What Will Happen When Earth Becomes Overpopulated?

[Potable_Toe]

Mr Khan said:

HappySqurriel said:

Seece said:
The 'One Child Policy' in China has prevented an estimated 250 million births in the same span of ten years.

More measures like this I imagin.

So we can have a massive shortage of women which will (likely) result in significant social problems?

 

Realistically, for centuries there have been people predicting doom and gloom in the near future because of over-population and humans have beaten the odds by becoming far more productive than was anticipated. If we were able to make better use of the land in the world that is currently being mismanaged in third-world dictatorships we will (probably) be able to support twice as many people worldwide, I suspect that development of unexpected technology (like inexpensive greenhouses) will probably double production per acre over the next 50 to 100 years, and spreading democratic capitalism throughout the world will result in prosperity that will naturally bring down the birth rate to a very slow growth after we factor in for much longer life-spans

Lack of women = less opportunity for reproduction :P

But seriously, disincentive-based population control measures would work better in cultures that have gotten past the notion that only a son is any good for a family

But there is more to that in China than simply more boys being born than girls. Yes there is a slightly higher chance that a boy will be born than a girl but the figure has hovered at around 50 more boys than girls per 1000 (globally) for decades which would only account for 5,000,000 of the 100,000,000 or so more males than females currently populating China. This means there have to be other factors involved. The biggest of these is the Stigma with not having a son, which with the One child policy in China results in couples to not want daughters, This causes many would be parents to abort upon finding out that their baby is a girl, or failing that some even resort to infanticide and will likely do so until they get a son, or until they give up and just accept a girl I suppose, which has caused the massive imbalance in China's population.