31–40 of 191 posts
This is fine, it's a small blip. Millenials and Zoomers and some Gen Xers will do the environment a huge favor and keep the birth rate trending down.
How's the birth rate in India or the african countries?
Africa fertility rate is dropping around 1.5% per year annually for the region as a whole.
Increasingly technologized populations drop fertility fast
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> Located in the U.S. where we could double the population without starting to feel cramped. You're already running out of resources: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-11/californ...
In that case the population is dominated by the suicidally bad water management in CA. You could cut the population by 99% and you would still have a looming water crisis there. If you build a solar energy farm on the dark side of the moon you shouldn't be blaming the people who want to use the energy, you should be blaming the people who managed the project.
Happy to see the world population growing. Unlike many here I don't believe the world is overpopulated and that we need more people to grow and expand beyond the planet. Located in the U.S. where we could double the population without starting to feel cramped. We can and we should.
The dust bowl absolutely destroyed a large part of the US. In prior centuries, massive droughts, volcanic explosions that blackened the skies, and massively deadly pandemics ravaged the world. These things happen periodically and absolutely destroy any population that's pushing the limits of its population totals.
So far we've managed to sustain huge population numbers by pumping up ground water. That's drying up across the world. We've survived off fish. Those populations are collapsing. We've diverted rivers for agriculture in deserts. There isn't enough rain to keep those flowing and hasn't been for years, plus with climate change glaciers and mountain snow that fed into rivers are increasingly a thing of the past--rivers and lakes that exist today will cease to exist within our lifetime (and long before we expect). Fertilizer let us push the land well beyond sustainable limits and vegetables are less nutritious than they've ever been due to nutrients being wiped out of the soil. Most countries are dependent on food being shipped from hundreds if not thousands of miles away and often from other countries entirely.
The world is severely overpopulated. We've just been lucky to have had a few decades of peaceful trade and a very, very, very mild environmental situation with zero major global disasters. This isn't the norm. One massive volcanic eruption, one actual plague, one massive drought and it's all over.
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Because you live in the wealthiest country in the world (over 100 continuous years of highest GDP) with high salaries and lots of habitable space (from exterminating the native populace). But that's not sustainable - the US has the highest CO2 emissions per capita when you factor in imports, etc. nevermind other environmental damage. And is also dependent on terrible conditions in Asia, etc. to produce all the cheap…
> But that's not sustainable - 100 years ago people were saying we would all die from starvation after a few billion more people. Doom sayers have zero credibility.
The current fertiliser shortages might undo some of that, there's a real chance we see severe famines in Lebanon, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Yemen, and other countries next year.
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Because you live in the wealthiest country in the world (over 100 continuous years of highest GDP) with high salaries and lots of habitable space (from exterminating the native populace). But that's not sustainable - the US has the highest CO2 emissions per capita when you factor in imports, etc. nevermind other environmental damage. And is also dependent on terrible conditions in Asia, etc. to produce all the cheap…
> But that's not sustainable - 100 years ago people were saying we would all die from starvation after a few billion more people. Doom sayers have zero credibility.
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We’re on track for electric cars to overtake gas cars in twenty years. Nuclear power is making a comeback. Even electric planes are in the wings. Best of all, lab-grown meat is here now and we’re just waiting for the price to come down. It seems as though we’ll have solved our emissions issues by the next generation. Would you still argue against a higher population once we largely solve the emissions issues? Or is t…
We consume many resources and we won't consume less of them just because cars become electric. Emissions are just one of many pressures we out on the environment. I think it's better to ask why should population keep growing? We don't need it and it physically has to stop growing at some point. It seems much better to focus on growing quality of life and quality of environment rather than growing number of people.
Because you can’t stop people from breeding apart from killing them, at which point you’ve become Hitler. That or tax and social disincentivization at which point you’ve become the Illuminati. That or a procreation suppression field at which point you’re the Combine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you live in the wealthiest country in the world (over 100 continuous years of highest GDP) with high salaries and lots of habitable space (from exterminating the native populace). But that's not sustainable - the US has the highest CO2 emissions per capita when you factor in imports, etc. nevermind other environmental damage. And is also dependent on terrible conditions in Asia, etc. to produce all the cheap…
> But that's not sustainable - 100 years ago people were saying we would all die from starvation after a few billion more people. Doom sayers have zero credibility.
Soil is now becoming depleted and fertilizer isn't enough.[1] Globally, much also depends on rapidly depleting ground water that isn't being replenished. Agriculture is exceeding its limits.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conserv...
My great-grandma was born in 1920 and died in 2020. She was lucid to her final breath. I spent a lot of time talking to her about the ‘before times’. She was a sucker for this new world. She loved it. Much more than her world from the 20s. However, she always reminisced about how empty of people and how natural everything was. We were 1.6 billion when she was born, almost 8 when she died. This is the lifespan of a si…
The main difference seemed to be car traffic and tourism. It's just unrecognisable nowadays (and even from the 1980s tbh).
Such a revolutionary time though - to go from biplanes to jet aircraft, radar, computers, mobile phones, etc. - I can't imagine we'll see a similar rate of change.
Happy to see the world population growing. Unlike many here I don't believe the world is overpopulated and that we need more people to grow and expand beyond the planet. Located in the U.S. where we could double the population without starting to feel cramped. We can and we should.
Overpopulation isn’t really about running out of space or feeling cramped, it’s about not having enough resources to sustainably support the population.
Persons are autonomous, and if we would educate them correctly, they could help to make more of earth hospitable and use resources more efficientlly.