• Question: How do we solve the population problem?

    Asked by anon-241420 to Ross, Natalia, Martin, Gabriela, Ellie, Chukwuka on 12 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Ross Alexander

      Ross Alexander answered on 12 Mar 2020:

      This is an excellent question and something i am very interested in. I actually did a show last year that was called “Lets kill half the world”. So that was my very extreme solution, haha. I do not really think we should kill people, but for fun, if you had to: how do you think we should do it?

      The problem with population is not that we do not have enough food, we have more than enough food to feed 10 billion people. It is that the food is not distributed equally across the world. We need to sort out that first. And we need to figure out a way to do this without destroying the planet.

      It is an extremely complex with no simple solutions. I am sure the other scientists will have some ideas. What do you think we should do?

    • Photo: Martin Johnsson

      Martin Johnsson answered on 12 Mar 2020: last edited 12 Mar 2020 7:01 pm

      First, caveat: I’m not an expert on demography (the study of populations). As much seems to be clear that we are going to be more people on the planet. That means that the world will need to produce more food, to be able to feed everyone, and it needs to happen in a way that doesn’t destroy the environment.

      According to “How to feed the world in 2050” UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world population will be around 9 billion in 2050, and the world’s food production will have to increase by 70% to feed all of us. (The numbers are from 2009, though, so the numbers might be a bit old.) The report argues that we need make sure that farmers all over the world get access to more advanced farming technology, and that we need to do more research on how to farm more efficiently.

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