Thank you!
ziad

i want to know the impact of the climate and vegetation of the country in its population growth. to me it seems that a lush tropical country will have more people because the food from the land can sustain the population. while a nordic country will have less population because the frigid lands can sustain less per square kilometer.

i would love to know your thoughts on this.

thanks,
jyoti

I really admire your presentations. Regarding “what-stops-population-growth” presentation, I think having small family is true but, educating the poor is really critical and plays a major role in stopping worlds population growth.

With best wishes,
Lakshmipathi
klpathi@yahoo.com

i) Divorce laws, and strict enforcement of it. I think this contributes heavily to lowering populations. But you need that because of point (ii) below.

ii) The lack of religion leads to a lifestyle that breaks down the family unit. Once the patriarchal mode of life goes out of the window, so does the population growth. In other words, women’s rights. So its a trade-off.

I think one needs to look at the related data and add it to the mix of factors.

The question is, how do we redefine wealth?
It has been proposed by some authors, that the key to generate wealth without substantially increasing the production of objects, is to focus on availability and accessibility of any given product.

The example of a vacuum cleaner comes to mind. In the developed world, every house has one or 2 vacuum cleaners, which are only used maybe 1 hour per week or so. The rest of the week, it just sits there waiting for someone to use it. In developing countries, most families do not have access to a vacuum cleaner. But let’s imagine that a community has access to vacuum cleaner. With some planning effort, the vacuum cleaner could be in constant use, changing from family to family. Everyone gets richer (they have access to the product), but it was not necessary to substantially increase the production numbers of it.

Airline companies know this well. Every airplane is almost constantly on air, being put to use. It would be financially disastrous if a single airplane were to be used only 1 hour per week, like a vacuum cleaner.
This paradigm change would force manufactures to focus on efficiency and longevity of a single object, instead of mass production with poor quality, since each appliance would be subject to more intense use.

As for homes, it has been possible for quite a few years to build houses in developing countries, made from renewable/recyclable/rejected materials. Several experimental cases have been demonstrated by architects in several locations around the world. These houses have been proven to behave well in terms of temperature control, local weather resistance, etc. It is still hard, however, to defeat the construction lobby prevalent in those areas, which promotes the consumption of traditional materials. And it is necessary to educate the local communities, training them to build in the appropriate way. All these things take time and money.

But, how do we convince the developing world to embrace “availability”?
The only way, I am afraid, is if the rich and the wealthy take the first step.

The poor people in developing countries are constantly brainwashed with media that only portrays the exuberance and glamour of the “western” lifestyle.
It is natural that they too, dream of living like the wealthy.

ONLY if the rich people in developed nations redefine wealth, and adopt a paradigm of product availability (or just call it a “sharing/commuter” system), will they be able to convince the poor to do the same. We must lead the way for others to follow.

Will we be capable to…? I will remain cautiously optimistic.

cheers,
______________
PruncDror
[url=http://forum.gina.alaska.edu/users/532]buy soma mastercard London[/url]
http://forum.gina.alaska.edu/users/532

Population control is a measure to control the populace. They do it by raising prices, controling capital, and giving the ‘means’ for the individual to save himself by not having children. In plain english, why do you not have as many children? I will remind you, Life is expensive, divorce rates are high, etc.. But going back to the first point, “life is expensive”. Go search the about the gap between the rich and the poor in the so called “developed” countries and compare them to the so called “developing” countries. In the “developed” country you are squeezed to a corner, and given one way out, the way they want you out, contraceptives.

There is not a single specie on this planet that would not strive if it had the chance! Not one.

many thanks

Selfishness is certainly a bad thing, and selfishness/greed has been the source of much of the world’s suffering over time. There is one issue, however, that may not be resolved even if we all become selfless, loving humans who hold hands and sing all day. That unavoidable issue is this: When any population grows faster than the resources it consumes – within a finite space – the resources get used up.

This is as true of humans on a planet as it is of bacteria in a Petri dish. This tragedy of the commons will be resolved in one of three ways:

1) We go extinct.
2) We fight over scarce resources so that only the “strongest” survive.
3) We pull together and manage population growth in a peaceful way.

If we match the rate of human reproduction and consumption to the rate at which our resources can be replenished, then we can all live comfortable, happy lives. Otherwise we go down in history as the one species that had the intelligence to foresee its own demise, but lacked the wisdom and the spirit of cooperation required to do anything about it.

I think that the best way to lower population growth is to improve healthcare and empower women (through education and rights etc). Empowering women will increase the economy and per capita income because the work force will increase (not double because change is not instant – along with other factors) and so will entrepeurship. These ideas, I believe, are the core to the solution of putting the break on population growth.

Perhaps in the future we will find that population change will be more to do with migration as people migrate between countries for their own reasons but in effect helping each individual country reach optimum population; both economically and environmentally.

I like to think of the earth as a giant hotel with a finite number of rooms. Each rich person takes up roughly five or six rooms, and every poor person takes up one. My point is not that we should all forsake our iPods and Minivans, but that population growth is not the only problem here. It is population growth plus growth in the standard of living. One billion Indians driving cars and living like Americans has FAR more impact on the planet’s ability to sustain life than simply doubling the number of Indians at their current standard of living.

I’m also not suggesting that the developing world should ban the purchase of cars or embrace poverty. Rather, I think scientists should try to approximate the number of wealthy / high standard of living people that this planet can support. Fewer people with a higher standard of living sounds preferable to more people with a lower standard of living. If we continue along our current path, I have some concern that more and more people are going to be fighting – literally – over a limited number of rooms.

My perception is that most people are either focused on “limiting population growth” (eg China’s one child policy) OR on “limiting environmental impact” by recycling and riding bicycles and such. I haven’t heard many people advocate doing both, and I don’t believe that either approach has any possibility of working without the other.

With a large portion of the world’s population eating meat as only a luxury item right now, instead subsiding on plant products, if they were to raise their standard of living so that they have the purchasing power to be able to eat meat regularly, then we are going to need a lot more farmland. Where is that going to come from? Mow down the rest of the Amazon?

It is questionable whether the Earth can even sustain humanity in its current form (the oceans are being severely overfished, diminishing every year, and if ocean levels rise due to global warming then billions will be displaced and have to move elsewhere), and that’s with 6 billion people poor using 2 hectares per person and 1 billion rich people using 5 hectares per person. Now if we were to bring everyone up to our standard of living and using 5 hectares per person, that’s going to require what, like twice as much ecological productivity? And if population grows to 9 billion then that’s three times as much.

And we can’t count on another Green Revolution to save us because as a result of the Law of Diminishing Returns we won’t get much more significant improvement in agricultural productivity. In addition, the industrial agriculture enabling the Green Revolution is energy and water intensive and we are running out of fresh water, not getting more.

So to conclude, I question whether it’s even possible, ecologically, to support that many people living that lifestyle required in order for them to have stable populations.

In particular look at the section “Effects on population growth and fertility rate”.

Question: why China in the graph is in the 6 or 7 children per woman position?
Thanks