World population... If the rate of population continues, will we eventually run out of room, food, or be over?

Question

I have a Nine page essay to write in two days an I would like to know what people belive would happen...

Answer 1

The population does not rise exponentially. It just look's as if it would, at the beginning.

http://barzilai.org/cr/generations-charts.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Population_curve.svg

You only see later that it's more similar to a logistic function (sigmoid) - first it rises very similar to an exponential curve, then the rise gets slower and finally the population reaches a more or less stable value.

http://www.xist.org/charts/pop_graph3.aspx
http://www.arcytech.org/java/population/facts_math.html

There are different theories to model the growth.

http://www.unfpa.org/6billion/pages/worldpopgrowth.htm

But the size of our population will always depend on our behaviour to each other and to the nature.
So, the real problems are not the actual population size or destruction of the nature, or wars but the causes of it all.

So, here we go: the basic cause is the interest-creating-nature of the wealth / money / cash... And as money is just an agreement between people and relies only on trust and accepting the agreed rules, the problems caused by it can be solved by creating other agreements: by changing the system of "how the money works".

http://www.systemfehler.de/en/neo/

And here we come to the total origin of all problems: human belief systems. Most belief systems (all large churches and all sects of any size what I know) don't allow one to believe in his own power to change anything, not only the world around, but even his own attitudes to life.

This is ground zero, here we begin.

What you believe, that you create.
If you believe you don't have power and istead God or anyone else has it over you (a government, a soldier aiming a gun to your head), then you give your power away and you'll not change your life to better. But the good news are: you can take your power back, any time you realize that it IS your power.

If you believe you can change the world and you get up and DO what you believe is the right thing to do, you will change the world.

I'm doing it, you can do it too.

Check out my sources.

Answer 2

That is a tricky question to answer... The trend that demographers are seeing over the past few generations (from the birth of the Baby Boomers until today) is that there are fewer children born per mother in each generation. However, this is a small number of children born to a large starting population, so the increase in population is still significant. Additionally, with improvements in health care and nutrition across the globe comes an increase in lifespan across the globe. More infants are surviving to adulthood, and more adults are surviving into old age (over 65) and extreme old age (over 85). So, the population of the earth is getting OLDER, not just LARGER.

Logically, we should eventually run out of resources to support this large and growing population... but at what rate we really can't tell. Centuries ago, Malthus predicted that continued population growth would result in "misery" for the human race because he saw the increase in human population as exponential and the increase in maximum possible food production as linear. He did not foresee the vast technological advances in farming that have occurred since his time. Nor did he foresee the huge infrastructures of our large cities that would allow massive populations to live in high population density with access to food, clean water, employment, etc. (Think New York City.)

So, yes, we will probably run out of resources to support our growing population eventually. We can also delay this inevitability by careful family planning, city planning, continuing to pursue innovative farming, fishing, and ranching methods, etc.

Answer 3

If it continues, then yes we will run out of room.
However, there is another trend that could change your answer. Look at the population trends for industrialized countries. Many actually have almost 0 growth, and some are even shrinking in population.
If that trend continues, then the rate of increase will dramatically decrease as more and more countries become industrialized.

Answer 4

If current trends continue, the population will stabilize around 11 billion by the end of the century.

Try the websites of the US Census and the WHO (world Health Organization)--I think they have some information you can use.

Answer 5

very stable question. A a hundred years in the past, there have been much less then a thousand million human beings roaming the earth. as we communicate we are a ideas-blowing 7 billion! i think of that we've very almost reached the peek of our organic supplies. enormously if we keep scaling down our trees and destroying our national parks to construct or amplify our ever groing cites. This leaves us with much less room to create fruit and vegetable gardens etc... Therefor reducing our source of nutrition until somebody comes up with a thank you to create bio nutrition in a lab.

Answer 6

It can't keep going at the present rate for much longer without widespread famine, population control and contraception must be introduced in the overpopulated countries!

Answer 7

I really don't believe we'll run out of room anytime soon, but since the earth is 70+ percent water, some adjustments will have to be made. I just wonder when we'll run out of space for graveyards.

Answer 8

The 1968 book, "The Population Bomb" said that would happen by 1980, but it was wrong.

Answer 9

We will eventually encounter a human who has the ability,knowledge and desire to end the human race.