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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

by 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-...
- ch_sm 5y ago
  the fact that we don‘t doesn‘t mean we can‘t.
- danielrpa 5y ago
  Much worse famines happened in the past with smaller populations. We can easily feed this many people - perhaps if we didn't spend so much trying to outbomb other fellow humans?
- ascar 5y ago
  11 people per minute is 5.7 million a year. That's less than 0.1% of the population. The inefficiency losses from production to meal (about 1/3 waste) and the unequal global distribution of food are the important factors not our ability to sustainably produce enough. Another problem is population growth in areas that lack the necessary environmental/climate properties to sustain themselves.
  - NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
    During almost 2 years of Covid 4.2 million people died (2m per year) and people are terrified across world, but I have a filling that mentioning 0.1% you are trying to say that 5.7 million death due starvation (roughly population of Ireland each year) is not much? Yes, I know stats, about waste, and also how half of planet undernourished, and half of planet is obese. Yes, if this is perfect world we would not have global warming, inequality, wars, we would not have extinction of animal and plant species, destruction of ecosystem... wealth would be distributed more fairly and we would already live in multiple planets. So, we do not live in that world, we live in world where people turn head on the other side when see someone on the street ask them for just a bit of food ...
    - ascar 5y ago
      I'm arguing that bringing up that 0.1% of the population is starving isn't a relevant point in regard to how much population we can actually feed. It was an answer to your original comment. Your answer is derailing the discussion to a moral debate about the worth of lifes.
thefz 5y ago
"Resources" include the Earth's capacity to dispatch CO2 emissions, which we are clearly abusing.
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
- About 690 million people globally are undernourished. - The proportion of undernourished people in the world has declined from 15 percent in 2000-2004 to 8.9 percent in 2019. - The rate of stunting (children too short for their age as a result of chronic malnutrition) fell from 33 percent of children under age five in 2000 to 21.3 percent in 2019.6 https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/world-hunger-facts-statistics https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/world-hunger-facts-stati... I mean yes theoretically everything is easy, but somehow in practice just does not work, maybe it will some day in future... they say hope dies last ...

by zpeti 5y ago

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-...

ch_sm 5y ago
the fact that we don‘t doesn‘t mean we can‘t.
danielrpa 5y ago
Much worse famines happened in the past with smaller populations. We can easily feed this many people - perhaps if we didn't spend so much trying to outbomb other fellow humans?
ascar 5y ago
11 people per minute is 5.7 million a year. That's less than 0.1% of the population. The inefficiency losses from production to meal (about 1/3 waste) and the unequal global distribution of food are the important factors not our ability to sustainably produce enough. Another problem is population growth in areas that lack the necessary environmental/climate properties to sustain themselves.
- NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
  During almost 2 years of Covid 4.2 million people died (2m per year) and people are terrified across world, but I have a filling that mentioning 0.1% you are trying to say that 5.7 million death due starvation (roughly population of Ireland each year) is not much? Yes, I know stats, about waste, and also how half of planet undernourished, and half of planet is obese. Yes, if this is perfect world we would not have global warming, inequality, wars, we would not have extinction of animal and plant species, destruction of ecosystem... wealth would be distributed more fairly and we would already live in multiple planets. So, we do not live in that world, we live in world where people turn head on the other side when see someone on the street ask them for just a bit of food ...
  - ascar 5y ago
    I'm arguing that bringing up that 0.1% of the population is starving isn't a relevant point in regard to how much population we can actually feed. It was an answer to your original comment. Your answer is derailing the discussion to a moral debate about the worth of lifes.

thefz 5y ago

"Resources" include the Earth's capacity to dispatch CO2 emissions, which we are clearly abusing.

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

- About 690 million people globally are undernourished. - The proportion of undernourished people in the world has declined from 15 percent in 2000-2004 to 8.9 percent in 2019. - The rate of stunting (children too short for their age as a result of chronic malnutrition) fell from 33 percent of children under age five in 2000 to 21.3 percent in 2019.6 https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/world-hunger-facts-statistics https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/world-hunger-facts-stati... I mean yes theoretically everything is easy, but somehow in practice just does not work, maybe it will some day in future... they say hope dies last ...