New Zealand. What a back water shit hole.

[Al Bundy 4eva!]

Funny I have not gone near this thread before. Dave has hit the nail on the head of all the world's problems. Over bloody population.
People starving- well some landscapes simply cannot support millions of fast breeding people. Let's say Sudan, Bangladesh and Ethiopia for starters..

These people are poor

The last thing poor people give a fuck about is climate change

Their only mission in life is not to be poor, you know like the Western world a century or so ago

And as for New Zealand, if a tsunami sunk the entire country tommorow, this wouldn't help climate change one bit, we are that insignificant, it's the poor country's in Asia and South America that will decide our fate, but like I said, these people don't give a fuck about climate change, all they care about is not being poor and keeping their kids alive until the next meal, so unless you want to sacrifice yourself and your family for climate change, I doubt these poor country's will want too either


This is where investment in innovation needs to come into play.

[F5 Dave]

Funny I have not gone near this thread before. Dave has hit the nail on the head of all the world's problems. Over bloody population.
People starving- well some landscapes simply cannot support millions of fast breeding people. Let's say Sudan, Bangladesh and Ethiopia for starters. Pollution, Climate change- well maybe 7 billion people driving cars isn't helping. Running out of clean water, running out of oil, running out of food, running out of native wilderness, running out of diversity of animals, running out of oxygen producing forests (Amazon springs to mind). Destroying the very atmosphere that has allowed life to exist on Earth. Nations going to war over this and that. None of this would have happened if we had never exceeded 1 billion people on Earth.

I get sick of science experts saying global warming and all these problems are caused by this and that (fossil fuels, pollutants etc). No it's not. The root cause of most of Life on Earth's problems is over population by humans. I expect that at some point in the future our self-indulgence with breeding will wipe most of mankind out and life on Earth will finally be allowed to heal itself.
I cannot see how NZ with 6 million people, then 8, then 10 million then... can be a nicer place. It was wonderful at 3m.

And you have expanded very nicely into my next intended point. For some strange reason, increasing world population is not brought up as a climate change main driver. Every new consumer. . . Consumes.

[Laava]

Im gunna vote for you Dave

[pritch]

Or maybe it's rampant capitalists like martin shkreli ("pharma bro")who obtained the manufacturing license for the antiparasitic drug Daraprim, a drug that was so cheap it wasn't worth other companies competing, and raised its price by 5,455% (from US$13.50 to $750 per pill).

Exactly and there was also the huge Epipen price increase. Not because of any inbuilt costs, simply because they could. The CEO got paid millions but there was a slight PR setback when it was learned that she was the daughter of a sitting US Senator.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epipen-...ch-speaks-out/

[MD]

^^ sounds like your solution is maybe a vaccine that could sterilize us, or perhaps increase our cancer rate, if only there was a way 90% of us could take it with us knowing..hmmm food for thought

..

Well that's one giant leap for mankind you just took there with my post. No where was I suggesting mass deaths or sterilisations.

My point was we shouldn't have gotten to 7 billion in the first place, or is 9 now? Well, it will be by tomorrow or the following week. Just because we may be able to squeeze every morsel of nutrient out of the Earth doesn't make it right. The idea that if there is unpopulated, unspoilt land somewhere we must rip it up, concrete over it and stick as many people over it as possible, just because science and engineering allow us too, doesn't make it right. We are just one of millions of creatures that deserve to live on Earth. Having technology doesn't mean we can drive all the others to extinction.

Humans are behaving like rats in a barn of grain. Eat, breed, eat, breed, eat, breed,...starve and die (with a bit of cannabalism thrown in at the end for show)

My Brother's partner is from India and goes back regularly. Each time she is shocked at the worsening density of the growing population. She describes it as horrible to go out anywhere. Constantly hard-pressed shoulder to shoulder in every street, shop, building, bus, train... How wonderful. I've been there, it's not pretty and a depressing taste of what an exponentially expanding population will deliver to us all. Yes, sadly there are millions of poor people and they didn't ask to be that way and there's little they can do about it. That is still not an excuse or justification for unsustainable population growth.

The idea that more people create more wealth, so that's got to be good and should continue to infinity and beyond is so short sighted. Step back and look at the bigger picture- life on Earth, a finite place.

Simple maths- 7 billion people consume and create more waste and pollution than 1 billion every could.

[TheDemonLord]

Well that's one giant leap for mankind you just took there with my post. No where was I suggesting mass deaths or sterilisations.

....

Simple maths- 7 billion people consume and create more waste and pollution than 1 billion every could.

With all due respect - What is the solution to that simple Maths Problem as you called it?

If 1 Billion people are less pressure on the Earth than 7 Billion, what is the solution?

It's not a Giant Leap, it is merely the next logical step.

FWIW - I think the Earths population could support significantly more people than currently - the question though is whether we want to live like that.

[R650R]

None of this matters, all that matters is the USD is the Reserve currency of the world so they can print as much money as they need and they have the largest most modern military machine in history to defend the dollar.

USA military is a paper tiger in terms of conventional warfare. They are only good at blowing up third world dictatorships where the CIA installed puppet has gone rogue.
In a proper sustained conflict they will be severely out of ammo and resources in several weeks. Ground forces number far less than at time of gulf war, being a soldier is too much hard work for the new generation.
Naval forces will be made redundant by the latest anti-ship missiles. AirPower needs substantial ground based logistical support.
Western nations don’t have the ability to quickly ramp up production of critical components, too much stuff is outsourced to over seas suppliers who may be adversary’s.
BRICS nations are implementing a new currency that will trump the dollar.

[R650R]

It was only a few decades ago at about 3-4 billion people were panicking about 5billion. Well we quickly smoked past that to 7 billion and a few problems aside she’s all going Tickety boo quite well.
BTW people we are pretty much at 8 Billion these days might wanna update your research sources.

There are ample resources to go round they just need to be better managed. The biggest threat to humanity will be the (deliberate) loss of petroleum powered mass agriculture production. Couple that with eventual banning of meat sources we will quickley give ourselves a Mayan style correction the year the crops fail...

Currently every person on earth could have their own 55,000 M2 of land each.

[MD]

With all due respect - What is the solution to that simple Maths Problem as you called it?

If 1 Billion people are less pressure on the Earth than 7 Billion, what is the solution?

It's not a Giant Leap, it is merely the next logical step.

FWIW - I think the Earths population could support significantly more people than currently - the question though is whether we want to live like that.

I sure wouldn't want to live that way. I'm not proposing we call Thanos to click his fingers. Halting the rate of population growth would be a start. We can of course take no action, continue on so as not to upset people's delicate feelings and freedoms to breed without consequence. Then we can all act surprised when the inevitable catastrophic collapse happens and we discover 'oh bugger, there were consequences, well I never saw that coming'

Nature will press reset if we don't.

[TheDemonLord]

USA military is a paper tiger in terms of conventional warfare. They are only good at blowing up third world dictatorships where the CIA installed puppet has gone rogue.
In a proper sustained conflict they will be severely out of ammo and resources in several weeks. Ground forces number far less than at time of gulf war, being a soldier is too much hard work for the new generation.
Naval forces will be made redundant by the latest anti-ship missiles. AirPower needs substantial ground based logistical support.
Western nations don’t have the ability to quickly ramp up production of critical components, too much stuff is outsourced to over seas suppliers who may be adversary’s.
BRICS nations are implementing a new currency that will trump the dollar.

Gotta disagree here - We haven't seen the US fight in a war that has overwhelming popular support. General Knudsen from WW2 showed that for a genuine existential threat to the US, they can ramp up production relatively quickly.

The other advantage is that US Military equipment still has a significant advantage over other nations. Russia has been shown wanting in the Ukraine, with too many systems that on paper would be equivalent to NATO stuff is just not up-to-scratch.

Not to forget that the issues of Ammo and Resources would apply equally to their adversaries as well. Including the majority of small arms ammunition manufacturing is in the US. Most of the 'shortages' in Ammo we've seen has been in part due to Biden/Lockdown etc. but also due to the US domestic market buying it up. In a full war-time footing, everything would be going the troops.

We've not seen the effect of a near-peer ASM on a western ship. Would the counter-measures be effective? Possibly - also looking at things like SINKEX - even a lowly Oliver Perry class Frigate was able to stay afloat, without any damage control parties after one hell of a beatig.

As for the Air-Force - America rules the Air. Strategic aerial refueling has shown that they can deploy from the US and hit anywhere on earth.

[pritch]

USA military is a paper tiger in terms of conventional warfare. They are only good at blowing up third world dictatorships where the CIA installed puppet has gone rogue.
In a proper sustained conflict they will be severely out of ammo and resources in several weeks.

Maybe. Currently the US munitions industry is operating on a peace time basis. They can crank it up to war time levels quite quickly - what's left of it anyway.

This has already caused problems in Ukraine. The Western munitions manufacturers are working at peace time pace. Ukraine is burning through their products at war time pace.

[onearmedbandit]

I sure wouldn't want to live that way. I'm not proposing we call Thanos to click his fingers. Halting the rate of population growth would be a start. We can of course take no action, continue on so as not to upset people's delicate feelings and freedoms to breed without consequence. Then we can all act surprised when the inevitable catastrophic collapse happens and we discover 'oh bugger, there were consequences, well I never saw that coming'

Nature will press reset if we don't.

There's growing concern worldwide about a slowing birth rate already, Japan was one of the first nations to really take note of this as a genuine issue. Already they are facing a situation where the numbers of those who are retired and no longer productive are growing while the numbers of those who are productive are falling. As the pressures and demands of work increase more and more people are either putting off having families longer, if not entirely.

[F5 Dave]

There's more to Japan's societal problems than just that.

But thier tiny percentage of the world's population is not representative.

[onearmedbandit]

There's more to Japan's societal problems than just that.

But thier tiny percentage of the world's population is not representative.

What's their societal problems got to do with a post about their aging population? I wasn't stating any causation or other issue, simply the fact that their population is aging. Also I didn't say it was exclusively their problem, I simply highlighted them as they were one of the first nations to really start to tackle the issue, also as some of my family are Japanese it's an issue of interest that I've heard discussed many times when over there. A quick google will show you it's now a worldwide issue.

[Berries]

I blame Luxon.