JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
- 16,767
- 2,220
There are ghastly famines repeatedly in various African countries, and extinction threatens many large animal species and not just in Africa.
When have we NOT had famines and species becoming extinct? Sounds like an easy call to me without 'over popullation', no?
It is true Paul Ehrlich (I believe he is still alive!) overstated when this would all happen by several decades. I've noticed this is what everyone does when they see a trend that is clear, like the French Enlightenment (leading to the Revolution) or WWI --- it's clear something is going to happen, so we say it's sure to happen SOON --- but usually it takes ten or 15 more years, and then blows up in half a week, like the collapse of the Soviet Union. I call that delay friction, the friction of things tending to stay the same till finally a sudden collapse.
I agree with this concept you have. I like the shed analogy, where someone is storing dangerous chemicals and stacks of old newspapers in their backyard shed.
That they will eventually have a fire there may be an easy call, but no one can give a date-time for the event. And if you warn them about their carelessness 12 times they later tell you that 12 times you have been wrong and the final fire that justified your warnings was the one time you were right!
roflmao
He predicted massive social unrest and that has certainly happened with Islam rising and a gazumpteen national revolutions all around the globe. The desperate migration of millions to countries with actual economies was the sort of thing he was talking about. I expect world war with North Korea and Iran and that would extend the population calamity. Nuclear weapons are of course an anti-population weapon, which is what you would expect in an over-population crisis.
But these are policy blunders, not inevitable events due to over population