If the population were to stabilize, would that solve our environmental problems?

Which types of might be alleviated, and which might continue to get worse?|||Not without better technologies.





Some feel the planet is already teetering on the brink with the population we have now. Zero population growth is predicted to occur not until 2050. By then the planet will have nearly doubled in population again.





Firstly, we have to find an alternative to burning fossil fuels. Wind, solar and tidal are renewable and clean resources but with the current technology they are very inefficient and impractical. Geo-thermal, like in Iceland is a great renewable source of energy but requires the right geography. The technology involved in nuclear power has greatly increased over the past couple of decades. Nuclear power plants have become much more efficient and safe. Most of the spent nuclear fuel can be refined and used over and over again but there still is the problem of what to do with the nuclear waste that isn't reused and with terrorism. Hydrogen as a fuel source in cars is a bust since it takes as much if not more energy to remove the hydrogen atoms from a water molecule to produce the hydrogen fuel. Nuclear fusion technology is still some time off.





If we keep relying on fossil fuels for energy, consumer goods, pesticides and fertilizer, etc, without developing alternatives, when we run out it will be chaos. The world will not have a stable population, it will have negative growth, if the damage fossil fuels does to the Earth doesn't do it first. Peak oil has supposedly already occurred. A few years ago when gas prices spiked is just one symptom. Oil companies are prospecting for oil and natural gas in remote places on the Earth including the Arctic and the deep ocean. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is the beginning of many environmental disasters that will occur because of this. We are using more dirty alternatives for fuel such as the Alberta tar sands in Canada and the dirty coal being mined and burned in China. We are diverting corn and other crops to making fuel instead of food in a world that already has more than enough starving people. Our water, air and soil is becoming more polluted by the day because of our bad habits and reliance on oil.





We must all educate ourselves on the subject. We have to at least attempt to be more efficient and environmental friendly and we must demand that our leaders take these issues seriously. There is no need to be driving around in a gas-guzzler SUV when you live in the city. We all must learn to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle more of what we consume. We should be buying products that are produced locally. We should not be having more than two children per household, preferably just one. We should all become vegetarians.





Personally, I don't think any of these are possible to achieve. For example, I couldn't give up eating meat. It seems as if we are a species running blindly off the edge of a cliff. Enjoy the ride. The Earth has its own defense mechanisms and will eventually humble us as a species and put us in our place. We will have a mass extinction, just as any other animal that grows too big for its environment. The earth will heal itself and in a few million years another intelligent species will rise again to take our place.|||We're past that point. It would need to decrease drastically if we keep living this way. If it were to even just plateu, we would still have to dramtically change our lifestyle with in the next generation to avoid an environmental catastrophe in the future.|||Hitler and Communist China have tried to do this.





Parents have tried to do this with their minor children.





It's a good luck thing.





Even famine and war haven't helped much.





Me, I guess we're stuck being life forms that are directed by genetic mandate to replicate our molecular structures.|||One thing stabilizing will not solve the entire problem.


There are different things that contributed to the problem,all has to be solved for enviro.to stabilize.|||No. Environmental activists would just come up with new environmental catastrophes in order to stay in business.|||You think we got environmental problems, look at Mars.|||It would help but not solve it. There would still be cars and pollutants.