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Could preventing the human overpopulation solve anything?

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Re: Could preventing the human overpopulation solve anything?

#3
Im curious as to why people are still concerned about over population nowadays.

Most of the „western“ world expects shrinking populations within the next two or do decades. Even huge countries like China aren’t expected to grow anymore.

Based on the data I am aware of, overpopulation won’t be an issue. The shrinking populations however will be an issue considering they’ll have a huge impact on the countries social systems and ability to produce basically anything

Re: Could preventing the human overpopulation solve anything?

#4
post #2

Overpopulation is not a problem. Global population will peak in the second half of this century and then decrease. In many countries it's already decreasing quite rapidly.

Why will it decrease tho? Our medicine is only advancing and we are (compared to middle ages) living in peace.

Re: Could preventing the human overpopulation solve anything?

#5
post #4
post #2

Overpopulation is not a problem. Global population will peak in the second half of this century and then decrease. In many countries it's already decreasing quite rapidly.

Why will it decrease tho? Our medicine is only advancing and we are (compared to middle ages) living in peace.

Medicine has its limits. You can’t infinitely stretch a human life as it has its natural limits.

Nowadays, in large parts of the world new births a decreasing much faster than modern medicine is advancing life expectancy.

Look at charts showing birth rates of Germanys births, it’s below replacement since the 70s. Similar effects can be seen for other countries are in a similar situation

Re: Could preventing the human overpopulation solve anything?

#6
post #4
post #2

Overpopulation is not a problem. Global population will peak in the second half of this century and then decrease. In many countries it's already decreasing quite rapidly.

Why will it decrease tho? Our medicine is only advancing and we are (compared to middle ages) living in peace.

Having babies is a survival strategy in desperate economic circumstances and agrarian societies.

As emerging economies develop, the birthrate plummets.

We've seen this time after time. We're highly confident that the asymptote is understood. Global population trends have been studied for centuries.

Peace reduces birthrate. Longterm. Short term sure there is a post war baby boom. Don't mistake local issues and trends for longterm demographics.

Re: Could preventing the human overpopulation solve anything?

#8
You can't prevent overpopulation: it has already occured. The carrying capacity of the planet is far exceeded.

A reduction in population would have immediate benefits: less manufacturing, less energy use, less pollution, less consumption, more land available for wildlife instead of stock/agricuture.

But what that means is "no growth" and "less money", which is not a popular concept in economics, politics and wealthy people, and they largely set the discourse.

It's been said that we're the only species that won't save itself because it's not cost effective. Damn right.

Re: Could preventing the human overpopulation solve anything?

#9
It's self limiting. Overpopulated communities simply stop having kids because the resources aren't there.

The problem is the delay. Europe is doing 4 day work weeks because the workforce does not match and some countries do 6 days because they have excess workforce. But workforce can be 20-30 years out of sync with the current state. It's why immigration/emigration is a good thing too.

Re: Could preventing the human overpopulation solve anything?

#10
There is not, and never was an overpopulation problem. If there was, we'd be experiencing famines and not an obesity epidemic. Maltheus assumed exponential growth in population but linear growth in resources. This was a highly inaccurate assumption as it turns out. Our ability to increase accessible resources has greatly outpaced our population growth since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
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