Why does our population have to always be sharply growing forever?
Have you looked at population stats? Most developed countries, including US, have birth rates well below replacement value. In a few decades as the previous generation passes and population plateaus, we appear to be headed for a steep decline in population. And it won’t even help the human condition if developed countries with resources and space decline in population, while undeveloped countries with lesser economies, food, resources continge to get more crowded.
No one is looking for a”sharply growing” population, merely one that’s not “sharply decreasing”.
I draw paralleled to climate change of the last several decades where the data is there, the trends are there, the predictions of doom are there, but it’s not manifest yet. Just because we’re not yet suffering from climate change population drop, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Just like with climate change in the 1970’s, a few small corrections could make a huge difference in the long term trend. Do we really repeat the mistake of ignoring a clear long term trend until it becomes a crisis?
Many populations are in decrease but is that a bad thing? At our current population and consumption rate we would need over two earth’s to sustain us. We’re destroying rainforests for their land, our rivers are going dry because of agricultural usage, we have fished many parts of the ocean to a point of collapse. Imagine if we had to feed, cloth and house one billion less people. Yay. Would it be hard economically, yep, but we should still do it.
At our current population and consumption rate we would need over two earth’s to sustain us
The point is this is not true. Sure, we’re too big a population and are continuing to increase beyond sustainability: I agree. The problem is people live 80+ years so it takes a long time for a change in birth rate to affect population numbers. The trend is already for a steep drop after plateauing in a decade or two . What do you think happens when there are x babies born in a year but 2x people die? When each generation is replaced by one half its size?
Imagine if we had to feed, cloth and house one billion less people
That might indeed be a good idea, but the worry is it happening too fast, disrupting some economies, too inconsistently, leaving some areas over crowded and suffering, and not stabilizing, leaving civilization in chaos. Imagine instead a world where a few tweaks now helps slow down population drop so economies are not disrupted, helps even things out between developed and developing countries, cushions the decrease to a sustainable plateau
Correct, my bad, just googled it. we need 1.75 earth’s to sustain us, not 2… 😂 But that doesn’t change that we only have one. If everyone lived like the people in the US (which is the global direction of things) we would need 4 earth’s. Four earth’s!
And you and I can give our opinions about population growth or decline but what is the professional concensus on the topic? Are we projecting a decline or growth in the next 50 years? Or 100 years?
Got any solutions for when too many people are in one place and not enough in another? I know immigration is scary for some people, but they can get over it. I can think of a few counties that have already.
Here’s a graph of UN projections showing a peak, then decline. Obviously the possible range is still too much, but
– people fear the red line of unconstrained growth but that no longer seems likely
– I fear the green line of destabilizing shrinkage
– we should tweak family support programs to try to land on yellow, where population starts to decline but slowly enough for society to adjust
Edit: sorry bad url or an image search, so let’s go with Wikipedia, showing a range of predictions with population peak sometime in the second half of this century
Have you looked at population stats? Most developed countries, including US, have birth rates well below replacement value. In a few decades as the previous generation passes and population plateaus, we appear to be headed for a steep decline in population. And it won’t even help the human condition if developed countries with resources and space decline in population, while undeveloped countries with lesser economies, food, resources continge to get more crowded.
No one is looking for a”sharply growing” population, merely one that’s not “sharply decreasing”.
I draw paralleled to climate change of the last several decades where the data is there, the trends are there, the predictions of doom are there, but it’s not manifest yet. Just because we’re not yet suffering from
climate changepopulation drop, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. Just like with climate change in the 1970’s, a few small corrections could make a huge difference in the long term trend. Do we really repeat the mistake of ignoring a clear long term trend until it becomes a crisis?Many populations are in decrease but is that a bad thing? At our current population and consumption rate we would need over two earth’s to sustain us. We’re destroying rainforests for their land, our rivers are going dry because of agricultural usage, we have fished many parts of the ocean to a point of collapse. Imagine if we had to feed, cloth and house one billion less people. Yay. Would it be hard economically, yep, but we should still do it.
The point is this is not true. Sure, we’re too big a population and are continuing to increase beyond sustainability: I agree. The problem is people live 80+ years so it takes a long time for a change in birth rate to affect population numbers. The trend is already for a steep drop after plateauing in a decade or two . What do you think happens when there are x babies born in a year but 2x people die? When each generation is replaced by one half its size?
That might indeed be a good idea, but the worry is it happening too fast, disrupting some economies, too inconsistently, leaving some areas over crowded and suffering, and not stabilizing, leaving civilization in chaos. Imagine instead a world where a few tweaks now helps slow down population drop so economies are not disrupted, helps even things out between developed and developing countries, cushions the decrease to a sustainable plateau
Correct, my bad, just googled it. we need 1.75 earth’s to sustain us, not 2… 😂 But that doesn’t change that we only have one. If everyone lived like the people in the US (which is the global direction of things) we would need 4 earth’s. Four earth’s!
And you and I can give our opinions about population growth or decline but what is the professional concensus on the topic? Are we projecting a decline or growth in the next 50 years? Or 100 years?
Got any solutions for when too many people are in one place and not enough in another? I know immigration is scary for some people, but they can get over it. I can think of a few counties that have already.
Here’s a graph of UN projections showing a peak, then decline. Obviously the possible range is still too much, but
– people fear the red line of unconstrained growth but that no longer seems likely
– I fear the green line of destabilizing shrinkage
– we should tweak family support programs to try to land on yellow, where population starts to decline but slowly enough for society to adjust
Edit: sorry bad url or an image search, so let’s go with Wikipedia, showing a range of predictions with population peak sometime in the second half of this century
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population