Finite resources, infinite growth

For some people this post can be controversial. I added a category “controversial” to my blog for people who prefer to filter it.

We start a imaginary experiment where we start with a bottle filled up with food and room left for exactly two worms. We assume worms replicate at a doubling time of one minute. We observed in a previous experiment that the bottle is filled up in exactly one hour. They eat the food as they double themselves, etc (use your imagination).

At 11’O clock in the morning we place two worms in the bottle. At what time will the bottle be full (easy)? At what time will the bottle be half full? At what time is the bottle only 3% filled up?

Humans have a global population growth of about 1.2% per year. It’s about 1% in wealthy countries and about 2-3% in poor countries. If you want to calculate a doubling time you take 70 and you divide it with the growth percentage. Which means that at our current growth rate, we’ll double our total population in 60 years.

In 1950 we were with about 2.7 thousand million people, in 1990 we were with 5 thousand million people. In 2050 we will be with 10 thousand million people. Infinite growth isn’t possible with finite resources. In 2400 years, at current growth rate, the earth’s mass will in theory be roughly equal to the total amount of human flesh.

The main question is, how big is our bottle? Let’s go back to the worms. For the worms the bottle is about 3% filled up at 11:55. It’s half full at 11:59. It’s overpopulated at 12:00. When three new bottles are found and pipes are connected with the first, the three new bottles will be filled up at 12:02. After that will four new bottles be filled up at 12:03. After that you need eight new bottles to survive minute 12:04. In minute 12:05 it starts getting crazy proportions.

Even if our bottle is only 3% filled up now, then still at our retirement age we will inevitably be at 50% capacity. During those retirement years we’ll see the population grow at an enormous speed to maximum capacity within a few years.

I’m among the people who believe that we’re already at 70% capacity of our planet. I think we have about 30 years of finite resources left: doubling the population to 10 thousand million people, is impossible (not unreasonable to think). Moving to another bottle will take us at least several more centuries of top notch space science (so this solution is not applicable). And that’s assuming we can leverage the resources of another planet. Moving to another star is simply out of the question unless we invent technology that allows us to let a huge mass travel at the speed of light (again, the solution isn’t applicable).

A solution that I have in mind? Genetically modifying newborn humans to have an annual fertility frequency and having their fertility enabled at a mature age. Instead of based on the phase of the moon would women be fertile only once per year. And instead of at the average age of 12 would women start becoming fertile at the average age of, for example, 25.

Is genetic modification immoral? Being an atheist I don’t have any believe system that forbids me to tamper with species. It’s indeed still immoral because we don’t know what we are doing, yet. No, morality is not divinely injected by a God. Atheists are born with morals, too.

But if we have to choose between living with each other under the condition of having insufficient resources, or making a change to our species, I know which of the two I will prefer.

Now, if you do believe in a God, then you must also acknowledge that your God’s intention was for us to become intelligent enough to genetically modify our species. If not, why ain’t it stopping us? We, for example, have successfully been genetically selecting dogs for centuries. And we have started genetically modifying them (active modification: interfering with the egg and sperm cells).

Mankind will have to open this difficult discussion sooner or later.

40 thoughts on “Finite resources, infinite growth”

  1. Billion, dude, not million.

    Anyway, I agree with you that this is going to be an increasing problem and really needs to be addressed. The inevitable result if the population keeps increasing is war and struggle over resources when we hit the limit.

    Lots of our problems are caused by or made worse by overpopulation when you think about it – such as global warming, for example.

    I don’t think genetic modifying ourselves is necessary or even practical (you’d have to modify everyone in the world for it to work). But something like China’s one child policy might eventually become a necessity.

  2. Ignoring the obvious issues with your solution (why not make males less fertile? why not make sperm live only a few hours, thus decreasing the fertile window to less than two days instead of 7 – 10 days per cycle? why not decrease sperm counts via drugs in the water or radiation treatment?)

    I really think that we could change our lifestyles before we change our genetic makeup to effect some change in our future lifestyles.

    Taking the food supply as an example, it takes a huge amount of resources to grow meat. The animals are kept on land which could be used for growing food, and consume food grown with resources that could have been used to grow vegetables for us. The farms where these animals are kept are also huge greenhouse gas emitters. You could think of it like this: in order to survive the longest would you rather eat me, or eat all of the meals that I’ve eaten.

    So far as overpopulation, it has been demonstrated that the better educated women are, the fewer children they generally have[1].

    I don’t really understand the appeal of changing behavior through genetic manipulation (something we don’t know how to do, and would only work on new generations) versus changing behavior via other means (cultural, legislative, etc). You could even change your *own* behavior to consume fewer resources (by going vegan, promoting women’s education, etc) without your own genetic modification and help solve the problem generations earlier (assuming that genetic modification would even be possible).

    Finally, a women’s fertility is not based on “the phase of the moon” (and the lunar birth control method doesn’t work, whereas fertility awareness does), some women have longer or shorter cycles, etc. You would perhaps be somewhat better off by being familiar with the basics before coming up with grand theories for the future of the species.

    [1]: http://econpapers.repec.org/article/blaobuest/v_3a58_3ay_3a1996_3ai_3a1_3ap_3a139-66.htm

  3. Seems quite silly to me talking about this on this way. It’s not immoral because there is a god that tells us to not to genetically modify ourselves or because we don’t know what we’re doing. It’s immoral because it’s a personal decision that you’re defending to be taken globally. Basically you’re defending a law that makes it compulsory for women to take the pill until they are 25. Also none of the measures that you’re talking about would change it from a exponential growth. Would be perhaps just a lower power. And in your bogus analogy would just delay reaching the 8 bottles for 1 minute or so.

    I agree that over population is a problem that has to be taken care for but with: education, better resources management and distribution of richness. In developed countries, especially in europe, the 1% rate that you talk about is due to immigration and increased longevity. The way to go is to make all the countries developed. Not some dictatorial measures alla China.

  4. “Now, if you do believe in a God, then you must also acknowledge that your God’s intention was for us to become intelligent enough to genetically modify our species. If not, why ain’t it stopping us?”

    Uh, a main tenant of most Judeo-Christian religions is that humans have free will, and are able to make the choice to live righteous lives or to go against commandments, etc. So, this statement is not only logically fallacious, but heavily under-researched.

    Love,
    An Atheist Who Gets Frustrated When Other Atheists Make Fallacious “Rational” Arguments Against Religion (It’s not that hard to make *good* arguments against religion, people)

  5. If we leave out the ethical debate for the sake of argument, you still have to deal with the fact that in order to genetically modify every human being, you need a world government so oppressive and powerful, that it by far outweighs the benefit of having solved the population issue. Rationally speaking, for any one country to “out-populate” the other countries that do implement such measures is beneficial, so without a comprehensive governing entity devoid of favouritism it won’t even work. And even if, you still have to deal with all forms of resistance and guerilla procreation.

    Rui is quite right in pointing out that global prosperity is the more realistic approach, although I suspect disease and famine will reign with an iron fist in some areas, well before we reach that utopia.

  6. You’re absolutely right! I wonder how long it will take for people to realize this. For some reason people don’t understand how exponential growth works and affects us. The same goes for oil. How people don’t get that we’re nearing the end of the supplies with a demand increasing with 7(?) percent each year is beyond me!

  7. Well, there is something you can do now yourself, straight away, about overpopulation, and it’s the only thing you have a moral right to: go kill yourself in an ecologically responsible way before you have procreated. You are not worth one bit more than anyone else in the world, so don’t expect them to make place for you.

    Once you have done that, feel free to advocated forced castration for all the women of the world. Doing so through genetic engineering is silly, of course. That technology is completely pie-in-the-sky unproven, and we already know that it it’s easy enough render large populations of animals infertile. That can easily be scaled to up entire countries filled with superfluous masses.

  8. I think people should start adjusting their outlooks so that 30 / 40 years down the line they can safely regress to more primitive technology (seeing as most of these resources we concern ourselves over are mainly luxuries). The powers that be seem woefully uninterested in actual, serious, rapid change, after all.
    The bonus here over, say, a thousand years ago is that primitive technology would be accompanied by a state of enlightenment with regards to who we all are and where we come from, thanks to decades of awesome global communication. It could go well.

    (Just hope the Earth doesn’t implode or something)

  9. The solution is actually pretty simple – make everyone rich. Observe the relationship between birth rate and standard of living, if you need a proof.

    :)

  10. @Boudewijn: I have already decided for myself not to reproduce. I’m also a VHEMT member. That doesn’t mean that I will stop consuming resources (I won’t commit suicide in an environmental friendly way, like you suggested). I don’t want to enforce upon people that they should not reproduce and I certainly don’t want people to commit suicide, or to start a war (which I think is similar or even the exact same as mass suicide – certainly given the kind of weapons that would be used in the next big war).

    @fraggle: I used n thousand million. Isn’t that the same as billion? I didn’t want to confuse people given that in US English it’s billion and in UK English apparently a billion is something else. So I took million and placed n thousand in front of it.

    @Anonymous, @fraggle:
    I agree that it’s probably not practically possible to start manipulating every newborn child. I was not proposing to genetically manipulate existing humans, by the way. For existing population I think compulsory taking the pill is a solution indeed (like Rui said I was suggesting – I’m, indeed. That’s the urgency of the situation, I think -). I don’t think such a law would be unethical.

    @Sandy: Ok. I didn’t intent to make a rational argument against religion. I didn’t even intent to make any argument against religion. Religion is not really what this discussion is about. Except that most religions tell people to replicate as much as possible.

    @Rui Ferreira: A question is that will your solution practically work in time? Also note that bringing prosperity to a country means that resource consumption per person skyrockets (compare European and US resource consumption per person with the rest of the world). This adds to the problem, rather than solves it.

    You are correct that it only delays the problem. On top we’d have to put a limit to the amount of children that you are allowed create. Like in China. Maybe a further genetic manipulation that decreases fertility after each child?

    @Dylan McCall: regressing to more primitive technology wont change the population growth if it can be done “safely” (what does that mean?). The kind of resources will be different, but nonetheless we’ll still have insufficient of them. Today’s technology actually increases the efficiency of our resources at this moment. A few hundred years ago wouldn’t 6 billion people have been possible. Agriculture, for example, has made it possible.

  11. Also note in general that I’m not saying that only women should be affected (their fertility, the genetic manipulation, having to take a pill, or whatever). Men would also have to pay their share, of course. This isn’t a discussion about feminism or woman-rights or who should do what and when and who doesn’t have to do anything.

    Also note that male fertility in cities is going down drastically already (caused by pollution, tight clothing, smoking, etc). Although perhaps controversial, I think this is a good thing, by the way. And note that I believe that it should have to go down even more drastically.

    @rwt:
    – I fully agree that we should also make sperm less fertile.

    – I fully agree that we should change our lifestyles

    – I fully agree that we should make agriculture even more efficient

    – I fully agree we should educate women (and men), so that they do more family-planning

    – Note that I’m a vegetarian (but not vegan). Among my reasons are the ones you are pointing out.

    – I’m not trying to personally be some kind of expert in whatever. Nor do I think that claiming that some specific individual should first do something specific (being more aware, or whatever) is actually helping. You’re just dodging the issue by looking at me and making a conclusion that is, actually, irrelevant anyway. So why the conclusion?

    I decided to give a solution because otherwise I would only point out problems, and then I would have been criticized for giving a problem without a solution.

  12. “Humans have a global population growth of about 1.2% per year. It’s about 1% in wealthy countries and about 2-3% in poor countries. If you want to calculate a doubling time you take 70 and you divide it with the growth percentage. Which means that at our current growth rate, we’ll double our total population in 60 years.”

    Can you get me a source for those numbers? Because they are wrong, the U.S. (not counting immigration) has a population that is just about stable the population in western Europe is actually going to decline (before immigration) over the next decades, her is the numbers;

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_fertility_rate

    (you need a fertility rate of 2.1 (every 2 people having 2.1 children) on average for a stable population as you will find reading that list almost all the western countries are well below that. And most really poor countries are waaaaaaaaaaay above it.

    Just for good measure her’s birthrate’s again you will find the western countries way at the bottom;

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate

    I am not going to comment on the rest of the maths there because I think your starting numbers are (intentionally or unintentionally) wrong.

    “I’m among the people who believe that we’re already at 70% capacity of our planet. I think we have about 30 years of finite resources left”

    Pure speculation with no data to back it up, going to just ignore it as such.

    “A solution that I have in mind? Genetically modifying newborn humans to have an annual fertility frequency and having their fertility enabled at a mature age.”

    Yes, lets take away humans choices as newborns when they don’t have any power to decide for themselves if they even want that, it’s like, say poising the mind of newborn with the meme we call religion before they can chose, you big fat hypocrite.

    “Instead of based on the phase of the moon”

    Are you on crack? Since when is PMS a moon cycle based thing? Do women only menstruate on one hemisphere at a time too then…?

    “would women be fertile only once per year. And instead of at the average age of 12 would women start becoming fertile at the average age of, for example, 25.”

    Do the women get any say in this, or are you robbing people of their freedoms again?

    “Is genetic modification immoral? Being an atheist I don’t have any believe system that forbids me to tamper with species.”

    Morality has nothing to with your view of the cosmos, atheist or other, also why are you even bringing this in a what seemed like a brainstorm on demographics and population control before this?

    “It’s indeed still immoral because we don’t know what we are doing, yet.”

    Has no bearing on morality either, was Einstein immoral when he came up with E equals MC squared because he didn’t now it would one day lead to nukes among other things?
    Werther or not you can oversee the consequences of an act does not as a necessity have any moral implications at all.

    “No, morality is not divinely injected by a God. Atheists are born with morals, too.”

    I had a really hard time reading Kafka in the womb, I found Kant’s critique of pure reason pretty hard too at 8 months old… /sarcasm mode off
    Werther or not you are born with any such knowledge or concepts of right and wrong is still subject to heavy philosophical debate, stop presenting opinion as fact, that’s what religious people are good at.

    “But if we have to choose between living with each other under the condition of having insufficient resources, or making a change to our species, I know which of the two I will prefer.”

    You might want to get your data sorted out before you go rendering judgements or making choices.

    “Now, if you do believe in a God, then you must also acknowledge that your God’s intention was for us to become intelligent enough to genetically modify our species. If not, why ain’t it stopping us?”

    They ‘must’ not do anything, stop telling people what they must or mustn’t do, it’s called oppression, my morals don’t like it, how about yours?

  13. @DerBart: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth

    “In 2007 the growth rate was 1.19% per annum”

    As for being born with morality I made a link to themoralbrain.be which is a scientific group who is using the scientific method to illustrate that we are born with a brain that has certain moral concepts (and we aren’t the only species) and that morality is probably something, like anything in the evolution of our species, that is more profitable to have, than not to have (which is why it’s successful in the gene pool of humans). The only person baseless ridiculizing it is you. I gave a link to scientific research material (including papers that do use the scientific method, double blind experiments and everything you can ever dream of as a scientific researcher researching the matter).

    As for woman vs. freedom: I already commented that we should probably also make men’s sperm less fertile. As for freedom I pointed out that if I have to choose between living together under the condition of not having sufficient resources, or changing our species (behavioural or genetical or any other form) … that I’d prefer the latter.

    Note that having insufficient resources, possession of a resource becomes a zero sum game. Meaning that if you have a resource, you survive. If you don’t have a resource, you die. Under that condition human morality rapidly changes.

    Right now religion is actually decided by your parents. So we are actually injecting religion into our newborns without them having much to say about it. That’s actually the realism behind religion already.

    Am I saying that this is a good thing? No (I’m not religious myself). Am I making a comment on that it’s a bad thing? Also no (I just didn’t). Which means I’m not being hypocritical. I also think that the necessity for birth control is sooner or later going to be based on facts, whereas the necessity for religion is (I believe) more questionable. I didn’t rule out that religion is a necessity. Apparently it’s a successful meme for our species (otherwise it would have disappeared already).

    ps. I agree with your E=MC**2 (Einstein) thing (not knowing what you’re doing doesn’t mean that it’s unethical – or whatever wording you want to use).

  15. About the phase of the moon criticism: hey, sure, it’s irrelevant what gives women their current frequency for being fertile or not. What is relevant is that it’s ~ monthly instead of annually and that my proposal is to make this annually (to statistically decrease the chance).

    I don’t really care that much what causes it. I’m pretty sure it’s hormones, and I guess a mixture of genetically and culturally defined reasons (I for example know that when other women in the social network of a woman get pregnant, that her frequency will increase – although I can’t find the research about that right now).

  16. “As for being born with morality I made a link to themoralbrain.be which is a scientific group who is using the scientific method to illustrate that we are born with a brain that has certain moral concepts (and we aren’t the only species) and that morality is probably something, like anything in the evolution of our species, that is more profitable to have, than not to have (which is why it’s successful in the gene pool of humans). The only person baseless ridiculizing it is you. I gave a link to scientific research material (including papers that do use the scientific method, double blind experiments and everything you can ever dream of as a scientific researcher researching the matter)”

    Faculty of Law. Not faculty of biology or evolutionary science. Whether or not I am the only person who critique’s does seem not relevant. Morality may in part or in its entirety (or not at all) be something that evolved but that is >not the same as

  19. oh ‘>’something’> inverted’ cuts everything after the ‘> inverted’ nice. well not retyping it all.

    in short; morality evolved, yes maybe, but only a thesis and one that for example dawkins, dennett, gould and pinker can’t even agree on the basics of and the I am supposed to accept the thesis of a faculty of law (who have a vested interest in morality being inherent) as scientific truth (which doesn’t exist ofc as science can’t prove anything with absolute certainty)? No I don’t think so.

    Werther or not humans have inherent concepts has been debated since Plato and there isn’t a single widely accepted answer so far.

    Also resources have always been a zero sum game, that isn’t anything new, and it doesn’t really affect morals if those morals are ‘inherent’ as you claim they should not change based on werther you are a ‘have’ or a ‘have not’ in that case.

    Also I still don’t see what religion or the lack there off has to do with any of this at at all, seems like an entirely separate discussion from the one of overpopulation to me.

    I do now that I don’t think any human or any group of humans has the right to decide for any other human or any other group of humans and as such I am diametrically opposed to messing with anyone’s genes before they are old enough to make that decision for themselves.

  20. Denbart, if you want me to reflow your comment, just email me instructions. Going to a movie now so it’ll probably be for tomorrow

  21. Developed countries have smaller growth rates, some even have negative “vegetative” growth rates and depend on immigration to avoid shrinking. Development leads to smaller growth rates, not the other way around.

    Anyway, the 20th century saw a rapid increase in life expectancy, but not in fertility, except for the post-WWII baby boom in Europe. Brazil, in example, had a rapid population growth in the last decades, but currently the “average woman” has less than 2,1 children in her lifespan, which means we are going to stop growing very soon.

    I just don’t dare saying anything about population growth in China and India, and these countries are obviously very important when we discuss the world population.

    Anyway, I’m not very pessimistic about the “finite resources”. The planetary limit is the energy coming from Sun, and we are very far from using a significant part of it. The human history is full of examples of technology improvements leading to increased efficiency in the use of resources!

  22. Even when your argument does not depend on the type of growth and the error is not that large, I wonder if its a good idea to teach people that doubling rates are computed with linearized growth.

  23. Ok, food resources can maybe be increased using new technology etc.

    We could put a ban on fertilizers to decrease the output from agriculture and let people in Africa, India and China die. However this requires a form of morality that goes beyond the average TV viewer and looks at the broader picture.

    However, space is limited. Right now, both in India and China tigers are being exterminated because of humans expanding their living territories.

    There is only one option: exploration of space of colonization of other planets as foreseen by science fiction writers many years ago.

  24. Two remarks:
    a) please google for ‘Malthus’
    b) you will find that population growth rates are not stable over time, but decrease heavily with rising levels of wealth.

  25. I don’t think I have a direct ethical problem with your proposal, but it doesn’t seem like a good or justified idea. We’ve already seen that women *choose* to have fewer children given education and access to birth control, to the point where the fertility rate in many countries in Europe is down below 2 (i.e. below replacement rate). Even in Mexico, which had 6.5 children born per woman in 1970, the current fertility rate is down to 2.14 children born per woman. The world we grew up in isn’t the one we live in now.

    So, why not instead propose that we spend our effort, time and money on encouraging such good things as education for young children, especially young girls (even just a few years of primary education is enough to drastically affect fertility rate) and encouraging vegetarianism (since we’re much more able to provide a sustainable amount of food for the population if we eat it directly, rather than feeding it to animals first). The choice to have fewer children and limit population growth will come naturally, rather than as a coercive denial of control over our own bodies.

  26. To make things short (because a lot of people have written a lot and I don’t intend to read it all at this late hour), I’ll just say that although I wholeheartedly agree, you’re going to have a hard time convincing people, you’re probably going to ruin the fun in sex and if you still haven’t, it’s a good time to watch “Fortress”.

  27. Seconding space colonization. It has the added benefit of not putting all of humanity’s eggs in one basket.

  28. Third for space colonization. I clicked through so I could bring it up.

    Anyone want to find those libertarians that keep trying to found their own country?

  29. Its not immoral because “we don’t know what we’re doing”;
    Its immoral because who the fuck gave you the right to say that my (hypothetical) children should be artifically sterilised?

    You’ve taken the choice not to have children (thank fuck) but thats your choice. You have no fucking right to dictate how other people live their lives.

    Whats next, sterilising disabled people, enforced euthanasia for people over the pension age?

  31. Just re-read my comment; It seems a bit harsh. I am not suggesting that presenting Bartlett’s ideas is a bad thing, I just would have preferred a citation :-)

    For others reading this, Bartlett’s notable statement is “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function”

  32. Looking at the problem wrongly I think. The U.S, Quatar, Trinidad and Tobago and the UAE have relatively low population rates, yet they use up the most amount of resources. So based on your assumptions, reducing population growth won’t actually achieve much at all.

  34. 1) It is education rather then wealth which influence birth rates.

    2) Worldwide demographic trends show that the rate of increase is falling. If those trends continue, then the world population will max out at somewhere around 8 or 9 billion. We can feed 9 billion people if we allocate resources fairly.

    3) The rich consume much more then their fair share of the worlds food and other resources.

    4) Quotas on scarce resources for the rich, who are in the minority, is fairer then forcing birth control on the poor majority.

  35. Yeah Phillip I propose we start with the africans, they’re too many anyway, not that smart quite close to monkeys, and they’re destroying the natural habitat of lions with their agriculture!

    Forget this Malthus/Club of Rome bullshit about overpopulation, humanity’s progress was driven not by gathering resources but by creativity! 300 years ago oil was just something that would destroy your farm land, now it’s used everywhere. What changed in 300 years? We found ways to use it!

    There was a movement with ideas like yours in the thirties in Germany. Where you think the ideea of “lebensraum” came from?

    Please grow a brain, seriously, I’m not flaming or something, just grow one you really seem to need it, again no flame no trolling no insulting, you need to grow a brain. And you do that by reading, start with something about clasical renaissance, see how they saw human beings, you need to learn history.

    And don’t forget this word, creativity, that’s how humanity evolved and not by gathering more resorces.

  36. This ZOMG-We’re-Nearing-Capacity business has been going on for years. How many? Well, people have been commenting on man’s ability to take over and ‘destroy’ an environment by overusing it for thousands of years, going back to Greek and Roman times.

    Here are some realities about that ‘scientific’ worms in a bottle.

    1) What happens to those worms when they reach full capacity? Do they just die off? Do they eat each other? Does the bottle break? There are a million and one ways nature can handle such a scenario.

    2) Do the worms reach full capacity? Right now they are without predators but when dealing with overpopulation, what happens? First off all, they become toxic with their waste long before they reach 100% capacity. The majority die off, but the waste is converted back into food. (Think about this the next time you eat an apple.) A few lucky ones live on.

    It gets better, there are signs in nature that when any population nears it’s maximum level, things happen that reduce growth. Predators find an abundance of food. Disease succeeds in ways unprecedented. Triggers in the species lower the birth rate. Etc….

    You can argue that the same is happening to humans nowadays. There are a number of diseases that are threatening wide scale destruction. Educated people do reproduce less. People refuse to have many children in cities because they feel that a city is no place to raise a child. In New York City, getting your child into a decent pre-school is harder than getting into that overpriced trendy club where your child was conceived. In the past, diseases such as the Black Plague have done their job preventing overpopulation. (If a close relative has died in the plague, i apologize if you feel offended by that comment.)

    One of the differences between human growth patterns and other creatures is that we modify our environment in subtle ways that help growth. Better medicine ups the child survival rate. New farming techniques up the yield. Minor scientific breakthroughs increase the ability to house people in one building, use slightly less fuel, create better more efficient tools and so on. You might say that we’ve been looking at these kinds of disasters for over 100 thousand years, but the reality is that we always figure out something new. It’s the difference between humans and many other animals.

    If you really want to solve this problem though, here’s my recommendation. Have more children. You’ll raise children into a wealthy background where they have the best access to medicine and education. Furthermore, you can educate them to be responsible for the planet they will eventually inherit. Any time a child is born with poor access to good education, it’s one more person who will irresponsibly reproduce in the future. Rather than just relying on some social organization to help change the balance of education, you can change the balance yourself by having kids.

  37. in logic level, yes! make sense! lot of sense!
    in human level, not make any sense!

    Change human biology its same distant as move to other star. And has lot of “open points” in this logic. How do you gonna push ALL humans to be modified? How can i trust bad people will not add another modifications? what if i dont want that thing on my baby?

    I think its right to say we are inteligent to figure-out and fix before brake…

    but… in my opinion. the right thing to spread its EDUCATION! Instead spend resources try to “biologicaly modificate and force ALL to accept that” we have to spend resources to EDUCATE all humans and promote better life style. Spread intelligence, education in world wide level

    spread education, intelligence its more valuable then “force biologic modifications”. education and intelligence in world scale will be better not only for this fill-the-bottle point, but in MANY MANY others

    think on that! (my 5 cents)

    ps 1: i agree with “asp” comment

    ps 2: check http://www.thevenusproject.com/ and Zeitgeist.Addendum. its lite “utopia” but a good logic exercise to reach the correct ideas

  40. “Population Control is depended upon education, and we feel an educated population needs no control.” ~ Jacque Fresco, Larry King Interview 1974

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