Population growth as a strategy?

There are arguments for a large population, arguments for a small population, and arguments for an increasing population.

Today, I want to examine the arguments for an increasing population. These arguments are not about how large the population is, but that it should increase.

The three arguments I have heard in favour of an increasing population are:
1) Population growth is necessary to secure essential economic growth
2) Population growth is necessary to maintain a sufficiently high ratio of younger people to elderly people
3) Population growth in a specific country is required to ease overcrowding in some other country or countries.

All of these sound reasonable, but lets first look at the argument against continued population growth. These are:
1) There is a limit to growth, sooner or later it must stop
2) Too many people must damage the earth to the detriment of all life on Earth

Is there a Limit to Growth?
Yes, demonstrably. One simply proof is to consider that people are made of atoms, and the number of atoms on earth is finite. Eventually you get to a point that there are not enough atoms to build each person. So growth must stop eventually, but is this 'eventually' so far away that it is completely hypothetical, or can we manage to colonise space before we reach maximum population on earth?
We have established that there clearly is a limit to the number of people we can have here on Earth, now the question becomes, 'What is the Limit?'.

Overpopulation does not depend only on the size or density of the population, but on the ratio of population to available sustainable resources. For every additional person, there is a decrease in resources per capita. This would not matter if every resource had an unlimited untapped supply, but clearly some resources are very finite. Consider beaches. Would it be ok if the average beach had twice as many people? Four times as many people? Eight times as many people? Does it matter if it is not realistic to expect our children to be ever able to visit a beach? Each doubling of the population currently occurs every forty years, how many doubling can we handle?

This is very subjective, but answer I get from many people is we could handle another doubling...maybe. Which, if correct, means we could maintain another forty years of a population growth strategy before we would need to stop.

When do too many people start to harm the Earth?
It is quite clear people are already damaging the planet, and for other species the earth is experiencing mass extinctions as a result. How much of this is due to bad practices as opposed to too many people is arguable, but a clear consequence of the need to produce food for people is habitat loss for other animals. Currently there are an estimated 7 billion people living on a planet that, without farming, is estimated could sustain an estimated population of 15million people.
(Luc-Normand Tellier (2009). "Urban world history: an economic and geographical perspective". PUQ. p.26. ISBN 2760515885)

There are currently debates about just how many people we are able to feed with currently available technology, with estimates ranging from clearly not everyone, through to there is a little to spare if we work at it. However it is clear we need to grow even more food, which would require even more farming land. This makes it difficult for significant parts of the globe to exist free of being transformed by human activity, which in turn means more species face extinction.

We are already down to 'it is us or them' will respect to allowing many of the other species we currently share our planet with to continue to exist outside zoos.


The Benefits: 1. Economic Growth.
There is a simple formulae: Maintain GDP per capita while increasing population and you have economic growth. However, there is another simple formulae: Share a fixed resource amongst a growing population and each share gets smaller. This means that as resources reach a limit the individuals must make sacrifices. A clear message is that economic growth through population growth is only realised by those who address the entire population, i.e. large companies and governments.

This is the underlying message. Big business and government wins with population growth, individuals pay the price. A far better path to economic growth is to increase GDP per capita since this works for everybody. Big business and government will still argue for the higher growth of complimenting any growth in GDP per capita with population growth, but individuals should not be misled as to the motives.

Benefit 2: Provide for the Ageing Population.
Yes, this does work as long as the population continues to increase over the longer term, as it has since 1900. The truth is that we have only had today's long life expectancy in a world with a rapidly growing population. Throughout most of history, where population growth was far lower, life expectancy was shorter. However, is it even realistic that the population will grow over the longer term? Almost all estimates are that growth will decline over the next forty years, which corresponds to the population growing beyond what most see as sustainable or desirable anyway.
(See: Wikipedia overpopulation)
At best this will solve the problem for one generation, and our children will need a new solution? Is it a good idea to push the problem back ensuring it is even more difficult for our children, or should we start searching for a better, long term solution to this problem now?
At the current point, it is clear that the price of the population growth is already to increase food prices, which will only make life difficult for the ageing population anyway.

Benefit 3: Sharing the burden through Immigration.
There is a strong argument that some countries need to allow their population to grow to relieve the burden faced by people in overpopulated countries. This argument is valid, but it concedes that the problems of overpopulation are real and immediate. The country which is the source of the immigration provides a clear demonstration of just how real the problem is, the countries which realistically act as a destination for such immigration without very soon reaching their own crisis point are very limited.

Conclusion.
Some people already are living in overpopulated areas, and globally if the Earth is not already overpopulated, it is very close to that point. Any policy of ever increasing population now has a very limited life which can achieve short terms goals, but with a risk for the longer term. This means that short term economic growth can be achieved through population growth but other problems, such as population ageing, cannot continue to be addressed by such a strategy. The challenge is to minimise the degree to which we pass on the problem over population to future generations.

The gas station: closing down forever?

Today, I read an preview of the Mercedes Benz vision for the future.

Link- Road and Track
Second link- Drive.

The car is appears to be a plug in hybrid driven by in wheel electric motors. The electricity comes from a hydrogen fuel cell and a lithium sulfur battery, with inductive charging to charge the battery. 100km can be traveled on battery power alone.

This appears an extremely viable vision of future motoring.

Electric propulsion and inductive battery charging seem to be inevitable. Hydrogen power to replace today's internal combustion engines as a way to deliver long range makes real sense too. So is this future car a hydrogen fuel cell car with additional 'plug in' hybrid power, or an electric car with hydrogen fuel cell range extension?

Well, either, depending on your perspective. Which refueling is more convenient? If you have a garage or other dedicated car space, then the car will automatically top recharge the battery whenever the car is parked. If you drive less than 100km per day, then you never need visit a refilling station, and never use any hydrogen. However on a long journey only 10% of the range comes from the battery. In reality for most people, I suspect the over 100km days will be the exception and over a year the car will be more than 90% battery powered, which is good because this is the greatest efficiency.

But it started a thought process.... if cars may actually use battery power for over 90% of power, then you need way, way less fuel stations!

At least this will make the challenge of creating the hydrogen refilling stations that much easier, but we may have to travel further to find one.

The interim step to this 'plug in' hydrogen car, is the the 'plug in' diesel of gasoline car. The same rules of usage can apply and again and if cars get to drive mostly on battery power then a whole range of fuel stations will convert to apartment blocks. Now this process somehow seems to have started already, but it could really accelerate!