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Remember back in the 70s when there was panic over overpopulation? I feel like we'll actually be running out of water before then (thanks climate change) but if

Remember back in the 70s when there was panic over overpopulation? I feel like we'll actually be running out of water before then (thanks climate change) but if that hadn't happened, it would have been running out of food. Once we reach "peak optimal food production", our population will eventually outstrip food reserves. We would have to start culling people or we'd starve. On an unrelated note, the Overpopulation wikipedia page is interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation

shafyy 4y ago
We're not running out of food, but the there's a huge price we're paying for that: We're destroying nature and ecosystems. Don't ever think this comes for free.
- iratewizard 4y ago
  Modern day catastrophism
  - ben_w 4y ago
    We can fix this stuff we know about now, and give future centuries a strong foundation upon which to recognise and solve the problems they know about. Only, we can't do that by just dismissing any discussion of the current problems — the best way to have a catastrophe is to ignore all the problems.
  - nitwit005 4y ago
    You can easily measure the catastrophe in progress. It's hard to call that some sort of panic.
- jl6 4y ago
  Yes. It’s easy to say “Malthus was wrong” because food production has so far kept up with population growth. What that doesn’t account for is that food production has been subsidized by natural resources like aquifers, topsoil, pollinating insects, cheap oil to make fertilizer and mechanized farm machinery - all of which we need to stop abusing either to save the climate or because they will run out anyway. We need renewable farming as well as renewable energy, and I don’t see any guarantee that such a thing can support a world of 8+ billion people.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    That's not why Malthus will eventually have the last (sardonic) laugh. All of the things you listed can be made renewable on timescales exceeding the natural lifetime of the sun with only engineering (rather than scientific) breakthroughs, including making the sun last longer and moving the earth to a different orbit to suit the light of the engineered sun. No, Malthus gets the last laugh because the sub-population that reproduces most, regardless of whether that is caused by genes or memes, quickly dominates the overall population; this means that even despite the currently sub-replacement birth rate, it's reasonable to forecast the population to rise to whatever level is necessary to overwhelm food supply, for any level of food supply. That can be fixed in principle, but the only solutions I can think of requires tech that makes the two forms of social/mind control in Westworld seasons 3 and 4 look like a child's finger painting in comparison to the filmography of the aforementioned show.
    - eloff 4y ago
      Indeed. The only way this doesn't happen is that no subgroups continue to reproduce beyond the replacement rate. I think that's highly unlikely. We can see certain religious groups in developed countries that have way more than 2.1 children per couple. It seems likely to me that development and education doesn't completely make the problem go away.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Actually, the odds of renewable farming to support 8 billion people is much higher than current practices because non renewable practices are constantly losing capacity and must let land stay fallow after decades of in intensive farming.
bluescrn 4y ago
We should still be very worried about population, but the 'cult of endless growth (on a finite planet)' wants us to breed more consumers/workers as fast as possible :( At least Elon is considering moving beyond that 'finite planet' limitation. But the way things are going, I suspect that modern civilisation will collapse well before we get there on any significant scale.
- badpun 4y ago
  > At least Elon is considering moving beyond that 'finite planet' limitation The limitations of Earth are basically about size of arable land, amount of clean water, lack of toxins in environment and the climate (percentage of areas where it's not too cold/hot for humans to survive outside). Other planets are terrible in all of those aspects and inhabiting them does not make sense (if we can solve these problems there, we can also solve them on Earth, but much cheaper/easier). They are hostile barren rocks that make places like Death Valley or Antarctica look like paradise on earrth.
  - algo_trader 4y ago
    Imagine recruiting a thousand engineers/technicians for an moon colony, loading them on a fake rocket, landing them in some remote desert, and working them 12 hours a day to build "a new world" .... They will probably be happy and fulfilled so long as you keep up the illusion.
- einpoklum 4y ago
  > At least Elon is considering You mean, the guy who pumps out private cars with years and years of massive government subsidies?
  - raarts 4y ago
    Greatly contributing to the electrification which we'll need to do to get rid of fossil fuels? Yep, that guy.
    - 4y ago
vkou 4y ago
Malthus only needs to be right once, disciples of endless exponential growth need him to be wrong every single time. Every unsustainable behaviour works, right up until the point that it doesn't.

shafyy 4y ago

We're not running out of food, but the there's a huge price we're paying for that: We're destroying nature and ecosystems. Don't ever think this comes for free.

iratewizard 4y ago
Modern day catastrophism
- ben_w 4y ago
  We can fix this stuff we know about now, and give future centuries a strong foundation upon which to recognise and solve the problems they know about. Only, we can't do that by just dismissing any discussion of the current problems — the best way to have a catastrophe is to ignore all the problems.
- nitwit005 4y ago
  You can easily measure the catastrophe in progress. It's hard to call that some sort of panic.
jl6 4y ago
Yes. It’s easy to say “Malthus was wrong” because food production has so far kept up with population growth. What that doesn’t account for is that food production has been subsidized by natural resources like aquifers, topsoil, pollinating insects, cheap oil to make fertilizer and mechanized farm machinery - all of which we need to stop abusing either to save the climate or because they will run out anyway. We need renewable farming as well as renewable energy, and I don’t see any guarantee that such a thing can support a world of 8+ billion people.
- ben_w 4y ago
  That's not why Malthus will eventually have the last (sardonic) laugh. All of the things you listed can be made renewable on timescales exceeding the natural lifetime of the sun with only engineering (rather than scientific) breakthroughs, including making the sun last longer and moving the earth to a different orbit to suit the light of the engineered sun. No, Malthus gets the last laugh because the sub-population that reproduces most, regardless of whether that is caused by genes or memes, quickly dominates the overall population; this means that even despite the currently sub-replacement birth rate, it's reasonable to forecast the population to rise to whatever level is necessary to overwhelm food supply, for any level of food supply. That can be fixed in principle, but the only solutions I can think of requires tech that makes the two forms of social/mind control in Westworld seasons 3 and 4 look like a child's finger painting in comparison to the filmography of the aforementioned show.
  - eloff 4y ago
    Indeed. The only way this doesn't happen is that no subgroups continue to reproduce beyond the replacement rate. I think that's highly unlikely. We can see certain religious groups in developed countries that have way more than 2.1 children per couple. It seems likely to me that development and education doesn't completely make the problem go away.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Actually, the odds of renewable farming to support 8 billion people is much higher than current practices because non renewable practices are constantly losing capacity and must let land stay fallow after decades of in intensive farming.

bluescrn 4y ago

We should still be very worried about population, but the 'cult of endless growth (on a finite planet)' wants us to breed more consumers/workers as fast as possible :( At least Elon is considering moving beyond that 'finite planet' limitation. But the way things are going, I suspect that modern civilisation will collapse well before we get there on any significant scale.

badpun 4y ago
> At least Elon is considering moving beyond that 'finite planet' limitation The limitations of Earth are basically about size of arable land, amount of clean water, lack of toxins in environment and the climate (percentage of areas where it's not too cold/hot for humans to survive outside). Other planets are terrible in all of those aspects and inhabiting them does not make sense (if we can solve these problems there, we can also solve them on Earth, but much cheaper/easier). They are hostile barren rocks that make places like Death Valley or Antarctica look like paradise on earrth.
- algo_trader 4y ago
  Imagine recruiting a thousand engineers/technicians for an moon colony, loading them on a fake rocket, landing them in some remote desert, and working them 12 hours a day to build "a new world" .... They will probably be happy and fulfilled so long as you keep up the illusion.
einpoklum 4y ago
> At least Elon is considering You mean, the guy who pumps out private cars with years and years of massive government subsidies?
- raarts 4y ago
  Greatly contributing to the electrification which we'll need to do to get rid of fossil fuels? Yep, that guy.
  - 4y ago

vkou 4y ago

Malthus only needs to be right once, disciples of endless exponential growth need him to be wrong every single time. Every unsustainable behaviour works, right up until the point that it doesn't.