The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
The number of children being born is now decreasing so population growth will soon be a thing of the past.
In fact, the real problem is that there will not be enough young working people to support an ever growing number of older non-working people who have ever longer retirements as lifespan increases.
China has just admitted to the huge mistake of its one child system and will probably have to start offering financial incentives to have children if it cannot boost its rapidly falling birth rate.
The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
The number of children being born is now decreasing so population growth will soon be a thing of the past.
In fact, the real problem is that there will not be enough young working people to support an ever growing number of older non-working people who have ever longer retirements as lifespan increases.
China has just admitted to the huge mistake of its one child system and will probably have to start offering financial incentives to have children if it cannot boost its rapidly falling birth rate.
Producing more children to look after the old is very short sighted, we cannot keep the population growing at the present rate. Have a look at the website of Population Matters:
The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
The number of children being born is now decreasing so population growth will soon be a thing of the past.
In fact, the real problem is that there will not be enough young working people to support an ever growing number of older non-working people who have ever longer retirements as lifespan increases.
China has just admitted to the huge mistake of its one child system and will probably have to start offering financial incentives to have children if it cannot boost its rapidly falling birth rate.
The following is taken from the myth busters section from the Population Matters website
"DON’T WE NEED YOUNG PEOPLE TO SUPPORT AN AGEING POPULATION?"
This isn’t the case. Those young people will also become old. The idea that we need more people to support older generations is an unsustainable pyramid scheme – benefiting the present generation at the expense of the next.
Instead we need to grasp the opportunities presented by an ageing population, including less unemployment, a stimulus to greater productivity - especially exploiting new technology - and the availability of fit, talented retired people to contribute to our communities. We must address the challenges creatively and positively, and if we truly value our older people, that includes investing more resources in their wellbeing. Recent reports have highlighted the opportunities available and how important it is to reframe the debate about ageing.
The alternative to a creative and positive approach to ageing is constantly increasing our population in a vain attempt to catch up. That means continued climate change, continued biodiversity loss and continued depletion of the Earth's resources. We can provide better support for the elderly if we choose. We cannot bring back melted glaciers or species which have gone extinct.
The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
How do you propose to 'confront this'?
Still really, really intrigued to know your answer to the problem
The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
The number of children being born is now decreasing so population growth will soon be a thing of the past.
In fact, the real problem is that there will not be enough young working people to support an ever growing number of older non-working people who have ever longer retirements as lifespan increases.
China has just admitted to the huge mistake of its one child system and will probably have to start offering financial incentives to have children if it cannot boost its rapidly falling birth rate.
The following is taken from the myth busters section from the Population Matters website
"DON’T WE NEED YOUNG PEOPLE TO SUPPORT AN AGEING POPULATION?"
This isn’t the case. Those young people will also become old. The idea that we need more people to support older generations is an unsustainable pyramid scheme – benefiting the present generation at the expense of the next.
Instead we need to grasp the opportunities presented by an ageing population, including less unemployment, a stimulus to greater productivity - especially exploiting new technology - and the availability of fit, talented retired people to contribute to our communities. We must address the challenges creatively and positively, and if we truly value our older people, that includes investing more resources in their wellbeing. Recent reports have highlighted the opportunities available and how important it is to reframe the debate about ageing.
The alternative to a creative and positive approach to ageing is constantly increasing our population in a vain attempt to catch up. That means continued climate change, continued biodiversity loss and continued depletion of the Earth's resources. We can provide better support for the elderly if we choose. We cannot bring back melted glaciers or species which have gone extinct.
Young people-a workforce-is needed to support an economy, so it isn't just about looking after old people. This website is a bit woolly and I can't find any links to the reports it refers to.
That said, I agree with the point that aid to the developing world is the key to drive sustainable population growth. It seems to down play the importance of the nature of consumption though while admitting we do have resources to support 10bn.
In all I don't like it's sensationalistic, tabloid feel. This is probably what has led to idiots like Danny Shine abuse young mothers in the street.
The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
The number of children being born is now decreasing so population growth will soon be a thing of the past.
In fact, the real problem is that there will not be enough young working people to support an ever growing number of older non-working people who have ever longer retirements as lifespan increases.
China has just admitted to the huge mistake of its one child system and will probably have to start offering financial incentives to have children if it cannot boost its rapidly falling birth rate.
The following is taken from the myth busters section from the Population Matters website
"DON’T WE NEED YOUNG PEOPLE TO SUPPORT AN AGEING POPULATION?"
This isn’t the case. Those young people will also become old. The idea that we need more people to support older generations is an unsustainable pyramid scheme – benefiting the present generation at the expense of the next.
Instead we need to grasp the opportunities presented by an ageing population, including less unemployment, a stimulus to greater productivity - especially exploiting new technology - and the availability of fit, talented retired people to contribute to our communities. We must address the challenges creatively and positively, and if we truly value our older people, that includes investing more resources in their wellbeing. Recent reports have highlighted the opportunities available and how important it is to reframe the debate about ageing.
The alternative to a creative and positive approach to ageing is constantly increasing our population in a vain attempt to catch up. That means continued climate change, continued biodiversity loss and continued depletion of the Earth's resources. We can provide better support for the elderly if we choose. We cannot bring back melted glaciers or species which have gone extinct.
Young people-a workforce-is needed to support an economy, so it isn't just about looking after old people. This website is a bit woolly and I can't find any links to the reports it refers to.
That said, I agree with the point that aid to the developing world is the key to drive sustainable population growth. It seems to down play the importance of the nature of consumption though while admitting we do have resources to support 10bn.
In all I don't like it's sensationalistic, tabloid feel. This is probably what has led to idiots like Danny Shine abuse young mothers in the street.
The patron of Population Matters is David Attenborough and you couldn't find a better advocate than him.
The first person I remember who talked passionately of environmental issues was Prince Charles.
He was thought of as quite dotty back in 1970 when he mentioned non-returnable bottles, indestructible plastic containers, oil pollution at sea and the harmful gasses of cars and planes.
I also recall him warning way back of the inevitable mass migration as the planet warms and sea levels rise.
For all his faults he seems to be ahead of the curve on this.
The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
The number of children being born is now decreasing so population growth will soon be a thing of the past.
In fact, the real problem is that there will not be enough young working people to support an ever growing number of older non-working people who have ever longer retirements as lifespan increases.
China has just admitted to the huge mistake of its one child system and will probably have to start offering financial incentives to have children if it cannot boost its rapidly falling birth rate.
Possibly the worse take on an ever creasing population I have ever heard.
Nothing of any consequence will happen until there is a disaster film sized catastrophe in one of the worlds great cities. Even then I’m not so sure. Perhaps it will take an epic drought or flood or temperatures off the scale but there has to be death and destruction. Pretty sad but until then all we’ll get is wringing of hands. Banning plastic straws won’t cut it I’m afraid.
How about a global pandemic?
Which at the very least has shown we are all connected - and what it would take to cut emissions.
The global initiative Covax to ensure vaccines reach every country and coordinated by The WHO is so far been very disappointing. Cooperation on a global scale requires political will. I don’t believe there is enough political will for Covax or climate change. Too many vested interests in the latter.
Politicians are really mainly concerned about winning elections. Promising to implement the sort of changes needed to reduce climate change is unlikely to be an election winning formula. Even if an election was won with a proper green agenda the effects of any changes wouldn’t be felt in that parliament’s lifetime, so many would feel their sacrifices (reduced travel, higher taxes, less meat etc) wouldn’t have been worth it, leaving the door open for a non green government (populist) to win next time.
The only hope would be moving to a proportional representation system where governments would be more likely to be progressive than ‘populist’, with the green vote, and therefore influence, rising as a result.
Thought I’d add a couple of more optimistic elements though.
Sustainable cities can be built, even against a backdrop of rising temperatures. This one in Dubai (less a city, more a district) is a model for what can be done if there’s a will:
Then there’s the fear that large parts of the world will be uninhabitable because of the lack of water. However, these Israeli scientists have found a way to extract water from the air on a large scale.
When people start dying in their tens of millions then the elites responsible for all this will probably lift a finger. Obviously by then it'll be far too late
This may have sneaked to the top three of the "@Leuth being over dramatic" posts.
How about over population being one of the main causes of climate change?
So the tens of millions of people dying will be a good thing. Gotcha
Yes, well actually it would be for the planet.
We as as a species are the parasites.
If another species thought like us they would be culling us in our millions.
Okay, so which millions are we killing off first? I mean, that's surely the only way to stop overpopulation, right? That or forced sterilisations. (Lifting nations out of poverty and making birth control widely available? Come off it, that's commie talk)
I would like to apologise to my children and grandchildren now because if we have mild winters and hot summers until I die I am all for a bit of climate change.
Sterilisation seems a bit extreme... why not start by just being more selective about how we use our resources? Overpopulation isn't a myth, it's just part of the overall cause. And the East is responsible for it's fair share of emissions. Technically the West has benefited more from the damage done, first unconsciously, now consciously, so we should take the lead on fixes and mitigation then encourage others to follow.
Western countries industrialised in the 19th,20th century and ramped up CO2 emissions, the likes of China are currently industrialising in the same way, its okay condemning it when you have advanced past the stage and are a western, developed nation with an economy based more around services and the quaternary sectors but the reality is we can't be carbon neutral with this state of affairs. Concentrating on Adaption to the changing climate is far more realistic than believing and ultimately gambling on being able to reverse or significantly slow global warming.
The single biggest problem facing us all is an ever increasing world population. But politicians from around the world seem to afraid to confront this.
I disagree with this. If you look at the Drawdown report it doesn't even mention population as an issue. Biggest contributors are food waste, electricity sources and meat and dairy consumption. Population is only a problem because of at least two of these three. More people getting electricity from coal etc and consuming meat and dairy is a problem, but population alone isn't. If we change the way we consume, while supporting third world development and life expectancy, there really are enough resources for about 10bn people.
Flip that argument on its head and you'll get a lot closer to the truth. A few million people wasting food, eating meat and using lots of electricity would not cause a big problem on a global scale. Several billion people doing the same thing does cause a problem as we are witnessing. You cannot take the reasons out of the context of the scale with which they happen. Over population is a massive problem, it just isn't a very palatable thing for people to hear.
Blackpool still hasn't answered my question. I've asked him twice!
If you Google what the world population was in 1950 and then continue to Google it in 1960,70 ,80 etc up to the present you will see that the population continues to rise decade on decade. The larger the world population gets the greater the demands of its people. You ask me how to address this and obviously it's too big a question for one person to answer. What I would like to see happen is for a world summit of all nations coming together to tackle the problem because if we do nothing the problem just continues to grow.
They called it "global warming" and found that the global temperature was actually cooling!!
So they returned to the drawing board and went with "climate change". An impossible slogan to ever quibble with. Of course there is climate change. Weather ...alters! Who knew?
Now let's get on with our lives. (Including that vacuous scandinavian reptile Grotty Beefburg.)
I mean, how would we go about that?
Promote global women's equality including reproductive rights, birth control, education etc, through aid and diplomacy? Or some sort of wacky chemical-castration water-supply hi-jinks? I guess now I've said it it's been said #steriliseafrica
"Sterilising Africa" doesnt sound very open to black lives mattering?? Children are a blessing from God. Let's not sterilise Africa.
They called it "global warming" and found that the global temperature was actually cooling!!
So they returned to the drawing board and went with "climate change". An impossible slogan to ever quibble with. Of course there is climate change. Weather ...alters! Who knew?
Now let's get on with our lives. (Including that vacuous scandinavian reptile Grotty Beefburg.)
They called it "global warming" and found that the global temperature was actually cooling!!
So they returned to the drawing board and went with "climate change". An impossible slogan to ever quibble with. Of course there is climate change. Weather ...alters! Who knew?
Now let's get on with our lives. (Including that vacuous scandinavian reptile Grotty Beefburg.)
'Global temperature' is not cooling. Global temperature is rising. There are a couple of important things to note about that: 'Global temperature' is an average across the planet, not an absolute at any given point. The temperature doesn't rise evenly; different parts of the globe will heat up at different rates at different times. Some, comparatively small, areas may experience cooler temperatures as weather patterns change, for example it is possible for the UK to be come cooler should the jetstream move south. It may also be that for short periods there are dips within the longer trend, but the trend has been that temperature have been on the rise for 140 years.
They called it "global warming" and found that the global temperature was actually cooling!!
So they returned to the drawing board and went with "climate change". An impossible slogan to ever quibble with. Of course there is climate change. Weather ...alters! Who knew?
Now let's get on with our lives. (Including that vacuous scandinavian reptile Grotty Beefburg.)
Well, that's wrong. Global warming causes climate change, it is the increase in temperature as a result of human activity.
Weather alters, yes, climate shouldn't... not to this extent and certainly not over a period of 150 years. But ours is changing more rapidly than in the history of the life-supporting planet.
Get on with our lives, fine, but know that some people in this world won't be able to, and future generations will find it even harder.
Greta Thunberg vacuous for having a view and trying to make a positive change? Strange viewpoint.
"Of course there is a Nazi empire, leaders alter, who knew? Get on with our lives and let him take Europe"
I doubt we will change our attitudes much in the coming years until it is really is too late to do anything worthwhile. It’s all very well pointing at developing countries and telling them the errors of their ways but we are the ones who have transferred everything from industries to lifestyle. At the same time we all, including us and the developing world, want more of everything. Something will have to give and as humans have demonstrated throughout history we are very nasty. Just wait until various highly populated areas of the world become unable to support life either through heat or rising water. 20 people in an inflatable gets people in this country ready to send in the navy to defend us. At some point in the not to distant future disaster awaits life on this planet.
When people start dying in their tens of millions then the elites responsible for all this will probably lift a finger. Obviously by then it'll be far too late
This may have sneaked to the top three of the "@Leuth being over dramatic" posts.
How about over population being one of the main causes of climate change?
So the tens of millions of people dying will be a good thing. Gotcha
Yes, well actually it would be for the planet.
We as as a species are the parasites.
If another species thought like us they would be culling us in our millions.
What other species are you talking about that has rational thought ?
Implying anyone is suggesting "killing off" millions of people is stupid, typical Daily Mail headline territory, nearly as much as blaming "the elites"
Birth rates need to continue to fall, this planet, by almost every estimation, can sustain just a fraction of the population we have now.
We really are destroying this planet. For ourselves but also for the future generations and the creatures that surround us.
Comments
In fact, the real problem is that there will not be enough young working people to support an ever growing number of older non-working people who have ever longer retirements as lifespan increases.
China has just admitted to the huge mistake of its one child system and will probably have to start offering financial incentives to have children if it cannot boost its rapidly falling birth rate.
https://populationmatters.org/
The following is taken from the myth busters section from the Population Matters website
"DON’T WE NEED YOUNG PEOPLE TO SUPPORT AN AGEING POPULATION?"
This isn’t the case. Those young people will also become old. The idea that we need more people to support older generations is an unsustainable pyramid scheme – benefiting the present generation at the expense of the next.
Instead we need to grasp the opportunities presented by an ageing population, including less unemployment, a stimulus to greater productivity - especially exploiting new technology - and the availability of fit, talented retired people to contribute to our communities. We must address the challenges creatively and positively, and if we truly value our older people, that includes investing more resources in their wellbeing. Recent reports have highlighted the opportunities available and how important it is to reframe the debate about ageing.
The alternative to a creative and positive approach to ageing is constantly increasing our population in a vain attempt to catch up. That means continued climate change, continued biodiversity loss and continued depletion of the Earth's resources. We can provide better support for the elderly if we choose. We cannot bring back melted glaciers or species which have gone extinct.
That said, I agree with the point that aid to the developing world is the key to drive sustainable population growth. It seems to down play the importance of the nature of consumption though while admitting we do have resources to support 10bn.
In all I don't like it's sensationalistic, tabloid feel. This is probably what has led to idiots like Danny Shine abuse young mothers in the street.
He was thought of as quite dotty back in 1970 when he mentioned
I also recall him warning way back of the inevitable mass migration as the planet warms and sea levels rise.
For all his faults he seems to be ahead of the curve on this.
https://youtu.be/WCKz8ykyI2E
Then there’s the fear that large parts of the world will be uninhabitable because of the lack of water. However, these Israeli scientists have found a way to extract water from the air on a large scale.
https://youtu.be/8fQRnM4-4W4
We as as a species are the parasites.
If another species thought like us they would be culling us in our millions.
,80 etc up to the present you will see that the population continues to rise decade on decade.
The larger the world population gets the greater the demands of its people.
You ask me how to address this and obviously it's too big a question for one person to answer.
What I would like to see happen is for a world summit of all nations coming together to tackle the problem because if we do nothing the problem just continues to grow.
So they returned to the drawing board and went with "climate change". An impossible slogan to ever quibble with. Of course there is climate change. Weather ...alters! Who knew?
Now let's get on with our lives. (Including that vacuous scandinavian reptile Grotty Beefburg.)
Weather alters, yes, climate shouldn't... not to this extent and certainly not over a period of 150 years. But ours is changing more rapidly than in the history of the life-supporting planet.
Get on with our lives, fine, but know that some people in this world won't be able to, and future generations will find it even harder.
Greta Thunberg vacuous for having a view and trying to make a positive change? Strange viewpoint.
"Of course there is a Nazi empire, leaders alter, who knew? Get on with our lives and let him take Europe"
At some point in the not to distant future disaster awaits life on this planet.
July was the world's hottest month ever recorded, a US federal scientific and regulatory agency has reported.
The data shows that the combined land and ocean-surface temperature was 0.93C (1.68F) above the 20th Century average of 15.8C (60.4F).
It is the highest temperature since record-keeping began 142 years ago. The previous record, set in July 2016, was equalled in 2019 and 2020.
Implying anyone is suggesting "killing off" millions of people is stupid, typical Daily Mail headline territory, nearly as much as blaming "the elites"
Birth rates need to continue to fall, this planet, by almost every estimation, can sustain just a fraction of the population we have now.
We really are destroying this planet. For ourselves but also for the future generations and the creatures that surround us.