Planet might be unrecognizable by 2050
Options
Huruma
Members Posts: 2,284 ✭✭✭
A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an "unrecognizable" world by 2050, researchers warned at a major US science conference Sunday.
The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, "with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia," said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.
To feed all those mouths, "we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000," said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
"By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable" if current trends continue, Clay said.
The swelling population will exacerbate problems, such as resource depletion, said John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University.
But incomes are also expected to rise over the next 40 years -- tripling globally and quintupling in developing nations -- and add more strain to global food supplies.
People tend to move up the food chain as their incomes rise, consuming more meat than they might have when they made less money, the experts said.
It takes around seven pounds (3.4 kilograms) of grain to produce a pound of meat, and around three to four pounds of grain to produce a pound of cheese or eggs, experts told AFP.
"More people, more money, more consumption, but the same planet," Clay told AFP, urging scientists and governments to start making changes now to how food is produced.
Population experts, meanwhile, called for more funding for family planning programs to help control the growth in the number of humans, especially in developing nations.
"For 20 years, there's been very little investment in family planning, but there's a return of interest now, partly because of the environmental factors like global warming and food prices," said Bongaarts.
"We want to minimize population growth, and the only viable way to do that is through more effective family planning," said Casterline.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/planet-could-unrecognizable-2050-experts-20110220-120547-402.html
As if that wasn't bad enough, half of the planet will be inhospitable to human life by the 24th century :
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/05/half-the-earth-uninhabitable-in-2300-study-says.php
Maybe even earlier than the 24th century :
http://www.350resources.org.uk/2010/10/22/global-warming-up-12%C2%B0c-half-the-world-will-be-uninhabitable/
I'll never bring children into the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrrpMNLEhk4Comments
-
Read this on yahoo.
I think it's over blown, it will be bad, but not that bad. As for the 24th century stuff, that's if we continue at the same way, which we can't because we'll die off by then in large numbers and oil would of done been gone. -
Fear..........
-
Thats that ? ...the countries that's contributing jackshit the ones that's gonna tip the scale. Need to implement as a one-child policy or some ? like China.
-
Only logical solution is to drastically reduce the human population to a sustainable level. This is why I support the Illuminati.
-
Population growth is cyclical. The mainstream demography narrative says that 200 years from now there will be fewer people on earth than there are now.
-
Swiffness! wrote: »Only logical solution is to drastically reduce the human population to a sustainable level. This is why I support the Illuminati.
X : ThaChozenWun -
LOL at being supporting a one child policy or a sustainable population. Like life would freeze and time would stay still if ? forbid something happened to yourself. I Do agree there are a lot of waste of life and space out there, but take a look at yourself first. Ain't no one hear winning a nobel peace prize and finding a cure for whatever is hammerin down on the human race.
-
playmaker88 wrote: »Fear..........
Concern.
Humans don't have to 'make it',I don't know why people assume that they do/will. Humans are not untouchable. I'd be willing to bet that ? sapiens will survive global warming, at least in the next few centuries, but what will the quality of life for future humans and other animals be like?oil would of done been gone.
That's a good point but anthropogenic global warming would progress even if humanity were wiped off the face of the planet today. I remember reading that sea levels will rise for the next 1000 years as a result of the green house gas emissions we've already produced. -
That's a good point but anthropogenic global warming would progress even if humanity were wiped off the face of the planet today. I remember reading that sea levels will rise for the next 1000 years as a result of the green house gas emissions we've already produced.
Yea the effects of it will continue for a long time, but it won't progressively worsen and a fast pace.
The population and income though there seems to be no hope as it goes hand in hand. You can't just keep creating tens of thousands of new jobs every year because those coming into the workforce far outnumber those retiring, especially now that most people have to skip retirement and continue to afford meds and ? .
