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Comment by stephc_int13 | Hacker News Reader

I know that many people are afraid of this demographic shift, but while I think this will certainly require societal adaptations, I think this is overall a extremely good thing.

Over-population would be a much more difficult problem to manage, I am not sure about the optimal human population for this planet, but I am fairly certain that a stable population is much better than a quickly growing one.

Quick decline can also be an issue at some point, but in my opinion there is a tight relationship between population density and the housing market, the latter acting as a bottleneck, and if I am right the whole thing should be self-correcting.

The next generations will have more space than they need for themselves, that will naturally lower the barrier to have multiple Childs.

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> Over-population would be a much more difficult problem to manage, I am not sure about the optimal human population for this planet, but I am fairly certain that a stable population is much better than a quickly growing one.

The environment isn't affected by "over-population" it's affected by environmental destruction and carbon emissions.

A lot of the developed countries where the populations are stabilizing or decreasing are already causing disproportionate environmental destruction and carbon emissions, especially if you factor in the effects in other countries caused by producing products that people in the developed countries are consuming.

> Quick decline can also be an issue at some point, but in my opinion there is a tight relationship between population density and the housing market, the latter acting as a bottleneck, and if I am right the whole thing should be self-correcting.

It may be counterintuitive, but having people concentrated in denser urban areas actually reduces the environmental impact overall. If the housing market leads to more people moving out of cities, that will actually increase the environmental damage.

We’re not even close to overpopulation

/s ?

Only of you ignore CO2 and other environmentally damaging emissions that stem from needing to feed and push millions more people out of poverty into the middle class where they also start to consume and travel and produce emissions.

So yes, the planet can theoretically sustain billions more people but only if you look at planetary free square footage per capita, but at the cost of either them living in absolute poverty, or insane environmental damage and climate change which will also create poverty from the issues climate change will cause to agriculture and food prices, so we're back to millions living or dying in poverty.

Canada and Australia are huge countries but the livable parts are quite small. You can't have infinite growth on a planet of finite resources.

Well said, many seem to conflate abundant space (habitable or not) with resources as if they are evenly distributed and consumed.

"We" who? Overpopulation is a local issue.

Lithuania isn't overpopulated. Japan sort-of is, most inhabitable territory is already built over. Egypt is definitely overpopulated, with 100 million people packed into inhabitable territory the size of Florida. Etc. etc.

Edit: to the downvoters, can you provide counterarguments? I would say that a good measure of overpopulation is that the country in question cannot possibly feed all of its population even if it tried very hard, and is inevitably dependent on imports.

Japan has massive amounts of unused land - take the train 45 minutes in any direction from Tokyo to see it.

Looking at the map, it seems that the majority of those regions are hilly/mountainous. So the land may not be economically viable.

It's a function of technology and what damage to natural ecosystems could be tolerated, but with current demonstrated crop yields the world could support 150 billion people. At the limit imposed by direct thermal pollution, the world could support 1 trillion people (but it would be more like living in a space station than on a planet.)

So the only thing a human need is food? Nothing else? No desires? You think peoole in poorer countries wouldn't like all the goodies you get to enjoy?

Accounting overpopulation on food alone is just plain stupid.

And it does not take into account the quality and diversity of the food.

Hunter-gatherers had better diet than most of us. But their lifestyle would not even be possible for a few millions of humans.

Observation is not advocacy.

Sorry, but that is unreasonable theory vs practice.. "by my metrics the world could support 150 billion people" but we don't even manage to put 8 altogether at reasonable living standards while we dump the world into a climate catastrophe? Why assume some tech that doesn't exist or couldn't be deployed at that scale? Even those crop yields are not sustainable long term.

It's a reasonable thought exercise to ask what the ultimate limits are if technology is allowed to vary. That's no more unreasonable than asking what the limit is if technology is completely frozen. The actual answer will be between the two.

Exactly, thought exercise == nice theory, but irrelevant for any practice right now.

So what defines the limit,.and what is it? Imo as long as world overshoot day is not beyond December we definitely are.. there are other knobs and factors one could touch to shift that (e.g. our current living standards), but who wants to cut in there? Everything else is just theory, or waiting for some assumed tech to save us..

It depends on the criterion.

Is it possible to feed more people? Yes, clearly, but mostly with highly processed junk food.

At the current population it would simply not be possible to feed everyone with a healthy diet. From my point of view, we've been past overpopulation for decades.

>but in my opinion there is a tight relationship between population density and the housing market

there are entire towns in Japan with empty houses, the problem is globalization which resulted in jobs being centralized in a handful of cities in developed nations and everything else getting outsourced. Governments embracing and encouraging remote work to help spread people out would be a better solution to housing problems

Once again, the first politician to promise an outsourcing ban gets my vote.

Overpopulation isn't really the issue.

Who pollutes the most? It's not poor country, but rich countries like the US.

The issue is really about our ecology and the effect of pollution have on our life support system.

We can even choose to create more ecological systems, if we choose, but don't.

Ultimately in the end, human population on this planet may be limited about the amount of heat that Earth can dissipate, once we solve pollution.

Poorer countries tend to get richer over time. And their diaspora prefers to settle in richer countries. If all populations don't level off then over-population becomes an increasing problem.

Easily exploitable resources are also finite. We are consuming non-renewables and haven't even built a renewable pipeline for the renewable sources, like solar panel or wind turbine construction.

Ultimately, population is the driving factor. Technology always propagate and diffuse on the whole planet, it is only a matter of time. Take China, look at the trends over time. We're lucky their population is not growing as fast at it was.

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