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.
Africa fertility rate is dropping around 1.5% per year annually for the region as a whole.
Increasingly technologized populations drop fertility fast
And some refusal to use condoms.
If this changes, the trend will sharply reverse.
Most forecast say population will peak at 10bn to 11bn - https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth
- A big part of this increase in indeed from Africa which is expected to increase by 3bn - from 1.3bn in 2020 to 4.3bn in 2100
- The largest uncertainty is also about Africa where faster economic growth is expected to bring down population growth (counter-intuitively).
To illustrate the point: The last 40 years have been the worst we will see in terms of stability, economic growth etc .... yet Population growth in Africa thrived and the % of people living in poverty reduced dramatically and the current population is healthier, wealthier, and more educated than ever before (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/above-or-below-extreme-po... ).
Once you start increasing quality of life and education, birth rates will plummet.
It would only be “over population” because our current in-effecient systems can’t keep up and they need to evolve.
The cultural offset is an important caveat, but it's possible that most of the cultural fertility decline due to urbanisation has been exhausted in urban socities, in which case the heritability effect will become more important.
I find it strange that natural selection is never part of the argument on debates like this. It's laughable that it's completely ignored by the UN. I suspect the tendency of humans to view themselves as separate from the animals meakes selection seem irrelevant. But we shouldn't forget its power: the types of people who deciding not to reproduce today are the types of people who won't be there to make that decision tomorrow.
All this to day, our contemporary perspective might seem very parochial in a few generations and while we can't predict future culture, the power of selection should never be ignored.
This whole "stop having children to save the environment" bullshit is dumber than the anti-nuclear crap and even more obviously wrong.
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.
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
They're also relying on us for a lot of aid, I'm not sure if your calculation takes that into account.
I hope you are aware of the carbon footprint of an american versus someone from, say, ethiopia?!
Again, from your theme song and your apparent fondness for the Teutonic Order I'm assuming you're at least familiar with Germany and the German social security system, which is very much a part of their culture.
The German state pension system basically amounts to a Ponzi scheme that requires a continuous influx of new contributors in order to not implode.
Not only is this pretty much a textbook case of "unsustainable", but given German culture is quite averse to change (which is unsustainable, too, by the way) and it therefore isn't particularly likely they're going to abandon their current pension system anytime soon, "bringing people from these undeveloped countries" also is about their only option left to keep the system from collapsing for just a little longer.
I'm not even talking general economic and societal repercussions here. It can be argued that a society with a declining population isn't long-term sustainable and ultimately will succumb to stagnation and a lack of innovation.
Yes and no - that is how the world, how life works!
The currently working take care of the currently too-old-to-work. No matter what layer and labels you put on top, that has always been and will always be true. Unless you create time machines, or eliminate aging (with its own huge set of issues).
So yes, the new generations have to take care of the previous ones. "Capital" is only an information layer on top of that reality used to determine who gets what, but it does not replace the reality of who and when produces goods and services. You can shift information about capital into the future (you "saved" for retirement - but only this information is transmitted to the future, not goods or services, which are always used in the present), but actual goods and services always have to be produced and provided by the working part of the population. You can shift as much "capital" (information) into the future as you want, "save" incredible amounts of money, it will change nothing.
> Not only is this pretty much a textbook case of "unsustainable",
Quite the opposite. That is the best kind of sustainable because it actually represents truth most faithfully. The "capital" based magic - that is much more problematic. It masks and attempts to hide the reality. Also a problem in the German system is the many exceptions.
The core German system is the most honest one about reality: The currently working take care of those that no longer don't. If there are too few in the new generation to take care of the expected number of old non-working people in the country, then seeing that problem is GOOD, trying to hide it behind some finance magic is bad.
> Before and during World War II, Nazi propaganda and ideology made frequent use of the Teutonic Knights' imagery, as the Nazis sought to depict the Knights' actions as a forerunner of the Nazi conquests for Lebensraum. Heinrich Himmler tried to idealise the SS as a 20th-century reincarnation of the medieval Order. Yet, despite these references to the Teutonic Order's history in Nazi propaganda, the Order itself was abolished in 1938 and its members were persecuted by the German authorities. This occurred mostly due to Hitler's and Himmler's belief that, throughout history, Roman Catholic military-religious orders had been tools of the Holy See and as such constituted a threat to the Nazi regime. Hitler based his German Order on the Teutonic Order, especially the Hochmeister's ceremonial regalia itself even though they abolished the said order.
Linking to this "theme song" and your (not yours, usrn's) xeonophic comments have no place on Hacker News.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teutonic_Order#Modern_organiza...
As such, talking about "unsustainable cultures" here is pure xenophobia.
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 of very rich countries. The poorest countries is where most of the population lives, and those cause the least environmental impact.
"Empty" is a very biblical word, with shades of the brass age Hebrew mission of “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
It's time to drop superstitious beliefs and take a hard look at reality. For example, we're using resources at a rate that is no longer sustainable (https://www.footprintcalculator.org/home/en).
> It's going to be the same for every other resource.
That's superstition / survivor bias.
Is your statement that far off from "the house is on fire, but I'm not going to move from the couch because a fire crew will be here sooner or later"?
This isn't just some hope, this is the way human history has run. To suggest otherwise is the lunacy here.
The past 50 years have shown abundant evidence of us causing severe damage to the environment. Physics is finite, discoveries are finite, human ingenuity is finite. The chances of us being on a fantasy path of becoming magicians, able to conjure up anything our hearts desire, is low. There are bounds to reality.
By the way, a land war in Europe over Ukraine has been very likely since Crimea and the election of Zelensky, which some people believe was rigged by the CIA. It was only a matter of time. The evidence from 80 years ago is there.
I am suggesting that the entire course of history is marked by the expansion of available resources to the human race. Not a cherrypicked 70 years.
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!
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).
> 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
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
In theory you are right, there is a lot of space to grow the population but in practice most people want to live in big popular cities and chase the dream of being rich which simply isn't sustainable and promotes a lot of waste.
A lot of people as they mature will give up their big city life dreams once they realize the cost / stress / commute isn't worth it unless you're very successful and rich. They move to the city to "make it", survival of the fittest selects some % of people who make it and the rest either cope with distractions / drugs or move to cheaper areas.
So we have a lot of space for many people to live but they won't live in luxury and since human nature is to compare ourselves to others and strive to climb social hierarchies most of the population will just overcrowd the already popular areas to live which is a problem
> was done by a very small number of very rich countries
And where do you think the (actionable) "intelligence" and money comes from?
It's not that poorer countries don't have intelligence, but they don't have the resources to put it to good use. One random person in a TED talk gets more attention than the people actually dealing with the issue
"More population" has always meant more misery and more conflict
With less people, each one can go further