South West Debates Forums: Population

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   Many of the difficult environmental issues we face come back to the huge increases in population across the world. Are we ignoring the REAL cause of the problem?

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Simon Newbie Joined: 16 Nov 2006 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 6	Topic: Population Posted: 06 Dec 2006 at 10:31am
	Many of the difficult environmental issues we face come back to the huge increases in population across the world. Are we ignoring the REAL cause of the problem?
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alister Admin Group Joined: 14 Nov 2006 Online Status: Offline Posts: 21	Posted: 11 Dec 2006 at 10:14am
	What's going to happen in the western economies once the ageing population dies? Is anyone doing work on that?
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James Newbie Joined: 14 Dec 2006 Online Status: Offline Posts: 17	Posted: 15 Dec 2006 at 12:01am
	At last - someone not afraid to raise the issue. 9 billion or more people competing for less and less resource - oil, land, water etc - it's not going to be pretty, is it? No idea how we tackle this. Experiments in China and India are now effectively abandoned. So coercion and bribery didn't work. Evidence to show that improvements in health and wealth lead to smaller family sizes but there is a lag. Come back Malthus - all is forgiven Edited by James - 15 Dec 2006 at 12:03am
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Statman Newbie Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Location: United Kingdom Online Status: Offline Posts: 1	Posted: 05 Mar 2007 at 4:25pm
	For me it's not a question of how many people there are on the planet, but the capacity of the planet to meet the growing material expectations of the existing (or growing) population. People often talk about the global economy as some kind of zero-sum game, as if growth in China or India must equate with some kind of loss in the UK or South West. It isn't. If they get richer they buy more from us. The only thing that is really fixed is the amount of aluminium, iron, petrol etc on the planet. So working out how to meet the material expectations of people on earth (growing or otherwise) without destroying the place is what counts. If a quarter of the world's population lived like Al Gore does we'd be stuffed, so let's not blame the developing world for reproducing. I think the RDA is doing really well in pushing the 'sustainable economic development' line. Whether it's more rhetoric than reality at the moment I'm not sure, but it's clearly the right line. On the other question - what happens when the ageing population of the developed world dies - presumably we'll import labour from the youthful less developed world.
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Environment
South West Debates Forums : South West Debates Chat : Environment

Topic: Population