There is some large object hurtling through space right now that is poised to hit the reset button on this planet, that’s just a fact. There could be a child being born right now with a mind capable of solving this problem. Several others with similar potential have probably already died in squalor. We must strive to nurture every young mind in every corner of the globe, and it only increases our odds of survival if we roll the genetic dice as many times as possible. Of course keeping this planet habitable is priority number one, but every other concern beyond that is trivial by comparison when one considers the long game.
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The issues with Malthus are not that he oversimplified the system. Essentially he is right. He could not anticipate the massive influx of energy that has allowed us to expand in ways previously unavailable. This influx is finite (read fossil fuel), not neutral (viz. global climate change) and might not be replaceable. As our appetites expand to fill the energy allotted, we may find ourselves once again in the same world as Victorian England.
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Yeah, most of the natural population limiters for animals are not the easy “lets not have as many babies” depicted above, they are disease, starvation, fighting over territories, and other heavy handed natural population limiters that typically decimate a significant swath of the population.
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Stage 6: We elect a meglomaniacal crackpot who unleashes a nuke war (either intentionally or accidentally) and death rates sharply increase while birthrates sharply decrease. After that, the pointer resets back to zero.
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This happy, optimistic video certainly twinged my cynicism receptors. I haven’t heard anyone arguing recently that there will be unchecked population growth. All reasonable sources I have ever seen have said that population will plateau around 2050 (though recently, I remember reading that there have been some revisions on this and plateauing may occur later).
The problem is that as more and more people become wealthier (a good thing!) there will be more and more drain on our finite resources (a bad thing).
Technologists and economists seem to say that because we have not seen the end of our finite resources yet and we are very good at finding more or inventing new things when resources run low, there is no reason to think that we won’t be able to keep on doing this.
But, really that is just a belief. If it hasn’t rained for a month and even if I live in the desert, it eventually will rain. We just don’t seem to want to prepare for stormy weather since we’ve had 2 centuries of sunshine.
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An awful lot depends on the status of women. If the birth rate doesn’t go down, then that society will have severe problems. Men don’t give a rat’s ass about the birth rate, but women don’t often have the ability to control it even when they want to.
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People who try to estimate the carrying capacity of our planet generally estimate that humans are now using 40-60% of the total planetary output. Obviously, that’s an estimate, and it might be possible to increase planetary production or cut our resource usage. On the other hand, operating at 90% of planetary output is an invitation to disaster.
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So the question is to what level will the population grow (through stages 1-3) before we all stabilise at stage 4. 15 billion? 20 billion? 30 billion? An how many can the Earth carry at a stage 4 level of economic comfort?
That the human population of Earth will not continue expanding into infinity is pretty self-evident. The more relevant question is by running into which constraints will this growth slow down (decreasing fertility due to economic progress? war? pandemic? forced sterilisation? informational campaigns to promote having fewer children?). Some of those are a lot less unpleasant than others. Of course, the most pleasant of all is if the situation sorts itself out as per the video. What we need to estimate is how likely is this constraint mechanism to be triggered before all the other less pleasant ones.
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Growth is already slowing down; we passed “peak baby” a generation ago. Current estimates are that the world population will stabilise at 9–10 billion.
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It is, but so are all developed nations to some extent. It is why immigration has become ubiquitous.
The issue is cultural as well. The result of a society which is still sexist as hell but more dependent on women in the workplace. Women put off marriage and/or children because it means career suicide.
Plus Japan cheats by having immigration it doesn’t talk about openly. They import workers from Brazil and Iran as “guest workers”.
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I would argue that Japanese population density is way too high for long term sustainability, so populations are not going to stabilize at levels which work in the long term.
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I’m not too worried about overpopulation, because my theory is that the “virtualization” of many aspects of our lives over the coming decades will compensate for growing wealth across a larger population. It’s already been happening, and for a while – Marshall McLuhan saw this. Unfortunately I don’t think it will be a steady progressive path to get there, and yes, we will lose many parts of the ecosystem in the meantime. Would be easier if people didn’t elect dolts to run the world.
Japanese population density is a bit strange. Its not that “elbow room” is an issue, its that a good part of the population is depopulating the rural areas to concentrate in the cities where the decent work is.
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The Japanese population has indeed been dropping, which is one of the reasons why they are putting so many resources into robotics (to augment the work force). Japan imports many of its resources, so yeah, I don’t think too many would consider them “stable” at this point in time.
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The video may in part have been triggered by surges of comments to previous videos about how the curing of disease is contributing to our doom by allowing populations to expand and I believe that is the idea that the video is trying to shoot down.
As for finite resources, yes there does seem to be a tendency for people to stick their heads in the sand when the issue comes up, but there are driving forces to make things more efficient and switch to clean energy sources. Unfortunately those forces took a hit with the election of Mr. Trump and his cronies in America, but they are still there. China is starting to try and make the turn, if in part because the results of their rapid industrialization have immediate and visible effects which harm their ability to maintain growth.
It is a belief that we can maintain progress, but I wouldn’t say it is unfounded. Maintaining infinite growth is impossible without infinite resources, you’re right, but progress towards a brighter future is something I firmly believe is possible, we just need to commit to it. The problem is a ‘short term mindset’ that we have to overcome in order to transition.
I once saw a prototype of a medium scale 3d printer that worked by magnifying sunlight to melt sand into glass. It took a long time and needed some manual assistance, but at the end of the day, the prototype created a bowl; granted a bowl that you would almost definitely cut yourself trying to use, so it would have to be sanded. Now imagine thousands of these things in the desert building components out of sand.
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Goodness grief. Bar scientific miracles, we’re already far beyond sustainable. Without the (finite) energy cache of fossil fuels, we’d already be fecked…
Choose one: maximum population and subsistence level quality of life or reduce the population* to keep our current western quality of life…
*And before anyone trolls: reductions on births via contraception, not exterminations/suicides.
What it boils down to: quality of life or quantity of life, you can have one only, choose one…
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Reducing the population means not everyone gets to have kids. That’s a direct threat on people’s only current road to ‘immortality’ and that’s something you have to be very careful about threatening. The ability to carry the family name is enough reason for some to sacrifice their female children; take any hope of a future, and you push those who are barred from having children into a place where nothing matters.
You can short circuit that by limiting each couple to one child. Though I personally think the best form of contraception is artificially enforced high population density. The Japanese seem to be doing that with strict controls on land use.
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The better form is education. Not just sex but subsidized schooling.
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Yes, that too.
