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All kinds of death - 6

Sustaining civilisation - 5

lecture15 D 5 --- | --- D 7 Next

Death by overpopulation

Sustaining a civilisation demands that its inhabitants are clothed, sheltered and fed.
The world's population has passed through three distinct growth periods

  1. development of tools - rise to ~1 million, 10,000 yrs ago
  2. agriculture - rise to 100 million, ~500 yrs ago
  3. technology - rise to over 1 billion
The current world population is estimated as ~5.2 billion (1990) and is expected to double by ~2010.



World demographics (see CIESIN )

Limiting population size:
Malthus - self-limiting by catastrophic declines

  1. Malnutrition - large fraction of land area unsuitable for cultivation
    exploit the seas? (we already have, to some extent)
  2. Diseases - epidemics
    the Black Death killed between 30% and 40% of the European population between 1346 and 1355, after creating similar turmoil in the mid-East, India and China (see Philip Ziegler "The Black Death")
    `accidental genocide' of native populations (Americas, Australia)
  3. War



The four horsemen of the Apocalypse

Is self-limiting by choice possible??