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My question is 'what does he mean by "sustain"?
You seem to be talking about the almost-complete destruction of the human race from the face of the Earth.
However, a poor political situation, unless it leads to all out nuclear war, is unlikely to cause a significant (relatively) reduction in human life. A worldwide breakdown in political order (coups everywhere, no government) could however change human society suffiently enough to be the end of a sustained order. Same could be with a highly destructive yet conventional weapon WWIII.
Socially is even more complicated. I suppose here we are talking about war that has come about through terrorism leading, again, to a breakdown of most presently acception societal conventions and institutions. Again, unless this ended in war, I don't see the human race dying out because of this, merely being drastically rearranged.
Environmentally there are a lot of options- catastrophic environmental breakdown brought on by asteroid impact (as you said), nuclear war on a wide scale, or a complete disregard for any bans on environmentally dangerous emissions or chemicals.
However, I think combining these forces makes everything a lot more likely: Say, a societal breakdown brought on by extreme terrorism that becomes economic and national (fear, racism, violence) distruction. This could lead to political breakdown in various key countries that in turn results in largely conventional war or wars that disrupt enough of the world's organization to cause environmental damage on a wide scale.
Result: The slow extinction of the human race.
That seems somewhat more likely.
However, I think we're going to last at least the next hundred years because I am optimistic that we can't be that stupid on such a large scale.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Politically, something along the lines of Peter's solution in the Shadow series would be great. Now all we need is a genius motivated by nothing more than pride and we'll have a good start. Oh, and we also need some child warrior geniuses to act as the new world arms currency.
The social and political issues are largely impossible to seperate. I don't really have a genuine answer to either problem short of receiving a console that lets me play with humanity like a really, really big collection of action figures. Even then, the solution would best be left out of my hands.
My answer to the environmental issue depends on how seriously you view the ideas of impending oil/water crises, and what you think the impact of those crises will be. If you take peak oil seriously, the only viable framework of a solution I can come up with is to drastically reduce our dependence on oil for anything other than the production of plastics and, by association, sanitation, since most of modern medicine relies pretty heavily on those two things.
I've never heard a solution to the water crisis that didn't involve the mass production of desalinization & water treatment plants, and/or mass water recycling. I've never heard a viable solution, period.
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I'm sure there are lots of things that have the possibility of destroying a large enough portion of the population to make a major impact on our ability to sustain the lifestyle we are accustomed to.
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I'll chime in early and remind everyone that Hawking is a positivist, and believes (or at least did when he published his last book) that the human race would continue to evolve into the unforseable future. Likely these questions were to promote thought on HOW TO sustain our civilization, not a despairing cry of hopelessness.
T_Smith, actually Hawking's voice is supposed to have a "American" accent, although it sounds more like a man trying to swallow an entire grapefruit.
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I just read a dated story about him. His voice machine is getting very old. Its fragile and they don't make some of the parts anymore. Yet he can't find another one with a sound he likes, and all of his fans know him by this one.
"I considered getting one with a French accent. But then my wife would have killed me."
He's looking for something in software.
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People need to stop shopping at Wal-Mart for the low prices on crap they don't need. I do it a few times a year too, so we're all part of the problem. But unless people are capable of that one step, I don't think it really matters if our civilization continues. One result is that scientific research will have to go back to the the chance collision of wealth and leisure with genuine curiosity. That, and a great guy like Hawking would probably not be heard above the Schwarzeneggers and Clintons of the world. I mean, I know he already sort of isn't. But it would be a world ruled solely by might and charisma.
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Ah, my pet subject! Averting Human Extinction! Yay!
Right now the human species is like a heedless adolescent, doing what feels good at the moment, and counting on the future to take care of itself. Like an adolescent, we're somewhat suicidal, or else we think we're immortal, or something like that.
The way we will survive is that we are going to have to grow up, as a species, and start noticing all the effects of our choices, even the secondary and tertiary ones, and start making wiser choices.
Things like the hurricane hitting New Orleans, which everyone foresaw years in advance, but nobody wanted to take responsibility for ahead of time, and spend the money required to avert it: that was an adolescent choice that cost us far more in the long run (not to mention the loss of life). In our adulthood the human species will spend the money up front for things like that.
Asteroid defense is another one. We know the chances of this are fairly high compared to things like airline crashes. We know that it would be devastating. It costs a lot to watch out for them, catch them in advance, and avert them, but nothing at all like it will cost to clean up after one hits (assuming we any of us survive). We will take care of stuff like that in advance when we grow up.
Another one is overfishing, and how that has damaged the health and size of the catch. We will manage these things so that in the long term, the fish populations get healthier and thrive in numbers. Then there will be plenty for all. Instead, we grab what we can of an ever-dwindling resource, and make the problem worse. Adolescents!
Terrorism: technology will continue to advance and put more and more power in the hands of fewer and fewer people. The only way for the earth to survive in such a situation is for all of us to take responsibility for the health, happiness, and safety of all the others. No more ignoring the third world because they are far away and make no difference in our lives and it's too big a problem to tackle anyway. All the human species are our brothers and sisters. If governments are oppressive, if people are starving, anywhere, it's just as though it were happening right down the street from us. The world is small now. We have to look out for our neighbors. We are one community, whether we realize it or not, whether we want it or not. Only when everyone has a decent chance at a good lawful life will an unlawful life of destructiveness cease to be attractive.
One basket: the earth is far too small a basket for the human species to put all its eggs into. We must colonize the solar system, and work toward having self-sufficient colonies scattered as widely as possible. This will be awesome for a number of reasons. It will open up vast realms of resources to our benefit, so that everyone can become rich by today's standards (just as all of us are rich by the egyptian pharoah's standards). It will give the species elbow room, so that if groups of us aren't happy with the systems where we are, we can move out into free territory and make our own systems. It will let us experiment in all the myriad ways that humans can be. This will lead to a great flowering of civilization, arts, music, technology, ideas, philosophy, everything! It's gonna be a great life, as much superior to our lives as ours are to ancient egyptian slaves. I can't wait!
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The question I have then, is how can we as a society "grow up?" Better education? Upbringing? Politics? Or do we have to have a horrendous situation occur in humanity for us to wake up and realize that what we are doing is not enough?
I believe we are working towards bettering ourselves, but as you mentioned, there is a lot of growing up to do. I remember seeing a documentary on the Sci Fi channel about a guy who is working on a satellite with a high density enough to create a gravitational pull that would effect an asteroid, thus kind of "tugging" it in a different path. Of course, thats in the planning/budgeting/designing stage.
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I still feel that the downfall of the human race will be a virus (or multiple viruses). We don't really have any mechanism to stop a quickly evolving, easily transmittable virus - nor are we likely to find such a mechanism.
If one were to be weaponized and distributed in a high population center, that could be the end of civilization as we know it and could knock us back to human population levels the world hasn't seen in over five thousand years.
Avian flu is a likely candidate if it mutates enough to be easily transmittable between humans. But what if an HIV/AIDS-like virus was created or evolved to have airborne or water borne transmission.
We aren't really equipped at all to handle an outbreak of that potent a virus on a large scale.
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Nathan, I don't know for sure how. The internet is an important tool that will help. There is a lot of potential there to reach most of humanity, in the forseeable future. What I see so far is that we have to reach out to others, and also we have to live up to the standards that we know about, that we are taught; the standards about being all one in heart, and giving of our substance to help each other, mourning with those who mourn and comforting those who stand in need of comfort, bearing each others burdens so that they will be made light, and taking care of all the children, seeing that they have proper food and shelter, education and medical care. It is something we could do now if we wanted to. It goes by planting seeds, and letting them sprout, by starting the tiny things that can snowball into something big. Faith has that generative capacity, like life. That's all I see now. It's very vague.
FlyingCow, you're so right that we aren't prepared to deal with viruses. Luckily they almost always seem to spare some people. So even if the population is cut to 1/100th what it was, and civilization breaks down for a while, I feel sure it will be able to reestablish itself when the survivors dig out. The population has always quickly sprung back after widespread scourges like this. Viruses will be a tremendous challenge, and can change the way life as we know it is lived, but I'm less afraid of them making us extinct than I am of other extinction pathways.
Of course, that could just be my bliss borne of ignorance.
We really need to have lots of smart people giving all these things a whole lot of thought.
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quote: Nathan, I don't know for sure how. The internet is an important tool that will help. There is a lot of potential there to reach most of humanity, in the forseeable future. What I see so far is that we have to reach out to others, and also we have to live up to the standards that we know about, that we are taught; the standards about being all one in heart, and giving of our substance to help each other, mourning with those who mourn and comforting those who stand in need of comfort, and taking care of all the children, seeing that they have proper food and shelter, education and medical care. It is something we could do now if we wanted to. It goes by planting seeds, and letting them sprout, by starting the tiny things that can snowball into something big. Faith has that generative capacity, like life. That's all I see now. It's very vague.
So essentially, be the best person you can be and more and the rest will follow? I see how that would work, over time. I like this way best, provided we have time.
The fastest way to go about uniting the world in fixing its problems and growing up is to have a global disaster of some kind, be it viral, celestial, political or ecological. It seems to be the more of a threat something is, the more united we become in dealing with it. So eventually, it's my thought, that at one point a problem will become so big as to be undeniable by all factions of the earth, and with a combined effort can be solved and dealth with on a global scale. My fear, though, is that by the time it becomes undeniable, the damage is done, and we'll be picking up pieces as we solve it.
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quote:Originally posted by T_Smith: So essentially, be the best person you can be and more and the rest will follow? I see how that would work, over time. I like this way best, provided we have time.
There's definitely more to it than that, but I don't see those parts yet. We have to actually come up with ways to make it happen, and be successful at it. It's not enough just to try. We have to keep coming up with new ideas, and trying them out to see if they work. Above all, we never get to throw our hands up and say it's too difficult.
I can see about 10 fronts we can be working on at once. Luckily, we aren't alone. Lots of people are quietly working on the problems.
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That's the real inconvenient truth that no one wants to deal with. I hate it when I hear people claiming that "the earth can support (more than the current number) of people, and population will level off." Bull. People like to make babies, people don't want to die, and medical technology is increasing fertility rates and extending lifespans. Population will continue to grow until we exhaust the resources that keep us alive. The question is not whether there will be a crash, but how bad will it be?
In the meantime, >6 billion people are destroying the planet, and people are claiming that we can support more people? The logic is the same as someone claiming that because there is gas in your tank, you can drive forever. We can support the current level of population only as long as the resources hold out, but they are running out.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Yep. Overpopulation, and no-one is even trying to talk about it.
If the the current population continues to grow at the current rate, human beings will be standing SHOULDER TO SHOULDER in just 500 years. That of course, will be LONG after the population becomes unsustainable.
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quote:If the the current population continues to grow at the current rate, human beings will be standing SHOULDER TO SHOULDER in just 500 years. That of course, will be LONG after the population becomes unsustainable.
At 1.4% a year growth (the 2000 rate, the U.N. estimates it has dropped since then but I can't find it), there will be 6.8 trillion people on the planet at that point.
If you give everyone a 5' square (which allows the vast majority of people to extend there arms without touching a neighbor, as long as they use the 7' diagonal of the square, you fit 1,115,136 people in a square mile.
That means we could get 6.67 trillion people in the U.S. alone (assuming every square mile of U.S. land territory was available).
Of course not every square mile is available, but this is just the U.S. There's no way 6.8 trillion people have to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Not that I think 6.8 trillion could be supported on earth. It's just the shoulder-to-shoulder fact that isn't accurate.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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And that's not even taking into account the vertical possibilities. We could give everyone alive today a nice cube in the grand canyon over 1.75 meters on a side and have lots of space left over. Just ask google what (52 billion cubic yards / 7 billion) ^ (1/3) is.
edit: this wouldn't be exactly comfortable, but people could certainly fit
quote:That of course, will be LONG after the population becomes unsustainable.
Too late. It's already unsustainable.
You can't simply claim that you can mathematically divide sustainable resources by the current number of people. You have to consider the unstustainable resources and the rate at which we are using them up. Also look at the rate at which the source of sustainable resources (i.e. ecosystems) are being destroyed.
It's not a matter of how many people we can support, but how much time we've got left given the system we've got.
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quote:When was the last time humans actually succeeded in causing "current trends" to "continue"?
I'm not sure I understand the question. The "current trend" of human population growth and territorial expansion has lasted as long as human history, with only a couple of minor blips like the black plague to interrupt it. The current rate of growth is unusually high, but there is no precedent for population reduction.
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The population is of critical concern, of course. The good news is that in developed countries, the population would actually be falling if it weren't for immigration from other places. If we give everyone access to birth control and allow them to have the number of children they want, then the population will stabilize and begin dropping. That's another reason why it's crucial that we not leave the third world with no help. Most of the environmental degradation is happening now in the third world.
Alabama, my state, has more forests each year than it did the year before, thanks to the paper companies and lumber companies who are managing its forests as a renewabla resource. They are reforesting faster than they cut it down.
posted
The environmental degradation in developing countries is largely happening because they supply developed countries to support our habits and appetites. It's overly simplistic to say that if all countries would develop to U.S./European standards that the degredation would end. There would simply be nowhere else to exploit.
Access to birth control is essential of course, but I think that's overly simplistic too. Didn't Indira Ghandi try that? There are cultural and religious norms that need to be overcome. Social momentum is hard to change.
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BTW, New York also has more forest each year than it had before, but it's disengenuous to say it's because we are managing forests as a renewable resource. The real reason is that New York was essentially deforested by the early 20th century, and the current increase is simply a matter of comparison. We still have virtually no old growth forest and the forest that does exist hardly constitutes a healthy ecosystem.
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There are definitely a lot of problems to be overcome. Are you saying we should despair? What are the solutions to our problems? We need a plan, and lots of good ideas.
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I still say a cheap environmentally safe _reliable_ fuel would end up solving the majority of the ecosystem problems, and would even give way to a more efficient space traveling program.
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Magical unicorns who carry us around on their backs would solve a lot of problems too. What magic fuel would you suggest T_Smith?
In my mind, a lot of the problems we face are such that nobody wants to seriously consider them. Most people expect to be able to have as many children as they want and follow any ideology they choose. I don't see how we can survive if this continues. We can't have an unlimited number of people, and we can't coexist with ideological groups who see everyone else as outsiders.
I don't think there's a simple solution to either problem, but I also think most people won't even consider either as something to discuss. Start telling someone that they have to limit the number of children they have, or that they can't practice their religion, and forget about any kind of discussion.
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Well, if I knew the answer to your question, I'm pretty sure I'd be a billionaire. Let me check. Nope, still dirt poor. I meant theoritical fuel, dude. No need to be sarcastic.
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Mighty Cow, I don't think we need to limit the population by draconian means, nor do I think we need to force people to have some particular ideology. I think those cures would be worse than the disease they're trying to prevent. I think the whole concept of adulthood for our species involves teaching correct principles and letting people largely govern themselves.
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Mighty Cow, I don't think we need to limit the population by draconian means, nor do I think we need to force people to have some particular ideology. I think those cures would be worse than the disease they're trying to prevent. I think the whole concept of adulthood for our species involves teaching correct principles and letting people largely govern themselves.
How would we go about teaching humanity those principles?
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Tatiana, I'm not suggesting any means, draconian or otherwise. I don't think we should force people to have any particular ideology either, except that we should expect people to respect one another, and not attempt to kill or convert them in order to consider them worthy of occupying the same planet.
I agree that people need to learn correct principles, but I doubt it will happen. There are simply too many greedy, self-centered, opportunistic, short-sighted people.
How do we prevent people from trying to better things for themselves at the expense of others, when we live in a system of limited resources?
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Nathan, I think that's the thing we have to figure out. There are probably many different answers. I have a lot of ideas about things we could do that might make a huge difference. No one person can do it by themselves, but what one person *can* do is begin things that have the potential to snowball and morph into something bigger, according to how good they are as ideas, and how well they work and are accepted. By no means do we know all the answers at this point. We will learn by doing.
The key, it seems to me, is letting go of the idea that it can't be done, that we can never change, that it's just too hard, and not worthwhile to try. We are part of the grand sweep of history, and the choices we make do make a huge difference downstream. We are not alone, there are lots of people who want the same things we want, and are working toward them. We don't have to do it all ourselves.
MightyCow, I'm glad you aren't suggesting what I thought you were suggesting. I think if we start with the thought that it's impossible for people to change, then we will be making a self-fulfilling prophesy. Resources are not limited in idea-space. What was once worthless sand is now silicon computer chips, for instance. If you look at all that humanity has done, starting as a few hundred thousand plains apes gleaning a meager existence from the savannah, then you will see that we are only limited by our ideas.
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quote:The key, it seems to me, is letting go of the idea that it can't be done, that we can never change, that it's just too hard, and not worthwhile to try.
Agreed. I'm the first to admit that the problem seems so large that it paralyzes me.
It seems to me that the most important aspect of a solution is education. People have to understand the concept of a finite world. People just don't see that.
It would be nice if the Catholic church could see that population control is a larger moral issue than birth control. They are in a unique position to educate people who are already receptive to their teachings. I don't know of a centralized equivalent for Islam and Hinduism, but all three have to adopt a platform of population reduction.
The next major issue is land use management, starting with agriculture. We need to allow developing countries to produce their own food, rather than growing cash crops or manufacturing products for export. That also means that developed countries need to stop converting farmable land to urban sprawl so that we can produce our own food locally, instead of relying on imported food. This means we need to change our view of agriculture so that rich, lazy americans recognize that it's our responsibility to do the manual labor required to harvest crops.
Also part of land use management is locating producers near consumers, so that we don't have to transport food over great distances. Not only would this reduce fuel costs, but it would also reduce the movement of invasive species. I think it would also improve the quality of communities.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Yep. Overpopulation, and no-one is even trying to talk about it.
If the the current population continues to grow at the current rate, human beings will be standing SHOULDER TO SHOULDER in just 500 years. That of course, will be LONG after the population becomes unsustainable.
Oh, please. There'll always be wars and/or famines before then to lower the population.
Some things you can always count on.
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