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> Ok, let's assume that people do indeed eat too much meat and that we halve our current consumption. Population grows until it has doubled and the meat consump

> Ok, let's assume that people do indeed eat too much meat and that we halve our current consumption. Population grows until it has doubled and the meat consumption is then back to the same level as to what it is now. This is a very strange assumption as UN Population Division predicts peak population at 12B, that is, the current world population will never double. That is business as usual without any intervention. Do you have specific reasons to disagree with UN Population Division?

barry-cotter 7y ago
The UN Population Division have underestimated population growth for decades and base their projections on the assumption that fertility will converge on a steady state. This is evolotuniariliy illiterate. People who have more children will have children who have more children. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513817302799#bb0180 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109051381... The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely in the foreseeable future The forecasting of the future growth of world population is of critical importance to anticipate and address a wide range of global challenges. The United Nations produces forecasts of fertility and world population every two years. As part of these forecasts, they model fertility levels in post-demographic transition countries as tending toward a long-term mean, leading to forecasts of flat or declining population in these countries. We substitute this assumption of constant long-term fertility with a dynamic model, theoretically founded in evolutionary biology, with heritable fertility. Rather than stabilizing around a long-term level for post-demographic transition countries, fertility tends to increase as children from larger families represent a larger share of the population and partly share their parents' trait of having more offspring. Our results suggest that world population will grow larger in the future than currently anticipated.

barry-cotter 7y ago

The UN Population Division have underestimated population growth for decades and base their projections on the assumption that fertility will converge on a steady state. This is evolotuniariliy illiterate. People who have more children will have children who have more children. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090513817302799#bb0180 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S109051381... The heritability of fertility makes world population stabilization unlikely in the foreseeable future The forecasting of the future growth of world population is of critical importance to anticipate and address a wide range of global challenges. The United Nations produces forecasts of fertility and world population every two years. As part of these forecasts, they model fertility levels in post-demographic transition countries as tending toward a long-term mean, leading to forecasts of flat or declining population in these countries. We substitute this assumption of constant long-term fertility with a dynamic model, theoretically founded in evolutionary biology, with heritable fertility. Rather than stabilizing around a long-term level for post-demographic transition countries, fertility tends to increase as children from larger families represent a larger share of the population and partly share their parents' trait of having more offspring. Our results suggest that world population will grow larger in the future than currently anticipated.