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The Fertility Implosion

nytimes.com

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Re: The Fertility Implosion

#11

Post by yxhuvud »

simplefish wrote: post #7
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #2

I've always believed in "Quality of Life", over "Quantity of Life". And reading stories like these gives me hope for the planet. I'm not sure we can handle 10 billion people living off of it simultaneously. Just look at all the problems we've got with only 7 billion and the upcoming food and resource shortages. Smaller populations living great full lives is so much better than massive populations living terribly. Eco…

I'm not sure why you seem surprised; this is a very long standing trend. It's also pretty obvious. You aren't the only one to value quality of life over quantity; in fact everyone else does too. The only problem is that if you're very poor you don't have a choice. Wherever and whenever the human race manages to claw its way out of poverty, we immediately stop having so many kids. It's not magic. That being said... 1)…

To claim that modern food production is sustainable when it is extremely dependent on cheap energy from oil seems quite a stretch stretch to me. It may work at the present oil prices but how many times can oil prices double until current practices stop working?

Note that I don't believe this will be food induced Armageddon. Rather, I expect a retooling just as big as the green revolution towards energy efficiency and energy output (as opposed to the great input that happens currently).

Re: The Fertility Implosion

#13

Post by pacala »

simplefish wrote: post #7
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #2

I've always believed in "Quality of Life", over "Quantity of Life". And reading stories like these gives me hope for the planet. I'm not sure we can handle 10 billion people living off of it simultaneously. Just look at all the problems we've got with only 7 billion and the upcoming food and resource shortages. Smaller populations living great full lives is so much better than massive populations living terribly. Eco…

I'm not sure why you seem surprised; this is a very long standing trend. It's also pretty obvious. You aren't the only one to value quality of life over quantity; in fact everyone else does too. The only problem is that if you're very poor you don't have a choice. Wherever and whenever the human race manages to claw its way out of poverty, we immediately stop having so many kids. It's not magic. That being said... 1)…

Simon-Erlich wager is the mother of all cherry-picks. It tracks the decline in oil prices in the 1980-1990 decade from over $110 to $30. Driven by cheap energy, commodity prices declined as well.

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/historical...

There are reasons to believe the era of cheap oil / energy is over, due to a combination of peak oil and the globally connected population growing from 1 billion to 3-4 billions and then some more. Think China + India joining the global economy. Indeed, the oil prices are now close to the Dec 1979 maximum. Commodity prices follow:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_vsQ_G2OOspQ/S6-J-F32xaI/AAAAAAAABp...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=copper+prices+1970+2010

Re: The Fertility Implosion

#15

Post by yason »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #2

I've always believed in "Quality of Life", over "Quantity of Life". And reading stories like these gives me hope for the planet. I'm not sure we can handle 10 billion people living off of it simultaneously. Just look at all the problems we've got with only 7 billion and the upcoming food and resource shortages. Smaller populations living great full lives is so much better than massive populations living terribly. Eco…

The thing is quantity of life is growing where quality of life is low, and the quality of life is growing where quantity of life is low.

So it's sort of the worst of both worlds: the developed countries could afford a population growth in a humane and civilized way but they won't. Conversely, developing countries with overly high population growth become a terrible mess that they couldn't afford.

However, I also think that nature will balance itself back in a way or another. Of course, we won't be asked whether we would like to join or not, and necessarily isn't going to be a nice ride, but the tension we, as a species, are building will release at some point.

The best part of unsustainability is that it can't be sustained.

Re: The Fertility Implosion

#16

Post by DanBC »

ekianjo wrote: post #6
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #2

I've always believed in "Quality of Life", over "Quantity of Life". And reading stories like these gives me hope for the planet. I'm not sure we can handle 10 billion people living off of it simultaneously. Just look at all the problems we've got with only 7 billion and the upcoming food and resource shortages. Smaller populations living great full lives is so much better than massive populations living terribly. Eco…

At the beginning of the century (20th, that is), people were already afraid of a world with 2 or 3 billion people. They predicted mass resource shortage, wars and so on. But overall we could cope, and population has been increasing steadily ever since, and we have never had so few cases of starvation as in modern times. Most people on Earth live now better than their ancestors. There is a huge amount of progress in q…

> and we have never had so few cases of starvation as in modern times.

Hunger kills more people than Malaria, HIV / AIDS and tuberculosis combined.

About 925 million people are hungry (that's very roughly 1 in 7 people).

Undernutrition kills 5 million children under the age of 5 each year.

(http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats)

Re: The Fertility Implosion

#18

Post by felipemnoa »

>>But, over the long term, it’s better to have a growing work force, not one that’s shrinking compared with the number of retirees.Why is this true? It seems to be taken as granted that this is true. I don't think that having a growing workforce that is barely earning a living is such a good thing.

It just seems unsustainable to think that we can depend on a growing workforce indefinitely to support the growing number of retirees. Long term it will be better to figure out technological solutions to this problem, i.e. robotics.

Hopefully with a reduced workforce we can focus more on quality of life.

Edit: I guess the reason this quote bothers me so much is that increasing the population in a lot of countries would mean bringing new babies to a life of poverty and misery. Why not focus on fixing the quality of life thing first?

Edit2: This is a response to the comment:

>>A lot of people would be surprised to learn that the impoverished peoples in a many those countries are a lot happier we expect. All-in-all they aren't much less happy than we are.I think you may be right. I was probably just projecting. Still, being below the poverty line brings a lot of problems. Tens of millions of people die just from hunger every year or from diseases that are simple to cure or prevent in the developed world. That is probably the kind of misery I'm talking about.

Re: The Fertility Implosion

#19

Post by blvr »

DanBC wrote: post #16
ekianjo wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the beginning of the century (20th, that is), people were already afraid of a world with 2 or 3 billion people. They predicted mass resource shortage, wars and so on. But overall we could cope, and population has been increasing steadily ever since, and we have never had so few cases of starvation as in modern times. Most people on Earth live now better than their ancestors. There is a huge amount of progress in q…

> and we have never had so few cases of starvation as in modern times. Hunger kills more people than Malaria, HIV / AIDS and tuberculosis combined. About 925 million people are hungry (that's very roughly 1 in 7 people). Undernutrition kills 5 million children under the age of 5 each year. ( http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats )

And all that's on the decline.

Re: The Fertility Implosion

#20

Post by derleth »

specialist wrote: post #8

Please prefix the pundit neocon's name to these types of submissions. Linking to David "Bobos" Brooks is the political equivalent of linking to goatse. Not to pass judgement, but if Brooks ever manages to tap out anything less than utterly wrong and contemptible, I'm quite certain someone else said it first, only better.

I don't know about the rest of the people here, but I'd be interested in hearing why you think Brooks is so contemptible.
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