Is homosexuality a bad thing?

The whole of the EU is now below replacement level as is Japan and China and the US without emigration is at just replacement level.

The whole world birth rate had drop sharply and there will be no doubling in 50 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not even the UN is now claiming such nonsense.

You are using outdated birth rates.............

This is not the 1950s or 1960s any longer

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29Birth-t.html?pagewanted=all

DEMOGRAPHICALLY SPEAKING, Laviano is not unique in Italy, or in Europe. In fact, it may be a harbinger. In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. Non-number-crunchers largely ignored the information until a 2002 study by Italian, German and Spanish social scientists focused the data and gave policy makers across the European Union something to ponder. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the “replacement rate” — the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country’s current population level. At various times in modern history — during war or famine — birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate, to “low” or “very low” levels. But Hans-Peter Kohler, José Antonio Ortega and Francesco Billari — the authors of the 2002 report — saw something new in the data. For the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country’s population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Kohler and his colleagues invented an ominous new term for the phenomenon: “lowest-low fertility.”

To the uninitiated, “lowest low” seems a strange thing to worry about. A few decades ago we were getting “the population explosion” drilled into us. The invader species homo sapiens, we learned, was eating through the planet’s resources and irretrievably fouling and wrecking its fragile systems. Has the situation changed for the better since Paul Ehrlich set off the alarm in 1968 with his best seller “The Population Bomb”? Do current headlines — global food shortages, climate change — not indicate continuing signs of calamity?

They do, as far as some are concerned, but things have changed somewhat. For one thing, around the world, even in developing countries, birthrates have plummeted — from 6.0 globally in 1972 to 2.9 today — as populations have shifted from rural areas to cities and people have adopted urban lifestyles, and the drop has perhaps lessened the urgency of the overpopulation cry. Meanwhile, in recent years another chorus of voices has sounded. Yes, we’re straining resources, they say, and it’s undeniable that some parts of the globe are overrun with humanity. But other regions now confront a very different fate. In Europe, “lowest low” isn’t just a phenomenon of rural areas like Laviano. Cities like Milan and Bologna have recorded some of the lowest birthrates anywhere, in part because the high cost of living forces couples either to move or to have fewer children. After the term was invented, “lowest-low fertility” got the attention of leaders in Brussels and national capitals across the Continent — and by now everyone from Seville to Helsinki seems to be aware of it. In Greece, the problem is so well situated in the national psyche that it is conversationally compacted: people refer simply to “the demographic.” Putting the numbers in a broader world-historical context stirred a debate about Europe’s future. Around the time that President Kennedy went to Germany and gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, Europe represented 12.5 percent of the world’s population. Today it is 7.2 percent, and if current trends continue, by 2050 only 5 percent of the world will be European.

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

According to 2002 reports by the United Nations Population Division[5] and the US Census Bureau,[6] population decline is occurring today in some regions. According to the UN, below-replacement fertility is expected in 75% of the developed world by the year 2050. The US Census Bureau notes that the 74 million people added to the world's population in 2002 were fewer than the high of 87 million people added in 1989–1990. The annual growth rate was 1.2 percent, down from the high of 2.2 percent in 1963-64.

"Census Bureau projections show this slowdown in population growth continuing into the foreseeable future," stated the Bureau's brief on the findings. "Census Bureau projections suggest that the level of fertility in many countries will drop below replacement level before 2050... In 1990 the world's women, on average, were giving birth to 3.3 children over their lifetimes. By 2002 the average was 2.6, and by 2009, 2.5. This is marginally above the global replacement fertility of 2.33. This fall has been accompanied by a decline in the world's population growth rate and in the actual annual population increase.

Yes, now the real estate companies cannot knock down more animal wildlife habitats so they can build more condos... real problems (cynical)...

That really hurts these republican big business advocates bottom line. What of animal extinction due to human population overload on the earth. Talk about, err, "problems"... Animal extinction is directly in correlation to human population growth...

Is a problem when there is less and less workers to support the retire people like me<grin>.

Second, it you would like to see what happen to a city that had lose half it population in a few decades I would suggest a visit to Detroit.

Bill, there are some countries that have like 20% overall medical services for their entire population of millions. Is it really that bad as you say for you? How about walking a mile in other's shoes, like the animals being raped of their lands to support more trailer parks...

Are you sure it is underpopulation or the auto industry moving abroad and robotics taking humans jobs that has emptied Detroit... Factual but not truthful Bill... I hope elderly people are cared for Bill, it is a civic duty... I also weigh that with the suffrage of our earth's cohabitants.

Where oh where did I say or imply that, low birth rates cause Detroit population to be cut in half!!!!!

However, if we do have a major worldwide population collapse that what every major city in the world will end up looking like.

Second animals should always be treated with respect however; their welfare is secondary to human welfare.

BillRM, You have no concept of human population growth if you depend on one person's opinion published in the NYT. World population doesn't "decrease" based on Europe's 1.3%. That's still a .3% increase. Where did you learn your math?

LOL so all the other information and sources I had posted beside the NYT you are just going to pretend are not there also?

Oh well there is no doubling of world population in 50 years and in a large part of the world the population will had fallen off the old cliff by that time.

The population bomb is not going to go off.........

We need to pick something else to worry about such as underpopulation in our major cultural and technology centrals.

BillRM, Do you comprehend simple math? How do you interpret a population growth at 1.3%?

Is that an increase or a decrease?

Below in the UN figures and the 2050 world population is expect to grow from the current 6 billions to 7.9 billions to 10.9 billions and even the higher figure is not a doubling.

With China alone dropping birth rate I would bet we do not reach even the 7.9 billions level but that is just my feeling.

In any case, a large portion of the world the population will be declining not inclining and the birth rate is expect to be falling into the future.

No science fiction story such as “Make room make room” is going to occur

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Among the key findings of the 2000 Revision are:
1. World population reached 6.1 billion in mid-2000 and is currently growing at an annual
rate of 1.2 per cent, or 77 million people per year. Six countries account for half of this
annual growth: India for 21 per cent; China for 12 per cent; Pakistan for 5 per cent;
Nigeria for 4 per cent; Bangladesh for 4 per cent, and Indonesia for 3 per cent. By 2050,
world population is expected to be between 7.9 billion (low variant) and 10.9 billion
(high variant), with the medium variant producing 9.3 billion (figure I).
2. The population of more developed regions, currently 1.2 billion, is anticipated to change
little during the next 50 years because fertility levels are expected to remain below
replacement level1. However, by mid-century the populations of 39 countries are
projected to be smaller than today (e.g., Japan and Germany 14 per cent smaller; Italy and
Hungary 25 per cent smaller; and the Russian Federation, Georgia and Ukraine between
28 to 40 per cent smaller).3. The population of the less developed regions is projected to rise steadily from 4.9 billion
in 2000 to 8.2 billion in 2050 (medium variant). This projection assumes continuing
declines in fertility; in the absence of such declines, the population of less developed
regions would reach 11.9 billion instead of the projected 8.2 billion. Particularly rapid
growth is expected among the group of 48 countries classified as least developed. Their
population is expected to nearly triple between 2000 and 2050, passing from 658 million
to 1.8 billion, despite the fact that their fertility is projected to decline markedly in the
future.
4. The difference between the projected population in 2050 according to the 2000 Revision
(9.3 billion) and that projected in the 1998 Revision (8.9 billion) is 413 million people.
Higher future fertility levels projected for the 16 developing countries whose fertility has
not yet shown signs of a sustained decline are responsible for 59 per cent of that
difference. The somewhat higher recent fertility estimated in the 2000 Revision for
several populous countries (e.g., Bangladesh, India and Nigeria) accounts for a further 32
per cent of that difference.
5. For 1995-2000, life expectancy at birth in the more developed regions is estimated to be
75 years. In the less developed regions, life expectancy was nearly 12 years lower, at 63
years. By 2050 the less developed regions are expected to attain a life expectancy of 75
years whereas in the more developed regions the projected level is 82 years, implying
that the gap between the two groups may narrow.
1 Replacement-level fertility is the level necessary to ensure that the population

BillRM, Clue: when anything increases from 6.1 to 7.3, it's an increase. No amount of what, if's and buts will change it; it's an increase.

Yes it is a minor increase but not of any concern the main concern is going to be the decreases in the high technology parts of the world. Some of the those decrease being very large indeed.

You can call it a "minor" increase, because you have no idea what the impact to this world of limited resources are.

You are SOOOOooo right CI!

Limited resources yes indeed like the Club of Rome project nonsense in the early 1970s where the best damn computers and computers models and some of the 'best' scientists in the world at the time was predicting the total collapse of technology and civilization base on it within twenty years or so because of us running out of such limited resources.

Your song is nothing new and been playing for most of human history.

If a shame that human ingenious have been proving the like of you wrong for all those thousands of years.

Only the people waiting for Jesus return are likely to have a longer wait.

Oh to go back toward the subject of this thread because of the imbalance of sexes due to the Chinese one baby per couple birth control program, one wonder what all the many tens of millions of men in China without women are going to do.

Are they going to import tens of millions of women or are they going to turn to each other or both?

Another amusing comment on your end of the world life view, as the populations of the wealthy and resource heavy using areas are predicted to drop like a rock the overall demand is therefore also likely to be less then now even with more people overall.

But I know you have an emotional need to see the worst possible future for mankind.

Tell that to the millions who do not have enough to eat every day.