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Population growth depends on cheap food using cheap energy for tillage, fertilizers, irrigation, pesticides/herbicides, transportation, processing and so forth.

Population growth depends on cheap food using cheap energy for tillage, fertilizers, irrigation, pesticides/herbicides, transportation, processing and so forth. If energy becomes expensive, as it most likely will, then population growth will stop. Some of the projections appear unrealistic. For example, Mali is projected to grow from about 20 million to 80 million by 2100. Given Mali's geography, this seems unlikely.

philipkglass 8y ago
The nations with the highest total fertility rates (Niger, Chad, Somalia, DRC...) all have far lower rates of energy consumption per capita than sub-replacement-fertility nations like South Korea, Italy, Japan, or Canada. Energy availability isn't a strong proxy for or constraint on fertility rates, at least in the next few decades.
- danans 8y ago
  One of the most important needs to enable fertility is a temperature in which an infant can survive. In colder climates, that requires a lot more fuel input to heat homes, whereas in consistently warm climates, like the African countries to mentioned, they get their heat "for free", and therefore fertility is less constrained. The heat poses other problems that affect survival rates, like tropical diseases, but the energy cost of fighting those is far less than heating homes. The same observation applies to the agricultural sectors of those countries, which can be incredibly productive due to growing regions with consistently warm weather. It's how China and India can support such massive populations (both are largely food self sufficient). And it's also why Brazil can produce sugar cane based ethanol far more efficiently than the US can produce corn based ethanol. Once this major difference is accounted for, however, change in energy consumption over time is a reasonable proxy for change in standard of living. But absolute differences in per capita energy consumption fail to capture variations due to things like country size, transportation/energy infrastructure, and socioeconomic structure i.e Russia has a much higher per capita energy consumption than Germany, but a lower standard of living. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_...
newnewpdro 8y ago
There's plenty of dirty cheap energy reserves to let this problem get a lot worse. India in particular is an interesting scenario, they have huge coal reserves and a large population still living without electricity. Coal will probably be used substantially for increasing their quality of life, that's a really big multiplier on a very dirty energy source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_by_country

philipkglass 8y ago

The nations with the highest total fertility rates (Niger, Chad, Somalia, DRC...) all have far lower rates of energy consumption per capita than sub-replacement-fertility nations like South Korea, Italy, Japan, or Canada. Energy availability isn't a strong proxy for or constraint on fertility rates, at least in the next few decades.

danans 8y ago
One of the most important needs to enable fertility is a temperature in which an infant can survive. In colder climates, that requires a lot more fuel input to heat homes, whereas in consistently warm climates, like the African countries to mentioned, they get their heat "for free", and therefore fertility is less constrained. The heat poses other problems that affect survival rates, like tropical diseases, but the energy cost of fighting those is far less than heating homes. The same observation applies to the agricultural sectors of those countries, which can be incredibly productive due to growing regions with consistently warm weather. It's how China and India can support such massive populations (both are largely food self sufficient). And it's also why Brazil can produce sugar cane based ethanol far more efficiently than the US can produce corn based ethanol. Once this major difference is accounted for, however, change in energy consumption over time is a reasonable proxy for change in standard of living. But absolute differences in per capita energy consumption fail to capture variations due to things like country size, transportation/energy infrastructure, and socioeconomic structure i.e Russia has a much higher per capita energy consumption than Germany, but a lower standard of living. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_...

newnewpdro 8y ago

There's plenty of dirty cheap energy reserves to let this problem get a lot worse. India in particular is an interesting scenario, they have huge coal reserves and a large population still living without electricity. Coal will probably be used substantially for increasing their quality of life, that's a really big multiplier on a very dirty energy source. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_by_country