Waves of refugees straining the local infrastructure past the breaking point.
It's not easy to migrate away from Africa and it's a matter of political willingness to accept "waves of refugees". The highest demand of petroleum and metals doesn't come from those place with high population growth. A US citizen consumes ten times the amount of energy as a nigerian. And Nigeria is a country that uses a lot of energy for an African nation because it has oil.
A Amercian house cat consumes produces more CO_2 than some Africans.
If we exceed that carrying capacity, we will have a die-off soon after no matter how "responsible" we are.
There no reason that everyone has to die.
But in reflection I grant you that developing alternative energy technology might reduce some risks.
If we exceed that carrying capacity, we will have a die-off soon after no matter how "responsible" we are.
But being responsible can mean using only a tenth as much energy which means you could have ten times as many people.
When it comes to the issue of overpopulation we face the trend that birth rates go down. The problem moves in the right direction. As far as current trends go it's unlikely that population will double.
It's not easy to migrate away from Africa and it's a matter of political willingness to accept "waves of refugees".
Well, it's happening in Europe already. The US is having immigration issues of its own as well.
When it comes to the issue of overpopulation we face the trend that birth rates go down. The problem moves in the right direction. As far as current trends go it's unlikely that population will double.
As I said to Lumifer, birth rates are going down because of wealth, which is driven by technology. As you pointed out, though:
...A US
Update: Thanks everyone for the continuing thought-provoking discussion. I intend to post my decision spreadsheet, and still am looking for suggestions on where to do so. It might come in handy come February. A discussion that I find interesting has branched off on the topic of technological progress versus Malthusian Crunch, and I started a new article on that over here.
I would like to kick off a discussion about optimal strategies to prepare for the event that the US government fails to raise the debt ceiling before the US Treasury Department's "extraordinary measures" are exhausted, which is estimated to happen sometime between October 17th and mid-November.
This is a risk *caused* by politics, but my goal is to talk about bracing against the event itself if it happens, not the underlying politics. If you want to debate Obama-care, who is at fault, or how likely a US default actually is, please start a separate discussion.
I consider this to be an indirect existential risk because if it kicks off a national or global recession, it will likely slow or halt research and philanthropic efforts at mitigating longer-term existential risks.
Since there are obvious associations between unemployment/poverty and crime, civil unrest, and poor health, a global recession is likely to be to some extent a personal existential risk to those living in the United States or countries that have trade links with the United States.
I notice that the markets do not seem to be anticipating a bad outcome. But I heard one analyst advance the theory that investors simply don't believe the government can (his words) "be that stupid". I imagine there is more than a touch of availability bias as well-- breaching the debt ceiling might, even for fund managers who harbor no illusions about the wisdom of politicians, be up there with science-fictional scenarios like asteroid impact, peak oil, grey goo, global warming, and
terrorist attacks. Moreover, there may be a dangerous feedback loop as the politicians in turn watch the stock indexes and conclude that "the market says there is nothing to worry about".So, I would like to hear what folks who are making contingency plans are doing. Especially people who have training or experience in economics and finance. What do you think the closest parallels in 20th/21st century history are for what the worst case scenario for a US government default would be like? Is there anything you would have done differently if you had known the date for the start of the 2008 recession with a +/- 2 week confidence interval, starting in two days? Or, if you did call it ahead of time, what are you glad you did?