Is it such a good idea to stop world hunger, with the human population soaring?

CorkMan

People are saying that we have to save people who are starving, in places like Africa, Asia, other parts. Don't mean to sound evil, but is that a good idea?

The world population is soaring, in 2050 the amount of people will be up by approx 5 billion, they are almost 7 billion now. We are even straining resources now. I don't wish that these people starve, but f**k, if humanity keeps increasing.

EverEvolving

Happy Christmas to you too.

But not them.

fedor.2.

lets eat them

chicken fingers

Yup. Funck it.
Let them die of hunger. The worlds population is going to get to a point where we pass a critical mass where we can no longer produce enough food for everybody anyways.

IMO introduce a 1 child rule for all families in any country that is recieving foreign aid, as a condition of receiving the aid.

Mr Benevolent

And he's off. Again.

Companero

(1) You're
(2) Irish
(3) 1847

You wouldnt be here to waste your precious well-fed brain cells on such wankery if people had had that attitude to your ancestors.

RoyalMarine

chicken fingers wrote: »

Yup. Funck it.
Let them die of hunger. The worlds population is going to get to a point where we pass a critical mass where we can no longer produce enough food for everybody anyways.

IMO introduce a 1 child rule for all families in any country that is recieving foreign aid, as a condition of receiving the aid.

do you think that foreign countries should have a similiar attitude to ireland?

we ****ed ourselves up. so why should they give any aid?

its bull****. every life is priceless. why should we put conditions on giving aid?

I dare you to go abroad and hold a starving child in your arms. You will never have the same attitude again.

starbelgrade

chicken fingers wrote: »

IMO introduce a 1 child rule for all families in any country that is recieving foreign aid, as a condition of receiving the aid.

Yep... let's continue the cycle of poverty by giving foreign aid to the poor, then tell them what to do.

That's the way forward for humanity.

K4t

CorkMan wrote: »

People are saying that we have to save people who are starving, in places like Africa, Asia, other parts. Don't mean to sound evil, but is that a good idea?

The world population is soaring, in 2050 the amount of people will be up by approx 5 billion, they are almost 7 billion now. We are even straining resources now. I don't wish that these people starve, but f**k, if humanity keeps increasing.

There is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone more than sufficiently at the moment.

Oranage2

Over population is certainly a concern - but with a world of plenty, And there won't be snow in Africa, Where nothing ever grows
No rain or rivers flow
Do they know it's Christmas time at all?

Brendog

Decrease the population.


I have a theory. We drink, shmoke and fight.

dr gonzo

you're condoning deliberate genocide through inaction as a means of controlling world population...?


This is a moot point anyway because Africa has both the space and potential for resource production that makes their impact on us minimal in terms of pop rise however our impact on them, through financial exploitation, is devastating and now that population control takes the spotlight the people of africa are the first to be thrown to the wolves too?

starbelgrade

RoyalMarineComm wrote: »

its bull****. every life is priceless. why should we put conditions on giving aid?

One of the problems with foreign aid - well one of the many problems - is that generally, conditions are placed on it.

One example of this was under the Bush administration who refused to give aid to countries with abortion clinics.

Foreign Aid is a very bad idea & is often used to manipulate countries for politically & religious reasons.

And on top of that, it achieves little of what it is supposedly set out to do - which is to combat poverty.

If this was actually the case, then you would have to wonder how - as foreign aid to Africa increases - poverty also increases.

It doesn't take a mathematician to work out the answer.

some_dose

Have a look at a study based on moose populations in the Isle of Royale in the U.S. (the link escapes me now). The study found that the population continued to rise until the numbers got so large that the food resource (spruce trees I think) were exhausted. As a result the moose population collapsed until there were only a few remaining survivors. The spruce returned due to reduced grazing and therefore the population of moose grew again.

They exact same scenario can be applied to humans. We are simply animals living off resources be it wheat, corn, oil, freshwater etc.... Sooner or later we WILL exhaust them. It is a dog eat dog world out there. By us artificially supporting other countries we allow the global population to reach unsustainable levels. We are no different from any other mammalian species at the end of it all.

/Science

chicken fingers

Companero wrote: »

(1) You're
(2) Irish
(3) 1847

You wouldnt be here to waste your precious well-fed brain cells on such wankery if people had had that attitude to your ancestors.

They DID have that attitude... Ireland was a net exporter of food during the famine PRECISELY because of the British not giving a **** how many lived or died.

greenmachine88

I read it as "Is it such a good idea to stop world hunger, with the human population snoaring" lolol

CorkMan

K4t wrote: »

There is more than enough food in the world to feed everyone more than sufficiently at the moment.

I did not mean solely food resources, I meant earths resources overall.

If the population keeps increasing, we will all be shagged in the not too far future. I would agree with the post about the 1-child limit. It is in effect in China IMO it is working. China could have an extra 400 million+ if it wasn't in effect.

studdlymurphy

chicken fingers wrote: »

Yup. Funck it.
Let them die of hunger. The worlds population is going to get to a point where we pass a critical mass where we can no longer produce enough food for everybody anyways.

IMO introduce a 1 child rule for all families in any country that is recieving foreign aid, as a condition of receiving the aid.

Thats Ireland f#*ked then

EverEvolving

CorkMan wrote: »

I did not mean solely food resources, I meant earths resources overall.

If the population keeps increasing, we will all be shagged in the not too far future. I would agree with the post about the 1-child limit. It is in effect in China IMO it is working. China could have an extra 400 million+ if it wasn't in effect.

Works in China you say?

I know you said it was your opinion, but would seriously question where you got that opinion from.

Oranage2

CorkMan wrote: »

People are saying that we have to save people who are starving, in places like Africa, Asia, other parts. Don't mean to sound evil, but is that a good idea?

The world population is soaring, in 2050 the amount of people will be up by approx 5 billion, they are almost 7 billion now. We are even straining resources now. I don't wish that these people starve, but f**k, if humanity keeps increasing.

So should we cut social welfare here and let people without jobs starve or is it only non-white people that should starve to death?

And most of the worlds resourses have been used by USA, Europe and now China so should we now punish the poorest people that didn't benefit from raping gas and oil wells?

Life is life whether your a middle class white man in Ireland struggle to pay a morgage or whether you're a mother in Kenya trying to feed yourself and your child.

Bono says it best "Thank God its them instead of us"

chicken fingers

studdlymurphy wrote: »

Thats Ireland f#*ked then

Ireland can safely produce enough food for maybe 20 million + people these days.
There are countries in central Africa where they are not producing and will never produce 50% of the required food for their population.
I know this as I´ve been all over the world with my job and I have seen firsthand.
These people are having 12 kids to try to ensure that one of them will have a job (by playing the numbers game, rather than specifically nurturing a kid), therefore being able to provide for them, the parents.

Perhaps its not such a great idea to feed more fuel into such a flawed system?

And every life is precious? The people who make the decisions REALLY dont think so
I work and have worked with guys who could not give a SH1T if their actions directly kill 100 brown people. And their bosses, and their bosses feel the exact same. The only reason that any country does anything is not the inherent good in its leaders, its so that they can be SEEN to be altruistic, or whatever.
The people who write the cheques and sign the laws could not care less, and I have a similar attitude.
Not every life is precious. Some are expendable. Debate that with your own opinion if you wish, but thats how the folks who run the show think.

CorkMan

I'm not saying for genocide to happen, i'm saying it would be a good idea for populations to the kept down. In Africa families have 10+ children, even though they can't afford them. They are breeding like rabbits.

I think there should be enough for a maintable population, so they earth can go on. I am not saying lower class or middle class people should be killed. Everyone type of person should survive but the situtation is worseing at the moment.

CorkMan

chicken fingers wrote: »

Ireland can safely produce enough food for maybe 20 million + people these days.
There are countries in central Africa where they are not producing and will never produce 50% of the required food for their population.
I know this as I´ve been all over the world with my job and I have seen firsthand.
These people are having 12 kids to try to ensure that one of them will have a job (by playing the numbers game, rather than specifically nurturing a kid), therefore being able to provide for them, the parents.

That is because of the dictators. Idi Amin, Jean-Bedél Bokassa, Mugabi and the like.

starbelgrade

Speaking of genocide & hunger, I'd murder a burger now.

Unpossible

Wouldn't bringing african countries up to first world living standards (through investments not aid) reduce the birth rate?

Or some natural/manmade disaster will take care of the problem and reduce our numbers significantly again. There was some documentary on rte the last night which said a volcano reduced the human population by some huge number, the amount was calculated by the variance in our genes and how much should be there after so many thousands of years.

Johro

CorkMan wrote: »

People are saying that we have to save people who are starving, in places like Africa, Asia, other parts. Don't mean to sound evil, but is that a good idea?

The world population is soaring, in 2050 the amount of people will be up by approx 5 billion, they are almost 7 billion now. We are even straining resources now. I don't wish that these people starve, but f**k, if humanity keeps increasing.

The western world has the means to stop people dying of poverty, just not the (political) will. Military spending last year was 1531 billion dollars, 661 billion by the USA alone.
The world population soaring is a problem though, especially since only 8% of it is arable land suitable for growing crops. There's things we can do about that though:

Some examples of infertile non-arable land being turned into fertile arable land are:

• Aran Islands: These islands off the west coast of Ireland, (not to be confused with the Isle of Arran in Scotland's Firth of Clyde), were unsuitable for arable farming because they were too rocky. The people covered the islands with a shallow layer of seaweed and sand from the ocean. This made it arable. Today, crops are grown there.
• Israel: Israel's land primarily consisted of desert until the construction of desalination plants along the country's coast. The desalination plants, which remove the salt from ocean water, have created a new source of water for farming, drinking, and washing.
• Slash and burn agriculture uses nutrients in wood ash, but these expire within a few years.
• Terra preta, fertile tropical soils created by adding charcoal.

Some examples of fertile arable land being turned into infertile land are:

• Droughts like the 'dust bowl' of the Great Depression in the U.S. turned farmland into desert.
• Rainforest Deforestation: The fertile tropical forests turn into infertile desert land. For example, Madagascar's central highland plateau has become virtually totally barren (about ten percent of the country), as a result of slash-and-burn deforestation, an element of shifting cultivation practiced by many natives.
• Each year, arable land is lost to desertification and erosion from human industrial activities. Improper irrigation of farm land can wick the sodium, calcium, and magnesium from the soil and water to the surface. This process steadily concentrates salt in the root zone, decreasing productivity for crops that are not salt-tolerant.
• Urban sprawl: In the United States, 8,900 km2 (2,200,000 acres) of land was added to urban areas between 1992 and 2003.

People just need to get sense. Letting people die of starvation purely because of their misfortune of being born in a poverty-stricken nation is just cold.
There may have to be some sort of population control in the future though. Scary. Ya ever see 'Soylent Green'?:rolleyes:

SuperInfinity

chicken fingers wrote: »

Ireland can safely produce enough food for maybe 20 million + people these days.
There are countries in central Africa where they are not producing and will never produce 50% of the required food for their population.
I know this as I´ve been all over the world with my job and I have seen firsthand.
These people are having 12 kids to try to ensure that one of them will have a job (by playing the numbers game, rather than specifically nurturing a kid), therefore being able to provide for them, the parents.

Perhaps its not such a great idea to feed more fuel into such a flawed system?

And every life is precious? The people who make the decisions REALLY dont think so
I work and have worked with guys who could not give a SH1T if their actions directly kill 100 brown people. And their bosses, and their bosses feel the exact same. The only reason that any country does anything is not the inherent good in its leaders, its so that they can be SEEN to be altruistic, or whatever.
The people who write the cheques and sign the laws could not care less, and I have a similar attitude.
Not every life is precious. Some are expendable. Debate that with your own opinion if you wish, but thats how the folks who run the show think.

I agree. The people who don't agree to the stipulations that they can't have many children are the cruel ones.

Bob Geldof talks about "let's feed the world", when he knows full well that the world will NEVER be fed because the more we give, the more children that are going to come around the next time.

Geldof himself has millions in the bank himself because of media exposure and getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for giving "talks" about giving humanitarian aid. The man is a monster. And he knows that as long as the population keeps growing they will never be able to "feed the world", it's a self-defeating concept.

Telling people they cannot have so many children IS NOT A BAD THING!!! I can't go around having children, due to all sorts of social and financial pressures.

Keeping population down is a perfectly natural thing. In the wild primates do not just continually have more and more children with tons of them dying.... no, there are tons of natural ways in which they keep the population down. People in the west keep their children down, whatever it takes we HAVE to keep the population down. If you don't want to keep the population down then YOU ARE A NAZI because you are asking for a future holocaust.

Also, you should see how much the CEO's of these so-called "charities" earn, it's wayyyy into the six figure sums.

I never give to charity anymore and I never will. I consider it to be blood money. They use the starving children on the ads to pimp their cause. It's sickening.

SuperInfinity

Johro wrote: »

The western world has the means to stop people dying of poverty, just not the (political) will. Military spending last year was 1531 billion dollars, 661 billion by the USA alone.
The world population soaring is a problem though, especially since only 8% of it is arable land suitable for growing crops. There's things we can do about that though:

Some examples of infertile non-arable land being turned into fertile arable land are:

• Aran Islands: These islands off the west coast of Ireland, (not to be confused with the Isle of Arran in Scotland's Firth of Clyde), were unsuitable for arable farming because they were too rocky. The people covered the islands with a shallow layer of seaweed and sand from the ocean. This made it arable. Today, crops are grown there.
• Israel: Israel's land primarily consisted of desert until the construction of desalination plants along the country's coast. The desalination plants, which remove the salt from ocean water, have created a new source of water for farming, drinking, and washing.
• Slash and burn agriculture uses nutrients in wood ash, but these expire within a few years.
• Terra preta, fertile tropical soils created by adding charcoal.

Some examples of fertile arable land being turned into infertile land are:

• Droughts like the 'dust bowl' of the Great Depression in the U.S. turned farmland into desert.
• Rainforest Deforestation: The fertile tropical forests turn into infertile desert land. For example, Madagascar's central highland plateau has become virtually totally barren (about ten percent of the country), as a result of slash-and-burn deforestation, an element of shifting cultivation practiced by many natives.
• Each year, arable land is lost to desertification and erosion from human industrial activities. Improper irrigation of farm land can wick the sodium, calcium, and magnesium from the soil and water to the surface. This process steadily concentrates salt in the root zone, decreasing productivity for crops that are not salt-tolerant.
• Urban sprawl: In the United States, 8,900 km2 (2,200,000 acres) of land was added to urban areas between 1992 and 2003.

People just need to get sense. Letting people die of starvation purely because of their misfortune of being born in a poverty stricken nation is just cold.
There may have to be some sort of population control in the future though. Scary. Ya ever see 'Soylent Green'?:rolleyes:

Johro, I accept you have good intentions in your post. However, I am extremely strongly against trying to turn all natural land on earth into "arable" or "farming" land.

Farming and agriculture is what got the planet into this mess in the first place. It's not sustainable, the only sustainable lifestyle is one that remains close to nature. Suppose we had more arable land: that would solve nothing because then there would be more people trying to use it. It's a vicious cirlcle.

Farming destroys the natural habitats of animals. They should have their right to exist also, otherwise you are throwing a perfectly balanced ecological system out the window and it can have devastating consequences. In the end, by throwing the natural environment of the planet so out of sync, humans are destroying themselves and making the world inhabitable in the future for our descendants.

starbelgrade

SuperInfinity wrote: »

Johro, I accept you have good intentions in your post.

*sniff sniff*

Anyone else get a weird smell?

It's like condensation... or.. no, wait it's condescension. That's it.

strobe

There is more than enough food to feed every human on the planet until they 'die of old age' several times over. People aren't starving because "there is only so much food to go around". There could be 30 billion humans walking the planet and it wouldn't even be close to that being the case. Person A in Ethiopia et el starves to death because someone B with no chance of starving to death would have ever so slightly less stuff if person A was to be taken into the equation. Expand exponentially.

starbelgrade

strobe wrote: »

There is more than enough food to feed every human on the planet until they 'die of old age' several times over. People aren't starving because "there is only so much food to go around". There could be 30 billion humans walking the planet and it wouldn't even be close to that being the case. Person A in Ethiopia et el starves to death because someone B with no chance of starving to death would have ever so slightly less stuff if person A was to be taken into the equation. Expand exponentially.

Behind every fat man, there's three skinny men, two skinny women, six skinny babies & a dog.

My name is URL

http://www.optimumpopulation.org/blog/

It's not really a case of feeding everyone.. it's about making them realise that there's a finite amount of resources available to sustain their offspring.

Numb.Muzik

eat the poor ... its like 2 stones with the one bird ....

Duiske

Too many people on the planet ?

Its estimated that around 110 billion people have been born into this world since humans first arrived from space evolved. It would be a tight fit, but you could pack all these people into an area the size of Wales.
Now consider that there are only 6 billon people on the planet at present. Does not seem such a huge number when you look at it that way.

CorkMan

Duiske wrote: »

Too many people on the planet ?

Its estimated that around 110 billion people have been born into this world since humans first arrived from space evolved. It would be a tight fit, but you could pack all these people into an area the size of Wales.
Now consider that there are only 6 billon people on the planet at present. Does not seem such a huge number when you look at it that way.

Eh, Around the time of Christ there were only tens of thousands of people on the planet.

stupidusername

Many experts have gone into detail about how within a shockingly short amount of time the earth will no longer be able to sustain the population, so I'm not even going to argue with the people saying of course there's enough food for everyone.

Many people have also taken a look at over population and some countries have actually tried to tackle the problem, YES IT IS A PROBLEM. I can't remember what country it was but I remember a program talking about somewhere that at one point the government enforced sterilisation as punishment for any crime committed. And you could argue till you're blue in the face about China and how that's going.

The only real thing I want to point out is, when we think of any problem that the human race faces, what we ideally (although it will never happen in our infinite superiority :rolleyes:) should do is look at the way any other species lives. Take for example any animal when it comes to being hungry and trying to survive. My example here would be pigeons. Pigeons don't wait until spring to breed like many birds, but they will breed as long as there is a food supply in their territory. If there isn't, they won't. It's as simple as that. If you can survive and your offspring have a good chance at surviving, you can breed.

And yes I am comparing the poor in these poor countries to animals. Be offended if you choose, but I would consider it much more intelligent not to keep reproducing when you can't even provide for yourself.

wild_cat

I'm very concerned about over population in relation to what its doing/going to do the environment, sprawling urban areas, more deforestation to grow more food, increased waste that has no where to go etc

But I don't think those that are here should starve. I'm just not going to have children myself its as simple as that and people should be more educated on the matter! Its also another reason why abortion should be legal.

Btw each child increases YOUR carbon foot print by 40,000 tonne.

OutlawPete

It's After Hours, there's no need to be afraid,
In After Hours, we let in newbies, but they banish trolls,

And with our threads a plenty, we can spread a smile of joy,
Throw your arms around the world, it's After Hours,

But say a prayer, Pray for the other ones,
At After Hours it's hard, but when you're having fun.

There's a world inside your laptop,
And it's a world of dread and fear.

Where the only threads being started,
Cause the Mods to shed a tear,

Posts just get reported, they're like the clanging chimes of doom,
So tonight thank God it's them instead of you!

Well there won't be snow (cocaine) in the After Hours Mod Forum,
The greatest gift they'll get this year is strife, woooowwww

Where no Mod ever gets blown,
Cause No girls or women would go,

Ohh do they know it's Christmas time at all?

VinnyTGM

There is some good points in this thread about overpopulation, I personally think that the world is overpopulated.

Something has to be done, Obviously you can't just start killing people, but something has to be done.

In relation to Africa, the situation wouldn't be so bad there if the population wasn't so high, I know they have been taken advantage of by a lot of other countries, but the pop. needs to come down a lot.

rossie1977

you could fit every person on the planet into an area the size of texas comfortably, everyone would have their own one story 1000sq foot house with a front and back garden

we still use a tiny fraction of our resources e.g in ireland ~17% of the land is arable, we use 0.03% of that to grow crops, in the us 18% of the land is arable but only 0.2% is used for crop

RussellTuring

I think I just lost faith in humanity. Yep, it's gone.

As has been said already, there is more than enough food to feed everyone on Earth. The problem is that it's not distributed evenly. There are about 800 million people who are malnourished but over a billion who are overweight. If you really care about overpopulation, stop eating so much. If, however, you are just worried that this planet isn't big enough for all of us then the solution is to do what you can to help improve education in underdeveloped countries, as education tends to reduce the numbers of children people have.


Also:

Duiske wrote: »

Too many people on the planet ?

Its estimated that around 110 billion people have been born into this world since humans first arrived from space evolved. It would be a tight fit, but you could pack all these people into an area the size of Wales.
Now consider that there are only 6 billon people on the planet at present. Does not seem such a huge number when you look at it that way.

When exactly was it that we "first evolved"?

wild_cat

VinnyTGM wrote: »

There is some good points in this thread about overpopulation, I personally think that the world is overpopulated.

Something has to be done, Obviously you can't just start killing people, but something has to be done.

In relation to Africa, the situation wouldn't be so bad there if the population wasn't so high, I know they have been taken advantage of by a lot of other countries, but the pop. needs to come down a lot.

I'm glad other people are concerned about over population when I mention it the odd time people think i'm talking nonsense. When David Attenborough says something you'd think people would listen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7996230.stm

dsmythy

RussellTuring wrote: »

I think I just lost faith in humanity. Yep, it's gone.

As has been said already, there is more than enough food to feed everyone on Earth. The problem is that it's not distributed evenly. There are about 800 million people who are malnourished but over a billion who are overweight. If you really care about overpopulation, stop eating so much. If, however, you are just worried that this planet isn't big enough for all of us then the solution is to do what you can to help improve education in underdeveloped countries, as education tends to reduce the numbers of children people have.

But the money has to come from somewhere to fund that education and it would come from the fund to put food straight into mouths, unless your implying more money is spent on top of what is already spent.

rossie1977

VinnyTGM wrote: »

In relation to Africa, the situation wouldn't be so bad there if the population wasn't so high, I know they have been taken advantage of by a lot of other countries, but the pop. needs to come down a lot.

population density in africa is 30 people per sq km roughly around the same as the usa and half that of ireland, one 1/9th that of the uk, 1/11th that of india

stupidusername

wild_cat wrote: »

I'm glad other people are concerned about over population when I mention it the odd time people think i'm talking nonsense. When David Attenborough says something you'd think people would listen.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7996230.stm

I think it was actually in a program he did that I saw the bit about the country introducing mass sterilisation. It was very interesting.

K-9

Global Rich List

That'll give you an idea of how rich you are. €500 a week here puts you in the top 3% in the world.

The mad thing is, the wealthier people get, the less children they seem to have.

We could probably have more free trade, drop subsidies for Irish farmers, that type of thing, but self interest will win out in the end.

Bit like the ones saying charity workers aren't doing it for altruistic reasons, it's all very well suggesting this when you live in a rich country, IMF bail out or not.

stupidusername

K-9 wrote: »

The mad thing is, the wealthier people get, the less children they seem to have.

Actually there's a link between how educated people are and how many children they have...as in the higher educated, the less children they have.

RussellTuring

dsmythy wrote: »

But the money has to come from somewhere to fund that education and it would come from the fund to put food straight into mouths, unless your implying more money is spent on top of what is already spent.

I didn't say I did or did not want this to happen; I was addressing the OP's points and proposing a solution. I personally don't think it's a very good idea to feed people only to leave them uneducated and forever dependent on the mercy of the North. So, yes: if someone wants to suggest we should turn our backs on the poor nations, I suggest we at least wait until we have supplied them with the means to support themselves.

K-9

stupidusername wrote: »

Actually there's a link between how educated people are and how many children they have...as in the higher educated, the less children they have.

Well abortions are more affordable.

stupidusername

K-9 wrote: »

Well abortions are more affordable.

nah it's more like more highly educated girls don't want to spend their lives at home and caring for child after child, and so have less.

K-9

stupidusername wrote: »

nah it's more like more highly educated girls don't want to spend their lives at home and caring for child after child, and so have less.

Well that and they usually are more aware of contraceptions and have higher incomes, so abortions are quite easily attainable.