5 ms·

We cannot strive for a continuous growth of the population since the earth's resources are finite. Someday we will have to stop, or regress; it's just that ever

by thefz 5y ago

We cannot strive for a continuous growth of the population since the earth's resources are finite. Someday we will have to stop, or regress; it's just that every generation does not want to be the one with more retirements and pensions over the shoulders of the working class.

nights192 5y ago
Alternatively, we may become an interstellar species and circumvent these problems for an entirely different set. I find it unfortunate that our milieu's become so thoroughly pessimistic as to the continued, unbounded prosperity of our race--I feel as though it engenders a sort of defeatism.
- pizza234 5y ago
  Resources availability is only one factor in the bigger picture - sustainability. Without sustainable politics/culture, the population will need endlessly to new locations. Space colonization would just postpone the need.
- j-pb 5y ago
  Space has at most cubed resources relative to time (we can only explore a sphere assuming non arbitrary FTL travel). Population growth is exponential. Even with space as a resource the math doesn't work out. You'd just keep the pyramid scheme running for a few hundred years with the 1% elite inhabiting earth, and the current cheap workforce of the third world inhabiting the astroid belt.
- Comevius 5y ago
  It's important to be realistic. We are not an interstellar species, we build infrastructure for cars and we can't even afford the maintenance bill on it. Even in space we could not afford an exponential growth. You would want to pace yourself before you can afford to reach other stars, then other galaxies. Eventually there will be nowhere to run.
  - zpeti 5y ago
    > Eventually there will be nowhere to run. You do realise there are probably more habitable planets than there are human beings right now? You seem to have no concept of how big the universe is. I'm not saying we are going to populate the entire universe at any point, but your statement here is just ridiculous.
    - coldtea 5y ago
      >You do realise there are probably more habitable planets than there are human beings right now? Which is neither here, nor there. Speed of light, and around thousands of required technologies missing, many of those huge leaps over what's available today, make their existance (assuming we even knew where they are) moot. And even if they were known what? You'll carry 8-10 billion people there for trips taking 10s or 100s of years with light speed? Or we're talking about some "generation ship" with some handful of humanity selected for it? And how would that help the rest? We haven't send a man out of LEO for 50 years, might as well forget those "habitable planets".
    - squiggleblaz 5y ago
      > You do realise there are probably more habitable planets than there are human beings right now? I don't realise that, for one. It certainly isn't part of the shared knowledge or common sense, so I don't think the way you have expressed yourself is fair. I thought we had only discovered a relatively small number of planets, most of which were relatively large gas giant types, and that claims to large numbers were based on speculation. That knowledge could be very much out of date by now. What is the current state of knowledge? What is the definition of a habitable planet? If it's just "an earth-size planet that is so close to a stable star", I don't think it's really fair to call that habitable. If there's no life on the planet already, it would be a great deal of effort to make it ready for human habitation, wouldn't it? There will be rock but no soil, so we need to start with simple life forms for a long time before we can get human food to grow. Is there any reason to suppose that a lifeless planet would have a breathable atmosphere? Or if the planet is Venusian or in a snowball phase, we probably couldn't do much on a useful timescale. Again, I don't actually know what the state of knowledge in that field is, so I'm betraying my ignorance rather than trying some kind of "gotcha". If we only need one planet at a time, I guess it's okay. But if we're talking about exponential growth, then we will need an exponential number of planets. We will "use up" the second one much faster than the first, and the third much faster than the second, and we'll probably need the fifth when we're starting the fourth and so on. There will come a time when we either need to slow down, or the difference between some technical and practical definition of "habitable planet" becomes relevant.
- coldtea 5y ago
  >Alternatively, we may become an interstellar species and circumvent these problems for an entirely different set. Don't see it. The "manned mission to Mars" merchants will sell the dream of that trip for decades to come (they have already backtracked. Which, even when eventually is done, it would be a crude, Apollo-style affair, for a handful of people and equipment, not some sci-fi travel destination. Anything further, and the hurdles are so many (plus "small" things like the speed of light limit and so on), that the only realistic thing would be "generation ships" going to some unknown place that might or might not have a habitable planet. And that of course is only feasible with major major leaps in technology which we don't seem to be making, including several "invent a whole new paradigm" style solutions. Heck, the reality is we haven't even been able to send a manned mission outside of LEO for 49 years now. Heck, basic infrastructure like roads and schools is in ruins, and people imagine being able to fund space exploration. Rather, bet on more decline. People want to leave Earth because "it's bounded", but at the same time think that our capacity for space travel/inventions/bearing manufacturing costs/etc is somehow "unbounded", or at least easily handles us being an interplanetary species.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  There are quite a few reasons to be pessimistic about space travel to new worlds. Never say never, but astronomy is no job for the impatient. It certainly won't help with our more immediate problems. Look at the other poor planets in our solar system and those beyond the solar system are solidly beyond our reach.
zhdc1 5y ago
> We cannot strive for a continuous grow of the population since the earth's resources are finite. True, but the US is in the enviable position where it has enough resources to support a substantially higher population. The US has the second highest amount of arable (cultivated land) in the world, second only to India. However, its population is only one quarter of India's. I'm not arguing that the US should increase its population to that extent, and I'm not arguing that having 1.3B people living in a country the size of India is a good thing. However, the US could maintain population growth for significantly longer than other countries.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  That's true in the present, but I doubt it will hold true in the future as climate change moves arrable zone further north.
  - zhdc1 5y ago
    This will likely balance out, as losses from certain regions that will be adversely impacted by climate change (e.g., Florida) will be offset by gains in other states (e.g., Virginia). There will be some detrimental impact, see Quaye et al (2018) "Climate Change Impacts on Farmland Values in the Southeast United States" for where I'm pulling this information from, but it won't be completely devastating. Again, I'm not saying that this is a good thing, and I'm only talking about cropland and not the impact of climate change on costal population centers (it will be devastating).
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  I don't think the current numbers factor in water requirements, which can and will throw around these numbers quite a bit. India's farm protests are sourced in water problems to a significant degree.
zpeti 5y ago
Contrary to the fear mongering media, in almost all countries in the world now population growth is declining, and world population will plateau or fall in the next 50-100 years. You can see this on the world population growth graphs now. If you look at it stricly statistically, Earth's population will plateau at around 10-11bn people. We can easily feed that many people, and it won't be massively more than now in terms of environmental impact. Yes, we need to learn to be sustainable more, but the trends are good and I'm pretty sure we will find a way to sustainably live as 10bn people on Earth. We will most likely run into huge societal problems from declining populations very soon, rather than from growing ones.
- 74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
  Why would population plateau at 11bn if even more people are still sustainable?
  - rich_sasha 5y ago
    One example I saw: countries that were the main drivers of population growth, India and China, are seeing drops in fertility rates. Wider afield, increasing access to education drops desired family size (I guess gives people other options for “growth” than literally having more children). And education levels in populous developing countries are rapidly increasing.
- Comevius 5y ago
  It's the ecological footprint of each person that's a concern. You can feed 10 billion people, but people don't want to just not starve. We already overshoot the resources Earth can regenerate in a given year in July, and that regeneration capacity and our ability to organize will fall apart faster and faster. Imagine if the rest of the Earth's population would be allowed to live like people in the United States.
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
  > Earth's population will plateau at around 10-11bn people. We can easily feed that many people It is interesting you said that especially as Oxfam recent study says that each minute 11 people dies of hunger while planet has 7.8bn people. https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/oxfam-11-people-die-of-hunger-each-minute-around-the-globe/article35228377.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/oxfam-11-people-...
alexashka 5y ago
> We cannot strive for a continuous growth of the population since the earth's resources are finite You give humans too little credit. There is no idea too stupid for humans to strive for and murder/subjugate each other over. Have a look at any history book of any culture in any century for some ideas.
voisin 5y ago
Knowing this truism, we need to be reorganizing our economic system in line with it. “Degrowth” has been a fun internet wormhole to investigate.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by thefz 5y ago

nights192 5y ago

Alternatively, we may become an interstellar species and circumvent these problems for an entirely different set. I find it unfortunate that our milieu's become so thoroughly pessimistic as to the continued, unbounded prosperity of our race--I feel as though it engenders a sort of defeatism.

pizza234 5y ago
Resources availability is only one factor in the bigger picture - sustainability. Without sustainable politics/culture, the population will need endlessly to new locations. Space colonization would just postpone the need.
j-pb 5y ago
Space has at most cubed resources relative to time (we can only explore a sphere assuming non arbitrary FTL travel). Population growth is exponential. Even with space as a resource the math doesn't work out. You'd just keep the pyramid scheme running for a few hundred years with the 1% elite inhabiting earth, and the current cheap workforce of the third world inhabiting the astroid belt.
Comevius 5y ago
It's important to be realistic. We are not an interstellar species, we build infrastructure for cars and we can't even afford the maintenance bill on it. Even in space we could not afford an exponential growth. You would want to pace yourself before you can afford to reach other stars, then other galaxies. Eventually there will be nowhere to run.
- zpeti 5y ago
  > Eventually there will be nowhere to run. You do realise there are probably more habitable planets than there are human beings right now? You seem to have no concept of how big the universe is. I'm not saying we are going to populate the entire universe at any point, but your statement here is just ridiculous.
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >You do realise there are probably more habitable planets than there are human beings right now? Which is neither here, nor there. Speed of light, and around thousands of required technologies missing, many of those huge leaps over what's available today, make their existance (assuming we even knew where they are) moot. And even if they were known what? You'll carry 8-10 billion people there for trips taking 10s or 100s of years with light speed? Or we're talking about some "generation ship" with some handful of humanity selected for it? And how would that help the rest? We haven't send a man out of LEO for 50 years, might as well forget those "habitable planets".
  - squiggleblaz 5y ago
    > You do realise there are probably more habitable planets than there are human beings right now? I don't realise that, for one. It certainly isn't part of the shared knowledge or common sense, so I don't think the way you have expressed yourself is fair. I thought we had only discovered a relatively small number of planets, most of which were relatively large gas giant types, and that claims to large numbers were based on speculation. That knowledge could be very much out of date by now. What is the current state of knowledge? What is the definition of a habitable planet? If it's just "an earth-size planet that is so close to a stable star", I don't think it's really fair to call that habitable. If there's no life on the planet already, it would be a great deal of effort to make it ready for human habitation, wouldn't it? There will be rock but no soil, so we need to start with simple life forms for a long time before we can get human food to grow. Is there any reason to suppose that a lifeless planet would have a breathable atmosphere? Or if the planet is Venusian or in a snowball phase, we probably couldn't do much on a useful timescale. Again, I don't actually know what the state of knowledge in that field is, so I'm betraying my ignorance rather than trying some kind of "gotcha". If we only need one planet at a time, I guess it's okay. But if we're talking about exponential growth, then we will need an exponential number of planets. We will "use up" the second one much faster than the first, and the third much faster than the second, and we'll probably need the fifth when we're starting the fourth and so on. There will come a time when we either need to slow down, or the difference between some technical and practical definition of "habitable planet" becomes relevant.
coldtea 5y ago
>Alternatively, we may become an interstellar species and circumvent these problems for an entirely different set. Don't see it. The "manned mission to Mars" merchants will sell the dream of that trip for decades to come (they have already backtracked. Which, even when eventually is done, it would be a crude, Apollo-style affair, for a handful of people and equipment, not some sci-fi travel destination. Anything further, and the hurdles are so many (plus "small" things like the speed of light limit and so on), that the only realistic thing would be "generation ships" going to some unknown place that might or might not have a habitable planet. And that of course is only feasible with major major leaps in technology which we don't seem to be making, including several "invent a whole new paradigm" style solutions. Heck, the reality is we haven't even been able to send a manned mission outside of LEO for 49 years now. Heck, basic infrastructure like roads and schools is in ruins, and people imagine being able to fund space exploration. Rather, bet on more decline. People want to leave Earth because "it's bounded", but at the same time think that our capacity for space travel/inventions/bearing manufacturing costs/etc is somehow "unbounded", or at least easily handles us being an interplanetary species.
raxxorrax 5y ago
There are quite a few reasons to be pessimistic about space travel to new worlds. Never say never, but astronomy is no job for the impatient. It certainly won't help with our more immediate problems. Look at the other poor planets in our solar system and those beyond the solar system are solidly beyond our reach.

zhdc1 5y ago

> We cannot strive for a continuous grow of the population since the earth's resources are finite. True, but the US is in the enviable position where it has enough resources to support a substantially higher population. The US has the second highest amount of arable (cultivated land) in the world, second only to India. However, its population is only one quarter of India's. I'm not arguing that the US should increase its population to that extent, and I'm not arguing that having 1.3B people living in a country the size of India is a good thing. However, the US could maintain population growth for significantly longer than other countries.

Ygg2 5y ago
That's true in the present, but I doubt it will hold true in the future as climate change moves arrable zone further north.
- zhdc1 5y ago
  This will likely balance out, as losses from certain regions that will be adversely impacted by climate change (e.g., Florida) will be offset by gains in other states (e.g., Virginia). There will be some detrimental impact, see Quaye et al (2018) "Climate Change Impacts on Farmland Values in the Southeast United States" for where I'm pulling this information from, but it won't be completely devastating. Again, I'm not saying that this is a good thing, and I'm only talking about cropland and not the impact of climate change on costal population centers (it will be devastating).
raxxorrax 5y ago
I don't think the current numbers factor in water requirements, which can and will throw around these numbers quite a bit. India's farm protests are sourced in water problems to a significant degree.

zpeti 5y ago

Contrary to the fear mongering media, in almost all countries in the world now population growth is declining, and world population will plateau or fall in the next 50-100 years. You can see this on the world population growth graphs now. If you look at it stricly statistically, Earth's population will plateau at around 10-11bn people. We can easily feed that many people, and it won't be massively more than now in terms of environmental impact. Yes, we need to learn to be sustainable more, but the trends are good and I'm pretty sure we will find a way to sustainably live as 10bn people on Earth. We will most likely run into huge societal problems from declining populations very soon, rather than from growing ones.

74d-fe6-2c6 5y ago
Why would population plateau at 11bn if even more people are still sustainable?
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  One example I saw: countries that were the main drivers of population growth, India and China, are seeing drops in fertility rates. Wider afield, increasing access to education drops desired family size (I guess gives people other options for “growth” than literally having more children). And education levels in populous developing countries are rapidly increasing.
Comevius 5y ago
It's the ecological footprint of each person that's a concern. You can feed 10 billion people, but people don't want to just not starve. We already overshoot the resources Earth can regenerate in a given year in July, and that regeneration capacity and our ability to organize will fall apart faster and faster. Imagine if the rest of the Earth's population would be allowed to live like people in the United States.
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
> Earth's population will plateau at around 10-11bn people. We can easily feed that many people It is interesting you said that especially as Oxfam recent study says that each minute 11 people dies of hunger while planet has 7.8bn people. https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/oxfam-11-people-die-of-hunger-each-minute-around-the-globe/article35228377.ece https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/oxfam-11-people-...

alexashka 5y ago

> We cannot strive for a continuous growth of the population since the earth's resources are finite You give humans too little credit. There is no idea too stupid for humans to strive for and murder/subjugate each other over. Have a look at any history book of any culture in any century for some ideas.

voisin 5y ago

Knowing this truism, we need to be reorganizing our economic system in line with it. “Degrowth” has been a fun internet wormhole to investigate.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]