Everything I wanted to say about global population (short version)

Now is the time for posting the full, albeit abridged, overview on changes in world population.  Previous posts here were snippets on the subject, foreshadowing the present content.
  
I presented the full version as a talk, and it was a lot of fun.  I handed out numbered questions on slips of paper before the talk, and then asked for the questions to be read by the person holding the paper.  I also used full-size cutouts of T3 and TX from Terminator 3 as stand-ins.  An imaginary string became a timeline. 

My wish is that you enjoy the contents as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

Here is the link:
Population: The Unmentioned Elephant in the Living Room



         "How long has THAT been there?

Credit to Debbie Tomassi for the cartoon:  http://www.debbietomassi.com/index.html

Population increase: Is it human progress or human failure?

Some are convinced that continuing increases in world population are a human failing that will have disastrous consequences for the future. They believe that major destruction of global life and society will occur. They foresee an apocalypse. You know those movie scenes set in a murky and almost deserted city. Or a barren desert wasteland with occasional life-support oases overrun by despotic criminals preying on the helpless.

At the other extreme, some don't believe there is a problem with overpopulation and don't believe it will lead on to a diminishing quality of life on earth. In a report from the Cato Institute(*) a few years ago, the lead comment was that there 'is no population problem. Population growth is the result of the plunging death rate and increasing life expectancy worldwide. That is progress.' Perhaps the writer was trying to be polemic. Whatever the case, nonbelievers say the problem of population increases will self-correct.

These are two quite different scenarios for the decades ahead -- progress to self-correction or sinking into disaster. Which scenario do you think will take over for life on earth? Notice that even now isolated pockets can be found around the earth for each scenario; that is, areas of population self-correction and also of apocalyptic disaster.

Even if self-correction eventually is the outcome, there are many paths to this outcome? The correction may result through disaster rather than through progress. For example the population might reduce as part of apocalyptic events.

Population correction can be reached by good means and by bad means. A likely bad way is to ignore the population problem and seek no adjustments in human behavior. To use an analogy, do we ignore hungry people because either they will find food or they will go away? Do we say that there is no need to worry about a hurricane, because eventually it will pass?

We should all try to be on a good path to population correction. We should all try to be part of a good solution and not just part of the problem. Our job is to find a good path.

(*)Reference: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=5457 (May 9, 1999)

News Update: Our earth is really a giant fishbowl

In the long gone past, everyone who bothered to think about the shape of the earth would tell you it was flat. They would say that it you went far enough, you could fall off the edge. Anyone who spoke otherwise at the time was kooky, or worse, was a heretic.

Then some people, who thought they were smart, made the claim that the earth was a round globe. They argued their point until most people believed it, and they pointed to the images of the earth seen from space. The flat earth types thought the images were fake but were then labeled the kooky ones.

Now we are being told that the global earth view is wrong. Some people, who think they are smart, tell us that the earth is really a giant round fishbowl. In their view, the fish are being crowded out and humans are being crowded in so much as to threaten all life in the fishbowl. Who would have believed it!

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2222548359/sizes/s/