How many is too many?

1
How many is too many?

• Analysis of the population growth
• Brain teaser What happened on the Easter island?

2
What is the pattern of the population growth?

• Watch the video and come up with your conclusions?

3
What is the pattern of the population growth?

• 1800 is the breaking point 1st billion is
  reached.
• Why did the population start to dramatically
  increase after 1840?
• Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.
• As countries started to prosper, the population
  grew.
• What has been the distribution of the population
  growth?
• Rural vs. Urban
• North vs. South

4
Current numbers

• Over 90 occurs in the developing world,
  countries that are least capable to cope with the
  resource and environmental consequences of the
  growth population.
• 1 billion is added every 11 years.
• Every day global population grows by 240,000
  people
• Every year it grows by over 95 million.

5
Other estimates - concerns

• By 2025 labor force in the developing countries
  will be 3.1 billion. Education and training
  spending will be on the rise.
• Every year another 38 million jobs will be
  needed, not counting jobs required to wipe out
  existing unemployment of 40.
• Elderly population will continue to be on the
  rise world wide.

6
What is the message of the cartoon?
7
What are the concerns associated with the rapid
population growth?

• Thomas Malthus theory
• Population would increase at a geometric rate
  (the sequence 2, 6, 18, 54, ... is a geometric
  progression with common ratio 3) and the food
  supply at an arithmetic rate (the sequence 3, 5,
  7, 9, 11, 13, is an arithmetic progression with
  common difference 2). So?
• " The number of labourers also being above the
  proportion of work in the market, the price of
  labor must tend towards a decrease while the
  price of provisions would at the same time tend
  to rise".
• It will lead to widespread poverty and
  starvation, as food supplies would be quickly
  outstripped by ever increasing population, which
  would only be checked by natural occurrences such
  as disease, high infant mortality, famine. So?

8
What are the concerns associated with the rapid
population growth?

• Therefore competition for scarce resources would
  intensify the frequency of world conflicts. The
  silver lining of the theory is that these
  Malthusian checks would reduce/slow down the
  population growth.
• Would this theory be relevant today? Explain.

9
Have we reached the limit? W. Catton

• Carrying capacity the maximum amount of
  inhabitants both animal and human that the Earth
  can support indefinitely. Shift towards looking
  at consumption rates, rather than just population
  growth rates.
• "... our lifestyles, mores, institutions,
  patterns of interaction, values, and expectations
  are shaped by a cultural heritage that was formed
  in a time when carrying capacity exceeded the
  human load. A cultural heritage can outlast the
  conditions that produced it. That carrying
  capacity surplus is gone now, eroded both by
  population increase and immense technological
  enlargement of per capita resource appetites and
  environmental impacts. Human life is now being
  lived in an era of deepening carrying capacity
  deficit. All of the familiar aspects of human
  societal life are under compelling pressure to
  change in this new era when the load increasingly
  exceeds the carrying capacities of many local
  regionsand of a finite planet. Social
  disorganization, friction, demoralization, and
  conflict will escalate.

10
What are the consequences of over-reaching the
carrying capacity?

• Increased ecological foot print - the load people
  impose on nature.
• Drawing down of resources - stealing of
  non-renewable resources from the future
  generation.
• Earth can supply 1.89 ha per person. We now
  consume 2.8 ha.
• Unequal consumption rates - Canada consumes 7.25
  ha vs. 0.6 ha in Bangladesh. If everybody wants
  to consume like Canada, it would take 4 Earths to
  support it.

11
Where have all the trees gone?
12
What is the message?
13
What might prevent the catastrophes of
overpopulation and over consumption?

• Human ingenuity and innovation.
• Political rise of the green agenda both
  nationally and globally.