7 Billion and Counting

With 7 billion mouths to feed -- and many more to come -- how will our cities, economies, health systems and environments cope? What are the challenges and opportunities?  We asked some of UNSW's experts to canvass the big issues surrounding the global population explosion. Here's a taste of what they said.

For more detailed videos and opinion pieces visit our 7 Billion website:
www.7billion.unsw.edu.au.

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[conradxu]

no one wants to say it, but the solution is pretty simple.

Kill half of the population

[conradxu]

@curingaging00 Correct, although we have many strategies, they all take time. And time is something that the environment doesnt have.

Before any of these strategies are able to take place, people will be is so much trouble that political, economic and social structures will have become very unstable.

It is because of this, that i believe a nuclear war or governmental collapse may come and as a result, greatly diminish our population. e.g. overpopulation of rabbits in a hill top.

[curingaging00]

@conradxu Part 3: The Million dollar question is how fast will it take to adapt these technologies before things start getting very very bad, this is my concern. Already in many parts of the world, a lot of farmland is at either moderate or high risk of desertification.

[curingaging00]

@conradxu PART 2: If a vertical farm were to be set right, they could eliminate 70-90% of the water need, for evaporated water could constantly be recycled, you would have much much fewer crop losses because this is a controlled environment, no longer at the mercy of mother nature would mean less crops lost because of bad harvest.

This would me what we will need to save massive amounts of water and land. Currently, these protects are still under development and research.

[curingaging00]

@conradxu PART 1: Education will play a huge role in solving the problem. As for dwindling resources. "The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that farmers will have to produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to meet the needs of the world's expected 9 billion-strong population." This would require something like 1.5 landmasses of South America to feed, we may expect much more deforestation.

Because of this, scientists have been looking for solutions to improve the agriculture.

[conradxu]

@curingaging00 continued:

Contraception is a civilised solution and can only work in a civilised world.

This would mean education needs to be expanded, but that takes time. Now, if education was implemented everywhere, contraception taught, manufactored and sold cheap/free. There would still be the population of 7 billion. taking that everyone uses contraception. It would take around a century for us to downsize.

Enough time for a war to start from dwindling resources or enviromental collapse

[conradxu]

@curingaging00 contraception would definitely be a solution. but the problem is that you are ignoring the externalities.

You even said, 1/5th or 1/4th of all births in developing nations are unwanted or unplanned. Logically, its not that the people were uneducated about sex but rather that they live in a country ruled by anarchy. where rebels and gangs drive around raping villagers. I highly doubt they would stop to put on a condom.

[curingaging00]

To fix this problem we do not nessecerily mean "one child policy" although I will admit that has been effective in the past, there is a much better way, increase access to education, family planning, contraception to women in developing countries.

Educated women have less children, and have them later in life, are able to care for them better, and are more likely to use contraception when they feel it is not the time to have children.

[curingaging00]

@conradxu no, the solution is contraception, increase global access to condoms, family planning, studies show 1/5th 1/4th of all births of the developing world are unwanted/unplanned pregnancies, global birthrate is something like 2.6 or 2.7 births per mother, for a stable population it would only have to drop to about 2.3 births per mother.

[jsc10846]

@conradxu i dont see you volunteering you or your family... douche