The population must be reduced

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

So I was reading about and I stumbled across this older article. There's nothing in it that should be a surprise to anyone, and most of the topics were covered in many of my university courses. But when he throws it all together it makes for a scary picture.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/281

PS. Yes I finally saw "The Road" today. I thought it was a pretty fair adaption of the novel.

[KaiserD 12]

This is a very rudimentary answer but it's 6:30 and waiting on coffee to finish...

I didn't read all of it to be honest the author is more waffly than I am, jeez!

Here's a few things to consider, depressing fun assumptions:

People (at least in the "rich" countries of the west) are having less children than before, once our baby boomers have left us the landscape will be a little different. This is to maintain a quality of life financially, I think in future generations it will be more common to have 1 child too.

I can't see human beings extending their lives much more unless, gods forbid, they reach immortality. I'll be dead by then and I'm not sad about that! Our organs age with us and eventually something gives out, it's part of the fun of being bags of flesh I suppose.

Sadly, there will at some point be another war. It only takes one country leader with a greedy, itchy trigger finger and the "n" word and an excuse. Sure it may be kept "just in case" and there are policies for protection but humans have a habit of talking sh!t don't they. I just hope we're all dead when it happens.

Other living things will continue to evolve too, we might have amazing scientists and medicines, but just imagine the chance of something like swine flu evolving into something more deadly that will outpace our medicine. That will be a lovely population thinner, especially since we live closer and closer together.

Ultimately none of these things will wipe us out completely (probably) and eventually science will get so wonderful we find some other planet to leech off.

You have to envy those people who just die in their sleep without any suffering at all considering how horribly some people go out. Mmmm positive thoughts!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

PS. Yes I finally saw "The Road" today. I thought it was a pretty fair adaption of the novel.

I found it a bit dull compared to the book.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

The author of is being overly dramatic (as usual with these sort of things), but most people 'get' the picture he's trying to paint.

He is a bit off though. The population we have to worry about isn't the United States. It's countries like India and then the entire continent of Africa. You want to see an issue with people starving more, with mass population growth and then looking at the first world as being resource hungry, etc. It will be those.

The US Population is actually growing quite slowly in comparison. It's the third-world that is posing an issue and it will be interesting to see their response to the ever-growing first-world's wealth when they have the vast majority of the population.

Many people who I've talked to in Army & Naval intelligence say the next big war won't be with China unless we attack them for whatever reason, the next big war will indeed be with Africa. - If you look at the 'real' purpose of AFRICOM, then you'll see we're already preparing for war there and working on a way to get in and steal as many resources as we can before ###### hits the fan. Though if we keep militarizing Africa (like many don't know we're doing) then it might be too late for Africa to even fight back. *shrugs*

It'll be all interesting to watch play out. A lot of ####### won't go down until later in our lifetime though.. Which is probably for the better.

[Usui Takumi 1,562]

The author of is being overly dramatic (as usual with these sort of things), but most people 'get' the picture he's trying to paint.

He is a bit off though. The population we have to worry about isn't the United States. It's countries like India and then the entire continent of Africa. You want to see an issue with people starving more, with mass population growth and then looking at the first world as being resource hungry, etc. It will be those.

The US Population is actually growing quite slowly in comparison. It's the third-world that is posing an issue and it will be interesting to see their response to the ever-growing first-world's wealth when they have the vast majority of the population.

Many people who I've talked to in Army & Naval intelligence say the next big war won't be with China unless we attack them for whatever reason, the next big war will indeed be with Africa. - If you look at the 'real' purpose of AFRICOM, then you'll see we're already preparing for war there and working on a way to get in and steal as many resources as we can before ###### hits the fan. Though if we keep militarizing Africa (like many don't know we're doing) then it might be too late for Africa to even fight back. *shrugs*

It'll be all interesting to watch play out. A lot of ####### won't go down until later in our lifetime though.. Which is probably for the better.

Well not to turn this into an illegal immigration thread, but without it the US would probably have a flatline or slightly declining population already. Declining populations do put stress on the government but they will eventually reach some equilibrium and thats for the best in the long run.

I think the worlds going to hit peak-food sometime in the next twenty years and it may be tied to peak oil assuming we don't move to alternative energies quick enough (which we won't). Once we hit peak food, countries like India, China, and most of Africa will collapse.

Actually its something I always look at regarding China. They are a net importer of food, and rely actually less on countries like the US and more on tropical countries like Brazil. AS we know Brazil has a pretty unsustainable farming method, so they will likely cut exports in the next 10 to 20 years.

So I really wonder if by say 2025 we'll see a reversal of the current trade deficit with China and if the US will then be pulling the strings. I remember watching some scenario (quite old now, probably from the early 90's) where Japan and the US basically become enemies in the 2020s and Japan begins to pull treasury debt causing the economy to freefall. The US retaliates by cutting all grain exports. This in turn collapses the Japanese government by mass riots etc due to starvation/inflation.

[Heracles 417]

Even on a national level, both legal and illegal are a growing problem actually. People use the country of immigrants to make some sort of open-border point but ignore that back when the immigrants were migrating in large numbers, the US had under 80 million and needed people. A situation no different to what Canada and Australia are facing today, with their under 35 million populations. However, even Australia [with 22 million] is rethinking their large immigration quotas, as it's having a negative impact on the living standard and the environment.

At the end of the day, take a glance at every one of the top ten countries with the highest standard of living [quality of life] and all of them have a relatively small population. Once America becomes a China, it's too late then.

Edited May 31, 2010 by Booyah!