Earlier quoted context omitted.
>nobody today really argues for any of that stuff ahem https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/themes/population-pol... https://iiasa.ac.at/web/home/about/news/20140918-PDR-pop.htm... https://blog.iiasa.ac.at/2014/02/27/what-is-the-optimal-fert... https://www.ined.fr/en/glossary/population-policy/ Malthus should be targeted by the time-travellers for culling as soon as convenient ..
Those are good things. We don’t want 12-14 billion humans. The biosphere is already under enormous stress. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11018
The Global Population Crisis That Never Was
111–120 of 280 posts
Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure and I agree with that but that doesn't mean that armageddon isn't coming either. For example Climate Change and the Covid19 pandemic, both are examples of very real problems with the potential to severally harm/kill large numbers but both are dismissed with that attitude. I'm not sayin that the sky is falling in either case, though with Climate Change I can't imagine not thinking that, but if we continue to igno…
> For example Climate Change and the Covid19 pandemic, both are examples of very real problems with the potential to severally harm/kill large numbers but both are dismissed with that attitude. No. I have that attitude, and I'm not dismissing either! I think they're both serious problems that will cause a lot of pain as they're being worked through. What I disagree with is doomsday scenarios where they'll be the end…
Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was
#113the dismissal of Malthus seems itself ideological. It's not due to any necessary reason that Malthusianism itself is wrong, quite obviously putting population pressure on restrained resources is an actual disaster. What was wrong with Malthus or the food scare talked about in the article is simply that they made their argument about the wrong thing and at the wrong time, the rebuttal is based on contingent facts. The…
While there has certainly been some poor husbandry of the earth's resources, there have been and continue to be significant efforts to improve resource utilization in environmentally friendly ways - not the least of which is increased costs of basic resources leading to self-imposed limitations by consumers.
Basically, on net, people choose more luxury over more children. They economize when presented with prices that reflect the reality of underlying scarcity. They make choices that often result in improved environmental stewardship, either implicitly or explicitly.
Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was
#114Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we were running low on resources for food production you'd expect to see food prices increasing. But broadly, food is cheaper than ever.
Ecological damage and collapses occur well before we'd run out of resources. Just because we can encroach on more and more land, at the expense of the environment, doesn't mean there isn't a problem.
Combine that with the fact that populations appear to top off at a certain level of prosperity, and you'll realize that we'll be just fine.
Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure and I agree with that but that doesn't mean that armageddon isn't coming either. For example Climate Change and the Covid19 pandemic, both are examples of very real problems with the potential to severally harm/kill large numbers but both are dismissed with that attitude. I'm not sayin that the sky is falling in either case, though with Climate Change I can't imagine not thinking that, but if we continue to igno…
I think the earth is too large to have an Armageddon over a very short period of time (perhaps the span of one life.) Instead, things become worse at local scale. Yemen has been having (and continues to have? I haven't kept up) a nice, local Armageddon. The United States is large, and well resourced. Short of nuclear war, there will be nice places in the US for a long time, even if the overall measure of things becom…
Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
But that was exactly why he was so wrong - he thought that the limits to resources was static, and they are not always.
The problem with that refutation is, population growth is O(2^n), available space is O(1) and available food is limited by available space and energy. Maybe there will be advances in science, increasing food production. However, to keep up with O(2^n) we need to double food production in constant time intervals, around 40 years. Otherwise, there will be overpopulation. There is no escaping it, except if exponential p…
WTF, no it isn’t. Human population increased exponentially for a period of time while we adjusted to lower infant mortality but fertility rates quickly altered to account for the new situation. Humans aren’t rabbits, we don’t give birth in large litters and we can reason about and control the number of children we have. As the last few places on earth finish their journey through industrialization we’re going to see population stabilize and then decline. Set a reminder for 2050 when we’ll all be panicking about there not being enough young people to fund our social security.
Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was
#118This is interesting political analysis, but the fact remains that the global population is topping out at several billion with almost all arable land already being farmed and ecological impacts accumulating. All these related problems may have solutions, but reframing the situation doesn't really address potential for improvement.
If we were running low on resources for food production you'd expect to see food prices increasing. But broadly, food is cheaper than ever.
In any year, in any place where there is not a famine, we are, by definition, producing more food than anyone wants to consume, in aggregate at least if not for individuals. Whenever you are producing an excess of something, the price will fall.
Famine, if it happens, won't happen as a slow decline of food production, until at a predictable time we cross from producing 100.0000001% of the food the world needs to producing 99.9999999%. It will happen as a slow decline reducing our safety margin until some sort of three-sigma weather event makes for a really bad year -- flooding in some regions kill production here, drought in other regions kills production there, a blight on crops in otherwise fair weather, and the production for the next N months falls below the level of the stockpiles to last.
That is the point at which the market will react and food prices will go crazy. It won't do anything to help production -- some things take time, not money. It will just be the world playing musical chairs to see who gets left without enough food to eat.
Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those are good things. We don’t want 12-14 billion humans. The biosphere is already under enormous stress. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11018
Who is "we" and how do "we" get to decide how many humans there should be?
It’s more just sharing things like birth control technology and education.
This whole discussion is actually a sort of win-win scenario, because what proves to lower birth rates more effectively than anything is improved regional health, education, and wealth, so helping along those factors is the biggest impact.
Re: The Global Population Crisis That Never Was
#120As I've gotten older and seen predicted doomsdays come and go, I've started to think that expecting armageddon is an innate part of human psychology. I'm not aware of any era or place where many people have not expected the world to meet disaster soon. It's a part of all major religions.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. It could be that worrying about doomsday is an innate human trait, and that as the article asserts, certain types of worries are motivated by racism. I still think it's a good idea to allocate some resources towards mitigating low probability, high impact events.