stop&think,

Do the numbers for yourself. At any given growth rate, the number of new people added is proportional to the existing population. So at 1% annual growth you would end up with 1 more person in a year if you started with 100 and 1 million more if you started with 100 million. So dP/dt = rP, with P the population, r the annual growth rate, and t the time in years, and dP/dt the change in population with time. The solution to this equation (see any textbook on differential equations) is P(t) = P(0) exp(rt), where P(0) is the population at an arbitrary starting point and t is the time in years. If you know the starting population, the rate, and the time and have a scientific calculator you can work out what the population will be at any point, assuming constant growth.

If you take figures from the CIA World Factbook, you can quickly establish that the Solomon Islands will be at standing room only in a little over 400 years. Not much potential for growth after that. If there were only 2 people 10,000 years ago and the population had been growing at 1% since then, global population would now be about 2.7 x 10^43 people. To put this in perspective, the density of human flesh is just about the same as water, 1000 kg/m^3. Assuming 50 kg per person, all of those people could just be packed into a sphere with a radius of 6.8 x 10^10 km. Pluto at its most distant is 4.4 x 10^9 km from the sun, so the sphere of people would extend more than 10 times as far if centered there. A Physics lecturer friend of mine says it is fun to calculate when the sphere starts expanding at the speed of light.

Unless you believe that God will suspend the laws of mathematics for you, population growth WILL stop. The only question is if we stop it ourselves before our environment is destroyed.

Excellent article, Valerie

Thank you Valerie. A good article and obviously appreciated by the sensible people who read it.

If there is a god may he preserve us from going down the path "stop & think" suggests we take of rampant and constant population growth.

This will lead to the inevitable conclusion where there will be nothing else on the planet except humans and what they directly require to sustain themselves. Certainly, "stop & think" is correct, we will survive but at what cost to the other poor beings that inhabit our finite piece of rock. There will be no room for the fabulous diversity of flora and fauna we in Australia are still lucky enough to enjoy. It is rapidly disapearing in Africe and has long gone in the middle east and Nort Africa.
Each country will look like the middle east, a strip of grass, a few goats, a vegetable plot and millions of starving humans fighting amongst themselves over who has the correct religion.
We now have the oportunity and resources to design an economy which will work without constant growth so we can preserve some choice in what we have for our children. This unchecked growth is for cancer cells and unthinking bugs in a test tube but not for a sentient being in control of its destiny.

“Some countries already have a negative population growth and those who have the highest rate are Africa and the Middle East.” (Stop--).
What sort of a worry would negative growth be?

The only ones I know of are in Africa: Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland; all with high fertility rates and having more than 40% of their populations below the age of 15. The reason for their negative population growth rate is a desperate enthusiasm, and some ability, of a great many to live in some other country.

Come to contemplate it: if the world’s population growth rate were to change at the same rate as 1963 (2.19%?), but in the opposite direction, for the same length of time into the future, the population would reach a much more comfortable 2.61 billion.

But, at a rate of plus 2.19% - just imagine the numerous youngsters associated with that. No wonder the warlike folk in the fastest growing regions used child soldiers to make up the ranks, from what they might have regarded as surplus humanity.

Excellent article - tells what every intelligent person knows.
The tragedy is that there is one man in the world - just one - who could make an immediate and measureable difference to the situation. I of course refere to that most educated of fools, the Pope. The catholic church would rather see thousands suffer and the earth polluted beyond repair than relax one of the most stupid of all the catholic doctorinal flummeries. Of course, in view of the history of the church, no-one would reasonably expect any other outcome. Souls for the church is the name of the game, and will continue to be so regardless of the practicalities of day-to-day living. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Wizofaus,

Paul Harrison wrote an article in New Scientist some years ago, suggesting that it is much easier to persuade people to have fewer babies than to consume less. As he put it, the bottom fifth of humanity needs to increase its consumption, and the middle three fifths aren't going to be satisfied with the odd bicycle or radio. One of the reasons world grain supplies are short is that people in India and China now have more money and want more animal protein in their diet. Biofuels don't help either.

If you were correct about technology alone being able to solve this problem, then it would have happened already. After WWII, the Rockefeller Foundation, with other charities and governments, funded the research that led to the Green Revolution. This doubled the productivity of wheat, rice, and corn, turning India from a food importer on the verge of famine into a food exporter. Unfortunately, in most poor countries, as Prince Philip once put it, people decided to feed more hungry people, rather than feeding hungry people more.

Although there may well be technological solutions to some problems, there are so many problems in so many areas that future Rwandas are far more likely than your technological utopia.

It is really encouraging that population growth can now bee freely discussed. For far too long it has been the environmental issue that no-one dare talk about.

With a naturally declining birth rate Australia (and most first-world countries other than the USA) are well placed to develop sustainable, no-growth economies. This may be a difficult task, but surely we have the ingenuity to do it. The alternative, quite literallly, is standing room only for the human race, somewhere down the track - and for those who pooh-pooh this idea, I would merely ask, at what point do you decide that the earth has reached the 'full' mark when it comes to its human population, and under what dire circumstances and draconian measures will something then have to be done?