One Finite Planet

One Finite Planet

Topics and Subtopics.
All: Pop. Principles

Ideal population of humans: How many people can, or should, each country, and the whole planet support?

It seems like the human population has forever been growing, but any analysis makes it clear growth must stop eventually at some level. The question becomes at what level should growth stop?

Do we go for the maximum possible people just before everything collapses, even if average living standards could be far better with a smaller population? With caged hens being farmed for eggs people advocate for a lower free-range population instead of denser living caged hens as it provides a better existence, but does anyone advocate against multinationals and politicians pushing for denser and denser housing for humans in order to allow bigger populations of humans for them to farm?

It seems to be accepted that global population growth should stop but claimed that countries who end population growth face economic disaster.

Read More »

Why Population growth even before the explosion?

Throughout history, although no other species on Earth has experienced such long term overall population growth, even before the recent population explosion, the human population kept slowly growing.

Yes, we recently had an unprecedented population explosion, driven by is hidden by by the near elimination of previously tragic infant mortality, but against the background of long term growth, many of us never didn’t even realise their was an explosion.

But what drove population growth even before the explosion? What will now happen as the explosion ends?

Read More »

Optimum Population Instinct: nature’s birth control.

Human birth rates are falling at a rate that has some fearing population collapse, but could this be a natural instinctive biological repose to threats of overpopulation, rather than any cause for alarm?

This raises the question as to what controls population in other species and, why is overpopulation rare? Would any species just multiply like bacteria in petri dish whenever possible until resources and the ecosystem collapses? Or do species, and even potentially humans, have instinctive mechanisms to constrain population at a more optimum level for long term survival? In practice, resource constraint and predation alone as population controls would for many species would result in repeated huge population swings, so logically, there must be more.

Analysing population mechanisms in other species may provide some interesting insights and possible answers to at least a large part of what is happing with birth-rates that will determine whether our future is population is one of: continued growth, collapse, or stability, on a planet where population of all life is not growing.

Read More »

Population on a Finite World: No Vacancy.

From childhood I had assumed human population was growing because the world was not yet fully populated and life was still expanding, but it turns out most recent “garden of Eden scenario” occurred 500 million years ago, and since then the planet has been full and the total biosphere of life slowly shrinking. It turns out that on geological timescales, it does not take very long for any species to reach its limit for possible population on Earth.

So, given every niche where life now exists has long been filled to maximum capacity, how does the human population keep increasing? The answer is the same process that allows new species to arise and grow their populations, a process Darwin declared “survival of the fittest” which is basically species creating their own vacancies by out competing or “evicting” other species, resulting in the decline or extinction of other species to make way for population growth. This may explain why as the human population now grows other species face decline or face extinction, but the twist is how this population growth is happening some 300 thousand years after humans first appeared.

Read More »

Pop. Principles

Optimum Population Instinct: nature’s birth control.

Optimum Population Instinct: nature’s birth control.

Human birth rates are falling at a rate that has some fearing population collapse, but could this be a natural instinctive biological repose to threats of overpopulation, rather than any cause for alarm?

This raises the question as to what controls population in other species and, why is overpopulation rare? Would any species just multiply like bacteria in petri dish whenever possible until resources and the ecosystem collapses? Or do species, and even potentially humans, have instinctive mechanisms to constrain population at a more optimum level for long term survival? In practice, resource constraint and predation alone as population controls would for many species would result in repeated huge population swings, so logically, there must be more.

Analysing population mechanisms in other species may provide some interesting insights and possible answers to at least a large part of what is happing with birth-rates that will determine whether our future is population is one of: continued growth, collapse, or stability, on a planet where population of all life is not growing.

Parent / Sub topics
Population: Our greatest achievement may cause our demise.

Population: Our greatest achievement may cause our demise.

Arguably mankind's greatest achievement, the near eradication of infant mortality, has resulted in a population explosion resulting in overpopulation that we prefer not to mention, even though it may yet kill us. Technically we would not die from overpopulation itself, just as people don't really die from "old age", and the real risk is that an already present threat will be exacerbated and become fatal because through our greed we ignore overpopulation. Unlike old age, the overpopulation risk factor could be avoided or reversed, we may be influenced by economists dependant on Ponzi schemes, the worlds' largest corporations and billionaires who thrive off the resultant increases in inequality into believing that living conditions required by ever increasing population levels benefit everyone and not just those living in mansions.
Webpapers
Population on a Finite World: No Vacancy.

Population on a Finite World: No Vacancy.

Ideal population of humans: How many people can, or should, each country, and the whole planet support?

Ideal population of humans: How many people can, or should, each country, and the whole planet support?

Why Population growth even before the explosion?

Why Population growth even before the explosion?

the surprises hiding in life expectancy numbers.

the surprises hiding in life expectancy numbers.