Chile Forum

So, this has been getting pushed around the internet today, an MIT researcher is predicting total economic collapse and decline of human population by 2030:
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/ne ... 52944.html
and mostly in relation to this:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n ... rowth.html

a great related quote I encountered over at slashdot about it:

Land Area of the Earth: 148,940,000 km^2
Population of the Earth 7,000,000,000

Land Area Per Person: 0.02127 km2 -> 21270m^2
So approx 200m x 100m (americans read yds per person)
But then there are mountains, desert, barren lands, asphalt to take into account.

Lets say 100m x 100m per person (roughly 2 football fields). That is the source of your food, your clothes, ....
This is ignoring all other life as that is likely part of the food chain that feeds us.
And that land is used year after year, getting less fertile, limited resources disappearing, getting smaller and smaller as more people appear.

http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/04/05 ... se-by-2030

How accurate that is, no se; but still really drives home how much resources are avaible in the world given the current population. By the way, if I got my math right that works out in the case of Chile to 0.04447 km per person, using 17 million people (waiting for the new censes, but should be close).

Somewhere I also ran in to a stat that something like 90% of the biomass of the oceans has been consumed since like 1954. I might have that wrong, but it was close to that and still a really shocking number.

admin wrote:Somewhere I also ran in to a stat that something like 90% of the biomass of the oceans has been consumed since like 1954. I might have that wrong, but it was close to that and still a really shocking number.

The population is now unsustainable (unsupportable), but at 9B (in 2050) is problematic in many areas of the third world, there will be greater breakdowns of control structures. Famine will be common in some areas that already have problems and food refugees will spill over into other countries causing chain reactions. The losses will be the 2B that will be born but can’t be supported. Support with bandaids from developed nations will not work and the Occupy movements’ redistribution is even worse. Only true understanding of what is happening will help, thus any Aid must be accompanied by education of the populations affected. More or less.

A couple of hectare of farmland with water around the Bio Bio looking pretty good these days.

This may be an unpopular view, I know the overpopulation idée fixe runs deep, but I've never bought the over population "issue". For at least 100 years there has been a lot of "scientific" data put out by scientists, and various authors in popular books etc. warning of the dire consequences of overpopulation. But you have to realise it's data by scientists whom have been bought by certain people, (the Rockefeller's, at first old John R, and now David) who want data slanted in a certain direction and who create foundations and corporations where these scientists earn a pay check. It's definitely an owner-employer / employee relationship. Not to mention school curicula created by Rockefeller controlled foundations to educate the public into this belief.

This slant or direction is designed to be more favourable to their business interests. Thus also the need of news media hysteria and doom & gloom books and movies to help mould popular opinion and bend the will of governments with bought off politicians to legislate laws that are favourable to those business interests.

I've never believed there is an over population problem. It's not even a lack of technology problem. Plenty of technology to "solve" world hunger. The problem is a management and stewardship problem. i.e. a lack of honesty. The people who control the worlds finance and technology lines are lacking in personal ethics not to mention compassion. It doesn't coincide with their business interests. No? take a look at statement #1 on the Georgia Guide stones. This death oriented ideology has been around a long time, at least since old John R. funded Margerat Sanger.

It's a lie and it's a sick dramatisation of an unhealthy mind.

I'm sure they already have ethnic specific viruses and other nasty stuff ready go at a moments notice. See ya on the other side or not.

We don't have to wait to 2030. The Chinese People and the Indian Gents will consumate everything in this planet muy pronto.
Land produced,Grains,Veggies,Minerals,Timber,Oil,Meats. Seafoods as well.

I mean everything.! In a few years, those two countries will grow
to reach one-half head count of total earth population. Assuredly to more than 4 Billions!

They will decimate and I mean everything...will be belonging to them!

Heck, we are going to need another earth-sized planet, Just in order to satisfy their wants mineral and resources needed to supply China's and India's voracious appetite to enhance their own Growth.

I see WW III on the horizon, unless: America,EU and the rest of the Civilised Nations tell China and India to curb their me too wants,not needs but wants. I give another 15 years max for the
El Fin del Mundo!.

I found this pretty entertaining:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/201 ... physicist/

I really enjoyed that essay with my morning coffee. Thanks.

Yea, the 10 billion person guerilla in the room, that no politician and even fewer environmentalist seem to want to talk about, is population control.

Really it is modern medicine that is going to kill us all. The 'do no harm' thing, is only applied to the individual. What about the rest of us?

Without modern medicine, we would have long ago exceeded our population limits or at least reached some equilibrium.

Think about it. 100 years ago, living past say 40 years old was a major stroke of luck. We doubled the population in one generation, not because of efficiencies, but because we doubled the lifespan of humans. We also eliminated major plagues, and many run of the mill killers. Cancer is not always a death sentence. Way more pregnancies are successful. A minor cut is not going to kill you. Even natural genetic imperfections no longer take their course. Totally possible to have some genetic disorder, and live a very full life. Even one of our great natural killers the flue, is mostly controllable and survivable.

The only natural population constraint we have left is social in nature. We have allocation and limits of food resources perhaps. We still have war. Not much else to work with. We really are only noticing the strain however now, because of artificially imposed economic / political limits placed on places like China, India, and the USSR in the first half of the century. Now that cat is out of the bag, and they can have a 4 bedroom house with an SUV too, the pinch is sudden. There was a sudden infusion of billions of people in to the global economic consumption picture over the last 10-20 years, that previously did not exist.

I recall in China, several friends of mine telling me how when they were kids their families starved. That their grandparents starved to death at home, because they were the oldest in the family. They chose to starve, so the younger people could eat. Those younger (30-40 year old people) now own several houses and apartments, drive cars, their kids are wearing the latest western fashions, eating western imported foods, kids are going to private schools, and so on. They are consuming as much resources as any American family consumes. Waiting in the wings for their chance to join the modern consumer society, are 100's of millions of more Chinese in poverty. I am sure India has a similar situation. Throw in another billion people from the Arab Spring now.

We did not suddenly have more people, we suddenly have more western style consumers. The people were there. Politics and poverty kept their ability to consume in check. Basic economics assumes people have the opportunity to fulfil their wants, needs, and desires; that has simply not been an option for over half of the World's population for most of the last century.

So, if the economist are correct, the only conclusion that can be reached is that scarcity of resources will check the population of the world at the door. War will be result of the political scramble to secure resources. It will not be a nice peaceful, those with the most money win market economy shift. It will be a 'those with the biggest guns and bombs' win. At least until there is an equilibrium reached of some sort. Economist are ignoring their own theory. You can add more resources to the supply, or you can decrease (eliminate) the demand.

Billions of people are going to die. Unfortunately, more vital resources are likely to be consumed in the process. War is not a zero sum game. It is not a sooner or later predication either. It is a borrowed time predication, that should have happened already.

Chile food prices inflation in february this year 9,8 % which is the highest food inflation rate in the entire western hemisphere. Compare this to 2,7 % in Costa Rica. Neither Chile nor Costa Rica uses price controls for food as in Venezuela so people in Chile pay for prices determined by market forces. The increases in Chile are due partly to drought and partly to higher prices for fuels. Right now Chile needs to import from other countries about 50% of the wheat used here, and also large imports of rice, meat, and corn.

Fascinating, considering I just watched an entire field of feed corn be harvested next door to me (that was a bit passed the expiration date). Just before that the field next to it that was all wheat. A friend of mine was just discussing how his neighbour was making mega money exporting alfalfa to North America from Chile.

Chile does not NEED to import those things. Chile does it because it has the money to import it, and exports more valuable food commodities. Price of a hector of corn vs. a hector of wine or fruit on the international market? In fact, there are all kinds of things grown in Chile, that you simply never find on the shelves in Chile to buy.

Much of that imported stuff they are counting is processed crap. Cereals, packaged meet, whatever.

"Much of that imported stuff they are counting is processed crap. Cereals, packaged meet, whatever."

And much of the processed crap is made with primarily GMO ingredients. Nice segue to another active thread today.

admin wrote:Yea, the 10 billion person guerilla in the room, that no politician and even fewer environmentalist seem to want to talk about, is population control.

I agree with the entire post.

. . . War will be result of the political scramble to secure resources. It will not be a nice peaceful, those with the most money win market economy shift. It will be a 'those with the biggest guns and bombs' win. . . .

Wars to secure resources are almost a certainty in the next forty years. (Some argue that Iraq 1 and 2 were primarily motivated by resources.) My greatest concern is that one or more of the wars will go nuclear.