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World Population Clock: 7.96B People (2022)

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

#71

Post by loonster »

isoprophlex wrote: post #55
usrn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> ... undeveloped countries who will bring their unsustainable cultures with them. I hope you are aware of the carbon footprint of an american versus someone from, say, ethiopia?!

Doesnt matter how small of a footprint the Ethiopian has. The Ethiopian is an exponential function, and the Westerner is a linear one. The exponential function will always overtake the linear function. Eventually.

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

#73

Post by nivenkos »

infofarmer wrote: post #69
nivenkos wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But we're reaching a point where we're hitting the limits of Physics in many areas.

Like it's hard to imagine an even faster passenger aircraft than the Concorde for example.

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

#74

Post by aortega »

usrn wrote: post #48
gonzo41 wrote: 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.

>these undeveloped countries who will bring their unsustainable cultures with them.

I live in Latin America, in my trips to the US I get disgusted when I see hundreds of family cars with giant gas engines that we only use in construction trucks, idling all day just to run their air conditioner in a slightly hot day.

It's incredible the delusion that the first world has about how 'sustainable' their lifestyles are.

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

#75

Post by shafyy »

xcom86 wrote: 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.

It's not about the space and feeling cramped. A rich human's land and ecological footprint goes way beyond than "feeling cramped" walking around in a city.

I'm not against population growth, but this whole rhetoric fueled by Musk, among others, stirring panic that the population will collapse is crazy. Sure, we would have a problem if people suddenly stopped having children. But this is not the case. World population is still growing, and it should stabilize at around 10B people. That's not too bad, why do we need to keep growing?

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

#76

Post by jl6 »

Might as well say it: 8 billion is too many, and it’s a good thing that population growth is levelling off. A decline down to ~1 billion would be fine. If we have to change retirement planning, so be it.

No other species can grow its population exponentially indefinitely. Population growth in every other species is kept in check by conflict and starvation. We have an opportunity to voluntarily limit our footprint to avoid that check.

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

#77

Post by j245 »

grapeskin wrote: post #58
j245 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will come up with a way to “fix” that (if it’s even a problem), as we have done in the past. Why ignore human ingenuity ?

Humans thought they'd find a fix for their problems before, so nothing to worry about. A lot of those people died because no fix was found in their lifetimes. Nobody fixed the plagues that went around Europe. Nobody fixed the droughts that killed millions. Entire civilizations went extinct because they weren't able to find a fix before a problem caught up with them. A lot of problems won't have a fix within our lifet…

Yet here we are.. having a discussion about whether too many humans are surviving for too long.

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

#78

Post by tjpnz »

k__ wrote: post #39
neuromute wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overpopulation isn’t really about running out of space or feeling cramped, it’s about not having enough resources to sustainably support the population.

I think, overpopulation is a eco-facist narrative. Persons are autonomous, and if we would educate them correctly, they could help to make more of earth hospitable and use resources more efficientlly.

Who's we? As a westerner I'd feel like quite the hypocrite schooling the rest of the world on how to efficiently utilise resources.

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

#79

Post by padjo »

aortega wrote: post #64
padjo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

I’m definitely not saying I want the poor to stay poor!

I’m saying I’d like more equality and that isn’t possible at current technology levels. I don’t buy that decreasing population would limit technological progress at all. The vast majority of people are currently living subsistence existences and contributing almost nothing to technological progress.

We could easily reduce population and end up with more not less scientists and engineers

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

#80

Post by dathos »

aortega wrote: post #64
padjo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 h…

But that’s what you’re saying:

> The planet can sustain much more people

This is only true if we add only poor people.

I think this argument that engineers or scientists will save the world removes the responsibility everyone has to consume less/better. Besides that this will probably only happen once the richer countries get hit, see the famines and water shortages all over the world. Mostly NGO’s and organizations like the UN are trying to fix those issues, while most of the money is spent on trying to get us to buy more

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