I've let this Friday come up with a little bit too little preparation, so instead of a normal post, I'm just going to put up a part of a facebook post that I wrote in the past in response to a friend who stated that they thought that over population was the heart of all the worlds problems. As a Christian he qualified that he didn't mean religious problems, just secular problems. So below is my response.
I apologize, but I do feel compelled to make one religious statement on it first. I would say the exclusive root problem for all of mans woes is original sin. Man saying “I will be as God” in his heart is the root of all present problems, as far as I can tell. However one could say the over population is the most egregious symptom of the root problem. And there is certainly nothing wrong with addressing symptoms by them selves, same as in medical practice, where one must some times relieve the symptoms as they can kill the patient before they even start to address the root problem.
So to look the issue of over population by itself, one should look at what areas of the world that are over populated, and determine how they are doing on provisions for their population. If you look at top countries by population density, you will see that almost all of them are around China, India, and Japan. It would seem very difficult to say that any of those three (or the most of the smaller countries in the area of disputed sovereignty such as Singapore) are doing badly on the resources front. China just passed up Japan as the #2 economy in the world, which is primarily due to their import/export imbalanced. That is to say that the export much more than they import. In fact they seem to be facing a crisis of over production. With the global economy being what it is countries simply do not have the money to continue purchasing all of the goods that they have been making. They may been on the verge of a crisis with food production as well, but that would be because of the explosion in the manufacturing market making it more profitable for farmers to stop farming and move into the city to get work at a factory. They are still exporting a great deal of food to the entire world, so I would find it a little hard to say that their theorized on coming crisis will be too great. Japan with their “lost decade” in the 90's still remained the 2nd largest economy in the world in front of all European nations until just this month when China passed them up. India is in the worst shape of the three by far, but even they are improving rather than getting worse, with a rapidly expanding manufacturing base. And the exports of all three of these nations is not limited to “produced” goods, but includes natural resources such as steel and oil as well. If you remember when Bush was running for office (I can't remember which time), he made an attempt to win MN votes by promising to put a hefty tariff on imported steel. If I'm not mistaken that steel mostly came from Japan.
So I feel like you cannot say that either food or metal based resources are, on a global scale, in short supply. There are certainly local examples of people running out of these resources, but that would more be a problem of distribution, and in most cases corrupt governments.
Oil is a different matter. There is a scare which is effecting the commodities markets on oil. This is due to rumors that Saudi Arabia has greatly overstated their supply. With them being the #2 largest oil producer in the world this is a very large problem. However, the problem here does not seem to be a lack of oil existing in the world but more where and how oil is being produced. Both the #1 and #3 nations on the list of oil producing nations (Russia and the US), have vast oil fields that have not been touched due to regulations, politics, and the nature of the oil. Saudi Arabia has sweet crude oil vs the oil grade found in the shale oil fields. Because of this they have been able to produce and sell us oil cheaper than we can get it out of the ground ourselves. However as refining processes improve this is becoming more and more irrelevant, as demonstrated by Canada (the #1 importer of oil to the US) who's oil reserves are very similar in grade to the shale. So in all the untapped oil in the world is by all accounts greater in supply then the sum total of oil in the reserves that we are currently using. The shale by itself is estimated to have more oil than all of the middle east. So I feel safe in saying that we are not running out of oil, and any resource crisis that may be coming in that regard has more to do with mismanaged resources than from a lack of them due to overpopulation.
As for water, I'm fairly convinced that the whole scarcity thing is a propaganda movement aimed at selling low flow toilets and other green products. The thing with water is that it is not really ever created or destroyed by anything man does. You might say that in the case of water used in nuclear power plants which is sealed up in barrels never to be opened again is “destroyed”, as it will never become rain again, but even that is a very insignificant amount (plus nuclear power plants have 0 air pollution resulting in less/no acid rain). Areas that are effected by lack of water seem to mostly be having issues with distribution as well rather than problems with over population. One could even argue that it is a lack of population that causes an area to be the most desperate for water. If you look at the areas that get the least water in the world, namely deserts, you will see that they are the most sparsely populated. If on the other hand you look at what is now modern day Israel as a case study, you will see that before the 20th century, it was mostly populated by nomadic tribes, and the land would be mostly described as a desert. Then in the second half of the 20th century they had a population explosion, and now are one of the most densely populated countries in the world (945 people/square mile vs the US's 83 people/square mile). It is also one of the most fertile areas in the world receiving a great deal more water annually than it did before.
Another interesting side note is that at the moment the total world population is going down rather than up.
I apologize, but I do feel compelled to make one religious statement on it first. I would say the exclusive root problem for all of mans woes is original sin. Man saying “I will be as God” in his heart is the root of all present problems, as far as I can tell. However one could say the over population is the most egregious symptom of the root problem. And there is certainly nothing wrong with addressing symptoms by them selves, same as in medical practice, where one must some times relieve the symptoms as they can kill the patient before they even start to address the root problem.
So to look the issue of over population by itself, one should look at what areas of the world that are over populated, and determine how they are doing on provisions for their population. If you look at top countries by population density, you will see that almost all of them are around China, India, and Japan. It would seem very difficult to say that any of those three (or the most of the smaller countries in the area of disputed sovereignty such as Singapore) are doing badly on the resources front. China just passed up Japan as the #2 economy in the world, which is primarily due to their import/export imbalanced. That is to say that the export much more than they import. In fact they seem to be facing a crisis of over production. With the global economy being what it is countries simply do not have the money to continue purchasing all of the goods that they have been making. They may been on the verge of a crisis with food production as well, but that would be because of the explosion in the manufacturing market making it more profitable for farmers to stop farming and move into the city to get work at a factory. They are still exporting a great deal of food to the entire world, so I would find it a little hard to say that their theorized on coming crisis will be too great. Japan with their “lost decade” in the 90's still remained the 2nd largest economy in the world in front of all European nations until just this month when China passed them up. India is in the worst shape of the three by far, but even they are improving rather than getting worse, with a rapidly expanding manufacturing base. And the exports of all three of these nations is not limited to “produced” goods, but includes natural resources such as steel and oil as well. If you remember when Bush was running for office (I can't remember which time), he made an attempt to win MN votes by promising to put a hefty tariff on imported steel. If I'm not mistaken that steel mostly came from Japan.
So I feel like you cannot say that either food or metal based resources are, on a global scale, in short supply. There are certainly local examples of people running out of these resources, but that would more be a problem of distribution, and in most cases corrupt governments.
Oil is a different matter. There is a scare which is effecting the commodities markets on oil. This is due to rumors that Saudi Arabia has greatly overstated their supply. With them being the #2 largest oil producer in the world this is a very large problem. However, the problem here does not seem to be a lack of oil existing in the world but more where and how oil is being produced. Both the #1 and #3 nations on the list of oil producing nations (Russia and the US), have vast oil fields that have not been touched due to regulations, politics, and the nature of the oil. Saudi Arabia has sweet crude oil vs the oil grade found in the shale oil fields. Because of this they have been able to produce and sell us oil cheaper than we can get it out of the ground ourselves. However as refining processes improve this is becoming more and more irrelevant, as demonstrated by Canada (the #1 importer of oil to the US) who's oil reserves are very similar in grade to the shale. So in all the untapped oil in the world is by all accounts greater in supply then the sum total of oil in the reserves that we are currently using. The shale by itself is estimated to have more oil than all of the middle east. So I feel safe in saying that we are not running out of oil, and any resource crisis that may be coming in that regard has more to do with mismanaged resources than from a lack of them due to overpopulation.
As for water, I'm fairly convinced that the whole scarcity thing is a propaganda movement aimed at selling low flow toilets and other green products. The thing with water is that it is not really ever created or destroyed by anything man does. You might say that in the case of water used in nuclear power plants which is sealed up in barrels never to be opened again is “destroyed”, as it will never become rain again, but even that is a very insignificant amount (plus nuclear power plants have 0 air pollution resulting in less/no acid rain). Areas that are effected by lack of water seem to mostly be having issues with distribution as well rather than problems with over population. One could even argue that it is a lack of population that causes an area to be the most desperate for water. If you look at the areas that get the least water in the world, namely deserts, you will see that they are the most sparsely populated. If on the other hand you look at what is now modern day Israel as a case study, you will see that before the 20th century, it was mostly populated by nomadic tribes, and the land would be mostly described as a desert. Then in the second half of the 20th century they had a population explosion, and now are one of the most densely populated countries in the world (945 people/square mile vs the US's 83 people/square mile). It is also one of the most fertile areas in the world receiving a great deal more water annually than it did before.
Another interesting side note is that at the moment the total world population is going down rather than up.
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