Family Planning for the Environment

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Well written, but not a word about the environment. With the irreversible melting of the ice caps around the World, this heavily polluted biosphere is reacting with increasingly violent weather which will storm, flood, dry up and burn until human society collapses and people return to a reasonable balance with Nature -- if anyone is left alive to do so.

Originally Posted by Val View Post
Here is your "Malthusian Catastrophe";
(The St. Matthew Island deer herd graph in the bottom link)





Here is another picture of overshoot, done long ago, but still relatively accurate, but with any easier(not realistic with present data) let down;

(the "Limits To Growth " Graph)


Upper deer herd crash graph: Very similar to the human population curve. With humans the timescale is 1944=1850 or so and the peak 2040 or so. The 6000+ population peak would be 8+ or <9 billion, and beginning at around 1 billion. Of course it would be better if we could transpose cricket's detailed human population curve on this(adjusting for its log scale). This curve would indicate heavy warfare with resource depletion and pollution effects(sharper and more vertical decline).

Lower 1972 Limits to Growth graph: "easy letdown" but without accounting for AGW and other long term (like the 6 oceanic plastic gyres) pollution effects(unknown at the time). See the causative factors at the bottom in "the horsemen and the blame".
(Population overshoot graph with carrying capacity level and near vertical crash line)
Or this graph with less warfare indicated, but more accurate in the general shape of the human population crash curve in the "combining of the curves":

__________~^1850___ ~^1950___ ~^2050
This one above with the flatter peak from 2035-2045 start at ~1B and peak at ~8.5B

>>>>>>and adding these graphs;


You need a graph with more detail. One like this(below, but different "Y" axis scale): (the above graph, we are actually at 7 billion now in 2011 and the crash circa 2050 would make it look similar to the top graph of the deer herd!)


The log scale crushes the curve down, and we are at 7B, 8/2011
(logarithmic scale graph)

You see those dips? The Black Death is estimated to have decreased global population from about 450 million to about 350 million by around 1400 A.D. The Black Death resulted in political instability across Europe, Asia and Africa.

The above graph is a little off, too, we are now at 7 billion in 2011. There is a "blip" at WWI/Spanish Flu, and WWII, >>>plus you have to adjust for the log scale<<<(which is really a distortion!).

Now, for a mental exercise, transpose all of them together. This will give you a more accurate idea of what has happened, is happening, and will happen. Unless people change very quickly their birth rate average, a nuclear war happens, a disease much greater than the plagues of old, or a miracle.
>>>NOTE: in combining the graphs, population peaks at ~8.4B circa 2040-50(NOT the UN's 9.2 or 10.1 billion then somehow stabilizing), and falls to around 400 million in 20 to 30 years(commonly called "the crash"). The line for food stays just above population until a greater spread with the green revolution(mechanized/petro-chemical fertilized/insecticide/herbicide use/hybrid seed/heavy aquifer and river irrigation), then crosses to less than population around the 2000 mark(peak grains 1986), then follows below population during the descent(after peak oil & AGW effects/irrigation water/soil depletion and fisheries collapse). Carrying capacity(natural resources) is at 3 billion for poor level(2 billion "Euro", 1 Billion "high standard of living") until after WWI when it accelerates downward to meeting up with population after the crash 2070-80, .4B. Pollution is steadily below population until after WWI when it goes rapidly above population, slows at the crash peak and keeps going up more slowly. Blips in population are at the Plague, WWI/Spanish Flu, and WWII, starting in the year 300AD and going to 2120. Also, allowing for known rates of soil depletion, fisheries depletion, aquifers depletion, surface water pollution and use, toxics buildup, AGW effects, and post peak oil effects/oil depletion.
The "Horsemen" and the blame. 1.) Aquifer depletion is to be blamed on the people who are over the aquifers, not on outsiders. 2.) Soil depletion can only be blamed on the countries where they are or have depleted their own soils(by not adding organics/composts, salinization by over-irrigation with river waters high in salts, citification by uncontrolled population growth and sprawl, and by not fallowing the land), not on outsiders. 3.) Oil depletion can only be blamed on the countries with oil who have sold it for their own wealth to outsiders. 4.) AGW has a number of sources of blame; the countries burning oil, the countries burning coal, the countries using slash and burn agriculture, the countries cutting down their forests--not outsiders. 5.) overpopulation beyond sustainable is the fault of the countries involved. It may be their culture. It may be their average stupidity. It may be religions. It may be their immigration policies. It may be the greed of some. It may be a combination of factors. 6.) world fisheries collapse can be blamed on drift netters, shark finners, and 3 billion people who get 60% of their protein from fish/seafood. 7.) Surface water pollution/depletion can be blamed on the people in the areas it is occurring and the people upstream who over-use and pollute with everything from agricultural chemicals, industrial waste, excrement, and pharmaceuticals.
THE LANGUAGE OF ECOLOGY