The earth is NOT overpopulated?

Question

Have you taken a commercial plane across just the U.S.? Then you noticed alot of empty acreage for thousands of miles.

Have you wandered Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, Nevada, Utah? Are those states are overpopulated?

Have you hiked the desert in Nevada? If you did, you noticed desolation, just a few miles from Vegas.

Have you bike trekked across Africa? If so, you noticed you can travel for weeks and see no one.

I've done the above. I have seen firsthand that the world is NOT overpopulated.

Overpopulation is chic hype as is global warming. Get out and travel the world and see for yourself, if you can et away from your keyboard. Quit causing such ridiculous fearmongering panic.

Study the lifecycle of water, it is THE ultimate natural renewable resource.

keithshearing,
I recycle and ride my bicycle whenever possible, rethink your accusation.

They once said the desert where Las Vegas is was uninhabitable. Anything is possible and habitable with a little imagination, $$@ and effort.

My family owns 2 commecial farms and produces food, I just might know where food comes from. Oh and having had military desert survival training, I do know how to live in a arid climate. 6 tours to Afganistan and going on #7 soon.

Answer 1

That is a valid statement. Currently we are not overpopulated. But if you know anything about continuous exponential growth, you will see that the rate we are growing and how short our doubling time has become, it will be obvious that in our lifetime if things continue the way they are, the earth will become saturated or nature will find a way to start wiping us out and limiting our growth. For everyone on the planet's sake I am hoping for the latter. Watch this series on "YouTube, it's long but it really puts it in perspective. I too didn't think overpopulation could be an issue with such vast forests and unexplored territories....but this lecture made sense and it's scary.


Added:
"....It is the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant, and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting."
-H.L. Mencken

Added:
See how many of the answers that said the world WAS becoming overpopulated got a thumbs down? Point made.

Answer 2

This idea that there is plenty of land left for man to expand is nonsense. The idea would be silly if it wasn’t so dangerous. This is exactly the kind of thinking that got us into the current mess. The empty land you see? There’s a reason it’s empty! No water. No arable soil. Nothing can live there except a few highly adapted species.

If you were to just plop down there and set up shop, how would you live? Conjure up water and soil and energy from thin air? Oh, I see, mankind will invent some solution to circumvent these problems. I invite you to read the rest of the answer.

The commonly stated myth is – the entire world population could fit into the state of Texas (or some variation). If you do the calculations, or just consider it from common sense, it’s impossible. Not enough water. No way to remove waste. No way to replenish the soil without contaminating it. No way to logistically construct a society where everyone stays on 5 acres and can produce everything they need and recycle all their waste.

In a direct response to your experience, dry land farming in the Midwest is a highly variable enterprise. To be successful you have to irrigate. If we were to populate heavily everywhere it stands to reason we would have to irrigate heavily. But, the Ogallala Aquifer is a fixed resource left over from the last ice age. It is not being replenished and it is down 100 feet in only 50 years. In another 50 years irrigated farming in the Midwest will be history.

Even if you could logistically put everyone into Texas, it would take the entire rest of the world to produce the resources to support them.

If you extrapolate the “everyone can fit into Texas” idea to the whole world, you will approximate the situation we have created. Land degraded the world over. Huge dead zones where rivers empty into seas and oceans. Fisheries in decline the world over. An atmospheric sink dangerously overloaded.

The key concept is – the reason our society works today is because we have the entire natural world as an open ended sink from which we can extract resources and send our waste. But the world is finite. The earth is a bounded sphere. Eventually resources will be exhausted and the biospheres ability to absorb our waste and regenerate itself will be exhausted.

There are fundamental thermodynamic limits in this world. You cannot change the laws of physics. No matter how much you wish we can circumvent the limits, that some magic technology will be found, that a savior will come down and save us at the eleventh hour, every bit of objective sense we have shows that we are bound to (dependent on) and by (subject to the same limits as) the environment we live in.

E.O. Wilson has done the calculations and if you are serious about this question I suggest you read some of his work. He estimates the theoretical carrying capacity of the planet at 14 billion people. We could live on boats and grow hydroponic food in caves with artificial lights and the world will “…surely be a hellish place to live.”

4/5’s of the people in the world today are living with bare subsistence in wretched degrading conditions. We are inflicting this now on 4.8 billion people. Do we really want to do it to 8 billion so that 2 billion can live in affluence? That’s where we’ll be in 2050. Although it will more likely be a 9 to 1 or a 9.5 to 0.5 split at that point.

I put these kind of cornucopian fantasies in the same category and attach about the same likelihood to them as the rapture movies.

P.S. I've flown over the US, been to Utah, Northern Canada, and have hiked in Washington State.

Answer 3

A majority of the land on Earth is desert. Just because there is still some natural land that hasn't been converted to farm or suburb is not proof that the world has plenty of room for even more people. It just shows that if we want even more people, we'll have to destroy even more natural land to become farmland and suburb. Isn't there a minimum amount of natural land you'd like to have on the Earth?

Answer 4

i may be happy to do slightly extra artwork to find some hyperlinks for you in case you think of it somewhat is a sturdy answer: vital is an information of what human beings propose by utilising over-populated. at an identical time as many anybody is homeless in the international, or have not got get right of entry to to scrub water, or nutrition, there isn't any loss of area in the international, or water or nutrition. the priority is often political: who has get right of entry to to what. there is a lot extra nutrition created in the international each 365 days than human beings choose. in the US on my own the government spends billions each 365 days getting farmers to throw away over-produced meals, and additionally they get extensive savings on water. everyone who needs to declare the international is overpopulated is basically asserting that the people who stay in the international yet have not got get right of entry to to nutrition and water and housing do no longer should stay. yet often those anybody is healthful westerners residing in the convenience of their very own abode, with paved roads and that they often throw away lots of their very own nutrition and water. even nonetheless each and all the folk who're ravenous might desire to quite be fed if international places like the US stopped throwing away great quantities of nutrition. there are a number of different themes that reason starvation/malnutrition, yet those are as properly the component. everyone who says that folk reason too lots pollutants? properly, surely, people who stay in cities reason much less pollutants in step with guy or woman than those residing in rural factors. Which makes a great style of expertise. the form of intake human beings in cities do is somewhat efficient. production unit tactics, little waste. In rural factors tactics are much less efficient. Villagers tear down complete forests to advance nutrition to take care of themselves. the expenditures are very intense. So returned, is the international overpopulated? Or are the adverse of the international consistently being blamed for issues wealthy human beings led to in the 1st place? :D solid success

Answer 5

No of course the earth isn't overpopulated. No one ever said it was. People often notice how many people there are, but they don't realise how gigantic the earth is. Lately, the earth seems smaller because of google earth and those maps. You just flick over the globe in a wink. Of course the earth is huge in real life. Global warming though, is a real problem, not just a hype. I'm sorry to say this because I'm not one of those doom thinkers. But it's a problem. And people are talikng about it now, because the effects are getting more and more noticable. In Holland, for example, where I live, the weather is out of control. Last summer was extreme. Really EXTREME heat! And the winter was warm. And suddenly this summer we are nearly drowned. It poured all summer. And the news said again: extreme, never rained so much at once here. So to tell you the truth: I'm a bit scared. Scared that the sea will rise because the north pole is melting and we might be under water in a few years. And I can hardly do anything. So, not a chic hype but a big problem!
But maybe we'll do something about it. Even if the earth isn't overpopulated, there are still enough people to come up with a solution. ;)

Answer 6

the earth is not overpopulated

the earth's population could fit in the state of Texas comfortably.

the earth will probably never be overpopulated

Answer 7

I aked a question to find out how big man as a whole is compared to the earth and i am told that 6.5 billion people all standing side by side on a piece of land would take up space the size of the isle of wight, which is very very small, so i do believe were are too puney to have an effect on the earths climate, however i don't think it's a good idea to destroy too much natural land.

Answer 8

Well for sure,
There is a lot of our planet, that is not populated.
So are you suggesting, the Earth should be completely populated.
OK have been there, have seen people want to grow crops,they cut down trees so they can grow food.
After they do, with out nutrition the land turns to dust.
A village can be consumed by mud, when the rain comes, only because the trees that keep the earth secure, have been removed.
Water is being polluted, by every country.
I think you should reconsider your argument, you are doing nothing to help the World

Answer 9

We could take the entire world population, move everyone into the state of Texas, and the population density there would still be less than that of New York City.

Answer 10

The state in which I reside, Minnesota, has only developed 3% of its land. I don't believe that's too far from the national percentage. Relax, everyone - we have plenty of space.

As for managing our resources, Americans are the most innovative achievers on the planet. Just look at the yield produced from an acre of farmland now vs. 30 years ago...

Don't listen to the likes of Paul Ehrlich ("smog disasters will kill 200,000 in NY and LA", "the battle to feed humanity is over", "before 1985 mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity"...).

As societies evolve technologically, birth rates drop. Look at western Europe, which does not reproduce at a level sufficient for generational replacement.