The World at 7 Billion

[Maisie]

Check out this BBC website  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515

Awesome, frightening?

In the words of Maurice Chevalier - I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore

[David G]

Seven billion  in the world, what's the point of them all ? Far too many people  in the world, far too many people in this country, you could halve both and the planet would still be grossly overpopulated,
For example, Zambia, population to treble by 2050, insanity, each family has on average six children, obvious answer, have no more than two children at the most to replace the parents, hand out birth control, and enforce the restriction by law.

[Carolyn]

I think China had a good approach but was made to sexest. 

[caminito]

Standing room only !

[Carolyn]

haha it will be I guess. 

[Rita Postlethwaite]

Countries acted as if this was a great celebration but it is yet another catastrophy.

[Angelo]

By the time this happens we will all be a part of the carbon footprint !

[Rita Postlethwaite]

You are right, of course, Angelo but the children of our present families will take the brunt of this.

[Papaumau]

Actually - taking a slightly different look at the subject - we find that because the numbers are not spread about better we find that we simply cannot sustain such numbers without famine and disease overtaking the countries that don't care about looking after the numbers of people that are produced by uncontrolled breeding.

If we look at the amount of food that is produced by the countries that do it we find that due to inefficiency of delivery - and greed - many countries have too much food and many have too little.

China did sort out it's population-explosion by ensuring that only two children were born to every couple but this took a lot of draconian enforcement and it also produced the awful situation where girl-babies were sometimes killed or just left to die. ( not an ideal situation or one to use as a model for the rest of us ).

I am sure that if we eventually - using science and technology - ensure that the fossil-fuel-use is ended so that we no longer pollute our world that there are ways that we can turn the imbalances of population into a balanced system that gives everybody enough food and clean water, we could then go on to have a world population of even ten billion or more.

If we don't it is all going to end in tears !

[David G]

Thomas Robert Malthus was a British scholar ( and clergyman ) influential in political economy and demography. The six editions of his An Essay on the Principle of Population, published from 1798 to 1826, observed that sooner or later population gets checked by famine and disease. If mankind does not control its own reproductive capacity, then nature intervenes to restore the balance through famine and disease. He argues that anything that improves the condition of the poor will encourage them to have children, thus creating more poor, but not creating more wealth. Therefore the poor will get poorer as they get more numerous. He went on to argue that the poor who produced children without having the means to support them ought to be punished for their irresponsibility.

[Angelo]

As recently as my Great Grandfathers time people had more children than was sustainable. However this was because of the death rate amoungst the young, since then because of medical science, better food and hygene we now find that the famalies are smaller especialy in the advanced nations. The problem is mortality notover poulation. Bill Gates and others predict that the population will decrease when this is a global condition.
Hopefully he is right.

[Papaumau]

Yes David G and Angelo, it is true that it is the poorest countries that for some strange reason have the largest families and if we take out the high mortality amongst children in such places we find that they STILL finish up with about a third to a half more people than they can readily feed and keep clear of disease.

It is true that nature - to an extent - does try to redress this balance by killing off many of the excess numbers, but eventually nature loses this race as it does not require that people who want to have large families need to be all that intelligent, or at least intelligent enough to realise that their part of the world cannot sustain such high numbers of births.

It is also a curious condition that shows that in places of very large populations the natural disasters and the accidents - like train and plane crashes etc' - always have many more numbers in them than equivalent incidences in the more developed countries - where the birth-rate is lower.

[Maisie]

Didn't Stephen Hawking say that the only way forward for the human race was to find other inhabitable planets? Or, have I got it wrong -  was it Captain Kirk who said that?

[Angelo]

Unfortunately the peoples who produce all the children are not the ones who are getting the benefits of our modern world. So they will continue to produce children to mitigate their losses. When and if the do start to get their mortality rates down, the next thing they need is proper education so that they can understand the changing situation.
200 years down the line and we have made little progress, so far !

[granny bee]

And what about the "I wanna live for ever brigade", the nanny state dictating what we eat, drink etc. etc. to stay healthy, then ending up with too many 90/100 year olds they can't afford the pensions for!  A lot to be said for eat, drink, even smoke if you like but at least die merry!!