The Depopulation Imperative: How Many People Can Earth Support

The Depopulation Imperative: How Many People Can Earth Support PDF Author:
Publisher: Australian Scholarly Publishing
ISBN: 9781922669216
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
The current world population is 7.9 billion people. Our demands are already making a massive impact on the earth. Global warming, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, these are all symptoms of a bigger problem, human numbers and excessive consumption. Given our impact on earth now we have to reduce our numbers rapidly. We don't have time to wait until 2100 for numbers to decrease gradually. After looking at all of the issues surrounding the population debate, The Depopulation Imperative argues that to achieve any reduction we need a profound moral change from an emphasis on the priority of the human to a new basic moral principle that puts the earth first. While the implications of this principle are radical, in the end the book argues that we can do it and there are grounds for hope.

The Depopulation Imperative: How Many People Can Earth Support

The Depopulation Imperative: How Many People Can Earth Support PDF Author:
Publisher: Australian Scholarly Publishing
ISBN: 9781922669216
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 192

Get Book Here

Book Description
The current world population is 7.9 billion people. Our demands are already making a massive impact on the earth. Global warming, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, these are all symptoms of a bigger problem, human numbers and excessive consumption. Given our impact on earth now we have to reduce our numbers rapidly. We don't have time to wait until 2100 for numbers to decrease gradually. After looking at all of the issues surrounding the population debate, The Depopulation Imperative argues that to achieve any reduction we need a profound moral change from an emphasis on the priority of the human to a new basic moral principle that puts the earth first. While the implications of this principle are radical, in the end the book argues that we can do it and there are grounds for hope.

How Many People Can the Earth Support?

How Many People Can the Earth Support? PDF Author: Joel E. Cohen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393314953
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 548

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Book Description
Discusses how many people the earth can support in terms of economic, physical, and environmental aspects.

Too Many Humans

Too Many Humans PDF Author: Morrison Bonpasse
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781506176567
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
This "Little Green Book" presents 21 proposals for reducing the size of the human population to 1 billion people, in order to enable humanity to live sustainably on Earth. For centuries and millennia, humans have exploited the inherited riches of the Earth without significant observable permanent harm. The Industrial Revolution, which used non-human, non-animal power sources to accomplish tasks, began in the 18th century in Europe and North America. In the early 19th century, that power increasingly came from the burning of fossil fuels, primarily coal and oil, and that burning created carbon dioxide. The ills of fossil fuel burning were compounded by population growth. Around the beginning of the 19th century, medical and nutritional advances led to the reduction of the death rate and populations began to grow more rapidly. This change can be said to be the beginning of the Demographic Transition, which is defined as the period during which there is a large gap between the declining death rate and the subsequent reduction of the birth rate which typically occurs several generations later. Proposed here are additional stages of the model to show a Sustainable Demographic Transition (SDT) to a human population of 1 billion, which was the population of the Earth around 1800. The question posed in this book is whether the human birth rate can be reduced soon enough to avoid much of the potential further damage to the Earth, and reduced further to enable remediation of previous damage. The year 1800 is chosen in this book as the pivotal year for the Industrial Revolution and Demographic Transition. At that time, the carbon dioxide density in the atmosphere was approximately 300 parts per million. During the subsequent 215 years, the Industrial Revolution accelerated and, together with exponential population growth, has degraded the ability of the Earth to sustain life. Whatever damage to the Earth the Industrial Revolution would have produced for a planet supporting one billion humans, that damage has been multiplied, so far, by the growth of the human population since 1800 to 7.3 billion by mid-2015. If not stopped, the multiplier will continue to grow. Even at the current and seemingly slow annual growth rate of 1.2%, the Earth's population will double to 14.6 billion in 58 years. Such a total is inconceivable, and avoidable. There has been debate about whether the sheer number of people is the problem or whether their unequal or excessive consumption patterns are the problem. The problem with that debate is that it poses a false choice, which need not be resolved here. That is, while there is no question that there is substantial inequality among people of income and wealth and therefore, of Earth-degrading consumption, there is also no question that every human being has an impact on the Earth. Putting it simply, more humans produce more carbon. Further, more humans have produced too many more humans. There are two basic elements of each human's impact on the Earth. First s/he consumes energy and resources, and s/he has the capacity to have children. Whatever the world's consumption patterns, there will be less consumption and Earth degradation when there are fewer people. This truth is a corollary to the message of population stabilization advocates since the 1970s - "Whatever your cause, it's a lost cause until we control population growth." The first of the 21 proposals is that all humans be encouraged to have no children, or at most, one child. The alternative to achieving population reduction through voluntary means is to endure catastrophes and collapse and gross reduction of biodiversity.

Can Earth's and Society's Systems Meet the Needs of 10 Billion People?

Can Earth's and Society's Systems Meet the Needs of 10 Billion People? PDF Author: Maureen Mellody
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780309306348
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Earth's population, currently 7.2 billion, is expected to rise at a rapid rate over the next 40 years. Current projections state that the Earth will need to support 9.6 billion people by the year 2050, a figure that climbs to nearly 11 billion by the year 2100. At the same time, most people envision a future Earth with a greater average standard of living than we currently have - and, as a result, greater consumption of our planetary resources. How do we prepare our planet for a future population of 10 billion? How can this population growth be achieved in a manner that is sustainable from an economic, social, and environmental perspective? Can Earth's and Society's Systems Meet the Needs of 10 Billion People? is the summary of a multi-disciplinary workshop convened by the National Academies in October 2013 to explore how to increase the world's population to 10 billion in a sustainable way while simultaneously increasing the well-being and standard of living for that population. This report examines key issues in the science of sustainability that are related to overall human population size, population growth, aging populations, migration toward cities, differential consumption, and land use change, by different subpopulations, as viewed through the lenses of both social and natural science.

"How Many People Can the Earth Sustain?"

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Population Bomb

The Population Bomb PDF Author: Paul R. Ehrlich
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781568495873
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


What We Do Next Really Matters

What We Do Next Really Matters PDF Author: Mark Roeder
Publisher: Australian Scholarly Publishing
ISBN: 1922669202
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The choices we make over the next few years will resonate for decades, and perhaps centuries. This is because our world is at a critical turning point in history, as old certainties are swept aside by a global pandemic, climate change and political upheaval. How we respond to these challenges will determine whether we usher in a new Age of Enlightenment, or a second Dark Ages. In this compelling book Mark Roeder makes sense of our predicament, and explains why we must reconsider some of our most fundamental beliefs. Our current path is not sustainable – socially, environmentally or economically. We are literally devouring our planet, and our communities are becoming more polarised and fearful of the future. The time has come for us to make some bold changes to the way we live. This book explains what these changes should be, and how to implement them.

Empty Planet

Empty Planet PDF Author: Darrell Bricker
Publisher: Signal
ISBN: 0771050895
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
From the authors of the bestselling The Big Shift, a provocative argument that the global population will soon begin to decline, dramatically reshaping the social, political, and economic landscape. For half a century, statisticians, pundits, and politicians have warned that a burgeoning planetary population will soon overwhelm the earth's resources. But a growing number of experts are sounding a different kind of alarm. Rather than growing exponentially, they argue, the global population is headed for a steep decline. Throughout history, depopulation was the product of catastrophe: ice ages, plagues, the collapse of civilizations. This time, however, we're thinning ourselves deliberately, by choosing to have fewer babies than we need to replace ourselves. In much of the developed and developing world, that decline is already underway, as urbanization, women's empowerment, and waning religiosity lead to smaller and smaller families. In Empty Planet, Ibbitson and Bricker travel from South Florida to Sao Paulo, Seoul to Nairobi, Brussels to Delhi to Beijing, drawing on a wealth of research and firsthand reporting to illustrate the dramatic consequences of this population decline--and to show us why the rest of the developing world will soon join in. They find that a smaller global population will bring with it a number of benefits: fewer workers will command higher wages; good jobs will prompt innovation; the environment will improve; the risk of famine will wane; and falling birthrates in the developing world will bring greater affluence and autonomy for women. But enormous disruption lies ahead, too. We can already see the effects in Europe and parts of Asia, as aging populations and worker shortages weaken the economy and impose crippling demands on healthcare and social security. The United States is well-positioned to successfully navigate these coming demographic shifts--that is, unless growing isolationism and anti-immigrant backlash lead us to close ourselves off just as openness becomes more critical to our survival than ever before. Rigorously researched and deeply compelling, Empty Planet offers a vision of a future that we can no longer prevent--but one that we can shape, if we choose.

Disaster Resilience

Disaster Resilience PDF Author: National Academies
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309261503
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
No person or place is immune from disasters or disaster-related losses. Infectious disease outbreaks, acts of terrorism, social unrest, or financial disasters in addition to natural hazards can all lead to large-scale consequences for the nation and its communities. Communities and the nation thus face difficult fiscal, social, cultural, and environmental choices about the best ways to ensure basic security and quality of life against hazards, deliberate attacks, and disasters. Beyond the unquantifiable costs of injury and loss of life from disasters, statistics for 2011 alone indicate economic damages from natural disasters in the United States exceeded $55 billion, with 14 events costing more than a billion dollars in damages each. One way to reduce the impacts of disasters on the nation and its communities is to invest in enhancing resilience-the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from and more successfully adapt to adverse events. Disaster Resilience: A National Imperative addresses the broad issue of increasing the nation's resilience to disasters. This book defines "national resilience", describes the state of knowledge about resilience to hazards and disasters, and frames the main issues related to increasing resilience in the United States. It also provide goals, baseline conditions, or performance metrics for national resilience and outlines additional information, data, gaps, and/or obstacles that need to be addressed to increase the nation's resilience to disasters. Additionally, the book's authoring committee makes recommendations about the necessary approaches to elevate national resilience to disasters in the United States. Enhanced resilience allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses-rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward. Disaster Resilience confronts the topic of how to increase the nation's resilience to disasters through a vision of the characteristics of a resilient nation in the year 2030. Increasing disaster resilience is an imperative that requires the collective will of the nation and its communities. Although disasters will continue to occur, actions that move the nation from reactive approaches to disasters to a proactive stance where communities actively engage in enhancing resilience will reduce many of the broad societal and economic burdens that disasters can cause.

One Billion Americans

One Billion Americans PDF Author: Matthew Yglesias
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN: 0593853881
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER What would actually make America great: more people. If the most challenging crisis in living memory has shown us anything, it’s that America has lost the will and the means to lead. We can’t compete with the huge population clusters of the global marketplace by keeping our population static or letting it diminish, or with our crumbling transit and unaffordable housing. The winner in the future world is going to have more—more ideas, more ambition, more utilization of resources, more people. Exactly how many Americans do we need to win? According to Matthew Yglesias, one billion. From one of our foremost policy writers, One Billion Americans is the provocative yet logical argument that if we aren’t moving forward, we’re losing. Vox founder Yglesias invites us to think bigger, while taking the problems of decline seriously. What really contributes to national prosperity should not be controversial: supporting parents and children, welcoming immigrants and their contributions, and exploring creative policies that support growth—like more housing, better transportation, improved education, revitalized welfare, and climate change mitigation. Drawing on examples and solutions from around the world, Yglesias shows not only that we can do this, but why we must. Making the case for massive population growth with analytic rigor and imagination, One Billion Americans issues a radical but undeniable challenge: Why not do it all, and stay on top forever?