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Overpopulation. It's the main source of humanity's current woes and will only get worse with time. We seem to be content with addressing the symptoms rather th

Overpopulation. It's the main source of humanity's current woes and will only get worse with time. We seem to be content with addressing the symptoms rather than the problem. The idea of population control is taboo but will help everyone in the long run.

canofbars 6y ago
Surprisingly capitalism seems to be helping here. A lot of people feel they are unable to afford to own a house and have kids at the same time.
- nawgz 6y ago
  Haha, "helping" and "growing wealth inequality to such disturbing extremes that the richest have more than ever before and more than most could conceive whilst the poor are faced with crushing existential dread and complete lack of power" might not be analogous to me, but yes.
  - canofbars 6y ago
    I'm not saying its helping the individuals, but if you look purely at the problem of overpopulation, its helping.
    - Lammy 6y ago
      Maybe 4°C+ climate change is how we'll maintain humanity under 500-million in perpetual balance with nature? https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/scientist-warming-could-cut-population-to-1-billion https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/scientist-warm... > “In a very cynical way, it’s a triumph for science because at last we have stabilized something — namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people,” said Dr. Schellnhuber
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
wussboy 6y ago
This is a problem that is solving itself. As countries get richer, their people have less children. And this result holds true in every country for which we have data. The prediction is that the world’s population will peak at ten billion then start to decrease.
- jl2718 6y ago
  Well the population is still growing faster than ever, so everybody must be getting poorer.
  - bart_spoon 6y ago
    It isn’t growing faster than ever. It’s growing, but the rate is declining, and it’s expected to hit net 0 in the next 30-50 years.
- slothtrop 6y ago
  If that's true, it can be accelerated by eliminating global poverty and allowing universal access to contraceptives.
wassenaar10 6y ago
I don't know why people still think that overpopulation is a genuine threat. If anything, there's a genuine threat to industrial societies in that their birth rates are almost all sub-replacement. This is true for countries in North America, South America, East Asia, and Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate
- wes-k 6y ago
  I don’t know why people continue to believe it is not a threat. Outside of economy, why is replacement rate needed? If the world reduced to 1 billion humans would the Earth be in a better or worse place? Seems clear to me that fewer humans = less CO2, less deforestation, etc. You can argue less invention too but that’s not as obvious to me given Multiple Discovery (1). 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery
  - ericb 6y ago
    Imagine the entire population of the world was a village of 100 houses. There are 100 people. Imagine the village ages out and you have 90 old people, and 10 middle-aged people. There's not enough people harvesting grain to feed everyone. There's not enough workers to maintain the roads. The life-savings everyone accumulated under the balanced population gets spent squabbling for the limited food at inflated prices. The water and roads fall apart with no one to maintain them. Life gets worse, not better. Unless there is war, famine or pestilence, usually reductions in population will be unbalanced by nature.
    - mrtweetyhack 6y ago
      that's some arbitrary shit you made up there
    - jl2718 6y ago
      Yeah, and that’s why we need universal basic income for all the young people without jobs. That’s why education takes up half of our employable years. That’s why over half of employed people say that their own job could be eliminated without consequence. That’s why unions protest against job cuts. That’s why real wages keep dropping. That’s why the trend toward industrial automation has been dwarfed by the trend toward outsourcing to cheap human labor.
nmca 6y ago
Most models have the population capping at ~10B, so people don't tend to worry about it any more? (10B number is recalled from "Factfulness", which I'd recommend)
- Aachen 6y ago
  Seconded on recommending factfulness. It's been very helpful to me in seeing the world more the way it is rather than in the negative light you'd get from watching sensational media only. I actually made a preview of iirc ~10 pages that I found to be very powerful near the beginning of the book, but I don't just want to post it to avoid copyright issues. Shoot me an email at factfulness202012@lgms.nl (just link this comment in the subject or so, no body needed) if you are interested.
- renjimen 6y ago
  I learnt a lot from Factfulness. Great book! My concern is mainly an ecological one, which I don't recall Factfulness really addressing. While human welfare continues to improve in most of the world, our sustainable use of natural resources does not, reducing our access to fertile land and fresh water in years to come. I hope technology can get us out of the giant pickle coming our way because I don't put much faith in our long term planning at a national or global level.
_Microft 6y ago
Check https://OurWorldInData.org https://OurWorldInData.org to see that a lot of our woes do not get worse with time. A lot of things are actually getting better quite fast. That does not mean that everything is good yet but at least it is better than it was in the past. The past sucked. A lot. Also: peak population growth rate was 50 years ago and it has been decreasing since then: https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth-past-future https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth-past-futu...
- jl2718 6y ago
  Net population growth has not certainly peaked. The earth’s resources are limited in absolute terms, not in terms of exponential growth. A linear increase looks like a declining exponential rate, but still grows unbounded. Any trend of growth exceeding a constant multiple of the inverse total is unbounded.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    > Net population growth has not certainly peaked. Net population growth peaked 30 years ago, see [0]. The rest is "technically true" if you argue solely based on an exponential model. That's not how it works. There is more to modelling population growth (or a pandemic for that matter) than just fitting an exponential. People had lots of children in the past because almost half of them died young and the parents needed children to care for them when they were old. So they defaulted to "more children". Then child mortality was brought down and people adapted with delay - which lead to more people growing up and increasing the population. Then people adapted and the fertility rate fell a lot and in some cases even very fast. Compare how fast Iran an South Korea transitioned and see how long it took the United Kingdom to do so before [1]. The articles on "Our World in Data" are really interesting and the people behind it make lots of effort to ensure good quality of the data. I can really recommend to checkout the website. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/absolute-increase-global-population https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/absolute-increase-global-... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?tab=chart&country=GBR~IRN~KOR&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?t...
- 6y ago
JabavuAdams 6y ago
There's no problem with overpopulation, globally. The population is forecast to max out at around 10B. The problem is that a small section of humanity use a completely disproportionate share of resources. We also have a consumerist culture that keeps upsizing our desires, often in banal and wasteful ways. E.g. SUVs and blow-up lawn ornaments. EDIT> I would say that advertising is a worse problem than overpopulation.
Aunche 6y ago
In less developed countries, kids are free labor, so unsurprisingly countries with high population growth are poor. I'm not sure sure what you expect these countries to do.
slothtrop 6y ago
I agree. What's astounding to me is that people will in the same instance downplay the impact of population, but soothsay about global warming, land-use, other ecological issues. Most of the issues are moot if the population stagnates. More demand means more ecological destruction, you might increase efficiency but that is still the equation any way you slice it. There are non-profits out there that might help to this end, but they are numerous. They ought to organize better. We need Universal access to contraceptives, and elimination of global poverty. Some organizations that may be helping: https://pai.org/ https://pai.org/, https://populationmatters.org/ https://populationmatters.org/, https://www.ippf.org/ https://www.ippf.org/, https://www.guttmacher.org/ https://www.guttmacher.org/

canofbars 6y ago

Surprisingly capitalism seems to be helping here. A lot of people feel they are unable to afford to own a house and have kids at the same time.

nawgz 6y ago
Haha, "helping" and "growing wealth inequality to such disturbing extremes that the richest have more than ever before and more than most could conceive whilst the poor are faced with crushing existential dread and complete lack of power" might not be analogous to me, but yes.
- canofbars 6y ago
  I'm not saying its helping the individuals, but if you look purely at the problem of overpopulation, its helping.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Maybe 4°C+ climate change is how we'll maintain humanity under 500-million in perpetual balance with nature? https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/scientist-warming-could-cut-population-to-1-billion https://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/scientist-warm... > “In a very cynical way, it’s a triumph for science because at last we have stabilized something — namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people,” said Dr. Schellnhuber

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wussboy 6y ago

This is a problem that is solving itself. As countries get richer, their people have less children. And this result holds true in every country for which we have data. The prediction is that the world’s population will peak at ten billion then start to decrease.

jl2718 6y ago
Well the population is still growing faster than ever, so everybody must be getting poorer.
- bart_spoon 6y ago
  It isn’t growing faster than ever. It’s growing, but the rate is declining, and it’s expected to hit net 0 in the next 30-50 years.
slothtrop 6y ago
If that's true, it can be accelerated by eliminating global poverty and allowing universal access to contraceptives.

wassenaar10 6y ago

I don't know why people still think that overpopulation is a genuine threat. If anything, there's a genuine threat to industrial societies in that their birth rates are almost all sub-replacement. This is true for countries in North America, South America, East Asia, and Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

wes-k 6y ago
I don’t know why people continue to believe it is not a threat. Outside of economy, why is replacement rate needed? If the world reduced to 1 billion humans would the Earth be in a better or worse place? Seems clear to me that fewer humans = less CO2, less deforestation, etc. You can argue less invention too but that’s not as obvious to me given Multiple Discovery (1). 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery
- ericb 6y ago
  Imagine the entire population of the world was a village of 100 houses. There are 100 people. Imagine the village ages out and you have 90 old people, and 10 middle-aged people. There's not enough people harvesting grain to feed everyone. There's not enough workers to maintain the roads. The life-savings everyone accumulated under the balanced population gets spent squabbling for the limited food at inflated prices. The water and roads fall apart with no one to maintain them. Life gets worse, not better. Unless there is war, famine or pestilence, usually reductions in population will be unbalanced by nature.
  - mrtweetyhack 6y ago
    that's some arbitrary shit you made up there
  - jl2718 6y ago
    Yeah, and that’s why we need universal basic income for all the young people without jobs. That’s why education takes up half of our employable years. That’s why over half of employed people say that their own job could be eliminated without consequence. That’s why unions protest against job cuts. That’s why real wages keep dropping. That’s why the trend toward industrial automation has been dwarfed by the trend toward outsourcing to cheap human labor.

nmca 6y ago

Most models have the population capping at ~10B, so people don't tend to worry about it any more? (10B number is recalled from "Factfulness", which I'd recommend)

Aachen 6y ago
Seconded on recommending factfulness. It's been very helpful to me in seeing the world more the way it is rather than in the negative light you'd get from watching sensational media only. I actually made a preview of iirc ~10 pages that I found to be very powerful near the beginning of the book, but I don't just want to post it to avoid copyright issues. Shoot me an email at factfulness202012@lgms.nl (just link this comment in the subject or so, no body needed) if you are interested.
renjimen 6y ago
I learnt a lot from Factfulness. Great book! My concern is mainly an ecological one, which I don't recall Factfulness really addressing. While human welfare continues to improve in most of the world, our sustainable use of natural resources does not, reducing our access to fertile land and fresh water in years to come. I hope technology can get us out of the giant pickle coming our way because I don't put much faith in our long term planning at a national or global level.

_Microft 6y ago

Check https://OurWorldInData.org https://OurWorldInData.org to see that a lot of our woes do not get worse with time. A lot of things are actually getting better quite fast. That does not mean that everything is good yet but at least it is better than it was in the past. The past sucked. A lot. Also: peak population growth rate was 50 years ago and it has been decreasing since then: https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth-past-future https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth-past-futu...

jl2718 6y ago
Net population growth has not certainly peaked. The earth’s resources are limited in absolute terms, not in terms of exponential growth. A linear increase looks like a declining exponential rate, but still grows unbounded. Any trend of growth exceeding a constant multiple of the inverse total is unbounded.
- _Microft 6y ago
  > Net population growth has not certainly peaked. Net population growth peaked 30 years ago, see [0]. The rest is "technically true" if you argue solely based on an exponential model. That's not how it works. There is more to modelling population growth (or a pandemic for that matter) than just fitting an exponential. People had lots of children in the past because almost half of them died young and the parents needed children to care for them when they were old. So they defaulted to "more children". Then child mortality was brought down and people adapted with delay - which lead to more people growing up and increasing the population. Then people adapted and the fertility rate fell a lot and in some cases even very fast. Compare how fast Iran an South Korea transitioned and see how long it took the United Kingdom to do so before [1]. The articles on "Our World in Data" are really interesting and the people behind it make lots of effort to ensure good quality of the data. I can really recommend to checkout the website. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/absolute-increase-global-population https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/absolute-increase-global-... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?tab=chart&country=GBR~IRN~KOR&region=World https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/children-born-per-woman?t...
6y ago

JabavuAdams 6y ago

There's no problem with overpopulation, globally. The population is forecast to max out at around 10B. The problem is that a small section of humanity use a completely disproportionate share of resources. We also have a consumerist culture that keeps upsizing our desires, often in banal and wasteful ways. E.g. SUVs and blow-up lawn ornaments. EDIT> I would say that advertising is a worse problem than overpopulation.

Aunche 6y ago

In less developed countries, kids are free labor, so unsurprisingly countries with high population growth are poor. I'm not sure sure what you expect these countries to do.

slothtrop 6y ago

I agree. What's astounding to me is that people will in the same instance downplay the impact of population, but soothsay about global warming, land-use, other ecological issues. Most of the issues are moot if the population stagnates. More demand means more ecological destruction, you might increase efficiency but that is still the equation any way you slice it. There are non-profits out there that might help to this end, but they are numerous. They ought to organize better. We need Universal access to contraceptives, and elimination of global poverty. Some organizations that may be helping: https://pai.org/ https://pai.org/, https://populationmatters.org/ https://populationmatters.org/, https://www.ippf.org/ https://www.ippf.org/, https://www.guttmacher.org/ https://www.guttmacher.org/