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The world should follow suit, 8 billions people it's just a ridiculous amount of people given the fast-paced damage we are doing such as climate change and many

The world should follow suit, 8 billions people it's just a ridiculous amount of people given the fast-paced damage we are doing such as climate change and many others born from consumerism and mindless growth.

rippercushions 3y ago
The world is following suit, and quite rapidly at that: China, Korea, virtually all of Europe, the US (excluding immigration), etc. Even parts of southern India are now below replacement level.
- modo_mario 3y ago
  The world population is still going up steadily and will continue to do so for a good while led by Africa no? I think Africa's population growth is predicted to plateau around 2100
  - rippercushions 3y ago
    Yup, it's by no means equally distributed, but fertility is dropping fast in Africa too.
  - jemmyw 3y ago
    I think it'll plateau well before that though because they'll see so much pressure on food and water resources. Africa doesn't feed itself now and if the rest of the world needs to direct more food production locally due to lower yield caused by climate change then Africa is positioned to suffer the most.
    - qwytw 3y ago
      But yields continue increasing at a relatively fast pace overal?
  - ido 3y ago
    It's projected to peak at a bit over 10B before the end of the century and then steadily decline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth#/media/File:World_Population_Prospects.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow... (see solid red median line).
connectsnk 3y ago
Please do not downvote this. At least present your side of view and educate us. Many of us feel that productivity/ money are not the goals of life. That humans are putting too much pressure on the planet by consuming resources and in the end it’s going to be detrimental for our own existence. Please let us know why we are wrong.
- qwytw 3y ago
  Because having disproportionally more old than young people in a society is extremely unlikely to result in a higher QoL. The opposite is much more likely..
  - connectsnk 3y ago
    In the short term yes but in the very long term, the old people will die out.
- nashashmi 3y ago
  People need to prioritize people over materials. Yet right now they are prioritizing heavy materialistic living over a bigger population. It is why the world "can't take the pressure of a huge population" argument surfaces.
  - nashashmi 3y ago
    https://youtube.com/shorts/mnYRqE1lC0E?feature=share https://youtube.com/shorts/mnYRqE1lC0E?feature=share
- BjoernKW 3y ago
  These are a few of my previous comments on the matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35357326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35357326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35362526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35362526
  - connectsnk 3y ago
kiba 3y ago
8 billion people is just fine. The problem is that wealthier nation just consume more and waste more. We literally feed perfectly good farmlands to cows, for example.
- jackmott42 3y ago
  What does just fine mean? Certainly if we all ate prescribed vegetarian diets and lived like quakers we could sustain 8 billion people for a long time. But that isn't fine for me, nor is it fine for me that we obliterate almost all natural wildlife and wild areas to feed and house ourselves and power our grid. Its already not fine from many of our perspectives.
- Chris2048 3y ago
  Unless you do a full analysis, there's no use doing a partial one. Much of tech design and manufacture happens in "wealthier nation" for example, that in turn is distributed worldwide e.g. even poor countries possess mobile phones, and electronics in general. Trading crops for western currency is a generally neutral exchange, but at least it gives you access to things you cannot otherwise produce - and technology generally can break the zero-sum/geo-arbitrage of trade. > We literally feed perfectly good farmlands to cows Where does the wasted energy go?
- epolanski 3y ago
  It's not wealthier nations, everyone is consuming more. The farmlands is a perfect example you make because everyone eats more meat. Meat consumption per capita in Europe increased an average 10% just in the last 7 years. But Turkey, Vietnam, pretty much the entire middle east and Africa increased per capita consumption by more than 60% in less than two decades. And on top of that it's even more environmentally toxic as beef keeps taking more and more of the share of the meat consumption. And it doesn't stop at meat, India didn't even figure in top 10 car sales globally just 10 years ago, now it's the third market in the world after China and US and sells around the same cars as Germany and UK (which are all in the top 8 world markets) combined.
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
Japan will become extinct at some point in the future. No girls growing up in Japan think to themselves "I want 2.1 children someday". But they'd all have to think this for population decline to plateau. Since not all girls will think this, the few that think such will have to have an even higher number. You won't see 1 in 5 think to themselves "I want 10.5 children". That you want this to happen everywhere is bizarrely misanthropic. It's an Erlichean death cult.
- jackmott42 3y ago
  No, that is silly. Their population is on the decline because there are too many people. Later when it declines and there is not enough people, people will want to reproduce. This problem solves itself, I don't know why you growth fascists get in such a twist about it. Growth can't go on forever, you have to give up on it sometime.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    It's not silly. Children growing up in Japan today learn from the environment they are in... they learn what "normal" is from the adults around them. They internalize the idea of having 1 or 0 children. The population never recovers. Extinction is, at some point, inevitable. Your comment amounts to "you're wrong, things magically change and it's all good". Do you know nothing of their culture, or psychology in general? Conformists aren't well-known for bucking the trends their parents set and doing something wildly different than they.
    - Chris2048 3y ago
      Your reasoning about "learning from environment" isn't much better than "magically change" as it's very speculative. > Do you know nothing of their culture, or psychology in general? Conformists.. Do you? Japan has proven highly adaptable in the past.
    - devjelo 3y ago
      You're extrapolating a trend in an unrealistic way. I don't think they will go "extinct" as you put it. I think it is more likely their population will only decline to a certain level.
AdamN 3y ago
Population growth is already <1% and trending down YoY. It's scheduled to plateau in 2086, 43 years from now. Most of the growth at this point is attributed to prior high birth rates and increased longevity.
Chris2048 3y ago
The elephant-in-the-room is this: religion aka super-virulent-neuro-memes generally promote having many children. How will the world reduce human growth on that basis.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  Religiosity down in most of the developed world even the US is falling pretty fast after holding out for a long time.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    I'm wary of this kind of reasoning. You could say the same about communism/central-control and totalitarianism but China is still doing fine as a superpower without having to become more open or more democratic. Religiosity is down, but how long does it take to adapt? Scientology (new strain) is up.
    - rtkwe 3y ago
      Scientology is up according to what? Their own numbers are pretty suspect. And when I say religiosity I mean the portion of the population that has no or limited religious affiliation is up as a whole not just one particular denomination or religion, it's down as a whole across all religions.
      - Chris2048 3y ago
        Me. 100 years ago: 0 scientologists now: conservatively, at least 100 scientologists As for the portion of the population that has no or limited religious affiliation, I'm not sure that mean it will keep going down, versus comes into some kind of equilibrium.
leaving 3y ago
Finally a sane and reasonable answer. Multiply population times consumption to get footprint. There is no question we are over the carrying capacity of the planet for humans with a lifestyle of mindless consumption and reproduction. The insects are mostly gone. Half the animal species are gone. The oceans are filled with plastic garbage. The reefs are dead. Humans have no capacity to limit our own numbers. Trends in Japan and projections for a few other places ignore the numbers for China and India with over 1.5 billion each and monstrous ecological collapse in both places. And still the company I work for, like every capitalist organization, harps on the insane Pozi scheme of perpetual growth at every meeting. Why can't we just produce something of quality that will last and provide it to a stable market? Greed and insanity. The only reason you don't believe that we are in a catastrophe of overpopulation is that the degradation of the environment is not immediately evident if you live in a city.
- surgical_fire 3y ago
  Don't worry. The last to starve will be the first to suffocate.
- midoridensha 3y ago
  >Trends in Japan and projections for a few other places ignore the numbers for China and India with over 1.5 billion No, they don't: the birthrates of Japan and China are actually very similar. (India is different.) China is of course much larger, but it's a geographically larger country anyway, and always has been. It's facing the same demographic problems, if not worse. >Why can't we just produce something of quality that will last and provide it to a stable market? Greed and insanity. Are you talking about frying pans, or computers? Do you really want to be stuck with a high-quality computer from 1975? Or a television from the same era? Modern electronics use far less energy than stuff from a few decades ago. With clothing, you have a good point though, but here again, who wants to dress like it's 1975?

rippercushions 3y ago

The world is following suit, and quite rapidly at that: China, Korea, virtually all of Europe, the US (excluding immigration), etc. Even parts of southern India are now below replacement level.

modo_mario 3y ago
The world population is still going up steadily and will continue to do so for a good while led by Africa no? I think Africa's population growth is predicted to plateau around 2100
- rippercushions 3y ago
  Yup, it's by no means equally distributed, but fertility is dropping fast in Africa too.
- jemmyw 3y ago
  I think it'll plateau well before that though because they'll see so much pressure on food and water resources. Africa doesn't feed itself now and if the rest of the world needs to direct more food production locally due to lower yield caused by climate change then Africa is positioned to suffer the most.
  - qwytw 3y ago
    But yields continue increasing at a relatively fast pace overal?
- ido 3y ago
  It's projected to peak at a bit over 10B before the end of the century and then steadily decline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth#/media/File:World_Population_Prospects.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_grow... (see solid red median line).

connectsnk 3y ago

Please do not downvote this. At least present your side of view and educate us. Many of us feel that productivity/ money are not the goals of life. That humans are putting too much pressure on the planet by consuming resources and in the end it’s going to be detrimental for our own existence. Please let us know why we are wrong.

qwytw 3y ago
Because having disproportionally more old than young people in a society is extremely unlikely to result in a higher QoL. The opposite is much more likely..
- connectsnk 3y ago
  In the short term yes but in the very long term, the old people will die out.
nashashmi 3y ago
People need to prioritize people over materials. Yet right now they are prioritizing heavy materialistic living over a bigger population. It is why the world "can't take the pressure of a huge population" argument surfaces.
- nashashmi 3y ago
  https://youtube.com/shorts/mnYRqE1lC0E?feature=share https://youtube.com/shorts/mnYRqE1lC0E?feature=share
BjoernKW 3y ago
These are a few of my previous comments on the matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35357326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35357326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35362526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35362526
- connectsnk 3y ago

kiba 3y ago

8 billion people is just fine. The problem is that wealthier nation just consume more and waste more. We literally feed perfectly good farmlands to cows, for example.

jackmott42 3y ago
What does just fine mean? Certainly if we all ate prescribed vegetarian diets and lived like quakers we could sustain 8 billion people for a long time. But that isn't fine for me, nor is it fine for me that we obliterate almost all natural wildlife and wild areas to feed and house ourselves and power our grid. Its already not fine from many of our perspectives.
Chris2048 3y ago
Unless you do a full analysis, there's no use doing a partial one. Much of tech design and manufacture happens in "wealthier nation" for example, that in turn is distributed worldwide e.g. even poor countries possess mobile phones, and electronics in general. Trading crops for western currency is a generally neutral exchange, but at least it gives you access to things you cannot otherwise produce - and technology generally can break the zero-sum/geo-arbitrage of trade. > We literally feed perfectly good farmlands to cows Where does the wasted energy go?
epolanski 3y ago
It's not wealthier nations, everyone is consuming more. The farmlands is a perfect example you make because everyone eats more meat. Meat consumption per capita in Europe increased an average 10% just in the last 7 years. But Turkey, Vietnam, pretty much the entire middle east and Africa increased per capita consumption by more than 60% in less than two decades. And on top of that it's even more environmentally toxic as beef keeps taking more and more of the share of the meat consumption. And it doesn't stop at meat, India didn't even figure in top 10 car sales globally just 10 years ago, now it's the third market in the world after China and US and sells around the same cars as Germany and UK (which are all in the top 8 world markets) combined.

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

Japan will become extinct at some point in the future. No girls growing up in Japan think to themselves "I want 2.1 children someday". But they'd all have to think this for population decline to plateau. Since not all girls will think this, the few that think such will have to have an even higher number. You won't see 1 in 5 think to themselves "I want 10.5 children". That you want this to happen everywhere is bizarrely misanthropic. It's an Erlichean death cult.

jackmott42 3y ago
No, that is silly. Their population is on the decline because there are too many people. Later when it declines and there is not enough people, people will want to reproduce. This problem solves itself, I don't know why you growth fascists get in such a twist about it. Growth can't go on forever, you have to give up on it sometime.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  It's not silly. Children growing up in Japan today learn from the environment they are in... they learn what "normal" is from the adults around them. They internalize the idea of having 1 or 0 children. The population never recovers. Extinction is, at some point, inevitable. Your comment amounts to "you're wrong, things magically change and it's all good". Do you know nothing of their culture, or psychology in general? Conformists aren't well-known for bucking the trends their parents set and doing something wildly different than they.
  - Chris2048 3y ago
    Your reasoning about "learning from environment" isn't much better than "magically change" as it's very speculative. > Do you know nothing of their culture, or psychology in general? Conformists.. Do you? Japan has proven highly adaptable in the past.
  - devjelo 3y ago
    You're extrapolating a trend in an unrealistic way. I don't think they will go "extinct" as you put it. I think it is more likely their population will only decline to a certain level.

AdamN 3y ago

Population growth is already <1% and trending down YoY. It's scheduled to plateau in 2086, 43 years from now. Most of the growth at this point is attributed to prior high birth rates and increased longevity.

Chris2048 3y ago

The elephant-in-the-room is this: religion aka super-virulent-neuro-memes generally promote having many children. How will the world reduce human growth on that basis.

rtkwe 3y ago
Religiosity down in most of the developed world even the US is falling pretty fast after holding out for a long time.
- Chris2048 3y ago
  I'm wary of this kind of reasoning. You could say the same about communism/central-control and totalitarianism but China is still doing fine as a superpower without having to become more open or more democratic. Religiosity is down, but how long does it take to adapt? Scientology (new strain) is up.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    Scientology is up according to what? Their own numbers are pretty suspect. And when I say religiosity I mean the portion of the population that has no or limited religious affiliation is up as a whole not just one particular denomination or religion, it's down as a whole across all religions.
    - Chris2048 3y ago
      Me. 100 years ago: 0 scientologists now: conservatively, at least 100 scientologists As for the portion of the population that has no or limited religious affiliation, I'm not sure that mean it will keep going down, versus comes into some kind of equilibrium.

leaving 3y ago

Finally a sane and reasonable answer. Multiply population times consumption to get footprint. There is no question we are over the carrying capacity of the planet for humans with a lifestyle of mindless consumption and reproduction. The insects are mostly gone. Half the animal species are gone. The oceans are filled with plastic garbage. The reefs are dead. Humans have no capacity to limit our own numbers. Trends in Japan and projections for a few other places ignore the numbers for China and India with over 1.5 billion each and monstrous ecological collapse in both places. And still the company I work for, like every capitalist organization, harps on the insane Pozi scheme of perpetual growth at every meeting. Why can't we just produce something of quality that will last and provide it to a stable market? Greed and insanity. The only reason you don't believe that we are in a catastrophe of overpopulation is that the degradation of the environment is not immediately evident if you live in a city.

surgical_fire 3y ago
Don't worry. The last to starve will be the first to suffocate.
midoridensha 3y ago
>Trends in Japan and projections for a few other places ignore the numbers for China and India with over 1.5 billion No, they don't: the birthrates of Japan and China are actually very similar. (India is different.) China is of course much larger, but it's a geographically larger country anyway, and always has been. It's facing the same demographic problems, if not worse. >Why can't we just produce something of quality that will last and provide it to a stable market? Greed and insanity. Are you talking about frying pans, or computers? Do you really want to be stuck with a high-quality computer from 1975? Or a television from the same era? Modern electronics use far less energy than stuff from a few decades ago. With clothing, you have a good point though, but here again, who wants to dress like it's 1975?