A declining population with increasing life expectancy is not a good thing. Which is a bit of a conundrum eh? The only way life expectancy increases is via better health care, and better health care is paid for by taxes - another conundrum.
In the 50s (when I was born) life expectancy was late 60s - so 3 or 4 years after retirement. Now, life expectancy is early 80s - 15 years after retirement. 10 years of additional healthcare, state pension etc needs to be funded. We push youth into more education, so narrow the time band of the working population..
And everything we do affects the environment - how is this then resolved? Too many people causes issues, but we don't really want population to decline too rapidly. Automation just pushes wealth into fewer hands and the money doesn't filter back down the pyramid.
Apparently the birth rate in the UK has plummeted. It's probably our fault us 27 year old forkers for living too long. Yes child benefit stops after child two. I cannot understand why people want to know the sex of the babies at 12 weeks. Now gender reveal party...it's not gender it's sex, not people having periods, babies,chest feeding it's us WUMIN! Just off to the GP now... going to demand a prostate exam.
Oh well we need some Hosta bigotry in the thread...
It's such a complex matter @steveTu and funnily enough the anti migrant tirade that gave us Brexshit undermines the productivity of the country as it has been proven time and time again. But still a small majority chose to poke its own eyes just to make a point.
Let's hope some mature thinking comes through and works towards a tricky balance that can keep the fairly basic social and health services going. It will probably require a total rethink on the funding and probably a consideration if the NHS should be totally free at the point of service especially for the really well off who can afford to pay a surcharge. But usually those rich folks are the ones who buy politicians to legislate on their favour or *cough* they themselves become politicians.
And thus green policies remain political for ever more. But preserving bio diversity and improving it should be at the heart of how we move forward.
We caught the last of Paul Whitehouse's Our Troubled Rivers on BBC 1. It is heart-breaking to see just how dead our rivers are. The water companies illegally discharge sewage into them, the Environment Agency has had its funding cut to the point where it cannot do its work - and it doesn't have the political will behind it to be able to bring action against the polluters and intensive farming means runoff of nutrients into the rivers allows algae to proliferate at the expense of the natural wildlife. This isn't just sheep and cows in fields - it is acres and acres of chicken sheds. One lady showed a big pile of chicken poo in a field - it was not allowed to be too close to the river. But Paul stood next to her - the river was just yards away and he said he thought that was still too close. And indeed it was - a heavy rainfall washes the slurry into the ditches and into the river. A huge lorry arrive while he was there - delivering day old chicks to be 'grown' (they are no longer reared) on in one of the vast sheds. This company also delivers the feed - the woman had no idea what was in it - and takes away the chickens.
When I was young chicken was a treat. Now it is everywhere. We consume vast quantities of cheap chicken to satisfy our fast food habit and in doing so contribute to the death of our rivers and all of their associated ecosystems.
Our rivers were in trouble before but there was a big effort to clean them up so people didn't automatically tip their old mattresses etc into them. They recovered but in the last 10 years or so have been allowed to simply die.
@didyw I certainly agree with what you say but is it not time for all of us to step back and have a think ? We all produce sewage but it isn't just urine and faeces which go down the toilet - how many times do we hear of sewage pipes being clogged up by stuff which was never designed to be flushed away and forgotten ? There is also the issue of various treatments/medications which people take and which can end up in the system to the detriment of the environment. The one I do recall is concerned with hormonne affecting aquatic life. Dropping rubbish as opposed to taking it home and trying to dispose of it responsibly is also a problem - blows into waterways as well as littering the landscape. The water companies do have a lot to answer for that's for sure - looking for profits rather than tackling the infrastructure. Agriculture too can be held responsible for environmental damage to both land and waterways. However, if the average citizen prefers cheap food, single use products, cheap utility bills and WHY, then the problem is unlikely to go away. Like many people, I don't see an easy answer but simply blaming "them" has had little effect so far. Governments and business will do whatever they think their citizens want (as well as earning votes and money too of course ). Be interesting to see where we are in 2100 but the Tea leaves aren't working
Unless govs around the world realise how quickly things are changing, how rapidly things spread around the 6-7 billion on this globe and that the market 'does not care', so guidance is needed - then we'll be looking at the next set of issues and wondering how we solve them globally without being able to turn the clock back.
Posts
It's such a complex matter @steveTu and funnily enough the anti migrant tirade that gave us Brexshit undermines the productivity of the country as it has been proven time and time again. But still a small majority chose to poke its own eyes just to make a point.
Let's hope some mature thinking comes through and works towards a tricky balance that can keep the fairly basic social and health services going. It will probably require a total rethink on the funding and probably a consideration if the NHS should be totally free at the point of service especially for the really well off who can afford to pay a surcharge. But usually those rich folks are the ones who buy politicians to legislate on their favour or *cough* they themselves become politicians.
And thus green policies remain political for ever more. But preserving bio diversity and improving it should be at the heart of how we move forward.
When I was young chicken was a treat. Now it is everywhere. We consume vast quantities of cheap chicken to satisfy our fast food habit and in doing so contribute to the death of our rivers and all of their associated ecosystems.
Our rivers were in trouble before but there was a big effort to clean them up so people didn't automatically tip their old mattresses etc into them. They recovered but in the last 10 years or so have been allowed to simply die.
Dropping rubbish as opposed to taking it home and trying to dispose of it responsibly is also a problem - blows into waterways as well as littering the landscape.
The water companies do have a lot to answer for that's for sure - looking for profits rather than tackling the infrastructure. Agriculture too can be held responsible for environmental damage to both land and waterways. However, if the average citizen prefers cheap food, single use products, cheap utility bills and WHY, then the problem is unlikely to go away.
Like many people, I don't see an easy answer but simply blaming "them" has had little effect so far. Governments and business will do whatever they think their citizens want (as well as earning votes and money too of course ).
Be interesting to see where we are in 2100 but the Tea leaves aren't working
The world’s population is 8.1 billion. It is expected to peak at around 9.4 to 10.4 billion in the third quarter of this century.
No idea if it's true.