7 billion people on Earth!

[Matthew_T]

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/crowded-earth-many-too-many-023009322.html

A good article on the facts of the population on Earth. We need to stop having babies!

 

[Arch]

Oi! I haven't even started yet!

 

[vernon]

Go for it Arch!

 

[ColinJ]

Oi! I haven't even started yet!

It's okay - you can have mine!

PS Er, I'll rephrase that ... You can have my share of the baby allowance - I won't be using it!

 

[Night Train]

Oi! I haven't even started yet!

Want a hand?




































(Slightly) Seriously though, Humans have gone viral and there are far too many of them to be good for the future of the Earth. We could do with either fewer of them or considerably less consumption of energy and resources.
Reducing the population would be easier but less acceptable for many.
Reducing consumption should be easier but is also less acceptable for many.
Extinction would be good for all the other living things.

 

[Arch]

Want a hand?

I know it's a while since my Biology A level, but I'm sure it's not a hand I'd need.....

Yes, there are far too many of us. Alas, the solutions, as NT says, are to live simpler less consuming lives in the comfortable first world, (but, but, I neeeed that Kindle!), or to demand that the less fortunate stop having children. Seems unfair, when it's not them who've been eating up the world's resources with little thought for the future....

A decent bout of 'flu might sort us out, but since we invented medicine and neatly sidestepped evolution, even that might not work....

 

[Night Train]

Well, a cull starting with the highest (multi Earth) consumers and stopping at the sustainable (single Earth) consumers would be a good start.

*Reaches over to turn the tv off!*

 

[Mozzy]

The wife and I have said for years that there may well come a day when a certain age is reached and you are no use to the planet, just a drain, that said age will result in, well, termination. Maybe a while off yet but we both agree that having gerzillions of kids should be a thing of the past. China in our opinion has at least made an effort by restricting how many a couple can have.

Would make a huge difference if the various Governments would STOP financially helping out when you have kids. Utterly farcical. If you want children then you pay to support them all the way through without help from everyone else.

Alien invasion would be helpful; a worlwide plague, or whatever to reduce the numbers. Tis about 6 billion top heavy (in my personal opinion, just that, and it is just my opinion.

Mozzy

 

[TVC]

It's true that the best thing you can do to control your carbon footprint is not to have kids.

I'm doing my part for the future of humanity by not making humans.

 

[Night Train]

I've nothing against having kids really, just against having so many and then training them to consume many, many more times more then a fair and sustainable share of the Earth's resources.

In real terms, I guess, a whole extended family in some parts of the world could consume less in their lifetimes then one footballer's wife in a year. So it make sense to get rid of the hypothetical footballer's wife then the family.

 

[Arch]

China in our opinion has at least made an effort by restricting how many a couple can have.

The problem of course is that artifical restrictions like that can lead to population imbalances. Too many human societies value boys so much more highly than girls (when in fact, a sustainable population could manage with many fewer males than females, in a strictly biological sense). So you start to get issues of infanticide, and problems of balance when those boys grow up and want partners. So any restriction has to tackle those societal prejudices too - which means providing opportunites for girls to be educated and valued in new ways.

(of course, a society that over valued girls would be as bad, eventually, I'm not having a go at men!)

 

[smokeysmoo]

So that means if each of them gave just 0.00003p THIS would have been sorted by now

In fact the fund is about half way now, so that means it's now down to 0.0000015p



ANY help still massively appreciated,

 

[Night Train]

The problem of course is that artifical restrictions like that can lead to population imbalances. Too many human societies value boys so much more highly than girls (when in fact, a sustainable population could manage with many fewer males than females, in a strictly biological sense). So you start to get issues of infanticide, and problems of balance when those boys grow up and want partners. So any restriction has to tackle those societal prejudices too - which means providing opportunites for girls to be educated and valued in new ways.

(of course, a society that over valued girls would be as bad, eventually, I'm not having a go at men!)

Of course there could be the additional effect that each of the very few girls grow up to only have one child.
Population problem solved.

 

[Gromit]

It was thought originally by educating women it would reduce the birth rate. That has happened in the western world, however educating women in the developing world has increased the population because they still want to have large family's.

 

[Matthew_T]

A decent bout of 'flu might sort us out,

Well that did happen with Bird flu but look how thats just deteriorated.

We really need a world wide (or the over populated parts) pandemic or some sort of catastrophic disaster.