Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Global Warming: Man-Made or Natural?

Here's a catch all reply

Yup, I think we're all agreed - overpopulation is the issue we have to deal with.

Now, as far as ImranCan's idea that overpopulation is exacerbated by 3rd world living conditions – I would mostly agree, but with a slight clarification.

I don't think it's because there is no running water(specifically), that people are having 6 kids. I think it's because in agrarian economy, children are either seen as ways to increase family income, or as retirement funds. As you move away from an agrarian economy to an industrial one, children don't have the same affect; in fact they become more of a financial liability. Additionally, in an industrial economy women can have a greater positive financial impact to the family, by getting a job outside the home, rather than having children. Working women yields educated women, which we all know leads to even greater reductions in birthrates.

So I guess, I'd rather say “the lack of industrialization in the 3rd world is exacerbating the global population issue.”

So what is stopping industrialization from occurring in many 3rd world countries. Here's a list of the top of my head (won't be complete)
1) Transportation networks - rail, road, ports. Need to move goods
2) Water/waste water infrastructure. Need plenty of clean water
3) Electricity, and electricity distribution networks. Industry lives on power
4) Intellectual property and physical property rights. No industry is going to set up shop, if it's going to be stolen from them (Venezuela?)
6) Extensive financial rulesets - try to stop corruption
7) Biggest one (I think). Access to 1st world markets. They have to have somebody to sell their "stuff" to. This is why trade tariffs should come down. Any political party that is protectionist is enemy #1 in my books.

One final requirement - and this is something I haven't totally fleshed out. But I'm beginning to think it would be very tough for any 3rd country to make the leap to a capitalistic democracy without having some portion of the transition period being ruled by an authoritative government (aka dictator). There's probably too many difficult decisions to make in that transition, while still worrying about being elected. This is just a thought however.


Remember though - economics is not a zero sum game, for every winner, there does not have to be a loser. Yes, energy companies will profit from increased energy consumption. There will be some that profit enormously. But where would the developed world be (and in reality, all of humanity), if we consumed no energy? I don't care to live in the Middle Ages



Let me phrase this question a different way - we can industrialize the 3rd world, drastically bringing up their standard of living. Stop the 3-5 million deaths per year that are caused by improper sanitation/drinking water supplies. Stop the starvation. Connect the 4-5 billion people with the developed world, and tap into that massive pool of human ingenuity to tackle issues of today (and tomorrow). Greatly reduce war and other humanitarian disasters (compare the locations of such occurrences with how well "connected" the locale is). And generally create a much more "just" and "equal" world. But live with increased CO2 emissions.

Or, we could drastically cut CO2 emissions, convert all transportation to hydrogen based, mothball every coal fired plant in the world, put a halt on any new ones, and only allow nuclear/hydro/solar/wind plants. (How many solar panels do you think you'd need to run a steel foundry? How many nuclear plants do you think Bangladesh can afford?). All in hopes of stopping CO2 caused global warming, which is a hypothesis based on a 25 year warming trend seen in data collected from a spatially(and temporally) heterogeneous monitoring network placed in changing land covers, with changing operation techniques.

I'll need a much better reason than GW to sentence the developing world to the status quo.