4 ms·
Exactly this, but it's also why, whilst we should all be conscious of what we're doing to the planet, I'm not so despondent about our future and population endl
by rusty__ 7y ago
Exactly this, but it's also why, whilst we should all be conscious of what we're doing to the planet, I'm not so despondent about our future and population endlessly spiraling out of control. It's been shown that once a country achieves a GDP of somewhere around $6-7k they begin to take a bigger interest in issues like climate change, more efficient energy sources and population control more seriously (China is about there now; India, Indonesia, Thailand and other large population Asian countries are getting there pretty quickly). As a planet with finite resources in terms of food and energy we can support a global population of about 10-11 billion. If it's becoming such that once societies advance to a level of development we see in places like S Korea and Japan that population begins to balance out or even slightly decrease, is that such a bad thing?
- pharke 7y agoThe issue here isn't a slight decrease in population. Japan is facing a projected decline of 1/4 of their population by 2050. A change of that magnitude will mean severe consequences for their economy and overall culture. Even China has abandoned their one child policy and now has a birth rate of 1.6. We're sailing into uncharted territory where our only comparable previous experiences are famines or plagues.
- distant_hat 7y agoThe problem isn't just that the total population is declining. It is that the dependent population relative to working population is increasing. This leads to all sorts of distortions to how things are supposed to be.