If thev population ofv this planet continues to grow @ its current rate that the land & ocean can maintain a -

Question

substanstial food supply for all of us as well as the animal kingdom? This is excluding any natural diasters and the possibility of a panademic or some space debris hitting us. Does this rattle your cage? Whats the chance of something like this happening within the next 50 yrs? I predict it will happen b4 then not to mention some nut who wants to send a few big bombs into us wiping out life as we know it.This is not ask to scare people but is ask to make people realize how vunderable we really are ..We really have control over very little do we?

Answer 1

Well, it really depends on how you look at it. Camhelp brought the point that overpopulation is an alarmist view. Granted, Elrich, as the author of "The Population Bomb" book camhelp listed, was a bit aggressive on suggesting 1970's & 1980's when famines and disasters would strike, which is only a couple decades at most after the book was published.

However, simply logic can deduce this, if an apple can feed a person fully. You can not expect the same apple tree to feed 20 people in 20 years no matter how good the technology develops. You can ask 20 people to eat around the apple cores to get more of the meat, and double the apple tree production but you are not going to get 1900% production increase out of the tree. You can not make nothing out of something.

The fundamental laws of conversation must be obeyed. Unless there are radical theories that would completely change our understanding of the universe, sustaining ever increasing population is not possible. Can anyone imagine US having 10 times of current population? Not even that, US with 5% of world population is consuming 25% of world's resources.

Not even considering overpopulation, with China & India's ever growing economic powess with their 25% of world population, their citizens believe they should have the same standards of consumption as US. How is the earth going to be able to do that? Can we somehow quintuple world's resources in 5 decades? or somehow make our energy consumption 500% more effiecent in 5 decades? As an engineer, I will tell you that it's never gonna happen. You should be glad that God is on your side if we even come close double the resources output or make things 200% of the current efficiency in 5 decades.

Here is another shocker. Global Warming is already killing peole. Flood victims, those succumbed to heat waves, and victims from hurricanes and typhones are already dying of increased global temperatures. For those who still believe humans have nothing to do with the global warming, or we need "absolute concensus" among the scientist even though the dissent is at most 10%, I simply gave up on persuading them.

All I know is the people getting killed due to Global Warming are the poorest and weakest among us who would not be able to fend for themselves. "Social Darwinism" Go figrue. There are always more poor people dying to ignore until there are no more poorer people than you and you become the poorest.

Global Warming? Bring it on. We need some more deaths in this world before it's taken more seriously. I seriously doubt we will have the same or higher world population than current in 50 years (We are not having less babies. We will just have more people dying). Truth will eventually come out. All the arguments about Global Warming and Overpopulation being real are starting to become fairly pointles...


XR

Answer 2

I have read that if the Sahara desert and the continent of Australia were intensively irrigated and farmed, that the Earth could easily support 100 Billion people or more. That having been said, the World Health Organization currently predicts that the world population will continue to grow from our current 6.2 Billion to around 9 Billion at around 2100 and then slowly decline after that. This is largely due to the trend of increasing prosperity that is currenty occurring all over the developing world, and this prosperity (fortunately) translates to fewer births and also (unfortunately) greater carbon emissions. Many developed countries or semi-developed countries such as France, Italy and Russia, among others, actually have shrinking populations.
Some futurists predict that in the next 2-3 centuries, all humans will likely leave Earth and spread out across the solar system and then the galaxy at large. Earth would be left to return to its former wild state, with perhaps only a few visiting humans allowed at a time for research purposes and/or vacations. I can hardly wait.

Answer 3

They weren't really wrong. In '68 they didn't realize how much food we could produce. So the Population Bomb has been delayed.

We could feed the whole planet now, but millions are starving. In '68 the big starvations were in China. They, with a whole lot more people, can export wheat today.

Now, and for a long time now, Africa has been the challenge. And we're not up to it. We're not feeding them. This, of course, is a political issue and the fact that we can produce the food to feed them still agrees with you.

Our population continues to expand and capitalist economies and the possibility of retirement demands population growth.

This is not good for our Planet. Eventually, the 68ers forecast will happen. There are only so many resources on our Planet and we are using them up.

America could soon run out of water, for instance. We depend upon irrigation for a good portion of the food we produce.

India has been having trouble with wells going deeper and deeper and deeper. The aquifers are being drained and never fully replenished.

We needn't worry much about animals eating too much on land. They will just die off.

The oceans are having major difficulties and are close to death. Fish farming helps but accidental releases of genetically altered fish suitable for farming breed with wild fish causing them to 'devolve'; the offspring are no longer properly suited for surviving in the wild.

The problems go on and on. There will be a climax - a Population Bomb. Decades late. But it will happen.

Answer 4

No it does not bother me. In 1968 a book called "The Population Bomb" it predicted disaster for humanity due to overpopulation and the "population explosion". The book predicted that "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death", that nothing can be done to avoid mass famine greater than any in the history, and that radical action was needed to limit the overpopulation. It was wrong. Population growth has slowed and food production as increased since then. It was wrong then and it is wrong now.

Answer 5

Our only option is to do what we can personally - recycle materials, reduce waste (not just reduce the amount of garbage but also reduce the amount of perfectly good food and other materials that are wasted or thrown away), protect the environment, find alternative energy and food sources, and be courteous to each other.
If the end comes due to a nut with a bomb, or a comet from space, or our own actions, then there isn't much we can do to prevent it.
But we can make life - for animals and humans - a more pleasant existence.

Answer 6

When time of famine comes war will outbreak over the world in a fight for food. Don't worry bout it we'll die from global warming first.