How many people in the world is enough?

How many people in the world is best for our survival on the planet earth?

All the hoopla over global warming has made cynics of much of the world’s population that cares enough to be interested. All the charlatans and naysayers who prophesize doom come across as the latest version of what happened as long ago as the dark ages. Those who profit from all this, as well as the most recently “fact check” ignorant reverberaters of all this, are no more than profiteers and alarmists. While they have to make a living, so do we. The mix of western scientists motivated by money and income from grants, mixed with politics motivated by charlatans and just dumb media in the western world, can confuse even politicians. Bottom line, would anybody move or spend money on what they know and read today about global warming? That some politicians do spend “public” money and issue “public” rules says much. They too have families and lives and common sense.

Most will agree, I think, that we humans can get to a point where there are just too many of us. To take an extreme, today’s rough number of 6.5 billion humans may be OK, but if we get to, let’s say 9 billion people, that may be just too many. And it is not just the number of humans, but the number of cooking fires, the number of transportation means, the number of farm animals we raise, the amount of energy we use, and general quality of life ideas that are spreading to all humans. It is fair to say, I think, that there is a limit to what is good for the world and we humans.

So in all the present hoopla about “global warming” and humans’ part in all this discussion, consider the sources, and their motivations, and the qualifications.That we can have a discussion is a major improvement in society since the dark ages that we can consider the sources. And as always, take council of your fears. In modern talk, our imagination is our worst enemy.

Now for the downside. If we don’t have too many people on the earth today, we may be getting closer. The idea has much to do with our human demands, which are increasing it seems, multiplied by an increasing number of humans. And it is not just energy use (like oil, gas, nuclear, earth heat, and “renewable”), but things like even more bovines and chickens and ducks farting methane into the atmosphere. Even conservation should come into play, as it does not stop keeping us seasonally warm and cool at home; it only slows the process of putting our human comfort heat into our atmosphere.

If you buy all this theme, then one can buy the theme of an “eastern” solution. After all, most humans are being made in the eastern third world. Anything that slows down birth rates can be considered a good idea, from a western point of view. Here’s an idea. The old social security idea of having a large family of kids to take care of you in old age could be changed to a more western retirement scheme. Probably someone will come up with a better idea in the next 100 years. The alternative is chaos.