One Finite Planet

One Finite Planet

The population lag: the first reason for the contradiction.

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Where is the halt?
This blog states that there has been a halt to engine of the population explosion, but the global population looks to be continuing to spiral out of control! What gives?

The lag that delays any halt.
The most obvious sign of the halt of the population engine is to consider how family sizes have dropped.  However this drop in family sizes seems to be having little impact, so what gives?

Before citing the evidence for the halt in the population explosion, it is important to understand the lag.  Consider the lag like switching off the engine of an ocean liner.  The sip will stop but it takes a long time. The best way to picture the lag is to look at actual data from a country like Japan.
japan populationThis graph is from this a Japanese government web site, and was posted 10 years ago but correctly predicted the current situation in Japan.
Note that the 0-14 age group plateau in around 1960 and show decline from 1980, but the overall population continued for another 30 years before starting to decline as has now occurred. This shows the ‘engine’ had clearly been turned off by around 1960, but overall population still continued to grow.

This example shows how studying population of younger age groups can accurately predict the future. This effectively tells us the engine setting.  As the younger group ages, the drop ripples through each age group.  The decline in birth rates is just one step, and determines the number of people in the lowest age group. The data shows how a decline in birth rates can take well over 30 years to even start to show an impact on total population.  The birth rate reflects the engine setting.  Not ship speed.

So what is happening in the rest of the world?  Part 1: Birth rates.
Birth rates are the precursor to population growth level changes, so lets look at these first, and then as what is happening in terms of population. I have taken birth rate figures from this data.  Check your own country and if the setting is below 2.2, the engine for population growth (outside immigration) is already set to ‘off’.

Data from locations from all of Europe overall shows levels below the sustain level. For example simply looking at locations and finding figures at random yields: Germany(1.43),  Italy(1.42), Spain(1.48), Sweden(1.88).

In North America, the USA is declining at 2.01, as is Canada at 1.59 and Mexico at 2.29 is marginally growing marginally naturally.  In south America, Brazil is contracting at 1.79 but whether other countries are still is open to opinion.  The birth rate data I have says they still should be growing, but I read reports of declining populations.  Emigration? Possibly, so i will leave it as the rest of Latin America still in positive natural growth.

Japan (1.40) and China (1.55) have been at low levels for some time but India (2.51) is still growing. Indonesia (2.18)is still showing marginal growth, as is Sri Lanka(2.13).

Bangladesh(2.45), Pakistan(3.3), Afghanistan(5.43), and sub Saharan Africa all have significant growth still.   A drop in birth rates in some of these locations is required before the halt of the population explosion brings population to stability or a correction.

The overall picture is the rapid change from a population explosion to close to population stability but it will take another 50 years for the full affect to overcome the lag.

So what is happening in the rest of the world? Part 2:  Population.
You would think other countries with similar birth rates to Japan would have similar population outlooks,  but there is one key difference: immigration.  Japan has unusually strict rules on immigration, whereas most other countries where birth rates declined earlier are strong targets for immigration.  Movement of people around the globe changes when and where actual declines in population actually will take place and generally so far have served to lengthen the lag in between a drop in birth rates and population levelling off or heading towards decline.

While the move from explosion is currently towards relative stability with another 30 to 50 years to absorb the lag, there are still areas of the world run away growth and they tend to be the least equipped to handle their increase.

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Categories

Flawed Australian voice of Indigenous People referendum: The irony of a voice campaign that failed to listen.

A tragic lost opportunity. Why didn’t those proposing the voice make changes to remove ambiguity and eliminated enough of the negative perception to win over enough support instead of simply declaring” “No, if that is how you see it you are either racist or stupid!” Was it just that there was no willingness to listen?

Australians had an opportunity in a constitutional referendum to righteously shout loudly “I am not a racist” by voting for a proposition that, at its core, could be seen as fundamentally flawed, divisive and even potentially racist, in the hope even a risk of moving in the direction of apartheid is still better than nothing.

The referendum resulted in a huge setback for action on indigenous disadvantage and while it did seem unlikely to do anything to unify Australians and offer more than some possible affirmative action, the division resulted with even sometimes “yes” voters being encouraged to also be racist.

This is a deeper look trying to see each side from the perspective of the other, with the reality that both sides had a point, and a vast majority of people do want equality and unity.

Perhaps it little more work could bring things together and offer a fresh enough perspective to move beyond just another well-intentioned patronising racism failure like the stolen generations?

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Crime: A litmus test for inequality?

Around the world, many countries have both a battle with equality for some racial groups and minorities and also a battle with crime-rates within and by those same groups.

Should we consider crime rates the real sentinels of problems and a solution require focusing on factors behind crime rates? Or is the correct response to rising crime rates or crime rates within specific groups an adoption of being “tough on crime”, thus increasing rates of incarceration and even deaths in custody for oppressed minorities and racial groups?

This is an exploration of not adjusting the level of penalties and instead focusing on the core issues and inequalities behind crime-rates. It is clear that it is “damaged people” in general rather than specific racial groups that correlate with elevated crime rates, so why not use crime rates to identify who is facing inequality?

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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.

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Influence: There’s no free lunch and they use your data to make you pay.

It can seem all those tech companies are so dumb giving away services for free.

I recently read another comment containing the “I don’t want Google getting more of my data to sell” and it reminded me of the question, ‘why is your data valuable?’ people too rarely ask. The common myth is that Facebook and Google etc want your data so they can sell it, but even with companies that do sell your data, it still requires someone to turn data into money, and enough money to fund the “free” services of the tech companies and allow them enough spare to make profits beyond anything seen in the world previously. So how does the data turn into so much money?

There is no such thing as a free lunch. Google and Facebook etc make their money from advertising, not from selling data, and unless they use can the data to persuade you to buy products at prices inflated by advertisers paying part of the sale price to Facebook/Google etc, they would lose money.

Your data is used to inflate the cost of living and earn votes for politicians with an agenda that gives them a budget to spend. They (Google/Facebook etc) don’t want to sell your data, but the reality, is more sinister: they use it to have to change your thinking, so more of your money will go to make them richer.

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The Power struggle in Australia.

From “the biggest corruption scandal ever” in Brazil, problems in Venezuela, human rights in Saudi Arabia and Iran, to the problems caused by lobbyists against action on climate change, an abundance of fossil fuels is a source of political power, yet rarely force for good, and Australia, with a wealth of coal and gas, is not spared.

The current crisis in Ukraine not only drives up energy prices globally, but it also creates a dilemma for gas producing nations.

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