Figure 38
Figure 37
Figure 36
Figure 35
HOW TO KNOW HIGHER WORLDS
Figure 39
Today Has Been Alright
The Soundscape
Cold night....
Zero / शून्य {shunya} / μηδέν
The travels of Pedro de Cieza de Léon
Portrait of Somasa
Thus Spake Zarathustra
Virgil and The Aeneid
View from Griffith Observatory
Vestibulo-ocular reflex
Figure 8.2
E coli
MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
Figure 7.3
PLATE 9
PLATE 8
PLATE 2
A view from Griffith Observatory
Friends in Spain
Paella
Kauai
JOURNAL OF A CAVALRY OFFICER
Prisoner's rhyme
Figure 17
Figure 16
Saccade
See also...
Keywords
Authorizations, license
-
Visible by: Everyone -
All rights reserved
-
24 visits
- Keyboard shortcuts:
Jump to top
RSS feed- Latest comments - Subscribe to the comment feeds of this photo
- ipernity © 2007-2024
- Help & Contact
|
Club news
|
About ipernity
|
History |
ipernity Club & Prices |
Guide of good conduct
Donate | Group guidelines | Privacy policy | Terms of use | Statutes | In memoria -
Facebook
Twitter
Stephan Fey club has replied to Dinesh clubWhat KNOWLEDGE creates: The population bomb has fizzled out
More people in the world - a reason to rejoice.
By Hartmut Wewetzer
24.09.2014, 00:00 Uhr
More people in the world - a reason to rejoice.
By Hartmut Wewetzer
24.09.2014, 00:00 Uhr
More than seven billion people populate the earth, in 2050 it is expected to be nine billion, in 2100 then eleven. Further growth is likely. These are the latest estimates based on data from the United Nations (the Tagesspiegel reported). Every year, humanity grows by about the population of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2100, the population of Africa will have quadrupled from one to four billion. The continent will then have caught up with Asia, which will have already passed its zenith. The remaining three heavily populated regions (North and South America, Europe) will each remain below one billion. That's the forecast. Because it concerns the future, it is uncertain. But the researchers credibly assure us that it is better than previous assumptions.
With their prophecy, the scientists are breaking with a consensus that has lasted 20 years. Previously, it had been said that the demographic peak of nine billion people would be reached in 2050. After that, things would gradually start to go downhill again. That was a bit of a valium for the worried. All the more reason to be surprised that the new projection has hardly caused a stir. All the more so in times when man-made climate change and its consequences are so much in the spotlight.
Forty years ago, things were different. Back then, overpopulation was a hot topic. The fuse had been lit by "The Population Bomb," a 1968 bestseller by Stanford professor Paul Ehrlich and his wife, Anne. The Ehrlichs predicted famines for the 1970s and '80s and didn't give a hoot about the future of humanity.
But the bang with which the population was supposed to "explode" didn't happen. The downfall failed to materialize because Paul and Anne Ehrlich got it wrong. However, problems such as poverty or hunger, which are attributed to overpopulation, are quite real. Anyone looking for solutions to the issue of population growth can easily get caught between the political and ideological fronts. The right would prefer to build dams at Europe's borders against the flood of people from Africa and, at best, drop contraceptives over the South.
The left, on the other hand, believes that hunger is merely a redistribution problem. There is actually enough food for everyone. And the fact that the rich climate-damaging nations now want to tell the poor not to have any more children is an impertinence anyway.
A whiff of doom also wafts through the new population forecast. The researchers led by Patrick Gerland of the United Nations fear environmental pollution, resource consumption, unemployment, poverty, health problems, social unrest and much more. But perhaps they also underestimate the adaptability, inventiveness and ingenuity of Homo sapiens. After all, it is still not clear how much humanity is actually "too much," how many people the earth can support. Paul Ehrlich said that the globe could at most cope with two billion. But why not ten? Or 15?
The equation "more people = more hunger" is by no means compelling. The example of the green revolution shows that. In the mid-20th century, better plant varieties, irrigation, fertilization and crop protection led to drastic increases in yields. India and China have been largely free of famine epidemics ever since. Certainly, the green revolution had its ecological downsides - but to condemn it on that account borders on cynicism and misanthropy. In any case, anyone who wants to feed people in the future and does not see them merely as climate pests will need more technology and know-how, not less.
In the 20th century, the world's population quadrupled. Today, with the exception of Africa, there is no longer any question of such dynamism. Human growth is slowing down, and the braking maneuver has long since taken place. The main causes of the global decline in fertility are prosperity and education. They curb childbearing, with benefits for all concerned. And because they are gradually flourishing in Africa as well, we need not fear for development in the long term. Paul Ehrlich excluded, of course, as always.
We are all living longer, healthier lives. Life expectancy has doubled since the 1950s. back when I was born 150 babies out of every thousand died before their first birthday. I could have been one of them. Now only five die. Should we cherish or fear this? Is good luck for the world's babies and bad luck for the planet? It is sometimes said that more than half of all the people who have lived on the earth are alive today. This is nonsense. Just under 7 billion of the total human roll call of 100 billion are alive today. But what may well be true is that half of all the people who have ever managed to reach the age of sixty-five are alive today.
But don't despair. There is something you may not have guessed -- something that may save us all. The population "bomb" is being defused. Only gradually, because the children of the greatest population explosion in history are still mostly of childbearing age, but it is happening. They may be having seven children in Mali, and six in Afghanistan, but half of the world's women are now having two children or fewer -- not just in rich countries, but in Iran and parts of India, Burma and Brazil, Vietnam and South Africa. Mothers today have fewer than half as many offspring as their own mothers. This is happening mostly out of choice and not compulsion. Women have always wanted freedom, not domestic drudgery and the childbirth treadmill. And now the most of their babies survive to adulthood, they are grabbing it. ~ xvi - Intro
Malthus who was known to family and friends as Bob, was having none of libertarian bubble. In the evening discussions with his father he laid into Godwin's (William) optimism with particular contempt. And into the night, he was working on his own retaliatory text, an exercise of pessimism based on his experience with his country parishioners. The result was his "Essay on the Principles of Population," first published in 1798. ....
Bob Malthus's vision was simple, bleak, and devastating. Human population would, until checked, always grow exponentially. Just as a couple might produce four children, who would in turn create eight, and so on, a city of one million people would become two million in a generation, then four million, eight million, sixteen million, and so on. But food production could never grow so fast. At the most, it could grow arithmetically, able to feed one million and so on. The masses would inevitably run out of food or suffer disease till deaths brought the population back to its former level. It was, he said happening in his own parish as birth outnumbered deaths and young grew up stunted. The whole country was going the same way. Probably the whole world.
Nothing could be done, he believed. All efforts to make the poor better off, or to relieve their suffering, would fail. Charity would only encourage more births, leading to a yet more calamitous population crash. To suggest otherwise was "an unpardonable deceit on the poor" Malthus saw this gloomy prognosis as a natural state of affairs, but one with political consequences. ......
For Malthus, this was a moral argument too. "Dependent poverty ought to be held disgraceful," he said. "A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents, or if the society do not want his labour, has no claim of right to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature's might feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to go gone." ~ Page 4 / 5
Sign-in to write a comment.