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Not that the headline exactly matches the article, but at this point is there any well educated forward-thinking person who doesn't think the planet is headed f
by grecy 8y ago
Not that the headline exactly matches the article, but at this point is there any well educated forward-thinking person who doesn't think the planet is headed for a catastrophe?
The population of humans is booming.. and surely any intelligent person can see that eventually, at some point something will have to give. Maybe it will be when there are 10 billion of us, or 20, or 100, but surely, at some point something's going to break in a very big way.
- justicezyx 8y agoThe exponential growth, this planet is not growing... I always am worried that no leading intellectual is considering the humans future. Cross the globe, I cannot see any happy ending for humans road forward.
- gizmo686 8y agoDeveloped countries have a fertility rate below the replacement rate. The population growth we are seeing now is caused by mortality decreasing in developing countries. If history is an accurate guide, the birthrate will naturally follow and global population will plateau without the need for any catastrophe. Of course, we are experiencing this period of population growth, at the same time as an environmental catastrophe, that we know will cause large scale displacement, so it is not obvious if we will make it to the "natural" population plateuo, or hit some less pleasent wall.
- joe_the_user 8y agoThe population of humans is booming. What a shame you had to spoil your otherwise reasonable argument with this canard. In most areas of the global (the Americas, Europe, Asia above India), population is not booming but shrinking. Moreover, the destruction of various sorts we see hardly the result of booming population by itself but massive resource wastage of variety of sorts combined overall short-sightedness. Climate change is 97 billion pound set to destroy our world and it's relation to population growth is quite tenuous.
- mirimir 8y agoSure, the human population is no longer growing exponentially. But mean resource use and pollution per capita is still growing. During the last century or two, when humanity released all that CO2, less than one billion people were responsible for most of it. And now we have maybe 2-3 billion more who demand such a lifestyle. So anyway, it's not population per se that matters. It's the sum over population times per capita impact. And that is still growing exponentially.
- joe_the_user 8y agoSure, the human population is no longer growing exponentially. Which is to say it isn't "booming". But mean resource use and pollution per capita is still growing. Indeed total resource is huge and massively destructive but that use isn't even happening in any uniform per capita basis but rather some individuals, processes and organizations consume far more than others. Bitcoin for example, air conditioning Dubai for example, etc, etc.
- mirimir 8y agoI didn't argue that resource use and pollution per capita is uniform. It's obviously not. But damn, just look at the aggregate indicators. CO2 emissions are still growing exponentially. Ecological degradation is increasing exponentially. We're starting to see widespread firestorms across the northern hemisphere.
- joe_the_user 8y agoI agree we in a horrible, crisis situation. I simply believe pointing to overpopulation as a primary cause is wrong headed. The world's nations could stop a country's worth of energy use tomorrow by banning bitcoin as just a single example. There are other, harder examples but the (awful) problem of stopping runaway really doesn't seem related to a "booming" human population - the quote I originally took issue with.
- 8y ago
- wolf550e 8y agoUN world population projection for 2100 is 11.2B. Stop with the Malthusianism. https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-population-prospects-the-2017-revision.html https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-popul...
- wott 8y agoFor 2050, they expected: * in 1998: 8.9 B * in 2006: 9.2 B * in 2010: 9.3 B * in 2012: 9.6 B * in 2017: 9.8 B That means that they constantly have to revise upwards their scenario because it does not happen as expected and the population grows each time faster. In 20 years, they had to add 1 extra billion people to their forecast...
- adrianN 8y agoWell given that even at our current population levels we're headed for a massive catastrophe unless we implement quite radical measures to reduce our carbon footprint I don't find it very comforting that we'll top out at 50% more people.