> That's true, and more contrary to our nature and history than just
> about anything else I can think of. Still, an equilibrium will be
> reached, whether it's pretty or not—as we overload the planet's
> ability to sustain us, people will die.
Actually, an equilibrium need never be reached. The typical model for
uncontrolled breeding involves a massive die-off, followed by a return
to uncontrolled breeding. It is a cycle with no natural equilibrium,
particularly when age and disease are the primary killers.
For an example of what could be ahead of us as a species, you may want
to read the Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle book _The Mote in God's Eye_.
The alien race in that book has an issue with over-breeding, and it
explores the consequences of that behavior if it is allowed to run
rampant.
> > The way I see it, there's a massive die-off coming. I can either
> > be kind to my children and not give rise to them, or I can try to
> > be one of the few to survive.
>
> Hmmm, I buy the "I'm doing my part not to over-populate the planet"
> argument more.
All you need is for your nice little only child to catch some religion
which disallows him/her from controlling the number of children they
have at which point it you become responsible for producing 80+
great-grandchildren instead of 80+ grandchildren. Having any children
is bad for the planet.
> > I don't expect the die off to happen soon. As such, I expect if
> > I had 2-3 children, those could result in 80+ adults before the
> > die-off. That's 80+ additional lives that will be spared by my
> > not having children. (I know of families with the elders having
> > more than 80+ grandchildren and great-grandchildren.)
>
> Those elders didn't have 2-3 children, I'd wager; they had 8-12.
If I have 5 children (like my father did, and my wife's parents did)
and each of those 5 children have 5 children then I have 25
grandchildren. If those 25 grandchildren have 5 children a piece,
I have 125 great-grandchildren.
Now, if I have my 5 children before I'm 30, my children have their 5
children before their 30, and their children have their 5 children
before their 30 and the life expectancy is 90+ years, then I get a
few years before I die to see all my 125 great grandchildren.
Those aren't numbers I pulled from my hat. Those are me having the
same size family that both I and my wife had.
When I said grand-children and great-grandchildren I meant the sum
of the two, so in the last example that total would be 150. So, when
I say 80+ grandchildren and great-grandchildren I was speaking about
an average family size of less than 5. Less than that of both my own
family and my wife's family.
Now, I don't expect to be alive for the die-off, which means that my
great-grandchildren may have had children before that time.
3 children -> 9 grandchildren -> 27 great grandchildren
-> 81 great-great grandchildren
9 + 27 + 81 = 117 decendants of my children to die off
2.5 children -> 5 grandchildren -> 12.5 -> 31.2
5 + 12 + 31 = 48 decendants of my children to die off
So with an average family size of 3 children there would be 80+
great-great grandchildren. One generation removed from my original
out-of-ass number.
However, the numbers look much worse when you plan for the future,
by which I mean 7 generations or about 140 years. Heck, plan for one
near-future life expectancy of 100 years and 5 generations and the
numbers are bad enough.
> You might like Orson Scott Card's Ender saga. The solution to
> over-population in that is to hurl great big chunks of our population
> out to the stars (of course, we happen to know where to send them,
> which helps).
Resource scarcity becomes a greater concern the greater the population
becomes. With insufficient resources there is little anyone will be
able to do to get off the planet.
> My fiancée and I are likely to adopt children; she herself was adopted.
My wife and I are thinking that we may eventually adopt, too.
There are plenty of children out there that need loving, caring
families.
My wife is less dead set against breeding than I am. However we
both have family histories with unfortunate diseases and disorders.
> "Voluntary human extinction" shouldn't catch on, but there's plenty of
> people who are choosing to be childless. Zero or sub-zero population
> growth is a much more reasonable goal (though not terribly likely
> anytime soon).
I believe humans should be extinct on Earth. The Earth was a nice
place to get started, but once we have the technology to live
sustainably off-planet it is our duty to the biosphere to leave it.
> The increase in population lately has largely been a matter of
> increased lifespan; in fact, birth rates have been declining for a
> while. I think it's possible, if we figure out good ways of better
> distributing wealth and education (two factors that are strongly
> inversely related to birth rates), that we can reach an equilibrium of
> human population within the next century.
That would be a nice goal. I fear that while there remain radical
religious groups promoting uncontrolled breeding (and not kept at
bay with legislation) the world will continue to have
over-population issues.
This is why it is in predominantly Protestant countries where laws
have been put in place to encourage people to have children. Left
to their own senses most people realize that children are a ton of
work and their life would be better off with few, if any.
I think that countries wouldn't feel the need to institute such laws
if it weren't for fear of the local culture changing. Once the
immigrant community is larger than the local population the local
population frequently takes notice. This is another reason that
Nationalism totally sucks. If people considered themselves citizens
of the planet instead of tied with some national identity it would
be easier to accept shifting cultures.
The big problem with over-population is that once it really becomes a
pressing issue so many of the options are no longer available. Instead
of allowing any family to have one child there will be a stronger push
to require sterilization of certain parts of our population. That just
starts big trouble all over.
(Though that's not to say that over-population law shouldn't include
forced sterilization for people who violate the law. It should be a
given that it is the only solution for repeat offenders.)
> Of course, our entire economics is based on the idea of perpetual
> expansion. I wonder what sorts of economic trials we'd be faced if we
> actually got to a balance point with the world population, or even a
> population recession.
It reminds me of why I believe there may never be a world government:
Large countries like to be able to bully smaller countries in to
submitting to what they would never let their own people submit to.
I don't know enough about economics to have really clear ideas on it.
My theory, though, is that we need to treat the planet as basically
a zero-sum game. It is about maximizing resource utilization and not
about having more -- as you can't have more, there's a fixed amount.
> When there are no more empty spaces, we'll have killed the planet's
> ability to sustain us. It's as simple as that, as I see it. If we
> manage to deforest and pave the world, we're done for.
Heh. A place isn't empty if it can't be accidentally destroyed in
an experiment gone wrong. Such a place may be an oxygen farm or
what-have-you. However when I talk about empty spaces, I'm talking
about places that *can* be destroyed when a ship falls out of the
sky during a test process. (Or better, places empty of even anything
that can be destroyed.)
> However, I think we'd have to pretty much want "voluntary human
> extinction" to hit that extreme, because it's not like we wouldn't
> notice the massive consequences of such action happening as we moved
> toward it.
The key word is "voluntary". If it is a die-off it is involuntary.
Voluntary means having a few children you can take care of well.
Involuntary means having so many children that they all go hungry and
none of them have clothes that fit. Then they all die when you don't
have the money to take any of them to a doctor.
> This planet will survive, no matter what we do. The question is whether we will.
Sure the planet will survive. There's life living in harsh conditions
not dependant upon the sun or rain, that will survive regardless of
whether we destroy the rest of the biosphere.
> Cheers? This is a pretty morbid discussion. ;-)
> Simón
Cheers, (morbid it may be, but we're all friends :)
Steven
> P.S. I think the only Linux-related thing about all this is that I'm
> typing it up on Ubuntu...
I believe open source software should be used in the process to get us
colonizing other planets. Linux is well suited for such a task. :)
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