Live data from Hacker News

World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

worldometers.info

61–70 of 191 posts

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#61
post #53
post #17

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.

>will do the environment a huge favor and keep the birth rate trending down. Why? intuitively it would seem that that less humans will improve the environment, but intuition is often wrong. The planet can sustain much more people, it's essentially empty. More people means more intelligence and more money and power to improve the environment. Remember, most of the environmental damage was done by a very small number o…

> those cause the least environmental impact

For now! They all want the quality of life of the rich nations and understandably so. I really doubt that the world can support 8bn people with the average US standard of living, let alone more. There isn’t enough land to grow feed for all the livestock we’d need for a start!

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#62
post #53
post #17

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.

>will do the environment a huge favor and keep the birth rate trending down. Why? intuitively it would seem that that less humans will improve the environment, but intuition is often wrong. The planet can sustain much more people, it's essentially empty. More people means more intelligence and more money and power to improve the environment. Remember, most of the environmental damage was done by a very small number o…

I think the problem now is that more and more people want to live like the small number of rich countries.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#63
post #2

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.

I'm with you on this. The world can still house a lot more people and we should stop being worried about the current population.

In terms of energy, nuclear. In terms of food, there are still large swaths of un-farmed areas. We can farm these and still maintain natural parks and not destroy the environment. Opening up immigration will solve labor issues.

We have the technology, we just have to distribute it to easily quadruple the carrying capacity of the earth

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#64
post #61
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>will do the environment a huge favor and keep the birth rate trending down. Why? intuitively it would seem that that less humans will improve the environment, but intuition is often wrong. The planet can sustain much more people, it's essentially empty. More people means more intelligence and more money and power to improve the environment. Remember, most of the environmental damage was done by a very small number o…

> those cause the least environmental impact For now! They all want the quality of life of the rich nations and understandably so. I really doubt that the world can support 8bn people with the average US standard of living, let alone more. There isn’t enough land to grow feed for all the livestock we’d need for a start!

>I really doubt that the world can support 8bn people with the average US standard of living

That's a completely different problem. So basically what you want is to poor people to stay poor.

Well, luckily technology improves and with that resource consumption is optimized. But that wont happen if you halve the population because there will be half of the scientists and engineers to do it (and likely, much less than half).

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#65

> Population Growth today: 110,589 Ok that's way more than I would've thought, and it's only 11 AM. Not sure if it converts to the local time zone though.

> Population Growth today: 58,667

That's at 6:16 AM EST / EDT (America/New York)

Looks like roughly 10,000 / hour.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#66
post #57
post #6

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 - 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 goods and clothes that you enjoy. Thanks to globalization... corporations influencing governments around the world to favor a global market. It's colonization all over again. Even back t…

The difference here is that corporations are subjected to local laws and legislations. Through those mechanisms, as well as general education and awareness efforts of the public we can overcome the environmental challenges imposed by globalisation.

Instead of taking a defeatist attitude, this has the opportunity to be a conversation starter with many big companies to champion a more ethical, sustainable future.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#67
post #19

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…

> She was a sucker for this new world. She loved it.

Glad to read that, I'm a sucker for Gen Z's world and I like the adult ones a lot!

Every counterculture thing I was into is normal with them! Like, broadly attractive people are totally into things that only socially maladjusted and visually unattractive people were into prior. That is perfect for me!

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are saints when it comes to environmental destruction. Many African countries have very high birth rates and they do whatever it takes to survive, environment be damned, such as pouring used motor oil on the ground without batting and eye or thinking twice about the effects to their own health. Don't even get me started about the mining and deforestation.

Saints, for real ? The rate of consumption of Americans would require more than 5 planets to be sufficient, Most African countries need less than one You mention mining and deforestation but where do you think the material extracted are going ?

I often see this problem of comparing America to one country. We have 350 million people spread out in an area larger than EU. It's really one state is equivalent to one country in EU or Africa.

I would think it's still more energy consumption but not as huge of a gap, depending on the state.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#69
post #19

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…

My grandad was born in 1925 - he remembers them installing the electric streetlights in Birmingham. 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion

There's an even better cognitive bias than this describing your «optimism» about the future, but I fail to find its name.

Re: World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

#70
post #48
post #17

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.

It doesn't matter when Africa is exploding. All the low birthrate in the West does is weaken the countries trying to protect the environment. As this continues corporations will bring in the people from these undeveloped countries who will bring their unsustainable cultures with them. This whole "stop having children to save the environment" bullshit is dumber than the anti-nuclear crap and even more obviously wrong.

> As this continues corporations will bring in the people from these undeveloped countries who will bring their unsustainable cultures with them

Cut this xenophobic crap right now. Have a look at the facts. For example, the per capita CO2 emission in Ethiopia is 0.13 tonnes, whereas it's 14.24 tonnes in the US. That's over a factor of 100 more.

Here's a good source: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita

Post reply on HN