Freedom said:

Isn't this a self limiting problem?

I was just reading about the Yapese. They have lived on the island of Yap for thousands of years, and so they have had to deal with the problem of overpopulation for thousands of years. They developed a complex social system that has an effect of greatly reducing the birth rate.


When population size begins to significantly effect the quality of life, my guess is that the people of the world will do what humans do best - adapt.

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Zanthius said:

Freedom said:

Isn't this a self limiting problem?

I was just reading about the Yapese. They have lived on the island of Yap for thousands of years, and so they have had to deal with the problem of overpopulation for thousands of years. They developed a complex social system that has an effect of greatly reducing the birth rate.


When population size begins to significantly effect the quality of life, my guess is that the people of the world will do what humans do best - adapt.

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Loss of resources is just one of the factors in the equation, the other is loss of biodiversity. As we grab more and more resources from the biosphere, other species get less and less. This leads to a decrease in biodiversity, and it can take millions of years to restore the global biodiversity with the slow evolutionary processes that generates new species. Sure, sooner or later we will run out of resources altogether, and that will halt the population growth, but then we will already have exterminated a large amount of other species.

You are also supposing that the resource depletion will happen gradually rather than suddenly. It is much harder to adapt to sudden changes than to gradual changes, and I can very easily imagine a sudden collapse of the world economy as a consequence of peaking oil prices, then massive starvation around the world, and when people start to starve there will probably be war for the remaining resources, mass emigration from rich to poor countries, and so on...

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Freedom said:

oh yeah forgot to add even I imagine nucear holocost and armagadden and shit to be fun and interesting in a mad max survivalist adventure sort of way

of course it would happen in winter and I would be alone and cold starving to death hugging a broken chunk of concrete deathly afraid and saddened of dieing.

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so true. Suicide is painless.

Freedom said:

Isn't this a self limiting problem?

I was just reading about the Yapese. They have lived on the island of Yap for thousands of years, and so they have had to deal with the problem of overpopulation for thousands of years. They developed a complex social system that has an effect of greatly reducing the birth rate.


When population size begins to significantly effect the quality of life, my guess is that the people of the world will do what humans do best - adapt.

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Quote:

When it all goes downhill, there will be a greater emphasis on alternative solutions that were there all along, but we just couldnt be bothered switching to

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desert father said:

so you think a marketing scheme will reach people in a deep enough way to influence the amount of children they bear?

really?

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OrgoneConclusion said:

Quote:

When it all goes downhill, there will be a greater emphasis on alternative solutions that were there all along, but we just couldnt be bothered switching to

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Bother? We have played around with ethanol as an alternative, but it is a low octane fuel that uses much farmland.

It is simple economics. A gallon of high octane bio-fuel is 50-100% more expensive than gasoline or petro-diesel. When it is cheaper then we will switch.

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