Earth - Over Populated
 

There's about 6.7 billion people on earth at the moment. what amount would it have to be to become a problem of there being too many?

What would have to be done when it became a problem?
educate people not to have too many children? make it law that you can't have any?

Re: Earth - Over Populated
 

Hmmm reminds me of a film I watched a couple years ago called Fortress. The start of that movie was about a law about how many children you could have.

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Some say it's already overpopulated. By around 2040 the population is expected to go over 10 billion.

Education won't work. Ever noticed it's normally the less well educated people in western countries who have large numbers of children (Excluding those who do for religious beliefs) and people in 3rd world countries hardly have any education and rely on large families to look after them in their old age.

Make it law... been tried in China and found to work in some ways, but sociologically failed. Male children are highly prized. Females aren't and it's thought that familes that already have female children in them will have a higher than average rate of abortion or infant mortality. They also project a shortfall of over 30 million women in the country by 2020, which is predicted to result in social unrest.

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imo, governments don't want to decrease the birth rate as this impacts badly on the future ratio of taxpayers versus pensioners who use medical resources and require expensive care.

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Hence the lower social classes pop kids out left, right and centre. They know they will get ruck loads of cash from the government for doing so.

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We can't feed the current population so we are already over populated. :(

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Re: Earth - Over Populated
 

Not really qualified to say if the world is over populated but living and working in London I do feel that the city itself is over populated. The transport system can't cope with the amount of people we have and you can barely walk down some train or underground stations at the rush hour.

I've often wondered what would happen if London said it was full up and tried to do something about it. Of course no one wants to do that as then businesses would move away and we would lose money.

Re: Earth - Over Populated
 

Maybe they'll release a virus to wipe out half the popula...Hmmm..



:dozey:

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I think you'll find that is not that far from the truth. but the planet will do it itself, rather than require human interaction.

The Goldfish bowl theory works best - If you have 3 fish in a bowl, they will live quite happily. Introduce No. 4 and it might be a struggle but they will find a way around it. But when No's 5,6 & 7 are chucked in, not enough space so somethings got to give. Some of the fish will die, or maybe all of them - due to the overcrowding.

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No way I wondered why my fish kept dieing! :dunce: :D

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Natures way of culling.

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You sure its not 'God' way? :erm:

:angel:

:D

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At this infection / death ratio, it should be over quite quickly (about 6 million years) ;)

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There is no God, Just nature and a bunch of mentally ill humans. Nature owns all. :)

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In your opinion... ;)

Anyhoo, back on subject - wasn't there a fad for Malthusian predictions in the 70's, stating that we would all be starving due to over-population and inability to grow enough food by the late 20th Century?

Re: Earth - Over Populated
 

start world war 3 --that should trim things down a tad;)

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If we pick the wrong country to fight against. it could be all over in a few minutes :)

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well best not mess with Belgium then;)

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Yeah - those cheesy frites are deadly.

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They have!

AIDS (New World Order - Population control)

Gets out tin foil hat.

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If only those pesky big pharma kids hadn't produced anti-retrovirals, the NWO would have gotten clean away with it......;)

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not fiction - see China

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Well the film itself was but whats this about china ? is there a law there about how many children you are aloud to have ? tbh I had no idea.

Re: Earth - Over Populated
 

Yep - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy

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Wow, well you learn something new everyday. I never had any clue that it was even going on. I amagine that this would be the only way to stop over-population though in the long run. unless there was some mass war or some deadly disaster for the whole world.

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It was interesting to read the other day that David Attenborough has become a patron of the "Optimum Population Trust", a body that campaigns to actively reduce world population.
One rather frightening fact he came out with was that since he began his television career 56 years ago the worlds population has tripled!! surely the planet and its resource's cannot continue to sustain such rises?
In the very near future, if not already, countries must begin to take this seriously, if you look at a graph of population growth over the last 250 years it was pretty steady until about halfway through the 20th century, then it exploded.
Of course no democratic government wants to touch this issue with a barge-poll, any sane person can see why, but how much longer can they ignore it?

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Re: Earth - Over Populated
 

It is a thing that does need to be looked at and it is a scary thought as to what will be done if nothing is done soon. What you agree with limiting the amount of children you are allowed to have ? I dont know. I think its a fair idea but then who has the right to say who can give life.

I do think its very silly when I hear of family's with 10+ children. I personally wouldn't think you could give all of them children the care and attention thats needed.

Maybe these war's we are always fighting are humanity's own way of trying to control its population. Intresting thought lol.

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So why has there been such an enormous jump in the developing world from the 50s on? What changed in the 50s?

Re: Earth - Over Populated
 

Elvis the bloody pelvis Presley and his gyrating hips!

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My guess would be better medical treatments for the people in developing countries, combined with more intensive farming techniques imported from the developed world.... But, like I said, that would be a guess.

Maybe a millenia or two ago, wiping out the populations of a couple of town's would have really staunted a countries growth. These days, I think it would be less of an issue to loose 10 or 20 thousand people and have a society come to the brink of social disaster. Our recient past (WW 2), shows that cities can absorb horrible numbers of civilian casualties and damage. Yet continue to function in a fairly productive manner. If I remember correctly, the German city of Hamburg incured 36+ thousand casualties as a consequence of Operation Gommoragh (sp). Yet it still managed to function as a centre of military production, Command and Control....

I think these days, to have a really big, fast impact on the human population, you would need to bring out the really nasty weapons.... Neutron Bombs, Non-Persistant Nerve Agents and Biological Agents. Ofcourse, all of these would have to be used on high density population area, so bye-bye to the city folk....

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Yes, that's what Wiki says.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth

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Well stone me ! I got one right without looking it up ! :D