So... today in my Bio lecture class on "Humans and their Environment" we spoke about population density and the problems with too thick of people. My teacher sounds a little crazy about wanting to "limit our population" and "not feeding people" to help knock down how long people live.

Where you live, do you think there are too many people squished in?

I'm for zero pop growth, which means that I've made a promise that I will never have more than two children. It IS a problem, to be honest. You really see it happening in the far east, like in Japan, where the population is very dense around big cities and almost nonexistent outside of them. Or in China, whose population is so dense that the number of children people can have is regulated!

NYC has a higher density than Tokyo.

I plan to have no children... well for reasons other than population issues, but I'll pretend I'm doing it to save the earth.

Humans ARE overpopulated. Most of our environmental problems are classic signs of a species overshooting the carrying capacity. Zero population growth is unlikely to be enough. We need negative growth. Either that, or we can sit around on our asses and keep having too many kids and let the death rate solution take care of it for us. Which given how taboo the p-word is, even in environmental circles, is where I'm betting my money. A news article I read recently about the food crisis didn't even mention the obvious elephant standing right in the middle of the freaking room. :roll:

My husband believes we could sustain current population if we started actually farming things in the ocean rather than just taking it out. There are projects off the east coast of the US that have started farming fish like that. If we could farm fish and algea for energy and so on, we might be a bit better off.

It's a harsh thing to say I know, but sending billions in aid out to countries where there's famine because the land cannot sustain the population seems just dumb to me. Famine is nature's way of saying "Hey, stop, too many people!" Human's screw with the natural balance and cycle of life at every turn : /

I'm only planning to have 1 child... so I wont be adding to it, as 2 people making 1 for later generations =)

I agree it's getting too thick... and instead of sending loads of food and money to these other countries... we should have a world wide agreement for 3 generations to have no more than 2 children each, then the number will at least drop, making food more abundant.

That or eat seaweed

Jelly- That is a good point. If you can't survive in an area due to famine it is time to move or die out like any other species.

Poet- Seaweed is good.

Yes, very good... it's a pity so many people hate it... (my family avoids it like the plague)

I don't really see the effects of overpopulation where I live, because I live in technically the most sparsely populated province in a fairly sparsely populated country.

But the way you guys are talking about it, it seems like it's a really big issue where you are. Anyway, I only plan on having one kid, so that's me being careful anyway.

Originally Posted by CollanaEstoria

NYC has a higher density than Tokyo.

... Realy??!! I'd realy say Tokyo o_O lol...


I live in the netherlands, and the population density is quite big here.
It's a very small country, and for example, sweden is way way way bigger
then the netherlands and have less people ._.;
It's like, everywere you look, people live on top on eachother in flat-appartments,
or houses attached to eachother, you can always look into someones backyard.

I rent a room here, in a capital city, near the shopping center, and I play ALOT
for it. It's small, I have to share the bathroom/shower and kitchen with 2 other
people who also rent a room, the guy downstairs has a bigger room, and the girl
next door has a smaller room.
Also, alot of people from other counties just move here, and it's getting over-
populated with people from outside holland, it's not that I hate it but it seems
to get worse over the years.

Originally Posted by Elwing

... Realy??!! I'd realy say Tokyo o_O lol...

This is according to my teacher, so it could be wrong.

NYC was 26,300 per square Kilometer
Tokyo was 5,930

L.A. even beat Tokyo with 6,073

Oh wow! Those figures are mental, hang on....

*googles*

Ok, NZ has... 16 people per square kilometer according to Wikipedia.

Originally Posted by Carzeebear

Ok, NZ has... 16 people per square kilometer according to Wikipedia.

But then consider how much land in New Zealand is not quite habitable... makes sense.

The state I live in has one of the lowest population densities. To give you an idea, you can fit, roughly, about 6 copies of The Netherlands inside our state and still have room to spare, but our population is only about 1/6 of The Netherlands' population. HUGE difference.

I wonder whether or not people would consider settling harsh uninhabitable areas before attempting mass population control..

edit: Now that I think about it, southern California is pretty uninhabitable, and it's dense as holy hell. <_<

Originally Posted by Risque

I wonder whether or not people would consider settling harsh uninhabitable areas before attempting mass population control..

edit: Now that I think about it, southern California is pretty uninhabitable, and it's dense as holy hell. <_<

The irony is, that surviving in such "uninhabitable areas" requires greater extraction of natural resources, which only hastens the problems associated with overpopulation. :sweat:

Well, a small clarification. I'm assuming here people would be adopting the posh living standards of most of the developed world in order to keep themselves from dying in winter or during bad heat waves and droughts. Which in of itself has a certain irony also.

Originally Posted by CollanaEstoria

But then consider how much land in New Zealand is not quite habitable... makes sense.

But a lot of what is habitable, isn't being used. For example, there is one highish building in my town, and it's a hotel. Nothing else is over two stories, and there are so many empty lots that it isn't even funny. And it's like that in most towns around here. Most of New Zealand hasn't even started building up yet, we just spread out. The only places that are really uninhabitable are the southern alps, (and that's only some of it, there are small towns dotted through those) and Fiordland, because most of it is only accessible by helicopter. We have a lot more extra space than you'd think.

Australia.
Nope, even here in Sydney it's pretty open compared to my experiences in Singapore, Tokyo, Bangkok and other nations in the region. Love it.

According to Wiki, Canada has a 3.4 per square kilometer population density. And I can see it, most of the territory we have is in the far north(tons of small islands up there with no people living there), also we cover a great deal of space, and the cold tends to drive most people away(which is awsome, since it helps keep the density down).

And as for the thought of limiting the amount of kids people can have for a few generations just to get things under control, I think it might help, but there is no guarantee, since damage has already been done, and some of it may be irreversible, maybe.

You should only limit the population by so much because then the younger generation cannot support the older generation and would badly affect the economy.

It would be easier to do that while training those from third world countries to move into first world countries to work which will help with the issue. The more developed the country, the less the population. And the workers can then take back to their original country and help development there.

But people hate immigration.

Pittsburgh .-. overly crowded crap.

I live in a small town...that supposedly has about 3k people in it. I don't believe it. But no, we're not all squished together or anything.

Unless like your entire family lives with you...then your house may be a little crowded lol