Halifax Population & Growth

[someone123]

Originally Posted by beyeas

Doesn't some to me that any decision by your kids to leave was actually affected by the local economy or job market!

One interesting angle you rarely hear people talk about is the "demand" side of the job equation. Some of the nicest cities have tougher than usual job markets because so many skilled people want to live in these places (Vancouver, Victoria, and Portland are like this, and the Bay Area is like this for people in most industries). Conversely, the high-paying areas tend to be places where people don't want to live. Halifax's relatively low premium paid out to degree holders reflects the fact that there are a lot of degree holders who want to live there. Fort McMurray employers on the other hand must pay a relatively high premium if they want to be able to hire people.

It's on a smaller scale and this is all hand-wavy but I think Halifax has had a mini-West Coast type of effect for a long time. A lot of people from Eastern Canada in particular (including Ontario) like to try to "make a go of it" there, so the limiting factor to population growth has traditionally been the supply of viable jobs. This isn't really a bad thing, it's a sign that the city is desirable. An interesting corollary to this is that if more jobs do come I think there would be a lot of people willing to move to Halifax. That scenario is not inconceivable with shipbuilding, the offshore industry, etc.

[fenwick16]

Originally Posted by Colin May

Read my comment again, slowly..........
I believe everyone should leave their home and see what is available elsewhere and then make an informed choice.
Try responding to my last two sentences.
Have you always lived here ?

Although your comment wasn't directed at me, I read through your recent comments and couldn't find this statement (did you post it several months ago?). When I read your comments, I get the impression that there is little hope for HRM and Nova Scotia. However, maybe that is what you mean, in other words people should move away and make an informed decision to stay away?

[Colin May]

Originally Posted by someone123

One interesting angle you rarely hear people talk about is the "demand" side of the job equation. Some of the nicest cities have tougher than usual job markets because so many skilled people want to live in these places (Vancouver, Victoria, and Portland are like this, and the Bay Area is like this for people in most industries). Conversely, the high-paying areas tend to be places where people don't want to live. Halifax's relatively low premium paid out to degree holders reflects the fact that there are a lot of degree holders who want to live there. Fort McMurray employers on the other hand must pay a relatively high premium if they want to be able to hire people.

It's on a smaller scale and this is all hand-wavy but I think Halifax has had a mini-West Coast type of effect for a long time. A lot of people from Eastern Canada in particular (including Ontario) like to try to "make a go of it" there, so the limiting factor to population growth has traditionally been the supply of viable jobs. This isn't really a bad thing, it's a sign that the city is desirable. An interesting corollary to this is that if more jobs do come I think there would be a lot of people willing to move to Halifax. That scenario is not inconceivable with shipbuilding, the offshore industry, etc.

Depends what degree you have.
If you are a civil engineer, a petroleum engineer, an electrical engineer, a chemical engineer, a nuclear physicist, or a medical research scientist you won't find much work here - not what I call 'soft degrees' The latter bought a home a few doors from me and quickly departed for Australia where he was offered his own lab, staff and a guaranteed job for his wife - an RN. He said he would have to wait a very long time for such an opportunity in Canada and so a 30ish couple are gone.
There are many very well educated and highly skilled people in Fort Mac - the world is their oyster. The higher skills and qualifications required for naval shipbuilding are mostly found outside Canada and that is why Irving spent more than a week in the UK in February this year.
There are degrees, somewhat useful degrees and very useful degrees.

[OldDartmouthMark]

I keep reading and hearing that we must continue to grow our population to keep our economy growing.

So I ask the question: what is the endpoint goal to this? Obviously, continued growth to infinity means that we will eventually reach the point where our population is so large that there will not be enough resources to sustain life on the planet.

So is this a flaw in our financial system or just somebody's concept of what our desired level should be? Why do we continue to chase this carrot at the end of the stick?

It always seems to be taken as a 'given' when I hear some politician spew it out in the news (people aren't reproducing enough, our young people are leaving in droves, we don't have enough people immigrating and the ones that do hightail it to Toronto and Vancouver, etc.), but I've never seen a good logical explanation of the concept.

Just curious in what other members of this forum think about this subject. Perhaps there needs to be a rethinking of how to sustain our province without continual population growth based on an alternative financial model...

[mcmcclassic]

My wife and I are moving to Ontario not so much because of the situation here in Halifax/NS, but more because we wanted to try something different (and I got a job paying 10k/yr more).

The most obvious answer that I think explains the decline of the population here is the lack of opportunities in rural NS. Many are faced with 2 choices: go to school for a shot at a job here or go to Alberta - most choosing the latter option.

In terms of keeping people from other places from leaving here, the general attitude towards progress has to change. The idea that if Halifax succeeds, the rest lose is offputting for many newcomers choosing to live outside of Halifax. The NIMBYism towards almost everything here I would think would be depressing for a newcomer. People generally move to a new place for opportunities or a new adventure. If the local people constantly shit on everything about their home/government/society then why would anyone want to stay and listen to that constant pessimism?

New Brunswick likely deals with a similar situation that we do, and to help fix this we need to do a better job promoting what we are good at here in NS rather than focusing on all the things we aren't.

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Colin May

and in which industries are these immigrants employed and where is a detailed analysis of arrivals and departures ?
ISANS does not publish any information as to the numbers who have arrived in metro, last country, country of origin, retention in Nova Scotia, and departure to other provinces.
I have read the SMU study but that includes refugees, I usually make a distinction between refugees and immigrants.

I'm not going to spend half the morning rounding up stats, but it's all available on StatCan if you know where to look.

I know all this from a detailed piece of journalism I did last year on immigration patterns in Canadian cities. What's interesting about Halifax is that while we have some of the best outcome for immigrants, we're relatively poor at attracting them. Even the other Maritime cities do much better, on a per-capita basis. (PEI blows everyone away.)

Part of this, I think, has to do with a provincial government more fixated on stimulating bygone industries in rural areas than with things like immigrant attraction and retention.

Another interesting thing: Immigrants are net job creators in Nova Scotia, so all the hue and cry over immigrants taking jobs from Nova Scotians is bunk.

As far as your kids, I mean, one wanted to see the mountains, one wanted to travel. That's pretty standard young person stuff: a desire to get out and see what's beyond your own backyard. That's why I left Calgary. A lifelong Torontonian friend of mine just left Toronto for Yellowknife out of a desire to live in a more wilderness-y part of the country. Young people are always going to be mobile, and it doesn't necessarily have to do with NS. We have to stop freaking out every time someone leaves--it's not necessarily a reflection on the province.

As far as not being able to make a career in arts, well, I know loads of people making a career in arts here—musicians, gallery types, curators, photographers—so it really depends what kind of career you want. But sure, moving to one of the cultural hotspots of the country (TO/MTL) is probably a decent idea, especially if you want to be an actor or a dancer or something. And a stronger economy wouldn't really help with that—there are only a few such cultural hubs in any country, and if you really want to be in the big leagues you have to leave Canada altogether.

I went to university in Calgary with several people who moved to Toronto after school, specifically because Calgary didn't offer them all the opportunities in the arts sector they wanted. Some of those are now in New York. It's just the way of the it goes.

Originally Posted by mcmcclassic

If the local people constantly shit on everything about their home/government/society then why would anyone want to stay and listen to that constant pessimism?

New Brunswick likely deals with a similar situation that we do, and to help fix this we need to do a better job promoting what we are good at here in NS rather than focusing on all the things we aren't.

Well, this is exactly right. We have great universities and medical facilities—what small cities with knowledge-based economies in the US called "eds and meds" infrastructure—out of which we can generate not only employment but entrepreneurship, research, and new enterprises. (Though sorry, they're not likely to employ former coal miners from Glace Bay.) And we have one of the best arts schools in North America. Yet you can open up the Herald and find on one page an editorial about, say, university debt or consolidation that implies our universities are taxpayer-funded liabilities that are preventing us from being competitive. On another page you can find a story about how our change-resistant culture is destroying the opportunities of fracking, despite the fact that there's probably very little frackable gas in the province anyway.

Arts is another example: we have an amazing arts scene for a small city, despite that arts funding is piss-poor, and arts infrastructure is mediocre (the oft-lamented lack of a real concert hall is one example). Artists WANT to live here, and do, despite a somewhat hostile environment vis-a-vis public policy and funding. Imagine the potential if we actually embraced the arts sector.

And heck, immigration is another: Immigrants do well here, and create jobs, and yet we're still stuck at debating whether or not we even should attract new immigrants, rather than crafting an aggressive strategy to do so.

So yeah: A lot of people in this province, especially decision-makers at the government level, don't know the strength of what's right under their own noses, preferring to chase pipe dreams. (Which usually relate to natural-resource extraction.)

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I keep reading and hearing that we must continue to grow our population to keep our economy growing.

So I ask the question: what is the endpoint goal to this? Obviously, continued growth to infinity means that we will eventually reach the point where our population is so large that there will not be enough resources to sustain life on the planet.

So is this a flaw in our financial system or just somebody's concept of what our desired level should be? Why do we continue to chase this carrot at the end of the stick?

It always seems to be taken as a 'given' when I hear some politician spew it out in the news (people aren't reproducing enough, our young people are leaving in droves, we don't have enough people immigrating and the ones that do hightail it to Toronto and Vancouver, etc.), but I've never seen a good logical explanation of the concept.

Just curious in what other members of this forum think about this subject. Perhaps there needs to be a rethinking of how to sustain our province without continual population growth based on an alternative financial model...

I think it's a basic human instinct to keep a society's numbers growing, though you're right, there's a point at which the instinct to grow no longer makes rational sense because we start butting against resource scarcity, etc. I don't think it's a flaw in the financial system so much as the result of a financial system based on basic human instinct—many societies throughout human history grew too large, and then crashed because of overconsumption. There's even evidence that some Aboriginal societies in North America did this.

But I also think that Nova Scotia isn't even close to being at overpopulation levels, and to keep our culture alive and vital, we need to keep the population not so much large as relatively young. But as the population shrinks, it also ages. The two are linked. And I don't want to live in a society composed mostly of old folks; it feels wrong, and it also won't offer me much (even when I AM an old folk, I don't think I'd want to be surrounded by nothing but).

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

I keep reading and hearing that we must continue to grow our population to keep our economy growing.

So I ask the question: what is the endpoint goal to this? Obviously, continued growth to infinity means that we will eventually reach the point where our population is so large that there will not be enough resources to sustain life on the planet.

So is this a flaw in our financial system or just somebody's concept of what our desired level should be? Why do we continue to chase this carrot at the end of the stick?

It is primarily to generate more tax revenue so that govts can pay off past debt and expand their size. No govt wants to size itself appropriately for the population base. Their natural instinct is to expand and grow, requiring more money.

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

I think it's a basic human instinct to keep a society's numbers growing, though you're right, there's a point at which the instinct to grow no longer makes rational sense because we start butting against resource scarcity, etc. I don't think it's a flaw in the financial system so much as the result of a financial system based on basic human instinct—many societies throughout human history grew too large, and then crashed because of overconsumption. There's even evidence that some Aboriginal societies in North America did this.

But I also think that Nova Scotia isn't even close to being at overpopulation levels, and to keep our culture alive and vital, we need to keep the population not so much large as relatively young. But as the population shrinks, it also ages. The two are linked. And I don't want to live in a society composed mostly of old folks; it feels wrong, and it also won't offer me much (even when I AM an old folk, I don't think I'd want to be surrounded by nothing but).

Thanks for that. Good points. Certainly we in NS have room to grow and definitely we should be aiming at retaining/immigrating a larger percentage of young people. As you said, a society comprised mainly of elderly people will not be sustainable or progressive.

All that said, I think it's time for a turnaround. IMHO, we need to analyze why young people from here are choosing to take up residence in other places:

- If it is just that they want to experience a different part of the world, then that's the way it goes, as you mentioned. It'll always be that way for a percentage of people, some permanently leaving, some returning later after they've "seen the world".

- If the cause is lack of opportunities matched to the education level of our young people, then we must find a way to correct this. A complicated issue to be sure as it involves so many factors, but we must find a way to create opportunities throughout the province in fields that are not at the end of their lifespan (like pulp and paper - dumping money into an industry with no future and no payback), and then find ways to motivate people in the school system to attain the skills and credentials to move into those fields. A difficult task, but a necessary one IMHO.

Regarding sustainability of population growth globally, I fear we are rapidly reaching our limit, since some of the world's largest population areas have been on the fastrack to industrialization for a while now. They are in a phase which historically has always yielded the highest levels of resource consumption and pollution and it appears that this is only increasing the stress on the planet. We (North America and Europe) have been dumping on the planet for a couple of centuries now and have stepped it up even more in the last century. Now that the rest of the world is following suit the problem is growing exponentially. It's something we all need to be concerned about and all need to act on. But that's another topic for another thread...

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

It's on a smaller scale and this is all hand-wavy but I think Halifax has had a mini-West Coast type of effect for a long time. A lot of people from Eastern Canada in particular (including Ontario) like to try to "make a go of it" there, so the limiting factor to population growth has traditionally been the supply of viable jobs. This isn't really a bad thing, it's a sign that the city is desirable. An interesting corollary to this is that if more jobs do come I think there would be a lot of people willing to move to Halifax. That scenario is not inconceivable with shipbuilding, the offshore industry, etc.

And the corollary to that is that it's difficult, sometimes, for born-and-raised Haligonians to believe that.

When I moved here, loads of my friends in Ontario and Alberta thought the idea of living out here was very cool. Most had visited the Maritimes once or twice, and had very positive impressions of the city and what life is like here.

So fast-forward to about six months later, and I'm working in Halifax. My company was deciding whether or not to advertise a new position both in and out of the region. The consensus was that nobody who didn't already live here would bother to move here, or would want to, so we should just advertise locally. The dissenting voices were me and another former Ontarian, who expressed the same thing, basically: Sure people would like to move here.

Our other colleagues were so tainted by their own negative perceptions of the city ("everyone's leaving!", etc) that they had a hard time believing that other Canadians would find it desirable, or even preferable, to live here instead of Toronto, Ottawa, etc.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

When I moved here, loads of my friends in Ontario and Alberta thought the idea of living out here was very cool. Most had visited the Maritimes once or twice, and had very positive impressions of the city and what life is like here.

It's weird that NSians accept that young people from there might have a desire to get out and see the world, but don't seem to understand that the same phenomenon makes NS interesting to people from other places and creates a natural inflow as well.

Halifax specifically has a lot of good qualities when stacked up against other domestic options like Ottawa or Calgary. It's on the coast, it's historic and fairly urban, it's got a lot of local culture and character, and it has one of the best climates in the country (which isn't saying much, but still matters if you're contemplating worse alternatives, which most Canadian cities are).

I moved away from NS to go to grad school. It really had nothing to do with a desire to escape from Halifax/NS, although I also wanted to move around. I figured people in other places would have a negative impression of the East Coast but that isn't really true, with the occasional exception of other East Coasters living here (particularly older ones), who often make it sound like everybody is on EI and has to deal with biweekly blizzard for six months of the year. Similarly when I go back, a lot of people have an unrealistically positive impression of what things are like here. It really does feel like there is a kind of reality distortion field focused around NS. Alberta and BC on the other hand have a bit of the opposite effect going on.

[halifaxboyns]

I wonder if it's an attitude problem and not just an economic development issue? If people perceive that an area doesn't have a lot of opportunities, they may see the economy as weak and decide to leave. Is the economic situation in Halifax truly weak or is it appropriate for a city of it's size?

The one attitude I find quite annoying for Halifax (and it may be a maritime attitude - IMO) is that being 'have not' we can't possibly get things done. But that's not true, at least I don't think. There is lots of money out there - it's about building partnerships and better relationships (intergovernmental, etc.) so that what one group could not achieve; a bigger group can.

Government can have a hand in doing that - certainly US cities have a lot of mechanisms to offer up a helping hand to development industry for things. Rollin talked about a heritage tax credit a viva city that allowed St. Louis to use old factories which had closed down to be retained as heritage buildings but converted into lofts.

This is where I think Planning Departments (in general) should really be linked up with the economic development agencies of cities. I know Hamilton actually has a Planning and Economic Development Department - they are linked in the same business unit. I like that idea and it creates a lot of synergy in my mind. But this is also where the Municipal ED agencies and Provincial need to have a lot more conversations and work together. They don't compete against each other (nor should they feel they do).

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by someone123

I moved away from NS to go to grad school. It really had nothing to do with a desire to escape from Halifax/NS, although I also wanted to move around. I figured people in other places would have a negative impression of the East Coast but that isn't really true, with the occasional exception of other East Coasters living here (particularly older ones), who often make it sound like everybody is on EI and has to deal with biweekly blizzard for six months of the year. Similarly when I go back, a lot of people have an unrealistically positive impression of what things are like here. It really does feel like there is a kind of reality distortion field focused around NS. Alberta and BC on the other hand have a bit of the opposite effect going on.

When I was planning to move here, I had to ignore a lot of "don't do it" warnings from ex-Nova Scotians in Ontario, mainly because of genuine concern that I'd regret the move, or that it'd be next to impossible to find good work, etc. (For the record: I'm glad I moved, finding work was relatively simple, and at least two of those ex-Scotians were ironically struggling with long-term unemployment in Toronto.)

I feel like when someone moves west to east instead of the other way around, it screws up the westward-bound narrative some people really believe in and use to define the country. I can't think of any other way to explain the occasional affronted or annoyed reactions I get from people who learn I've come here—like I've made some insanely stupid or inexplicable personal decision to go against the grain. I still get a chuckle out of the people who seem to assume that I've left cities where the streets are paved with gold (or at least help-wanted ads). I usually try to suggest that it's not so bad here, and not that good elsewhere, but usually I get a lot of "no, no, "you don't understand."

I think a lot of people have made "Nova Scotia" the cause of any problem they might have, and "away" is the solution.

But I definitely had a similar difficulty when I left Alberta—I was convinced it was total redneck-land, until subsequent visits convinced me that I'd been way too harsh, and bringing way too much of my own stereotypes and baggage to how I felt about it.

[someone123]

I've always found the westward-bound attitude bizarre. The US has seen a similar pattern of settlement. I could be wrong, but it doesn't feel to me like people treat, say, Boston as a kind of throwback destined to be abandoned in favour of Utah or Colorado. I also don't think that Canadians necessarily view a country like Norway as being moribund because it was once a source of settlers. This specious line of reasoning feels like a special concoction designed to explain away poor outcomes in Atlantic Canada.

To some degree I wonder how much Maritimers are victims of the national media. For years they have been bombarded with an overwhelmingly negative outside perspective coming mostly from Ontario. It has changed a bit in recent years but in the past it was very hard to find a story about Atlantic Canada in the news that wasn't about hardscrabble living in an outport. Even when there was a positive story, it happened "against all odds" or with government help, whereas successes in Ontario tend to be reported in an unqualified way.

The other day I was watching a story about how some auto manufacturer wasn't setting up shop in Ontario because the federal government wasn't going to to pony up the $800M in subsidies they wanted. It was squarely an "economic development" story and the decision not to provide the public funding was portrayed as controversial. Had the setting instead been Sydney NS that would have been a government handout story and they'd have gone door to door interviewing people about how these government jobs are desperately needed to improve their miserable lives.

The sad thing is that at this point this double standard has even rubbed off on local media outlets. Hopefully they'll change someday and adopt a more balanced outlook. It would be interesting to have a look back through the decades and see when this change in attitude happened. If you read stories from the 1800's they don't have this tone at all. If anything Maritimers for a long time had a tendency to believe that they were living in a more developed part of the country even as the focus was shifting westward. If you go back to the golden years of the 1850's and 60's, there was discrimination in the other direction; people like Joseph Howe viewed Ontario and Quebec as somewhat less stable and developed socially and economically.

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by halifaxboyns

I wonder if it's an attitude problem and not just an economic development issue? If people perceive that an area doesn't have a lot of opportunities, they may see the economy as weak and decide to leave. Is the economic situation in Halifax truly weak or is it appropriate for a city of it's size?

The one attitude I find quite annoying for Halifax (and it may be a maritime attitude - IMO) is that being 'have not' we can't possibly get things done.

PM Harper's line from years ago about the area having a "culture of defeat" was decried at the time, but it is absolutely true for many here. The incessant negativity, amplified by opposition politcians and the news media, especially the Bousquet types in it, really feeds on itself. Even good news stories like the shipbuilding contract are still seen as an illusion, pie in the sky promises that will never make any difference or come to reality.

[fenwick16]

Originally Posted by OldDartmouthMark

Regarding sustainability of population growth globally, I fear we are rapidly reaching our limit, since some of the world's largest population areas have been on the fastrack to industrialization for a while now. They are in a phase which historically has always yielded the highest levels of resource consumption and pollution and it appears that this is only increasing the stress on the planet. We (North America and Europe) have been dumping on the planet for a couple of centuries now and have stepped it up even more in the last century. Now that the rest of the world is following suit the problem is growing exponentially. It's something we all need to be concerned about and all need to act on. But that's another topic for another thread...

I agree that the world is getting close to its population limit, however the world population isn't as out of control as you may think based on this UN document - http://esa.un.org/wpp/documentation/...HIGHLIGHTS.pdf.

Maybe Halifax will become such a desirable place to live that it will continue to grow even once the worldwide population reaches a plateau .

[someone123]

Originally Posted by fenwick16

I agree that the world is getting close to its population limit, however the world population isn't as out of control as you may think based on this UN document - http://esa.un.org/wpp/documentation/...HIGHLIGHTS.pdf.

There isn't really a fixed limit. It depends on how people live and what kind of technology they have access to. There were countries in the past with much smaller populations that suffered from famine and environmental problems because they had inferior technology and social problems. It's possible to imagine better energy sources becoming available in the future that would allow a larger number of people to live on the planet but have a smaller environmental footprint.

All of that being said, I disagree with the idea that a place needs to have population growth to be successful. Some of the most successful countries have low population growth while many of the fast-growing countries have a low standard of living. There are lots of big cities too with rapidly-growing populations and a low standard of living. That is not something to aspire to, and attracting more people does not in and of itself solve problems.

[curnhalio]

Originally Posted by someone123

All of that being said, I disagree with the idea that a place needs to have population growth to be successful. Some of the most successful countries have low population growth while many of the fast-growing countries have a low standard of living. There are lots of big cities too with rapidly-growing populations and a low standard of living. That is not something to aspire to, and attracting more people does not in and of itself solve problems.

Fort Mac had that problem. They were seeing exponential growth and a good chunk of residents were living in tent communities. For all I know, the tent communities are still around. It certainly made me think twice about following the oil boom jobs. The possibility of living in a tent when it's -30'C outside was in no way desirable, no matter how much I was being paid.

If you follow the narrative, I suppose I'm in the minority as a young person born and bred here that chose to stay and make a go of life. I suppose I had more modest financial dreams, and not much of a desire to work harder than necessary to achieve gainful employment. You're not going to bust your hump working 12 hours a day on a rig for a six figure annual salary if you have no desire to earn six figures to begin with.

[halifaxboyns]

Originally Posted by curnhalio

Fort Mac had that problem. They were seeing exponential growth and a good chunk of residents were living in tent communities. For all I know, the tent communities are still around. It certainly made me think twice about following the oil boom jobs. The possibility of living in a tent when it's -30'C outside was in no way desirable, no matter how much I was being paid.

If you follow the narrative, I suppose I'm in the minority as a young person born and bred here that chose to stay and make a go of life. I suppose I had more modest financial dreams, and not much of a desire to work harder than necessary to achieve gainful employment. You're not going to bust your hump working 12 hours a day on a rig for a six figure annual salary if you have no desire to earn six figures to begin with.

Having lived and worked there as a planner for almost 3 years; it wasn't so much tent communities (that was a dramatization of the media). Tents only worked in the summer - too cold in the winter (no joke intended). But it was people coming and living in campers (and yes some did try to stay in tents through winter) but it was the issue of couch hoping, and stacking of people in units (if an apartment was projected to have 3 people you ended up with 10).

We called these folks the shadow population because they were hard to find and to count in terms of the census. What I saw during my time was the rise of corporate housing. A company would buy a house and then plunk a bunch of it's workers (typically men) into the house and it caused no end of grief because you'd have 7-10 guys in one house and each having a work truck (apparently car pooling wasn't in the mindset) and so on street parking became an issue. We did try to curb or control it using the City's Boarding House rules until the zoning bylaw but when it got challenged in court we lost because the definition was so old and there was no way to prove the compensation aspect (3 or more people living in a dwelling unit for compensation was the basic definition if I remember correctly).

When I left; the shadow population was a huge issue and I believe still is. It was that and work camps - they were popping up all over the rural areas and not always having the necessary environmental clearances (I had 2 end up at appeal board and the guy admitted he was going to fire off his sewage into the woods - that went over well).

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by someone123

There isn't really a fixed limit. It depends on how people live and what kind of technology they have access to. There were countries in the past with much smaller populations that suffered from famine and environmental problems because they had inferior technology and social problems. It's possible to imagine better energy sources becoming available in the future that would allow a larger number of people to live on the planet but have a smaller environmental footprint.

With all due respect, I feel there actually is a fixed limit with the ambiguity being at which point that fixed limit is reached. Obviously, one can imagine that there would be an ultimate point where every square inch of land is physically taken up by humans - a situation that most of us would agree to be inhabitable. And I think we would all likely agree that the limit at which people could actually sustain health and happiness would be much less than that. So therefore, we have established that there is a limit.

Where that limit lies is partly subjective, partly objective. I'm sure we could objectively determine through scientific analysis the max population at which it's possible for people to physically live. Also, as mentioned, technological advances could have an effect on what that final number is and could potentially increase that max in the future as new technology becomes available.

However, the subjective side would have many different answers, largely dependent on how people define how they want to live and what they decide are their priorities for the environment, etc., which is much broader than a simple carbon footprint calculation. Yes, energy sustainability and the effect of pollutants on our environment are very important, but there are many other factors to consider:

- What about our practices which effect other species of life on the planet? Is it acceptable to allow other creatures to die off directly due to human population? Then one has to consider what effect does that have on the rest of the environment/ecosystem? There is a balance that we've already surpassed where the existence of so many humans on the planet is happening at the expense of pretty much all other species to differing degrees - this is fact.

- What type of food supply do we want? Natural organically grown food, or manufactured food? Genetically engineered? There is a wide range of opinions on what is acceptable in this field. Often the difference comes between people who care about their well-being and companies which stand to profit from particular activities.

- How do we want to live? Does everybody want to live in a situation like Manila, for example, with a population density of 111,002 per square mile? (from wikipedia) I suspect that there is no one answer for that, but people who have experienced a richer style of living (which can have many interpretations, but I'm not referring to monetary richness) would probably not aspire to live in such density.

- etc., etc.....

Of course technology can have an effect on some of these things, but historically when humans apply technology to have a certain desired effect there are often several undesired effects that go along with it. I thinks it's very dangerous to assume that technology will always have an ideal solution for everything. Also, one must remember that technology is often initially created for the betterment of mankind, but then to attain sustainability somebody has to be able to profit from it, after which profit becomes its reason for being rather than its social benefits - that is an entire subject in itself.

Finally, the question that continues to haunt me is... why? Why do we continue to grow the earth's human population exponentially? There are many cultural and religious causes for it, including humans' hard-wired desire to reproduce at all costs. This all was arguably sustainable when the planet was more sparsely populated, but now, IMHO, it has become a liability rather than a benefit. Yet, politically and otherwise there appears to be a continual push to grow population - I think we as a species need to do some soul-searching and start asking hard questions regarding the wisdom of this mindset.... :twocents: