Is there an ideal population level for a country?

[weltweit]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8224520.stm

Population growth at 47-year high

The UK population grew by 408,000 in 2008 - the biggest increase for almost 50 years, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The total number of people passed 61m for the first time, with changes in birth and death rates now a bigger cause of growth than immigration.

The numbers of people arriving minus those leaving actually fell by 44%.

Minister Phil Woolas said migrants were coming for short periods, contributing to the economy and then going home.

The UK population grew more in 2008 than at any time since 1962, when it rose by 484,000.

Is there a maximum population that a country can sustain or are we simply always going to be able to cope with population growth?

As far as I am aware no political party has made any statement on the ideal population figures for Britain. Should they at least have a policy?

 

[JimW]

Hard to propose a static figure and entirely dependent on the economic model you intend to pursue, I'd have thought. London should be disbanded and forested over though, obviously.

 

[weltweit]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8223611.stm

Aquifers are being drained and fisheries exploited at unsustainable speed. Soils are becoming saline, air quality is a huge cause of illness and premature death; the human population is bigger than our one Earth can currently sustain.

 

[JimW]

Yep, but in terms of persons in a given space, south-east England and Holland etc have probably been overpopulated since the 17th century, but commerce brought in the resources.
China had it worse and has been seeing severe resource conflicts since the late Qing at least; tiny amount of arable land per capital and only 1/9th of the average global water resources per capita. But still say it's far more a systems problem than setting some absolute number - as populations would naturally settle down in the new sustainable communist system with equitable distribution. Malthusian ideas look at the symptoms, not the cause.

 

[weltweit]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7865332.stm

Population: The elephant in the room

Uncontrolled population growth threatens to undermine efforts to save the planet, warns John Feeney. In this week's Green Room, he calls on the environmental movement to stop running scared of this controversial topic.

It's the great taboo of environmentalism: the size and growth of the human population.

It has a profound impact on all life on Earth, yet for decades it has been conspicuously absent from public debate.

Most natural scientists agree our growing numbers and our unchecked impact on the natural environment move us inexorably toward global calamities of unthinkable severity.

They agree the need to address population has become desperate.

Yet many environmentalists avoid the subject, a few objecting strongly to any focus on our numbers.

 

[weltweit]

Yep, but in terms of persons in a given space, south-east England and Holland etc have probably been overpopulated since the 17th century, but commerce brought in the resources.
China had it worse and has been seeing severe resource conflicts since the late Qing at least; tiny amount of arable land per capital and only 1/9th of the average global water resources per capita. But still say it's far more a systems problem than setting some absolute number - as populations would naturally settle down in the new sustainable communist system with equitable distribution. Malthusian ideas look at the symptoms, not the cause.

Ah Jim, I see you are posting from China. China's action with the one child policy to address their own overpopulation was IIRC often lambasted in the west as being against people's human rights.

Do we have the human right to overpopulate the planet?

 

[JimW]

Ah Jim, I see you are posting from China. China's action with the one child policy to address their own overpopulation was IIRC often lambasted in the west as being against people's human rights.

And it was quite rightly so, because it was, remains so in many locales and has been controversial since its introduction in China (though also popular with many). It was also a response in part to state intervention the other way in the early years of New China that encouraged an unnatural population boom. Now it's going to burden the country with all sorts of social problems due to the unnatural demographics it has created.
As to our 'right' overall, of course we have that right and of course it wouldn't be particularly clever. But again, overpopulation is a symptom not a cause - there will be some absolute number in mathematical terms the earth's water cycle can sustain, but it will be billions in excess of the present population. It really is a systems and distribution problem. That's not just an ideological position for me - to return to China, since they addressed symptoms such as population rather than systemic problems of unsustainable practice, all the population policy achieved was to mask the appallingly environmentally irresponsible practices they were undertaking, which is now coming home to roost. If nature doesn't get you one way, it'll get you another.

 

[smmudge]

A friend showed me an article in the Economist the other month about how people should be encouraged to have more children. The ideal 'fertility rate' is 2.1 children per woman. In 2008 in the UK it was 1.96. Well this is just bad economics, apparently.

So we want to save the future of our children, as long as they can afford to pay our pension

 

[berniedicters]

I've heard it said that, to be able to sustain itself with food, etc., the UK population needs to be about 30m. I think this was in the context of WWII, when we were faced with the very real prospect of not being able to meet our needs by importing food.

I think someone else - Lovelock? - has said that we need 6.3ha each for space to grow food. Obviously, with petrochem based fertilisers and intensive techniques, more can be squeezed out of less, but at a price.

 

[weltweit]

- There is only so much land
- There are only so many houses
- There are only so many jobs
- There is only so much food
- There is only so much water

Sure we could create more of many of those but there have to be some natural limits.

 

[yield]

Do you think population growth is a good thing?

Aren't you covering similar ground as a thread from a few weeks ago?

OK, another angle on the same issue.

I maintain we could do with less people in the UK.

But:

What is the ideal population of the UK?

100 million. Nice round figure. Now let's MAKE IT HAPPEN, people.

It's an absurd notion.

 

[danny la rouge]

Is there a maximum population that a country can sustain or are we simply always going to be able to cope with population growth?

As far as I am aware no political party has made any statement on the ideal population figures for Britain. Should they at least have a policy?

As has been said, I think it only sensible that a country be able to be self sustaining in food production. Of course the UK is currently heavily reliant on imports of food, even food it could very easily grow itself. This is not new; writers like Kropotkin remarked on it a century ago and more. In times of national crisis - such as WWII, as has been mentioned - the population has been called upon to supplement the agricultural yield. But that is all quickly forgotten afterwards, because it is inconvenient for the food industry to have consumers too self sufficient.

Colin Tudge, in his 2003 book So We Shall Reap, suggests that the small and labour intensive mixed farm as the main supporter of local populations is the only way to sustain the world population. This, I think, is broadly correct. Clearly without too much pondering we can see that the food we currently import is being produced somewhere. Even fairly recently big cities like New York and London could produce the majority of what they consumed within a relatively small radius. (Up until the 1920s, New York could produce 60% of its needs within a 60 mile radius of the city).
This is no longer the case.

Currently in order to keep us in the fashion to which we've become accustomed other countries are giving up their arable land in order to feed us. Clearly only a few countries can behave in this way, since there is only a finite amount of arable land on the planet. (It is said that if all the arable land in the world currently under cultivation were divided amongst the current world population, we'd have just over half an acre each).

 

[cybertect]

As has been said, I think it only sensible that a country be able to be self sustaining in food production.

All of them?

Singapore? Iceland? Malta?

 

[danny la rouge]

All of them?

Singapore? Iceland? Malta?

Clearly, not every country can be a net importer of food. If there are countries actually unable to sustain their population in food, then they are in effect hoping the rest of the world will continue to support them.

 

[weltweit]

Do you think population growth is a good thing?

Aren't you covering similar ground as a thread from a few weeks ago?

Oh, er, well I recall the discussion erm .... sorry. I am interested in the subject!

 

[littlebabyjesus]

1. There is only so much land
2.There are only so many houses
3.There are only so many jobs
4.There is only so much food
5.There is only so much water

Sure we could create more of many of those but there have to be some natural limits.

What do you mean by 'natural limits'?

1. There is only so much land, yes, and a great deal of it isn't being used to grow crops in a productive, sustainable way. The biggest environmental issue of land is the problem of land ownership.

2. Houses can be built – see point three. In fact, despite the presence of 61 million people in the UK, there are fewer people per household than ever before.

3. The more people there are, the more jobs there are. This point is simply wrong.

4. There are going to be limits to the amount of food that can be produced sustainably, but the problem in rich countries such as the UK is overeating, not starvation.

5. Water is in many parts of the world a vital, scarce, and contested resource – see Israel/Palestine for a typical power struggle over water. But as with many other environmental issues, it is the consumption of the rich that is the problem, the profligate folly of places such as Dubai.

In short, to attempt to analyse these kinds of problems without looking at economic power relations and wealth inequalities is to entirely miss the point.

 

[danny la rouge]

In short, to attempt to analyse these kinds of problems without looking at economic power relations and wealth inequalities is to entirely miss the point.

Indeed.

 

[el-ahrairah]

Yes. Me. With no other person around for bloody miles.

 

[lobster]

I personally think the way in which resources are created and distributed is the root of the problem that needs a huge overhaul. To begin by consuming less meat as the following wikipedia quotes sum it up well the damaging effects of the meat industry.

Environmental effects of meat production include pollution and the use of resources such as fossil fuels, water, and land. The use of large industrial monoculture that is common in industrialised agriculture, typically for feed crops such as corn and soy is more damaging to ecosystems than more sustainable farming practices such as organic farming, permaculture, arable, pastoral, and rain-fed agriculture.

The production of animal protein requires eight times as much fossil-fuel energy as the production of plant protein, though animal protein is only 1.4 times more nutritious for humans. According to an article in Environmental Health Perspectives, typical feedlot husbandry of cattle requires an input of 35 kcal of fossil fuel to produce one kcal of food energy in beef, far more than that required for comparable plants.

sources both taken from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_effects_of_meat_production

Best Before labels on food contributes highly to food wastage, I think its a fallacy to think we don't have enough food to feed every one.

Why is that some people have hectares of land that is simply used as a garden and then some families with 6 have to sleep in the same room?

Cut down on how much land people can own and your be able to build more homes that can be built with environmentally friendly materials..

I think the way we look at work needs to be looked at differently? Instead of profitability as the only incentive to work we need to look at work on a global scale and why certain jobs need to be filled and how to go about them... This will require regulation, I am not sure quite how it can be done under a free market though.
A much bigger public sector would certainly help, of course we need a government that wants to see everything I have mentioned improved.


I know what I wrote sounds fluffy and not realistic at the foreseeable future but the state we have been in is only down to ourselves metaphorically speaking. Humans created the problem, humans can surely work a solution to the problem? On the other side we can be paranoid and cynical and blame a number of reasons for overpopulation but without having a genocide or holocaust human population is just going to grow.

 

[fela fan]

But again, overpopulation is a symptom not a cause - there will be some absolute number in mathematical terms the earth's water cycle can sustain, but it will be billions in excess of the present population. It really is a systems and distribution problem. That's not just an ideological position for me - to return to China, since they addressed symptoms such as population rather than systemic problems of unsustainable practice, all the population policy achieved was to mask the appallingly environmentally irresponsible practices they were undertaking, which is now coming home to roost. If nature doesn't get you one way, it'll get you another.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean about the water system cycle being able to accommodate billions more, i assume you mean that the earth can sustain a far greater world population than exists now? If so, i'd've thought there'd be great problems in terms of how healthy or not the water would be, with such a huge increase in people. It may be that with greater numbers of lives will come greater and more frequent deaths. If so then presumably the water cycle itself cannot be enough to determine what population we can sustain.

It also bears thinking about the environmental problems we already cause with just six billion. Double or treble that population... can't see planet earth living with that!

Which in fact i think you're saying as much about nature getting us one way or another.

 

[fela fan]

I've heard it said that, to be able to sustain itself with food, etc., the UK population needs to be about 30m. I think this was in the context of WWII, when we were faced with the very real prospect of not being able to meet our needs by importing food.

I think someone else - Lovelock? - has said that we need 6.3ha each for space to grow food. Obviously, with petrochem based fertilisers and intensive techniques, more can be squeezed out of less, but at a price.

Bearing in mind that over half the water and i think over half of farmland area is taken up from livestock intended for human consumption.

Just mentioning it because the impact a population has on its nation not only depends on the land space it's got, but also how they utilise that land space.

I agree that a better population figure for britain is less than current, and 30 million sounds as good as anything. I did try my best be making it one less...

 

[Wolveryeti]

Is there a maximum population that a country can sustain or are we simply always going to be able to cope with population growth?

I think there is, but it's contingent on a large number of factors (economic and political as well as as biological/geographical,)and ecologists have a distinguished track record of fucking up when they've delivered gloomy estimates on how many people are going to starve by year x etc.

I think we're very far away from people in the UK starving, (and we are still below replacement population growth levels anyway) so in a way a more interesting question is at what point the cons of more people start outweighing the pros. This is a highly value-laden terrain of debate. In the short run it is a certainty (albeit an arithmetically banal one) that per capita income declines. The extent to which this is an issue for you depends on the future value of these extra heads. Maybe the happiness they give their parents, or what they will collectively add to the stock of human knowledge completely outweighs this cost. I personally think the hidden cost of the average Brit's contribution to climate change provides enough of an argument for limiting population growth, ceteris paribus, because I think the problems posed therein have mainly political, not technological solutions, but there you go...

As far as I am aware no political party has made any statement on the ideal population figures for Britain. Should they at least have a policy?

Yes, but the policy shouldn't overly concern itself with numbers, so much as the quality of the arriving population cohort. Of much more concern than the extra numbers are stories like this. Anything that encourages benefit claimants and school leavers to have more kids is a bad thing in my opinion.

 

[bhamgeezer]

- There is only so much land
- There are only so many houses
- There are only so many jobs
- There is only so much food
- There is only so much water

Sure we could create more of many of those but there have to be some natural limits.

Surely you the number of jobs is relative to the size of the population

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Anything that encourages benefit claimants and school leavers to have more kids is a bad thing in my opinion.

Quoted for posterity.

You're like a throwback to a Daily Mail leader writer of the 1930s. A combination of patrician eugenics and outrage at the antics of the poor. Getting married on the dole? Heaven forfend.

 

[Wolveryeti]

It is quite amusing how similar your style of argument is to your preferred choice of martial arts.

You kick the shit out of that straw man, son!

 

[weltweit]

Surely you the number of jobs is relative to the size of the population

Oh, I would suggest that the number of jobs might be related to the level of economic activity in the region, not the population.

There are still a lot of people in the Welsh valleys but there is now no coal industry to support them. Too many people, too few jobs.

 

[mentalchik]

I agree that a better population figure for britain is less than current, and 30 million sounds as good as anything.

Considering this is about half of the current population how do you propose going about this ?

 

[fela fan]

Considering this is about half of the current population how do you propose going about this ?

Erm... random lots?!

Emigration? That's why i said i'd contributed already!

No, i'm just talking theoretically, no plans to do that. But it might be an idea to consider if britain can really do with any more increases.

 

[danny la rouge]

I agree that a better population figure for britain is less than current, and 30 million sounds as good as anything. I did try my best be making it one less...

"30 million sounds as good as anything". Is that Science?

I think you'd be better off working out how best to support the population we've got (ie, less wasteful food production, better use of land, etc~).

 

[fela fan]

"30 million sounds as good as anything". Is that Science?

I think you'd be better off working out how best to support the population we've got (ie, less wasteful food production, better use of land, etc~).

Science seems to be the new God these days.

And yes, that would be a good idea, but unforunately it's not what this thread is about! And as for less wasteful food production, that's a great place to start, and to continue concentrating on for a long time. Not just less wasteful, but less harmful too, and more ecological for the planet. The rearing of animals for food consumption takes over half the planet's available water...