OVERPOPULATION
I've ranted before about overpopulation. How we are dependant on oil, a dwindling resource, to feed everybody. How immigration policy, which is deliberately open door, causes wages to fall. How most towns have seen doubling populations in the last few decades and all the pressures it causes as far as housing prices and traffic congestion and what not. Let me try again, because I don't think most of us have thought it out completely. Perhaps even myself. If I had, I wouldn't be living near anybody at all.
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Overpopulation is normal. A growing population means more farmers and more soldiers and more taxes, and more control over workers. Everyone loves growing populations. Until it reaches the tipping point and resources run out and most people die. No one seems overly worried about population. But both globally and in the US, we have severe overpopulation. We simply don't have the resources to keep every one alive except for oil. And we can already see that 2005 was the peak of global oil production. We are now on the leveled top of the production bell curve. And the only reason we haven't started going down the other side is our increased use of unconventional carbon energy to make up for the declining oil figures and the economy putting a stop to growth. If you think that this economic depression is going to be bad, imagine what a world of increased oil demand with decreased oil production would be like. We are actually on the better side of the collapse.
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But this has only bought us some time. We are still going to see a point where energy availability doesn't meet the demand for food. So far, we have had several factors putting off this point in time. Our food quality has decreased, being grown in almost completely infertile soil that is seeing more pollution from increased artificial inputs. Our food imports has increased. And the reprieve from high oil prices has scaled back ethanol production. Of course, we have yet to feel the effects of the global drought and further declines of oil production from Mexico and others. It only takes a small change on the down side to start food shortages. A percent less oil imported, or a grain failure elsewhere, or even more credit contraction keeping equipment from reaching enough farms. Look at the rice spectacle last year. It only took a few areas seeing production failures to set off a world wide shortage. It was solved by Japan opening its stockpiles ( which had been built up under US pressure to buy our rice, but Japan wants to keep local production going so they don't let ours get to market ), a time time unrepeatable event.
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We have no stockpiles anywhere. What if some event put the brakes on shipping? Over half of our artificial fertilizer production went overseas after Katrina. Chinese civil unrest alone could throw all global trade into an uproar. I don't know exactly what will drive us into a crisis. But something will. We are on the razors edge for survival, everything must work perfectly. Any failure in the system brings it down. I don't think we have much resiliency left, all excess having been turned into profit already ( system in decline eating the seed corn ). And when it starts failing, we have huge teeming masses of humanity that have no means of support or anything in reserve. You can't stock enough bullets to repulse that many survivors climbing into the life boats.
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Got a safe place to wait out the die-off?
END
I know, mostly the obvious being repeated. Not inspired much today. I did post a new Chicken Little Magazine. Number six, with the novel The Scarlet Plague by Jack London. Only fifty cents, at www.bisonpress.com . Thanks loyal minion, for compiling the Bison issues for it.
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21 comments:
This is the thing that gets me about preparedness. Stocking up on loads of food and whatnot will extend your life for a little while, but we are approaching complete systematic failure. How do you prepare for that?
Oops, I meant "systemic"
Total Systemic failure means that all of the interwoven componants all fail at about the same time or a perfect storm so to speak. How do we prepare for that? What is the PTB's corrupt govenment doing? They are stockpiling everything secretly, including the basics of beans bullits and bandages. We need to make sure we can figure out what the PTB's are doing and follow thier lead in even more secrecy, perhaps hiding in plain sight.
Cryptic I know.
By the way we have 6 billion too many people on this planet
Interesting stuff in the economic sector. I regularly keep up with Karl Denninger he has gotten relay gloomy the last few weeks and he is not a tinfoiler.
http://market-ticker.org/archives/852-Whats-Dead-Short-Answer-All-Of-It.html
I agree their will be a die off most likely massive in scale but it is not necessary. We can grow food by mixing fresh water and sea water to make hydroponic solution.
http://www.seaagri.com/hydroponicsformulas.pdf
http://www.seaagri.com/research.html
This works well even without adding the fertilizers recommended but even with them it takes MUCH less than spreading it on a field and hoping plants can get it.
Coconut farms can be irrigated directly with sea water you just need to do it heavy enough to keep salt from building up.
Use sea solids as a fertilizer and it makes the plants strong enough that insects cant live on them. Most of the insect and disease problems of plants are poor mineral content in the soil.
I read that Scarlet Plague due to your earlier post - liked it a lot. I didn't know Jack London wrote this one - its pretty good!
There are 6.5 billion people on a planet that can hold 1 billion people, so each survivor need only stock 6 bullets, 18 to be sure (3 per person), surely you have room for 18 bullets??
Even if you use the US military accuracy rate (apparently it takes the US army around 700 bullets to kill 1 person) thats still under 5000 rounds of ammo, so thats stockable...
In addition to this, we wont lose 6 out of 7 people evenly across the globe, places such as Zimbabwe/Nigeria will lose nearly everyone, while other places, such as NZ will perhaps lose almost noone.
well, i was trying to find the number of private market jobs vs. the number of govt. jobs ? so what i found...
112-132 million (farm, full & part time) 40% of which don't make enuf to pay income taxes...
22 million + government employees.
70 million social security and government pensioners.
70 million food stamp recipients.
basically, that's 30 million men and 30 million women supporting 250 million other americans....
so if american people were actually FREE and not just wage slaves and a source of tax revenues...well, a lot more people could be productive and society would be 10 or 20 times better off.
so the point is, the sick sick elite is trying to save their ass and their way of life, the only system they know....
anyway, with all those pundits, who were saying things were fine last year, are now saying were totally sunk... ha! it could be 6 months or 6 years. anybody who has read about financial collapses knows that governments try and paper their way out of the hole...which makes it a gradual painful nightmare that stretches out as more and more annoying fascist laws are passed and the printing press rolls...
no we won't be so lucky for it to be over real fast. a die off ? hum, some people might not be able to adapt without their4 hours a day of free boob tube entertainment...pus drooling zombie plauge carriers ???
DNH
"The Revenge of Gaia", a book by James Lovelock, is significant because Lovelock use to be an optimist. Now, he's a doomer, and a pretty sure one at that. Per Lovelock, the earth, devastated, can no longer support 6 or 7 billion people. He predicts 1 billion by 2100 and a very uncomfortable environment for humans as our population declines over the next decades. Might as well prepare. We are running out of options fast.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aErNiP_V4RLc&refer=home
this is a strange article about people pooping wherever and the diseases that occur...
a sobering thought about a very likely disease vector especially with the coming (this summer) water rationing and the possible eventual breakdown of government services (still a few years off).
FYI, some disease vectors that exist in the USA revolve around kids. schools, day care and spring break being the largest contagion points. then public places like stores and shops. followed by the food supply. this country has really wasted and polluted it's water, but hardly as bad as elsewhere...
DNH
People have been screaming overpopulation since Roman times. Where is it? I haven't seen any. True a bad ratio of producers vs. consumers is a big problem. People using water to dispose of waste is a problem. How many of you use a flusher? Especially in a low water area. Yea those people are a problem. Pollution form the oil industry is a problem. Coal is even worse.
Under educated, (especially in common sense) forced by big business and gov. propaganda to be wasteful? Sure! I could go on the list is huge but to many? Not hardly.
To John H:
"People have been screaming overpopulation since Roman times. Where is it? I haven't seen any." You have a vision-impairment.
Since the beginning of time, people have starved. Malthus was right, is right now, and will continue to be right into the future. In Roman times, a large percentage of the people were always starving and finally, when the agriculture lands around began to peter-out, the Roman Empire became doomed and greatly reduced in population.
What's in it for you to be in denial about population issues? Is it a religious concern?
Check out:
http://www.gradebook.org/
Geography%20Class-Population
%20Growth.htm
Population is growing a fantastic rate which also creates a resource problem no matter how efficiently those resources are used.
World Population Growth
Year Population
1 200 million
1000 275 million
1500 450 million
1650 500 million
1750 700 million
1804 1 billion
1850 1.2 billion
1900 1.6 billion
1927 2 billion
1950 2.55 billion
1955 2.8 billion
1960 3 billion
1965 3.3 billion
1970 3.7 billion
1975 4 billion
1980 4.5 billion
1985 4.85 billion
1990 5.3 billion
1995 5.7 billion
1999 6 billion
2006 6.5 billion
2010 6.8 billion
2012 7 billion
2020 7.6 billion
2030 8.2 billion
2040 8.8 billion
2050 9.2 billion
Hello my name is Richard I read your blog and the comments from people. Well I believe that most people, not all, lack the intelligence to see the trouble that is near with overpopulation and pollution. Though these problems have been around for years and are worsening. The reason I say the above comment about most people is for quite a while now I have questioning local governments about old factory sites called brownfeilds which in my area are heavily polluted with metals and other toxic compounds, tests taken on these sites have shown this to be true. But local governments have approved housing developments and other projects such as parks on these lands and me and few others who oppose get threatened and insulted by many members of the public, e.g. we are against people having homes by preventing development therefore we are environmental wackos. For overpopulation I have been told that I am against human rights because people should be allowed to breed as much as they wish without restrictions regardless of the other animals on the planet, perhaps most people are like cockroaches and since cockroaches cannot make decisions on their breeding nature makes it for them with die offs. Hopefully people as a whole can get their heads straight and humanely begin to reduce birthrates to allow a slow decrease in population to more sustainable levels.
Hey Rickandkath. Nice comment. Unfortunately there are total freakin idiots like OCTOMOM who breed because they can. My god 14 children from one unwed welfare Mom. There are lots more out there doing this...
If SHTF the food trucks will stop running. If you can button up and repel boarders for ninety days there will be far fewer food competitors out there.
Like I said their will be mass starvation and disease WHEN the system collapses. It wont be because of overpopulation though. Their is an over supply of idiocy and corruption. Since people wont deal with it this WILL cause mass starvation disease and most likely war.
After the system purges a significant portion of the problem we will AGAIN as in the past race to a MUCH higher population that before. Your own figures prove this.
PS: While I used to be very religious that is no longer the case. Though I believe their is some sort of higher intelligence that created us I don't think it gives a shit about the individual. Prepare accordingly.
Like I said their will be mass starvation and disease WHEN the system collapses. It wont be because of overpopulation though. Their is an over supply of idiocy and corruption. Since people wont deal with it this WILL cause mass starvation disease and most likely war.
After the system purges a significant portion of the problem we will AGAIN as in the past race to a MUCH higher population that before. Your own figures prove this.
PS: While I used to be very religious that is no longer the case. Though I believe their is some sort of higher intelligence that created us I don't think it gives a shit about the individual. Prepare accordingly.
A short Critique of Malthus
Actually, when Malthus published in 1800, he was predicting mass starvation in America by 1825 because of it's 'enormous' population growth... Obviously, just some crack pot darwinism to justify the existence of the inbred Monarchy and the putrid and servile existence of the working class.
I'm not sure you have to survive more than a couple of years to make it. Think about it - within a few years it is possible 75% of the population will starve, die of disease, or war. Make it that long and there will be plenty of land and resources for the survivors.
Like I said their will be mass starvation and disease WHEN the system collapses. It wont be because of overpopulation though. Their is an over supply of idiocy and corruption. Since people wont deal with it this WILL cause mass starvation disease and most likely war.
After the system purges a significant portion of the problem we will AGAIN as in the past race to a MUCH higher population that before. Your own figures prove this.
PS: While I used to be very religious that is no longer the case. Though I believe their is some sort of higher intelligence that created us I don't think it gives a shit about the individual. Prepare accordingly.
The biggest obstacle we face in changing attitudes toward overpopulation is economists. Since the field of economics was branded "the dismal science" after Malthus' theory, economists have been adamant that they would never again consider the subject of overpopulation and continue to insist that man is ingenious enough to overcome any obstacle to further growth. This is why world leaders continue to ignore population growth in the face of mounting challenges like peak oil, global warming and a whole host of other environmental and resource issues. They believe we'll always find technological solutions that allow more growth.
But because they are blind to population growth, there's one obstacle they haven't considered: the finiteness of space available on earth. The very act of using space more efficiently creates a problem for which there is no solution: it inevitably begins to drive down per capita consumption and, consequently, per capita employment, leading to rising unemployment and poverty.
If you‘re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, then I invite you to visit either of my web sites at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com or PeteMurphy.wordpress.com where you can read the preface, join in the blog discussion and, of course, buy the book if you like.
Please forgive the somewhat spammish nature of the previous paragraph, but I don't know how else to inject this new theory into the debate about overpopulation without drawing attention to the book that explains the theory.
Pete Murphy
Author, "Five Short Blasts"
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