions, malnutrition and inadequate, inaccessible, or non-existent health care, the poor are more likely to be exposed to infectious diseases.

# Starvation, malnutrition or poor diet with ill health and diet-deficiency diseases (e.g. rickets). However, rich countries with high population densities do not have famine.

# Poverty coupled with inflation in some regions and a resulting low level of capital formation. Poverty and inflation are aggravated by bad government and bad economic policies. Many countries with high population densities have eliminated absolute poverty and keep their inflation rates very low.

# Low life expectancy in countries with fastest growing populations

# Unhygienic living conditions for many based upon water resource depletion, discharge of raw sewage and solid waste disposal. However, this problem can be reduced with the adoption of sewers. For example, after Karachi, Pakistan installed sewers, its infant mortality rate fell substantially.

# Elevated crime rate due to drug cartels and increased theft by people stealing resources to survive

# Conflict over scarce resources and crowding, leading to increased levels of warfare

# Less Personal Freedom / More Restrictive Laws. Laws regulate interactions between humans. Law "serves as a primary social mediator of relations between people." The higher the population density, the more frequent such interactions become, and thus there develops a need for more laws and/or more restrictive laws to regulate these interactions. It is even speculated that democracy is threatened due to overpopulation, and could give rise to totalitarian style governments.

So, is overpopulation a bad thing? Do we take the phrase "go forth and multiply" To seriously?

How would you maintain and regulate population so things don't get to out of hand?(Chine for instance has adopted a one child policy)

Anything else you could contribute to the topic? Whats your opinion on overpopulation?



Hopefully this draws some traffic, its hard to think of something to write about when almost everything has been covered.

 

[Serious Mozzarella]

I used to live in NYC. If you're driving in that down, you're a limo, shuttle, or a taxi driver, OR you're an idiot tourist who failed to do any research on the place you're trying to visit. In NYC, people either walk (which is, at this point, faster than using personal transportation) or they use the Subway, which is a pretty efficient way of traveling around the city.

I'm not going to claim that I know a lot about overpopulation, or the problems it could present in our lifetimes, but I do know, for certain, that there are a finite amount of resources this planet is able to provide for its entire animal population, not just humans, and we're growing at an excessive rate, and there WILL come a time where overpopulation will start to be a huge problem, whether it be in our lifetimes, or thousands of years down the road.

Once it gets to that point though, the rate at which population will increase will stagnate, as you'll start seeing a spike in child death rates.

 

[#hamler]

There's no real way to control the growth or size of a community without violating individual rights.

Are we overpopulated in our cities or regions, probably. Are we as a planet overpopulated, eih, no. Globally we aren't overpopulated. Certain areas of the planet definitely are. I define overpopulation as the inability of the land to meet the basic needs of the population. Places like Hong Kong can't meet the needs of the people there without drawing from other resources. New York City is overpopulated. The city of Los Angeles can not provide for all its people. LA is overpopulated. On the other hand, The United States could provide for all the people living here. As a whole, the US isn't overpopulated, even though distribution isn't so great. There are countries in Africa are far from being able to provide for all of its people. The world, as a whole, could provide for all of it's people if it's resources are distributed correctly.

There is nothing you can do to control our rapid growth population. However, we can control the conditions of our overpopulated cities and countries. The best we can do is educate people and help less fortunate countries that can't provide for themselves. That's how I view overpopulation.

EDIT-You can also see families the same way as I stated above. You're too large if the parents or gaurdians can't meet the needs of their children on their own including food, shelter, clothing, and meeting the individual emotional needs of a child. If you have to rely on long-term welfare to meet the expenses of your family, your family is too large, stop having more.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

EDIT-You can also see families the same way as I stated above. You're too large if the parents or gaurdians can't meet the needs of their children on their own including food, shelter, clothing, and meeting the individual emotional needs of a child. If you have to rely on long-term welfare to meet the expenses of your family, your family is too large, stop having more.

Spot on. If you cannot provide for your children without having to rely on handouts from the state/government, then you need to stop having any more kids until you can.

Unless you live in a 3rd world country, contraception is available so there is no need for anyone to keep having more and more kids and claiming increasing welfare in order to pay for them. You are relying on other people to pay for your children to live. Why should they look after your kids for you just because you refuse to stop getting pregnant

 

[Calderownz]

So, is overpopulation a bad thing? Do we take the phrase "go forth and multiply" To seriously?

How would you maintain and regulate population so things don't get to out of hand?(Chine for instance has adopted a one child policy)

Anything else you could contribute to the topic? Whats your opinion on overpopulation?

1. It's not really anything as it stands. The idea of more people could be good or bad. If it's to have more well-minded individuals that are eager to add to the world, then it's brilliant. If it's to create more mouths to feed and that's about it, then it's horrible.

Families that continue to multiply for the sake of it are ridiculous. I hate that. Otherwise, a sizable family isn't anything until you see what the family amounts to in general. Usually, it's bad in my assessment, however.

2. I doubt that would be useful in the long run. Especially in America, for example. It strikes a line through freedom, to a certain extent.

If you say that you can only have one kid for example, you're penalizing families that CAN take care of multiple kids. You're also putting families in an awkward position. I am pro-choice. However, if a family isn't (which is their right) what are they to do with the pregnancy. So, it goes against quite a few freedoms.

The best we can hope for with regulation is that we allow parents with a certain level of income have the right to have more kids. Even that gets messy, however, in America.

3. Truthfully, I haven't thought about the subject for any length of time before this thread. Lol.