Pops wrote:Where I'm at now in MO peaked out at 5K in 2010, the same year walmart came to town, Half the businesses closed since then and the population fell 10%.
I'll take the dying town tho, walmart or not...
make that the town collapsing early... degrowth baby!
Subjectivist wrote:In our modern higher technology world just about every famine of the last half century has been caused by political acts, not actual food shortages. The starving children of Ethiopia in the 1980's were pawns in international politics as were the starving Somali population in the 1990's.
Eight billion people means ‘all of the above’ energy strategy
World population recently reached the eight billion milestone, according to estimates from the United Nations. That’s up from about 2.5 billion people in 1950, with a gain of a billion since 2010. However, population growth rates are falling, and the total will likely peak at around 10.4 billion in the 2080s.
The United States remains the third most populous nation, with 337 million residents. China currently has the largest population (over 1.4 billion), just slightly above India. However, the Chinese population is shrinking, and India is projected to surpass China next year.
Growth rates are quite uneven across countries. Some two-thirds of the global population lives in countries or areas where lifetime fertility is below 2.1 births per woman, approximately the level required for zero growth on a sustainable basis. Projections show declining populations in 61 countries between 2022 and 2050. For many high-income countries, international migration has been the sole source of population expansion for decades, a trend which is expected to continue.
Conversely, over half of the projected increase in global population through 2050 will occur in just eight countries — the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Tanzania. One reason for this phenomenon is the current age distribution, with large proportions of women of childbearing age, a pattern which gradually diminishes over time.
The world’s population is set to hit 8 billion on Tuesday, according to the UN, and growth over the next few decades is predicted to be concentrated in just eight countries, five of them in Africa. Among them is Nigeria, where the city of Lagos is already struggling to cope with the growing population.
There is a decidedly positive trend in most countries of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as parts of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean in that the share of the population of working age has been increasing. With more workers as a percentage of the total comes an opportunity for accelerating production.
As we consider the future, it becomes apparent that global economic progress is critical, particularly in rapidly growing nations. Otherwise, problems such as hunger and abject poverty will become much more acute. Over three billion people currently survive on $2.90 per day or less, with 700 million — more than twice the population of the United States — having less than $1.90 per day. Education is essential to such development, and in many countries, attainment is extremely low.
Another key is adequate supplies of reliable energy. It is impossible for emerging economies to meaningfully develop without the power needed to support enhanced output. It is an inescapable fact, verified by the U.S. Department of Energy and many other analysts, that an “all of the above” strategy is required, including both responsible fossil fuel utilization and rapid implementation of renewable resources. Climate goals are achievable alongside sufficient energy to permit greater prosperity.
Failing to acknowledge and embrace that option is essentially consigning billions of people to lives of extreme poverty. We can do better.
WACO Trib
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
The Earth's population is expected to reach 10 billion people by 2050. The consequences will be catastrophic. Based on Stephen Emmott's hit theater show, Ten Billion is a wake up call to an unprecedented planetary emergency.
theluckycountry wrote:I'm no agronomist but I know that 80% of the crop yield since 1960 has come from fossil fuel fertilizers pesticides, refrigeration and fast transport. All of which are unsustainable in the decades to come. I also know that the western nations' diet is increasingly being made up of garbage wheat and soy based products bolstered with sugar to give them calories. It's the reason behind the epidemic of heart disease, diabetes and other organ failure. I assume that eventually the attrition from these products will balance the birth rate.
careinke wrote:
In the 1970's the type two diabetes rate was around 2%, today it is around 53%. Thank the Standard American Diet, SAD.
Carnivores don't have this problem, nor many others. But the WEF and Bill Gates would rather you eat bugs, own nothing, and be happy.
PEACE
ralfy wrote:Interestingly enough, only a fraction of the documentary is about overpopulation. What it does is connect all dots involving peak oil, increasing population, climate change, "green" energy, and more. Also, the docu is actually a prepared multimedia lecture by a computational scientist.
AdamB wrote:It was a slick and well produced movie. However, it connected peak oil to the rest of it by basically saying there is so much of the stuff running out isn't an issue, technology abounds and will make it as available as we want it for about as long as we want it (I'll admit, a bit optimistic for even me) and we have to DECIDE to stop using it. Peak demand in other works, not the scarcity angle so favored by the religious nutters as Savinar liked to call his followers.
yellowcanoe wrote:AdamB wrote:It was a slick and well produced movie. However, it connected peak oil to the rest of it by basically saying there is so much of the stuff running out isn't an issue, technology abounds and will make it as available as we want it for about as long as we want it (I'll admit, a bit optimistic for even me) and we have to DECIDE to stop using it. Peak demand in other works, not the scarcity angle so favored by the religious nutters as Savinar liked to call his followers.
Yes, I noticed that too! Given the many predictions of peak oil that have failed to materialize perhaps it was smart not to include peak oil as a problem we face.
YellowCanoe wrote: Also keep in mind that the movie was made in 2015, eight years ago. It was more credible at that time to claim that the oil and gas industry was continuing to find enough new oil and gas resources to replace what they were producing and investing vast amounts of money to bring more oil/gas into production.
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