Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!apple!agate!ucbvax!mtxinu!unisoft!fai!sequent!crg5!szabo From: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) Newsgroups: sci.bio Subject: Re: Human Population Growth/Decline Message-ID: <21472@crg5.UUCP> Date: 2 Apr 91 00:22:28 GMT References: <21376@crg5.UUCP> <1991Mar20.125112.2920@desire.wright.edu> <21418@crg5.UUCP> <3146@beguine.UUCP> <1991Mar29.112327.3031@desire.wright.edu> Reply-To: szabo@crg5.UUCP (Nick Szabo) Organization: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc Lines: 43 In article <1991Mar29.112327.3031@desire.wright.edu> sbishop@desire.wright.edu writes: >According to the World Population Data Sheet, the world pop. is doubling itself >in forty years. That's an overall estimate, some regions are more, some are >less. This is incredibly simplistic, since the _rate_ of population growth has been cut nearly in half in just the last 20 years, and continues to fall at a rate that is itself accelerating. The people who have the most $$$ to lose/gain (and $$$ to spend studying) world population growth, the World Bank, show world population "leveling off" at less than 10 billion people. In other words, _today's_ rate of food supply is more than enough to feed future populations, even with no technology advance. Of course, tech advance is not slowing; the green revolution continues, and genetic engineering for massive productivity gains is just around the corner. The hoped-for day of ending world starvation may soon arrive, if it hasn't already. For a 100% end to starvation, however, local distribution, not global food supply, is the limiting factor. The World Bank's time-line is limited by their loan horizon, of course: they have not yet started projecting what happens after the "leveling off". I will certainly agree that overpopulation has been a problem, and continues to be so in some pockets of the world. However, increasingly underpopulation is becoming a problem -- in Japan, where there is a severe shortage of young workers, in Hungary, where population is rapidly decreasing (by over 1%/year), in Amazonian tribes that are being given birth control and driven off their lands at the same time, and increasingly across most of the developed world, where retirement funds are coming under severe pressure as a first symptom. We should not let overpopulation problems, severe as they have been and still are, keep us from seeing the problems of underpopulation that are starting to occur. We pretty much know how to lick overpopulation; underpopulation is a difficult problem with which we have not yet come to grips. -- Nick Szabo szabo@sequent.com "If you want oil, drill lots of wells" -- J. Paul Getty The above opinions are my own and not related to those of any organization I may be affiliated with.