Since writing a recent post where I joined the tiny chorus of people who are asking why we don’t ask whether we have too many people on the planet, I’ve been noticing quite a few articles in which the authors could have, might have, suggested to some of us that the resource depletion/crowding/degradation/contamination considered in the article had something to do with sheer numbers of people. Here are two examples.
The first one is from the May, 2007 edition of National Geographic. It is a story of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) India. More particularly, it is about a slum within Mumbai called Dharavi,
the teeming slum of one million souls, where as many as 18,000 people crowd into a single acre (0.4 hectares). By nightfall, deep inside the maze of lanes too narrow even for the putt-putt of auto rickshaws, the slum is as still as a verdant glade. Once you get accustomed to sharing 300 square feet (28 square meters) of floor with 15 humans and an uncounted number of mice, a strange sense of relaxation sets in—ah, at last a moment to think straight.
Dharavi is routinely called “the largest slum in Asia,” a dubious attribution sometimes conflated into “the largest slum in the world.” This is not true. Mexico City’s Neza-Chalco-Itza barrio has four times as many people. In Asia, Karachi’s Orangi Township has surpassed Dharavi. Even in Mumbai, where about half of the city’s swelling 12 million population lives in what is euphemistically referred to as “informal” housing, other slum pockets rival Dharavi in size and squalor.
The other article is actually part of a “Special Advertising Section” promoting the newest Ken Burns documentary featuring America’s National Parks. I found this article in the September 2009 edition of Harper’s Magazine. It was written by Robert F. Kennedy, who reminisced that his dad took him to the Grand Canyon in 1967. Based on his 2006 return trip to the Grand Canyon, things have changed dramatically:
Today, National Park Service employees are kept busy policing small infractions while our political leaders forced them to turn a blind eye to major abuses by powerful private interests. In 2006, I returned to paddle the Grand Canyon with my daughter, Kick. I was sad to see that the beaches where I camped with my father were gone; the sands that fed them are now trapped above the Grand Canyon Dam. The river itself, once a dynamic and specialized ecosystem, has been transformed into a plumbing conduit between the two largest reservoirs in the United States. The water, which should be warm and muddy, is clear and the frigid 46 degrees. Four of the eight native fish species are extinct, and the canyons of beaver, otter, and muskrat populations have disappeared. The reservoirs themselves are emptying to quench reckless developers and big agriculture, and the Colorado no longer makes it to the sea or feeds the great estuaries in the Gulf of California that once teamed with life. Instead, it dies ignominiously in the Sonoran Desert.
Kennedy never mentions that these “powerful private interests” are driven by the needs of large numbers of people to have direct or indirect access to water, admittedly oftentimes in wasteful amounts.
Neither of these articles address overpopulation by name, and this is typical of most article that comment on stressed resources. People who dare to bring up this topic of overpopulation get crucified from all angles of the political spectrum. To mention this word suggests that we need to actually consider whether we have too many people on the planet, and that raises the specter of admittedly terrible actions that have been taken to limit population in the past. To avoid this criticism, though, it’s only a rare writer that will dare to mention that we need to consider this issue. In my opinion, we need to consider the possibility of overpopulation and its effect on every square mile of land on the surface of the earth, from Antarctica, to Florida, to Great Britain, to Indonesia. If our goal has been to wipe out most of the biodiversity of this planet by shoving once-common plants and animals off of their native habitats with ever more humans, we are doing a great job of it.
If we don’t consider this issue, we will never able to deal with it. The current situation reminds me of many of the characters in the Harry Potter movies, who dare not refer to the character Voldemort by name. To mention that name would mean that they would have to risk dealing with the problem.
Whenever we think about buying or renting a house, we consider the capacity of that living space. How many people will it comfortably hold? We consider the same things when buying a car. How many people can safely use this vehicle at one time? I think it’s time that we consider the same basic question with regard to the entire planet. It is time to consider this issue to cause it’s already difficult to think of a basic natural resource that has not been degraded, depleted, contaminated or put at risk. If it’s not pressures put on these resources by increasing numbers of humans, it’s hard to think of what the cause might be. And for those who insist that it’s only our unsustainable lifestyles that are the problem, we are well past the point of making that argument. It is only thanks to our unsustainable use of water, fertilizers and fuel that have allowed the population to get to this point where humans fill every nook and cranny of the planet.
For more information on this topic, see this prior DI post and the website of the Global Population Speak Out.
Interesting Erich, but I cannot even in my wildest imagination envision a scenario where the world can muster the will to address an issue like this, so it doesn't bother me that it isn't discussed in many conversations.
Instead, I wonder about whether continued population growth is irreversible and inevitable. I'm heartened and in agreement with views like Stewart Brand's at TED a few years ago:
http://bit.ly/6AfVzp
Maybe population will top out some time this century, and that then (or by then), we as a species will have begun to learn to live in whatever world exists at that time. However, even if population growth continues, the USA and its citizens really don't have the clout or credibility anymore (if we ever had it) to adequately influence the rest of the world to stop growing in population.
I don't mean to sound overly pessimistic here. I'm with Brand, who I believe is optimistic about the future, even as he is brutally realistic about what's going to happen with regards to population, climate change, and geo-engineering.
What do you think?
Mark: The people of earth don't have the political will to pull themselves in check on big environmental issues. Hell, we don't even have the political will to kick the big corporations out of the room and have a meaningful discussion. Based on the past few decades (at least), we can be confident that people will not show the discipline necessary to address any problem that requires people to consistently say no to their short-term desires. My bet is that the population of the world will keep growing until it hits an equilibrium maintained by war, disease and exhaustion of resources. There are far better ways to run a world, but this dreadful scenario is where I would put my chips based on the historical record.
Why that is the way it seems to be serves as another set of subjects that I periodically attempt to explore in some of the posts at this website. Indeed, why don’t people take better long-term care of their planet? To compound matters, quite a few people who I consider to be smart, well-informed and equipped with ample good intentions seem to be resigned that there is nothing that can be done. I can imagine a United States filled with people who DO work hard to pass the world onto the next generation in reasonably good shape, but that is not the country we have. Here is a recent post reflecting my reading of the will of the populace.
I totally agree with you that the U.S. has neither the clout nor credibility to lead the way.
I had watched the Stewart Brand talk about five months ago and I posted on it here: I was also intrigued by his talk, but I thought he was trying to keep a stiff upper lip despite the dreadful things he was pointing out. I figure that we’re going to burn a hell of a lot of coal over the next 50 years (and “oil sand”), leading to terrible air quality and horrific environmental disasters. In the throes of all of this, the desperately poor will essentially cut down and burn what’s left of our forests. As I see it, we are at a critical time, arguably already past the critical moment, and that we don’t have the guts, the personal communications skills nor the foresightedness to even discuss (meaningfully) the looming crises.
From the Boston Herald:
"Tessa Savicki, who has nine children aged 3 to 21, claims doctors were supposed to implant an intrauterine device, which is a type of reversible birth control, after she delivered a son, Manuel Flores, on Dec. 19, 2006, at Baystate Medical Center. Instead, she said, a type of permanent sterilization known as a tubal ligation was performed, leaving her mentally distraught and incapable of bearing more children . . . Savicki has nine children from several men, is unemployed and relies on public assistance for two of the four children who live with her. She receives supplemental security income, or SSI, for a disability, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, she said. Her mother has custody of three of her children . . . She had her first child at 13 and dropped out of high school in the ninth grade."
http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?art…
The reason this story gets people talking is the concern that this is not a good situation for society. But these kinds of stories are usually discussed only on an individual level, the silence suggesting that it is not the community's business how many children a person has. Most stories refuse to mention the "O" word (overpopulation, in this case on a very local level), even though it is that precise concern that drives much of the interest in this story.
Admittedly, this is not how a person should be sterilized (assuming Savicki's allegations are true), but she is, in my opinion, a person who shouldn't have more children, given her situation. This is what almost everyone reading her story thinks, but public media almost never bring the issue out into the open. Why is it that we can't even have this discussion? Here's the dangerous question that we're all thinking but we're not allowed to discuss in the public media: In the year 2010, should any American man or woman have a legal right to create more than 9 children?
Yesterday, after watching the movie "Children of Men" from my sizable DVD collection, I noticed that among the DVD extras was a short film, "The Possibility of Hope" which makes several valid points about overpopulation and rapidly dwindling resources to support human population growth.
It is available on youtub in three parts.
Jeffrey Sachs is one of a select group of prominent writers who directly acknowledges the desperate need for stabilizing the world's population. According to Sachs, if we don't stop adding new people, all of our efforts for increasing food supply and preserving the earth's ecosystems will be for naught. The first sentence of his recent SCIAM article is instructive: "We are eating ourselves out of house and home." Sachs quotes Norman Borlaug, who stated the following while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970:
"There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort."
For the entire article in the Dec 2009 edition of Scientific American, go here.
wow, people are starting to become almost antihuman. population is a front, for the real agenda. it is bad management and overregulation by gove/corporate interests that cause these problems, not people.
if people were allowed to spread out (after all staying croweded in cities was nimrods idea, he was in oppisiton to God) for better control. it would seem there are not enough people, but people have to live near their jobs, one time a person job was right outside the door farming ranching etc.
as jobs get scarcer, more people will be forced into tighter cities. if there wre more varied jobs spread out more people would spread out more and it would seem alot less croweded and there would be more open,green space.
this planet, allowing for using only half of avail land leaving the rest for wilderness, it could support 20 billion people with an acre of land per person how much food can you produce on one acre? a family of four together would have four.
my guess the population bomb is a scare tactic, it is not too many people for the earth to support it is too many people for corporations and gov people to control when every one is forced into thrid world status (just look at riots in eygpt).
can you imagine 300 million people thrust into foreign jurisdiction all property totally confiscated, and people being forced into fema camps or relocated (kind of what happend to the poor american native called indians) against their will?
can you imagine an army the size of 300 million all angry at the invasion/piracy of gov/corp interests stealing all they have and kidnapping them for slavery or murder?
dont you all worry population is not the problem, wicked people in gov/corp/religion is the problem. but only God has the right to decide who is wicked and needs culled and who is rightous and doesnt.
Rosa suffers either from innumeracy or misinformation. All plans for the next century should include the phrase "without fossil fuels". The current rate of food-per-acre depends on fossil fuel based fertilizers and other chemicals; almost ten times as much as carefully managed land without such a boon.
Without fossil fuels, a family can farm about 40 acres, always could. But because of scientific plant and animal breeding, chemical soil studies, and other post-Enlightenment advances, that family can now subsist on as few as ten acres.
Modern agronomy did increase Malthus' numbers, but only to about 6 billion, given that most labor would be dedicated to producing food. (The Malthusian Catastrophe)
I would be curious why oil is called a fossil fuel? when anything dies it goes back to dust it doesn't change to oil does it? after all it is constantly being made by bacteria as some have stated and some have said magma? I guess if the tv keeps repeating something long enough (lie or not) people will believe it.
frankly I would love to see alternatives without banning oil or gas, considering that the amount of power the oil companies have over the people they need to have more stiff competition. monopolys really suck. nothing wrong with trying new things, and I like clean air and water and land, but the air waves and magezines papers etc are so full of disinfo, misinfo, and lies and manipulation of the data it is difficult to make heads or tails of who is being truthful and who is engaging in propaganda for a poltical or finanacial gain.
I can't imagine that energy that came from the earth itself would actually pollute that earth by its use.
personally I have to see any evidence that oil is bad after all it is a fat.. hydrocarbons same substance as saturated or mono fats. of course there are impurities I am sure but technology is meant to go forward not backwards. maybe this desire to get away from oil is not about the enviroment at all, but about some other agenda having to do with destroying the enemy, after all I read the trading with the enemy act and it (feds) considers americans the enemy.
this fits in with the legal defintion of war, art of paralysing forces of an enemy, surly impoverishing americans would defintily fit the bill wouldn't you say? no money, no property rights, no way to ever get yourself out of poverty, after all those who own the properties will never sell that way you can never accumulate any wealth and you will always be paying rent. feulism at it's worst.
why do you suppose they are specifically target america for oppressive and destroying policy of enviromentalism and tech and industrial destruction or outsourcing and taxing everything, and restricting americans right to even breath without paying taxes but other countries including developed like china and many european nations will not be be subject to the same rules?
and why do corporations advocate (remember tv is owned by corporations not gov) thrid world nations be exempt from any pollution controls of any kind? could it be because the corporatons are polluting it like crazy (the people themselves surly arnt) and exploiting the labor and resources of those people without a fair consideration in return? do you really believe it is about leveling the playing field so third world people can get oppertunity to get out of poverty? I mean corporations and governments are not that benevolent are they?
I guess since there really is little evidence if any to prove the assumptions made on tv mages etc by scientists and gov agents and financiers etc about oil gas and other enviromental issues that you have to go on if you trust that person or not. unless you are on hand and see for yourself the evidence.
I surly don't like oil floating around in the sea though, not sure how much is damaging or how much the sea can handle the load of detoxifying it.
ONly God knows how his planet works and how it will be cleaned up and how energy will be used and technologies will be allowed. he had the answers for the most part, only he knows how to level the playing field and make sure justice is available for all. but that is another subject altogether.
Rosa reveals that she has not been exposed to secondary school biology or geology. Fossil fuels (like oil, coal, and methane) are mined from particular strata that were deposited in times and at locations when plants (or some animals) died in such a way as to prevent the oxidizing of their remains. Some known scenarios: Before there were microbes to break them down, or before there was too much oxygen in the air, or (as in modern bogs) naturally pickled. Temperature and pressure removed most of the more complex molecules, leaving only carbon and/or hydro-carbons. Some methane may predate life, but it had to have been sealed from the atmosphere before there was much oxygen around in order to still be there, now. But it could not have been too deep, or it would have broken down to carbon and hydrogen.
The oil company encouraged urban legend about magma-level bacteria producing methane or oil has no evidence behind it. No geologist or petroleum engineer can make use of that idea to find reserves. Only the methods I've mentioned above seem to help them find new sources. And once a well is pumped dry, no more appears. Fossil fuels are not being created, unless at a rate orders of magnitude slower than that at which it is extracted.
Each of Rosa's paragraphs shows further misunderstandings of physics, chemistry, and so on. Fossil oil (hydrocarbons) are not the same as cooking oil (carbohydrates). One can cook the latter to create the former, but they are not the same.
Note: "Cook" in the physical chemistry sense, of a recipe of temperatures, pressures, and sealed environments. You cannot do it in a pot on a stove.
Bugs Bunny (in Bob McKimson's "A Lad in His Lamp"): Sock him, Smokey!
Rosa, I get little of my information from television. I have been to many museums, many actual fossil sites, geological features, observatories, and so on. I read general science journals, like Scientific American or Nature.
Please do the same before questioning what actual scientists on television keep repeating. As a rule, their agenda is the future of mankind, not the profits of the oil companies.
Dan,
If you get yor information from journals would you please comment upon the possibility of an "abiotic" origin for some or much of the fossil fuels.
Do you read/research from more than the familiar popular journals and other popular media outlets?
Karl:
There is a possibility of some hydrocarbon formation through abiotic means, but not in amounts that are commercially viable, or even close. For example, Jenden and Kaplan estimate that the abiogentic origin of methane in commercial gases to be less than 200 parts per million. (source)
The abiogenetic theory of fossil fuel origins was first proposed early in the 19th century, before we had the tools or framework to understand organic chemistry. Now that we have the means to examine hydrocarbons at the molecular level, most abiotic theories have been completely discredited. This discreditation is compounded by the fact that abiotic theories of hydrocarbon origin have failed to predict locations of hydrocarbon reserves, whereas our standard models of hydrocarbon formation generally work quite well.
If abiotic theories are true, we should not be seeing a rising failure rate in exploration, a falling reserve replacement rate, cannibalism within the oil sector, or an expansion of drilling into increasingly risky (and expensive) areas.
Karl, if anyone could come up with an abiotic process to produce hydrocarbons in volume, that would be the end of oil wells and refineries.
If there were a theoretical way to make hydrocarbons, then we'd be doing it instead of trying to develop a hydrogen based energy transport system.
We are already producing many things that are either hard to get in nature, or not found there in extractable amounts. Our information age depends on such exotic things as unnaturally pure crystals, exotic compounds, and unlikely molecules. You're probably looking at some of each right now.
Brynn states
"If abiotic theories are true, we should not be seeing a rising failure rate in exploration, a falling reserve replacement rate, cannibalism within the oil sector, or an expansion of drilling into increasingly risky (and expensive) areas."
This statement is based upon an assumption that the earth can not quickly replace oil that has been removed.
Some wells have been found to be puzzling to say the least.
http://astuteblogger.blogspot.com/2009/10/what-if…
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/26/science/geochem…
A totally abiotic mechanism is virtually as impossible as saying that organic compounds can not be produced in a lab. The raw materials for oil/coal are essentially organic in composition and origin but that doesn't mean that the crust of the earth couldn't also have some mechanism for converting water and carbonate materials in the presence of a reducing environment (magma) directly into hydrocarbons and other varied crustal materials.
Just the presence of molten silicate magma materials alone makes the likelihood of lower melting point compounds to be decomposed fairly certain.
If farmers can turn a turkey into diesel fuel, just imagine what the earth magma could do to an entire deep deposit of limestone.
Dan,
There must be way to produce hydrocarbons from both living and non living things in volume.
If we say that is not possible then it is only because we just don't have incentive to do it.
Fracting is like asking for a earthquake to happen.
What if an existing oil well that is known to have few if any leaks to steam could also be pumped full of carbon dioxide (or even some other high carbon content waste materials). What would the heat and pressure do to these materials?
It might takes a few months/years to accomplish the task, but it would be like to dumping our garbage deep into the earth and seeing it come back as useable fuels.
Take the waste products of existing human activities and combustion cycles and pump it back deep into the crust and see what the earth's magma can do with it.
If our scientists can't discover a way to take carbon dioxide and water and turn it back around into even methane (without the use of photosynthesis)we had better call it quits.
Karl:
Remember that I did not dispute that <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">some</span></span> hydrocarbons can be produced abiotically, as we have evidence of the same. But "some" is not enough to power a world population reaching 7 billion.
Yes, I do "assume" that "the earth cannot quickly replace oil that has been removed", and so do the sources to which you link, and so does virtually everyone else within the scientific world. Your first link, to the article The Astute Bloggers cite has this to say on some of those puzzling wells:
So in a very limited number of fields, there is some evidence that the action of geological faulting may allow migration of mostly gas (but some oil) to higher strata. That's a far cry from the claim that all oil reservoirs are refilling themselves. Additionally, please note the scientist's acknowledgement that the oil & gas was formed millions of years ago, indicating that even if a few reservoirs appear to recharge (rapidly in geological time is very slowly in human time), the timeframe to generate actual new supplies is still millions of years. Oil remains a finite resource, even in the estimation of those scientists who are cited here.
Speaking of those scientists, most of the claims seem to rest on the work of one Jean Whelan, who is credited primarily as a chemist, specializing in marine chemistry and geochemistry. By testing the geologic ages associated with the hydrocarbons, she can identify when the hydrocarbons were produced. The New York Times article to which you link has this:
So again, we are looking at geological timeframes of millions of years to generate new supplies. Her speculation that these field are refilling at a steady-state rate is overhyped, and unsupported by other geologists. For example, actual petroleum geologists and those employed by the oil companies are also cited in the New York Times article:
What is also undisputed is that recovering this oil (the oil speculated to exist in these even deeper basin systems) would stretch the limits of our current technology, not to mention be prohibitively expensive. Again, from the New York Times article:
Those supporting the idea of rapidly-refilling reservoirs of gas and oil seem to rest their claims on the fact that reserves have been growing, even as production should have been depleting the reserves. But there is an alternate explanation for this, and one that makes more sense and is more generally accepted. From Wikipedia:
<span></span>This phenomenon is also noted in the New York Times article:
So forgive me if I remain skeptical of abiotic or steady-state proponent's claims that there is no crisis. I almost hesitate to ask, but what is your explanation for the rising exploration failure rate, the falling reserve replacement rates, and the expansion of drilling into ever more-extreme conditions? Again, if the abiotic theory of hydrocarbon formation is true, or if reservoirs around the world refilled at a steady-state replacement level, those situations would not arise.
Karl, "There must be a way" is both wishful thinking, and ignoring thermodynamics. If a technically feasible way is discovered, then it will still take more energy to produce the oil than we can extract from it.
Fossil fuels (as with hydrogen, alcohol, and batteries) are media of energy storage. By shelf life and storage cost, hydrocarbons are better than alcohol is better than hydrogen.
And if we had a way to turn CO<sub>2</sub> back into fuel, then that same process would be a way to reverse the carbon-dioxide problem.
If the energy, heat and pressure inside of the planet can't accomplish the types of energy conversions we are talking about, we had better admit evolution on the earth's surface is also contrary to thermodynamics, open systems or not.
If a huge pressurized landfill container of thousands of cubic yards was buried hundreds to thousands of feet deep in the ground say around the yellowstone hot spot, what do you suppose would result?
Put a control relief valve in place and draw off the methane at a safe rate, then eventually the longer chain hydrocarbons as well could be pumped up out of the vessel, or even the entire vessel brought to the surface and reloaded with another months garbage.
Time for a serious question– why do we still talk to Karl? He's repeatedly shown himself to be willfully ignorant on the topics he discusses. Ignorant, we can deal with. Wilfully ignorant is a whole other deal. I'm halfway tempted to believe he's just trolling (as in the third definition here)for fun anyway. It's apparent that we are constantly talking past each other, with little real dialogue taking place. Maybe that's just me?
Nope – not just you.
But like Dawkins and Gould refused to debate creationists for reasons that to do so would be seen as validation of the creationists' positions, Michael Shermer does debate them because he feels to not do so would be construed as the scientists not having rational arguments.
So somebody needs to show readers where Karl is wrong. But that takes a lot of energy.
Karl, there is a qualitative difference between the dozens of atmospheres pressure deep in a landfill, and the hundreds of thousands of atmospheres pressure in the mid-crust.
Also, thermodynamics shows how complexity (technically called "disorder") will increase. How is this a barrier to evolution?
Personally, I engage with the likes of Karl and rosa in the hope that they someday may produce an idea not already thoroughly explained and/or debunked. Science is all about testing, and re-checking.
I can always hope to instill understanding in such under- or mis-educated folks, as a serendipitous by-product.