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Despite the use of various contraceptives, the world population keeps ballooning. Will there come a time that all food will be extinct and we cannot feed ourselves or what is the way forward because we are tilling all the virgin lands etc .

According to the UN, the total fertility rate in the world has been going down constantly since the 1950s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate). This means that people are having less and less kids. The total fertility rate for 2010-2015 was 2.36. If I understand correctly, when the fertility rate is at 2.0, this means the population no longer grows, since there are usually about 1 man for each woman. If each woman has two children the population stays about the same. In some countries these numbers are much higher, but even there the numbers are going down. In many countries, populations have negative growth due to this. I don't think the world population will continue to "balloon". Food is not going extinct.

Thinking that the use of various contraceptives will help decrease, the world population is puerile. Another thought is about food. People often think that it might come a time when all food will be extinct and we cannot feed ourselves properly. Again, it is not true. Yes, climate change is an issue. Lands are disappearing and the sea is gaining more territories. We have to cope with this issue for sure. However, the world population has nothing to do with this. Actually, the population is quite stable and fix.  Banks and newspapers love to frighten people. It helps them to make, more money. For that reason, they bring such topics. No ladies! The world population is ok.

we' will have to build an urban planetary civilisation

Global population is not going down, is stabilizing, but we are too many already.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Population_Growth_by_World_Bank_continental_division.png

The issue is that we, as animals, have had unnatural survival behaviour, so the world population grew exponentially from 4 billion in 1974 to 7.5 billion in 2018, almost a duplicated number:

https://i.imgur.com/QDZ6JaF.png

So yes, it is an issue, though. If any other animal had this kind of behaviour, humans will, for sure implement a reproduction control in order to stop the (hypothetical) animal to become a plague.
So, in fact, and given the reproduction behaviour, humankind can be considered as one.

Yes, education can be absolutely something of value in stopping this incredible and crazy increment. But the humans have already altered the earth so much that is starting to be considered at this particular time as a new geological era: Anthropocene.

In only less than a century, human population has exponentially skyrocketed and the world population today is about to reach 8 billion. If population growth is not controlled properly, then someday we will have to take drastic measures to make do with the limited resources the Earth has. We can find another planet, but I don't see that happening in a thousand years at least.

It of course depends on many factors, climate and our behavior mostly, the later of which we can control. Producing meat as a source of food is moronic, we make soils go depleted 15 times faster then when growing crops. We lose 90% of the energy when converting from crops to meat and from meat to energy in our cells. We use enormous amounts of water to keep he meat industry going, which might be the biggest concern we have.

If we would eat only crops we grow we could free up massive amounts of land and stop the soil erosion. The animal industry emits more green house gases then all vehicles on earth, it is the worst possible solution which also speeds up the climate issue, droughts etc . We could save large amounts of water as well and by doing this we will create a sustainable food source capable of  producing food for 8 Bil.

This will give us the time to let  human growth stabilize and we can build grow sky scrapers and produce food vertically so there is no limit on how many we can feed :)

Peace

Gov should should come with strict policy like "one child policy" in china.It will help the gov. in long run.
In this chart you can see that... growth rate is going down..

https://sundial.csun.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Opinionoverpop-696x536.jpg

source:GOOGLE

 WAY FORWARD: GOV. should invest in the agriculture field and invest in research related to food ,So we can able to grow more food in less area.

There is evidence to show that fertility rate drops in more developed countries. The reasons for this are vast but most likely due in part to people having careers and having children later in life combined with an increased level of healthcare and contraceptives for family planning. There is a load of data here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate) that shows the spread of children per family for different parts of the world.

Now, simple math shows that if 2 parents have 2 children to replace them and they in turn have 2 children to replace them that the population will hit a plateau and stop increasing. This is already the case in most Western countries, Australia and Russia, and having one child is strictly enforced in China. It varies by country in Africa and the middle east from 2-3 children per family to 7-8 children per family, and this is mostly due to the lifestyles and society of the people there.

There is also data to show that immigrant families to western countries still maintain high birth rates when first entering a country but within 1 or 2 generations actually lower birth rates to the average for whichever country they settle in. This shows that the problem (if thats what you want to call it) is predominantly influenced by lifestyle and the level of development in a country.

The whole point of this post is this. To fix the problem of overpopulation, developing countries need to increase healthcare levels with access to proper contraceptives and education. They also need to be given options in terms of lifestyle where women are given the opportunity to have a career instead of staying at home to pop out one child after the other.

Hopefully the problem will fix itself over time, but if the more developed countries took more responsibility for the planet that we all share and helped these other countries to develop we could guarantee a solution to this problem without having to find other planets to inhabit.

edit: Another thing I forgot to mention that influences population growth is that people are living longer lives due to better healthcare and diet. Although this will also hit a plateau at some point as human life cannot be extended indefinitely, at least with the current technology that is available, and by time we reach levels where this might be possible it is likely that the birth rate issue will be solved.

edit 2: Just realized that some of my points have already been covered by other posts but I still feel there is valid info in my post.

The problem you describe is very real but humans have evolved to eat meat and eating only crops should not be enforced on the population, luckily a solution already exists and only depends upon consumer adoption when it becomes economically viable to mass produce. I'm sure from your name "the biochemist" you have probably already heard of lab grown meat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultured_meat). If it compares to real meat I would happily make the switch.

We did not evolve to eat meat, we are not carnivores, coulden´t be more wrong. We have been feeding on vegetables or rather nuts fruits and roots ect for millions of years as apes, meat is new on the menu and NO evolution has taken place since then. It is time to stop denying that meat is the worst option and brings only diseases not good health! I am a professional biochemist and this is just plain facts get it right!

If we did not evolve to eat meat why do we have canine teeth, a trait that is observed only in predators?
Why are our eyes located on the front of our face for increased depth perception? another trait observed in carnivore animals to help hunting and chasing prey. If you don't believe me look at the position of a lions eyes, and then look at a rabbit or deer...

We aren't carnivores, you are right in that, but we are definitely omnivores that need a balanced diet of meat and plants.

Im not disagreeing that the meat industry is bad, but to say that people should not eat meat is closed minded.

We have the teeth, guts and stomach PH of frugivores / omnivores and can handle small amounts of meat not 100kg a year, do you think you have the teeth of a wolf??? This is  not accurate!

Animal fats will prevent the production of your own metabolites and shut down the liver and build up fats in the blood and around organs, we cant metabolite or digest meat properly....
Wolves have much larger livers and sharper / different tooth there is no similarities. They eat less often as well, there are nothing suggesting that we should consume meat on a daily basis, fact!

@TheBiochemist, this is getting off topic, but there's so much bullshit in this post that I have to say something.

As previously mentioned, humans have canine teeth. Human stomach pH is typically around 1.5, which is much closer to typical carnivores than herbivores or even other primates.

Humans can handle high-meat diets just fine provided organ meats are included - that's where the vitamins are.

I do! We foxes have identical dentition to wolves, which is why we're in the canid family despite being unrelated to true canines. Yet foxes are omnivores, not carnivores. Why, it's almost as if teeth are not the deciding factor in what a creature can or should eat.

This is completely untrue. Humans can metabolise animal fat just fine.

There are more similarities than differences. The main difference being that humans lack carnassial molars, used by wolves to eat bones and by foxes to cut chicken wire, but again, teeth aren't a deciding factor.

Humans should eat less often too, generally speaking. Humans can survive for weeks without food, in common with carnivores, and intermittent fasting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting) may improve life expectancy.

I've never really understood why vegetarian advocates feel the need to spread such lies, twisted facts, pseudoscience, and general bullshit in their propaganda (and at every opportunity - again, it is off-topic in this thread). Given that there are arguments for vegetarianism that aren't complete bullshit, this sort of behaviour really just makes the cause look bad and is more likely to turn people away from vegetarianism once they learn the truth.

1. A frugivore is a type of omnivore which is what I stated.
2. When did I say 100kg of meat per year was a normal healthy diet? Thats the equivalent of roughly 2kg per week...
3. When did I compare human teeth to wolves?

Our closest relatives are Chimpanzees and although they have a mainly plant based diet, there is plenty evidence of that shows they spend a large portion of their foraging time fishing for termites and ant dipping. Heres a scientific study that you can read that states exactly this http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/miltonlab/pdfs/meateating.pdf (http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/miltonlab/pdfs/meateating.pdf). Go straight to the conclusions if you don't want to read the whole thing. Furthermore, although primates are our closest relatives, the eating habits of each individual species varies. Evidence in that report also shows strong support for the role of animal based micronutrients being critical in human infant development.


If we aren't designed to digest animal fats, how do babies digest their mother's milk? Surely that's a natural intake of animal fats?

This study https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/71/3/682/4729121 (https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/71/3/682/4729121) finds that hunter gatherers would have consumed about 50% of animal based food in their diets and even this vegan blog states that humans are not exclusively herbivores. https://veganbiologist.com/2016/01/04/humans-are-not-herbivores/ (https://veganbiologist.com/2016/01/04/humans-are-not-herbivores/). Although I won't argue the science behind saturated fat being linked to fatty liver disease, saturated fat does not exclusively come from animals and you are cherry picking facts to support your argument.

I may have been a bit short sighted in my original post because after looking into it a bit more its possible out eye position originated to aid us in climbing trees. That doesn't take away from the fact that it aided us in our hunter gatherer lifestyle and it could be a combination of both.

Stop arguing with me about stuff that you clearly have a biased view on. You even said yourself that humans are omnivores, which is exactly what I said.


Apologies if i took this off topic but I guess the whole meat industry thing stems from the sustainability theme of the post

But...

It's so TASTY!!!

Overpopulation will surely have it's toll on the natural resources on our planet.
Pollution and depletion of the natural resources will surely make things harder
for the generations to come. If we don't find alternative solutions to the growing
number of problems, human civilization is at risk. There's always a price to pay.

These ideas were proposed by Paul Erich in the 1970s, virtually identically. None of the dire consequences he predicted have came true, and the world, and the welfare of people, is far, far superior to the 1970s. In spite of great increases in population.

Humans are actively spreading in numbers as of now. What will happen in this society will eventually be chaotic and full of conflicts regarding survival. Even if the government takes lead to starting a new changed world, humans are still humans. No one can ever be a hindrance to this growing population, not even political leaders and officials.  It is human's nature. So therefore, the world is more likely to suffer.

As the human population grows, many new problems arise: from environmental issues; Social Security; economy; society's vices..
It will be a difficult question to ask the government and the people to work together to think and change their behavior

If climate change caused by global warming continues as currently projected, the global human population will probably peak and then decline.

the day when the population will grow into as much as 50 billion may be a few thousand years away, and by then there would have been several world wars, catastrophes, natural calamities, earthquakes, global warming, and floods to reduce the population, perhaps to even a lower value than 0.5 billion.

we suffer world wide food shortage. if our population is keeping larger and larger. and thats not good. the government need to educate people about family planning not family planting. educate about the cause and effect use of contraceptive to avoid prenancy and our polulation will not keep rising.

Small growth still growth and we can't keep growing forever.  I recommend watching this amazing talk about population growth and the math behind growth.

Arithmetic, Population and Energy - a talk by Al Bartlett (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY)

Various contraceptives are still controlling the population meanwhile there are still many young people are not educated well about our various contraceptives and maybe that is the reason why our population keeps ballooning. We can't really stop their lust and a lot of young people now are having sex and not educated well.

Why would you say that survival behavior is unnatural? I think that's just about the most natural behavior you can have. I think you're right when you use the word "animal". These are the same instincts that animals have to reproduce. I don't think the huge boom in world population is due to people suddenly deciding to turn on their survival instinct. The difference is that people actually started surviving. Modern medicine and vaccinations have reduced out mortality rate greatly. Life expectancy is also going up. I suggest not only looking at the history population, but also look at the birth rates. They are going down all over the world. Some projections even predict that world population will start going down again the future.

The world population is keep on increasing exponentially. Hence, there will come a time that we will be dealling problems regarding its effect to us. But, what are these problems that we are about to face? What will be the possible effect of this? Well, I think that if it is the case, then the government will mandatorily require a specific number of children within the family. Then, the supply and distribution of food will be strictly facilitated by the government as scarcity and shortage will possibly happen. Next is, most of the lands will soon be occupy by many. And then, if the population will still grow insanely, then more or less, there will be killings --- as part of nature of survival.

At the rate we’re going, we are already using up the available resources of 1 ½ Earths, even though this planet is all we have at the moment. Unless we can find another Earth where we can move half of our 7 billion population, it’s very obvious that we are using up our finite supply of resources. The effect of growing population will be an increased demand for resources and space. Both of which we are running out of. The Earth just can’t keep up with us and our habit of wastage is not helping.

Like with everything there has to be a limit as to how many people the Earth can hold, and that point will come one day. If there's not enough food to go around, you're going to see the same old conflicts but at much higher scale, war, scapegoating, people fighting among each other because they have no other choice, else they will not survive. Everything will go down hill. Perhaps the government around the world will suggest to people to do like China, you can only have one or two kids. And many of people will not care and have 10.

What do you mean by that? How could we possibly use the available resources of 1.5 earths? Is that not physically impossible? I don't think you can use more resources than exist. I think one of our biggest problems is that we don't actually know how many resources are available. Capitalism requires scarcity to work. It it is in private companies' best interest to make people think that their product is scarce. Then they can charge more.

Man has always found a way to improvise. I don't think increase in population should be a problem so far there are provisions in terms of economy to cater for it. There are so many uninhabited places on earth e.g. in Russia and Canada.
We should't also forget that life expectancy is increasing which means more people on earth.
I think uniting and working on issues like global warming and climate change should cater for the next generation.

i think the western world will become a growing one again.

there is no threat, i mean curoscant in star wars had several thrillion inhabitants, you would have to build such a planetary urban society, nature and other stuff would be something only for those that traveled or colonised there.

(humanist perspective)

Harms to the following:
- Reserve of resources quickly depleted.
- Deforestation to expand agricultural land leads to ecological imbalances.
- Generate concentrated sources of waste that exceed the capacity of self-degradation of the natural environment in urban areas, agricultural and industrial areas.
- The gap in the rate of population growth between industrialized and developing countries is rising, leading to poverty in developing countries and excess consumption in industrialized countries. The growing disparity between urban and rural areas, between developed industrial and least developed countries, leads to the immigration of all kinds.
- The rise of the urban population and the formation of big cities - megacities make the urban environment at risk of severe degradation. The supply of clean water, houses and trees can not meet the population growth. Pollution of air and water increased. Social evils and the problem of social management in urban areas are increasingly difficult.

To my own view nothing is going to happen if things continue like this, because people die everyday and also new babies are also born as well and that's how the life cycle is going to be like.

You actually that populations will start growing naturally in the Western World? You think that birth rates will go up? Of course, the populations in many western countries are increasing. This is happening in large part, thanks to immigration. Canada, for example, welcomes more than 300,000 new immigrants every year! That's about a one percent increase in population every year just from immigration. The population of Canada is only 35 million. Why do you think the population will start growing more again?

It is undeniable that a population explosion will inevitably affect the natural resources of our planet;
Pollution and degradation of natural resources will certainly make things harder. Social issues; job; Evil ... will be a very difficult problem not just a country but the whole world. If we do not find alternatives to the above problems, the existence of humans on this planet is unlikely to last.

Population hits MaxQ.. Thats all. But people are also having more time to do other things and that creates both opportunities and challenges to soceity

Did you read the post? What do you mean by MaxQ? I'm not familiar with this term. I Googled it and found that it is an aerospace engineering term. Wikipedia says it "is the point at which aerodynamic stress on a vehicle in atmospheric flight is maximized". I can't see how that could relate to a population. If we run out of resources, how will that give people more time to do other things?

It is sad that us humans keep destroying and abusing natural resources for our own pursuits. In a short span of time, we have seen new buildings being built in an old empty land so that people will have some place to live or visit. Population is growing every year. Will we ran out of food to feed ourselves with, you ask? Natural resources, perhaps, but with the kind of technology we have today, it is only a matter of time before someone comes up with something. One example of this is mycoprotein.

That's what I say. People forget to take into account technological developments. Whenever we run into a problem so global, we always have people offering solutions. I have read about skyscraper farms, for example. You can actually farm vertically. If land is an issue, you can just build taller and taller. It's nice in a city too because then the food is already right there. You don't need to pay much for shipping. That's for mentioning mycoprotein. I think I heard of it before, but it was nice to read up on it a bit.

because human beings are the most perfect than other creatures. humans always think, humans are always developing, humans always improve their abilities in all things. For that people will always try to be better in the economic, social, environmental, state.

There are technological ways to solve this. Have you heard of Space X and its plan to colonize another planet? Then there’s also digital living in a virtual realm, courtesy of the Virtnernity Project (both of which are discussed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/transhumanism/comments/91g7yd/should_we_focus_on_space_colonization_or_digital/
I don’t know all the details, but I’ve heard that research is on- going. What do you think about these options to solve our population problem?

We not only could, we will outstrip our ability to feed everybody if the our population keeps increasing rapidly and if our population keeps on growing exponentially, we will inevitably reach the point where there is physically no way to grow enough food for everyone. On our journey to that point, we will lay waste to most of the remaining wild areas of Earth, burning down the forests and filling in the swamps to create more farmland, and in the process causing a mass extinction. We are already well down that path, but have not yet reached the point of no return

I believe that there is enough food for everyone.You look at the map how much unprocessed land in the world.If we look at the food basket of man and sum up it is safe to say that there will be no hunger.This is provided that there will be no global cataclysm.

I heard there is a theory in biology that claims that as the population reaches some critical point, the species start encountering problems with their health, including infertility, cancer and other states hypothetically used by "nature" to regulate the number of species. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the theory. Should someone remember the theory, please, comment on it, will you?
Thanks!

Time will come that all our resources would be in its limit. We cannot accomodate all the people anymore. People growth can cause lead us to scarcity of resources which is bad because when the time comes all of us would fight for foods, water, land and etc. It would be a survival of the fittest again or worse no one will survive anymore. As time passes by our world are becoming more toxic because of the environmental stresses that we human induced, it caused people growth which impact our livings. So I therefore conclude that as long as human is increasing in numbers we are approaching the time that all people ask when, the end of the world. Okay Im going too far, but seriously this will result to pollution and more that will lead us to toxic world and even the world would give up itself.

It is very interesting the rate at which world population is growing. Contraceptives and the rest haven't even helped much. Though in my opinion, that wasn't the major focus of creating them. Either ways, I don't believe there's any cause for alarm. Human population was always bound to grow. And I am highly confident that if we take proper care of the Earth, it is rich enough to cater for each and everyone of us. I mean there's so much untilled land all over the world but nobody is willing to work them. We all like to migrate to the same developed regions and choke ourselves out. We should pay more attention to agriculture too because if we don't take care of our basic needs, we won't even be alive to pursue the secondary ones that we all love so much.

Human population will certainly stop increasing because at some future point every atom of carbon will be used in a human.

At that point the only way to have a continued increase would be to make humans progressively smaller.

I think food isn't the main issue. Technological improvements are always making less materials be enough for more people (transgenic  food, for an example). But no one can create pieces of land, and doesn't matter how large the Texas state is, sooner or later the world's population won't fit there anymore.

Also, many of these people having more and more children can't give them a decent life. It's a miserable life, they don't really live, instead just exist. So this uncontrolled increasement of the population is insane and in the end those who have a more ruled and organized life will have to pay the price for the problematic people actions. Only a strong family planning policy can solve this through contraceptive methods, psychological monitoring and why not even a financial advisor?

What we see right now is humanity doing 51% attack against the rest of the planet

I think it will be hard to deal with this problem. It will be hard to feed whole population. One way is to grow many genemodified products but food like this isn't healthy. I think it need time to update ways of growing genemodified products.

the use of various contraceptives, the world population keeps ballooning there come a time that all food will be extinct and we cannot feed ourselves or what is the way forward because we are tilling all the virgin lands...population will surely have it's toll on the natural resources and depletion of the natural resources will surely make things harder for the generations to come.. we don't find alternative solutions to the growing number of problems,human civilization is at risk....

I guess if there will be more new born births in the future and less Dying let say adult, we will be congested and will produce more carbon dioxide that speeds up the destruction of ozone layers that causes heat that will melt Ice land and will make our oceans bigger that will make our low land sink. In short it'll be a disaster. It will have domino effects in anyway we could've see it.

This is definitely an issue we will have to be dealt with. Overpopulation also adds fuel to the fire when it comes to the environment's health. Feeding everyone and making sure resources are adequate often calls for desperate measures. I think there will be a point within the next 100 years where you literally can't survive on planet earth if you don't have the money to protect yourself. Many places will no longer be habitable if the current trends continue.