The Population Bomb Has Been Defused

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-16/decline-in-world-fertility-rates-lowers-risks-of-mass-starvation

by sethbannon • 8 years ago

136 172 8 years ago

ouid• 8 years ago

6 billion people burning coal to keep their refrigerators running is not what I would call defused.

Not mentioned besides the ecological footprint- there is with high density, a high chance for infectious disease to wipe out great parts of this humanity.

Another aspect is, that liberal society is only kept as "guest" for bribes- as long as capitalism delivers continously improvements and sedates the population with trinkets- it is accepted- the moment that wanes, anti-liberal sentiments come back with full force from all sides.

Thus interesting at the moment is not what great archievments the west accomplishes, but wether science, free debate and education can exist on in decaying societs like North Korea (extreme end) or Turkey/ Russia (at the start).

Can a scientist work in a country in the middle east or mexico. If that is the "default" state of humanity, that is where our interest should be.

There will be no city on mars, but there might be a secret society, doing fusion research in a slum filled with racists and relgious fanatic luddites - condemning us as the decadent golden past.

csallen• 8 years ago

And what are the consequences of that? I would guess significantly milder than the predictions of mass starvation that we managed to avert.

Leader2light• 8 years ago

Nobody knows, the destruction of the entire planet most likely.

The earth is dying, you can see it everywhere you look if you open your eyes.

craftyguy• 8 years ago

The consequences could include things like forced mass migrations, wars over water rights, and an increase in territorial disputes among nations as land becomes more scarce than it already is. In addition, the byproducts of coal burning cause cancers and death, regardless of whether the previous stuff I mentioned actually happens (hint: it's already starting to happen).

woolvalley• 8 years ago

Don't worry, it will be solar panels soon enough. Simply because it will be cheaper.

zanny• 8 years ago

If solar can manage to maintain even 10% of its performance growth per annum it has had in the last decade coal will be obsolete completely everywhere except in the most geographically extreme environments by 2030.

People are very much underestimating the momentum of something cheap and with minimal side effects can have on an economic status quo. Or more particularly, is already having - solar as a percentage of global energy production doubled from 1 to 2% in the last three years, and if we keep adding almost 100GW of solar per year (and cheaper / more efficient panels just accelerate that adoption, and nothing can really slow it down unless the prices regress) the planet will be 10% solar by 2025. And thats the pessimistic status quo figure.

freebear3• 8 years ago

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610457/at-this-rate-its-g...

nostrademons4• 8 years ago

...if we can get through the next 20-30 years. Peak danger for societies isn't when there's a bulge in birth rates, or when the population starts to fall. It's when there's a bulge in the rates of young, unmarried men who don't have the wherewithal to marry and pass on their genes. That's when you tend to get an increase in crime, violence, warlike behavior, and other things that tend to rip a society apart.

joshklein2• 8 years ago

Particularly when those young men feel disempowered, usually through unemployment or under-employment. Consequently, their well-being and the well-being of society in general are no longer neatly aligned, and their rational self-interest does not allow them to support the status quo.

It’s worth noting that “driver” is the most common job for white American males, and the United States can’t be too many years from full automation of vehicles. If the benefits accruing to the broader society from this automation are not redistributed in such a way to alleviate the strain placed on the workers displaced from their roles, I fear it will be the moment this pot boils over.

fjsolwmv6• 8 years ago

That "most common job" was debunked. It's an artifact of where you draw arbitrary taxonomy lines.

sidyom2• 8 years ago

"Peak danger for societies ... [is] when there's a bulge in the rates of young, unmarried men"

Could you provide a source for that? There are more unmarried men per capita now than almost any time over the last 100 years [1], yet violent crime has been declining steadily - most people can't seem to agree why, though. [2]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/23/144-y...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/what-ca...

philipwhiuk2• 8 years ago

The prevailing theory seemed to be lead but I also remember reading it doesn't explain every drop. I assume like often, it's a mixture of factors and many are quite subtle.

nostrademons4• 8 years ago

I've read it in several places, but here are a couple articles with charts and references to other studies:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/03/an...

https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21688587-young...

I should also point out that the sort of violence I'm talking about is things like wars, civil disorder, gangs, terrorism, failed states, anarchy, and other group forms of violence, not individual crimes like premeditated murder. The latter has a lot of conflating factors (a sibling comment mentions lead, and there's also abortion, better policing tactics, economic growth, etc), but to get a critical mass of people who are so disaffected by their current situation in life that they want to burn the whole society down, you usually need some form of major demographic or environmental change.

fjsolwmv6• 8 years ago

Video games and movies and internet and junk food obesity have had a powerful impact on "defanging" people who might otherwise be bored and angry out in the streets. Now the aggression is channelled into shitposting online and only occasionally shooting up an office/mall/school

hyper_reality• 8 years ago

The theory sounds convincing, but if you actually look at countries with the highest rates of young males to females, few, if any, support it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_sex_ratio). China, Portugal, South Korea, Kuwait... these are all countries with far more young men than women, and all are stable.

I know that a country with a high male/female ratio is not necessarily the same thing as a country experiencing a "bulge in the rates of young, unmarried men", but I still couldn't find evidence to backup the claim that it would lead to crime and war. Here is a study which looked at 20 other studies of the number of males and violence and could not find a conclusive trend: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016953471...

fjsolwmv6• 8 years ago

It's not the m:f ratio that matters, it's the number/fraction of males that are lacking in stable economic prospects.

nostrademons4• 8 years ago

Here's commentary on that paper from the first author cited within it:

https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2014/04/violent-straw-men-se...

Only the abstract is available from your link so I couldn't look at the paper's data, but the critique's point is that the relationship between violence and sex ratio is U-shaped, with higher violence noted with both too few men and too many. Furthermore, many of the studies cited in your link were studies of inner-city black neighborhoods in the U.S, which feature both high violence and a large overpopulation of females because all the males are dead and incarcerated. Thrown into a linear relationship that's not actually linear, and they'll conflate the data significantly.

The data on current sex ratios could be read one of two ways: either the theory is wrong, or the theory is predictive, and those countries with an overabundance of young males that are currently stable & at peace will not be at peace for long. There's some recent evidence for the latter hypothesis: of the 5 countries with the highest 15-24 sex ratio, Qatar is in the midst of a diplomatic crisis with Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE that may be a prelude to war, and the Maldives just had a coup. I've got friends either living in or with family in China & India that say it's nowhere near as socially stable as is commonly perceived in the West, and that there are a number of social problems that could easily become a powder keg if economic growth dries up.

honorarydarwina2• 8 years ago

Nuh-uh, the youngin pose no threat. Enter the internet, video-games, social-media, on tap 24/7 porn and endless escapism. (now with more opiates!)

As long as youngins have food and internet, there is no war to be had. Porn is very key in reducing street-level agression. Moreover discourse on the internet is very easy - aand affordable - to control.

Nukes ensure that there are no wars between the big players. Nukes are also probably the best - least scary - way to go as long as it's done right.

We live in a very dystopian world truly. I would not have imagined that things would have turned out this way even as recently as 100 years ago.

danbruc5• 8 years ago

Some of the most spectacularly wrong predictions in history have been made by those who claim that overpopulation is going to swamp the planet. Thomas Malthus, a British economist writing in the late 1700s, is the most famous of these. Extrapolating past trends into the future, he predicted that population growth would inevitably swamp available food resources, leading to mass starvation. That didn’t happen - we continued to develop new technologies that let us stay ahead of the reaper.

Why are people so eager to point out that Malthus was wrong all the time? As far as I can tell he was not. He said if population growth continued as in the past, then we would starve, not that we necessarily will. I also think it is wrong to say we engineered us out of starvation, at best it bought us some time to get the fertility rate down. As the article admits, exponential population growth can never be finally solved by technology.

toomuchtodo3• 8 years ago

I think the problem is, no one predicted that educated women, the accessibility of family planning aids, and economies developing [1] would be so effective at reducing fertility rates (with that said, it would've been convenient if this occurred earlier in the 20th century; we're going to hit 11 billion people before the population decline is in full swing, and that's going to challenge the carrying capacity of the planet).

Were these unintended consequences? In most countries, yes. Humanity keeps turning up lucky in this regard (the above mentioned outcome, solar and wind becoming cheap enough we might be able to go carbon neutral for energy consumption, etc).

[1] PDF: http://www.earth-policy.org/images/uploads/book_files/ecoch1...

danbruc5• 8 years ago

I admittedly did not read »An Essay on the Principle of Population« in its entirety, but that may actually be the point where he was the most wrong. He could not imagine the fertility rate to fall as much as it eventually did and therefore did not really expect that disaster could be avoided. But I still think it is rather misleading to turn this lack of imagination on his side for the evolution of this - of course extremely important - one factor into calling his work wrong and disproven.

fjsolwmv6• 8 years ago

Economies can also undevelop, leading to inceased fertility rates.

jccooper• 8 years ago

Because he believed that population would be limited only by resources, and that fertility rate was nearly invariant. These have both proved to be wrong. The popular imagination of the Mathusian prediction of inevitable mass starvation (which is not really that mis-characterized) was also wrong. So classifying him as wrong seems fair.

danbruc5• 8 years ago

Well, he got wrong how the fertility rate would evolve, but that does not invalidate the model he developed. And he would probably have been pretty spot on with his predictions if the fertility rate had not drastically decreased.

ScottBurson• 8 years ago

And yet, the specter of a possible Malthusian catastrophe may have helped motivate us to prevent it. I don't really call that being wrong.

Finnucane• 8 years ago

Population remains limited by resources. How could it not be? We've been adept over the years at finding new resources or extending old ones (the expansion of ranching and farming in the Americas in the 19th century, which greatly increased the global food supply, or the invention of artificial fertilizer, for instance), but it is a bit of hubris to say that this is a solved problem for all time.

rojobuffalo• 8 years ago

~9 generations hence it's hardly safe to say those predictions are bunk. We may have found some short-term patches, but conventional food production today is deleterious to soil stocks. We're hardly secure from the possibility of famine this century.

EtDybNuvCu• 8 years ago

People are uncomfortable with Malthusian conclusions when applying his model to other systems. Malthus highlighted a tension between the relative sizes of populations in certain resource-allocation games wherein a population both wants more members but also wants more resources per member.

hprotagonist• 8 years ago

Nature abhors a true exponential nearly as much as it abhors a vacuum.

All the world's a sigmoid.

rz2k2• 8 years ago

I think he was simply bad at functional analysis compared to current understandings. The output of growth functions with multiple inputs tends to look like a logistic function when inputs change and the output shifts to a new equilibrium. The front part of a logistic function looks like an exponential function.

World population is probably ten times what it was at the time his growth model was proposed 220 years ago. That is so far below the rate that humans could multiply their numbers, that it doesn't make any sense that people have argued that we were saved by technological advances. Technology seems to change carrying capacity, then human population approaches that carrying capacity rather than catastrophically hitting a barrier and suffering famines.

cryptonector3• 8 years ago

Because he was wrong.

It's true that if human population on Earth grew to the point where there was no room for one more human on Earth, then we'd have huge problems. But this is a) very bloody obvious, b) exceedingly simplified, and c) misses the whole point of what actually happened and what others predicted would happen: that population would stabilize (and even fall, perhaps dramatically) long before we might starve from lack of room to make food in.

First of all, there have been huge advancements in food production technology in all the years since Malthus. Second of all, there are huge advancements in the pipeline (basically indoors vegetables growing with minimal food waste and extreme space-efficiency, and lab printing of meat). Third, we clearly want fewer children when infant mortality is low and life expectancy high. Malthus could not have foreseen all of this, but he certainly lacked imagination, and worse: malthusians in the last 100+ years really didn't need that imagination, just normal powers of observation, and STILL they have all missed how wrong malthusianism was.

"But still, he was right!" No, he wasn't. We could grow and grow and grow if we get off the Earth -- hard to imagine that at this time, but maybe not in a few hundred years. "But we could run out of habitable planets in the Milky Way!" Well, yes, we sure could, but I think that's just not something we should worry about today and for thousands of years yet.

Q: Why are there any malthusians? A1: Because humans appear to be wired to be pessimistic and alarmist. A2: Because humans appear to be wired to be pessimistic and alarmist, which means that cynical people / psychopaths can take advantage of the rest of us. Doesn't make Malthus right.

thaumasiotes6• 8 years ago

First of all, there have been huge advancements in food production technology in all the years since Malthus. Second of all, there are huge advancements in the pipeline (basically indoors vegetables growing with minimal food waste and extreme space-efficiency, and lab printing of meat).

These are not good counter-Malthusian points. There were huge advancements in food production technology all throughout history (ploughs / iron ploughs / crop rotation / plants from the new world... the list really is endless), but things were in a much more Malthusian state.

The non-Malthusian state of affairs we enjoy today is entirely a function of people choosing not to have children, not a function of better technology. People who were so inclined could easily wipe out (per capita) the gains from productivity, by increasing the number of capita.

coldtea• 8 years ago

It's true that if human population on Earth grew to the point where there was no room for one more human on Earth, then we'd have huge problems. But this is a) very bloody obvious

And also a strawman. We can have huge starvation crises, and struggles for power, migration etc with much much less population, even 2x the current number can yield catastrophic power struggles.

Q: Why are there any malthusians? A1: Because humans appear to be wired to be pessimistic and alarmist. A2: Because humans appear to be wired to be pessimistic and alarmist, which means that cynical people / psychopaths can take advantage of the rest of us. Doesn't make Malthus right

Actually you've got it backwards. We're wired to be pessimistic and alarmist so that fewer cynical people / psychopaths can take advantage of the rest of us.

If we were optimistic / eager to believe we'd be far worse.

newyankee• 8 years ago

Only people in first world countries who have not experienced difficulties due to overpopulation , poverty etc. claim that Malthus is wrong, everything would improve etc.

Having been brought up in an average Indian family and looking at the future where we have a population which is sky high and even though the fertility rate is significantly lower today, you can see the problems first hand. There are no easy solutions now, that time is gone. Only crazy future looking practical things like what the Chinese did with 1 child policy when it was needed long time back would've had helped.

People should get out of their Western bubble, live in overpopulated cities in Bangladesh/India, travel in their public transit, try to find a job as a local without connections and then report back whether overpopulation is not an issue.

astrodust• 8 years ago

European cities in the 1600s were massively over-populated for much of the same reasons non-Western cities are massively over-populated now: The rise of industrialization, a lack of available housing, poor infrastructure, and massive population growth coupled with rapid urbanization of a traditionally agricultural workforce.

London, as just one example, was an ugly, disgusting, miserable place until the mid 20th century, so it takes time to sort these things out. Cities in India might be a mess today but once their population growth simmers down and the cities can get better organized they'll be much less crowded.

As filthy and disgusting as the slums of some cities in India are, London was worse. The Thames was so polluted with sewage that paddle boats would churn it into this vile froth, like bath bubbles from hell. People who fell overboard from boats would drown because they couldn't be seen through all the foam. Even though the Parliament buildings are right on the river, and the smell in the summer was absolutely unbearable, it took decades for a proper sanitation system to be built because of a lack of political will.

Better infrastructure means you can even out the population density better. India, like many other industrializing countries, is way behind the curve. China is one of the few that's been building infrastructure like its going out of style. It's not the one child policy, but aggressive city engineering that's keeping a lid on the problem.

philwelch4• 8 years ago

As the article admits, exponential population growth can never be finally solved by technology.

Only in the sense that maintaining a population in the first place can never be finally solved by technology. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure the universe has more than enough energy and matter to support as many meatbags as we could ever want.

birksherty• 8 years ago

Terrible title. "Population bomb" is not defused, only "birth rate" is decreasing. There are already too many people on Earth. It's big problem in developing countries.

Viliam1234• 8 years ago

"Population bomb" is not defused, only "birth rate" is decreasing.

This is all that needed to be said about the article. The author doesn't (want to) understand the difference between a number "getting smaller" and the number "increasing less quickly".

When someone gains 10 kg in January and then gains 9 kg in February, we don't say that they are losing weight.

nyolfen2• 8 years ago

not in subsaharan africa. nigeria alone is set to hit ~1 billion by the end of the century, even if current birthrates slow dramatically. if china is the centerpiece of the 21st century, africa is the stage for the 22nd:

https://i.imgur.com/9obArWa.png

philipwhiuk2• 8 years ago

140K in 2006, 185K in 2016. 1B in 2100? That seems a big jump.

Africa does need an economic super power however to avoid hundreds of millions of economic migrants moving to China, the EU and the US.

CUViper• 8 years ago

Directly extrapolating that 32% in 10 years would predict over 2B in 2106.

0xcde4c3db• 8 years ago

140K in 2006, 185K in 2016.

If those are supposed to be the population of Nigeria, you've missed a factor of 1000 somewhere.

nyolfen2• 8 years ago

i believe those numbers are meant to have an ‘m’ instead of a ‘k’? lagos alone has over 20m.

the US had a population of ~76m in 1900, and severely restricted immigration for much of the 20th c

akshayB• 8 years ago

One of the reasons that is not tracked here is the fact that in developing countries as more and more people get educated. They tend to have 1 or 2 children and they try to ensure their kids have good education and upbringing. These parents realize that if they have more children they might not have enough resources and money to push them through higher education.

paulddraper• 8 years ago

There's significantly less randomness now. Less disease, more economic mobility, higher standard of living, and more safety nets then 150 years ago.

The only way to succeed when the odds are disadvantageous and out of your control is to make many attempts.

f-• 8 years ago

Not long ago, a significant proportion of the scientific establishment - along with a number of celebrities and policymakers - believed that the "population bomb" is an inevitable, imminent, and apocalyptic threat. There was talk of "point of no return", calls for worldwide China-style fertility restrictions, and so forth.

Instead, what happened over the past several decades is not just a drop in birth rates, but also dramatic improvements in our ability to grow cheap food at a scale (something that the article doesn't really talk about).

So it is a very interesting take to claim that the population bomb has been "defused" - since this implies it wasn't an episode of pathological science flirting with mysticism (with frequent allusions to the pristine "natural" order contrasted with the evils of Man), but just some sound science that turned out to be a bit off.

(Please don't read into this as a critique of any contemporary scientific debates; that's not my point, but I think we should be more willing to recognize our past mistakes.)

usrusr2• 8 years ago

but also dramatic improvements in our ability to grow cheap food at a scale

Are those improvements sustainable? Agriculture that is generating high yields from converting very fertile natural ecosystems into deserts and then moving on is almost like eating through fossil resources, only that the timescale for replenishment is a few orders of magnitude closer to being relevant for humanity (but still far or of reach). Failure ecosystems that have been farmed out of existence in antiquity are still as barren as thousand years ago. If you ignore the yields of unsustainable farming, our ability to feed billions looks a lot less rosy.

Turing_Machine6• 8 years ago

"Are those improvements sustainable?"

Available evidence suggests yes.

http://plantsci.missouri.edu/grains/corn/graphs/USA-corn-yie...

"Agriculture that is generating high yields from converting very fertile natural ecosystems into deserts"

Iowa didn't look much like a desert the last time I was there.

"Failure ecosystems that have been farmed out of existence in antiquity are still as barren as thousand years ago"

Yeah, that's why you don't want to rely on "organic" farming. Good thing we don't do that any more.

shkkmo• 8 years ago

In what ways were Malthus' predictions rooted in "mysticism"?

EdgarVerona• 8 years ago

It is interesting to contrast the decline in fertility rates in China and India. Would China have had a similar dropoff if not for the One Child policy? Will we see the number increase again given enough time after the 2013 easing of that policy? I'd be curious to see these numbers again ten years from now.

toyg• 8 years ago

It’s unlikely that numbers will change dramatically in China. They have dramatically eroded their agrarian culture, which is the main demographic engine pretty much anywhere. It is unlikely that well-paid industrial workers and urban professionals will start cranking out children above and beyond replacement rates.

tonyedgecombe• 8 years ago

I'm sure I remember reading that fertility rates had already declined significantly before the one child policy was introduced.

telotortium• 8 years ago

Indeed -- you just need to take a look at the graph in the original article for further confirmation (the one-child policy was instituted in 1978, and fertility rate was in definite decline by that point).

lanewinfield• 8 years ago

Here's the non-AMP link, for anyone not viewing on mobile:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-16/decline-i...

dang2• 8 years ago

Changed to that above.

wesleytodd• 8 years ago

Better link (non amp version): https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-16/decline-i...

dang2• 8 years ago

Changed to that.

themgt3• 8 years ago

Shocker, Noah Smith pens yet another of his "whig history" takes. The reality is just a few short years ago the UN updated its population estimates for the end of the century from less than 9 billion to a more likely 11 billion, and as many as 13 billion people. [1]

Nearly the entirety of that increase is because fertility rates in Africa have not fallen anywhere near what was expected, so the population there is set to quadruple from 1->4 billion people over 100 years. The 4 billion figure assumes fertility will begin to rapidly fall in line with the rest of the developing world - nearly all of the growth is already "baked in the cake" due to the extremely young population, and if TFR doesn't drop the population could well soar significantly higher. The population of Nigeria alone is expected to be more than the entire population of Europe by 2085.

Whether the fertility rate can actually be brought down is very much an unsolved question, with a history of optimistic mistakes Noah Smith is smart enough to be aware of. Combine with climate change, resource depletion, the utterly dysfunctional nation-states where this is occurring and the the meteoric rise of neo-fascists after Europe accepted something like 1/100th of the potential economic migrants/refugees as want to come, and this vapid "forward march of history" perspective looks at best cherry-picked and facile, if not disingenuous in the extreme.

[1] https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/art... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-population-...

rukittenme6• 8 years ago

The population of Nigeria alone is expected to be more than the entire population of Europe by 2085.

Do you think that's realistic? The population of Niger is expected to be 200 million in 2100 (20 million today)[1]. Have you seen Niger? Its a desert with little natural resources.

1. https://www.populationpyramid.net/niger/2100/

edit: I'm aware Niger and Nigeria are different countries. I'm changing the subject to Niger intentionally. 10x population growth in the Sahara desert.

antisthenes2• 8 years ago

Maybe that's because it's 2 different countries and the parent comment said nothing about Niger?

ccozan• 8 years ago

That would be Nigeria, not Niger.

Two different countries.

jcranmer• 8 years ago

The bulk of Niger's population is in the Sahel, not the Sahara.

Turing_Machine6• 8 years ago

The reality is just a few short years ago the UN updated its population estimates for the end of the century from less than 9 billion to a more likely 11 billion, and as many as 13 billion people.

The surface area of the Earth is about 510072000 km^2. 13 billion people gives a population density of about 25 people per km^2. By comparison, the U.S. has a population density of about 33 people per km^2. The U.K has a population density of about 255. So, there's plenty of room (heck, much of the U.S. is still essentially unpopulated, particularly in the western states).

resource depletion

What "resource" is being "depleted"? Not energy, that's for sure. There's enough uranium to keep our civilization going at the current level for millions of years, assuming breeder reactors are used. That's without requiring any new technology. If we get fusion, then you can up the millions to billions.

We're not actually running out of anything vital. Sorry.

history of optimistic mistakes

Not to be confused with the history of pessimistic mistakes, running from Malthus, down through the "population bomb" scare of the 1970s, right up to the present day.

saagarjha• 8 years ago

The surface area of the Earth is about 510072000 km^2

Of which 70% is water.

So, there's plenty of room

Sure, there's plenty of room. But I think you'll agree that most people don't want to live in a desert, or Antartica, or on top of a mountain. The amount of land that people actually want to live on is much, much smaller than the figure you're quoting.

We're not actually running out of anything vital. Sorry.

Maybe nutrient-rich soil? Clean water?

sangnoir2• 8 years ago

We're not actually running out of anything vital. Sorry.

You're absolutely correct and it's a shame you're being downvoted. I have lived in the third world and I can confidently declare than people in the west have much bigger ecological footprints (by any metric you can think of :energy usage, pollution, weight of garbage thrown out, etc). Contrast this with the low-productivity of third world farming (per unit area, relatively) as well as massive unrealized potential for hydro-electrical and other renewable energy. I'm going to say there is plenty of capacity for accommodating population growth.

thinkloop2• 8 years ago

I never understood this logic, population growth is 100% dependent on the amount of resources the system is able to produce, not the other way around. Resources are the precursor to growth. It is not possible to grow unabated then one day realize we're 50% short on resources. Population necessarily has to stabilize at around 100% resource utilization.

fjsolwmv6• 8 years ago

And when resources are depleted? That's the bomb.

rukittenme6• 8 years ago

Resources don't plummet to zero. Prices rise gradually and people change their behaviors gradually. That's not a bomb.

thinkloop2• 8 years ago

What would get depleted?

amriksohata3• 8 years ago

India had a population of approx 79million in 1000 CE

https://i.stack.imgur.com/2928N.png

After successive invasions, by the Mughals, Dutch, Portuguese and British it shot up to over 300 million, a much bigger rise say compared to other countries. Largely due to the poverty it was left in, people ended up having more kids to make sure they survived. Anyhow I agree it has been refused as the poverty levels are now being tackled and mass education programmes in place.

rgbrenner2• 8 years ago

"After successive invasions..."

You draw this clear line between invasions and population growth for India... but India doesn't look a whole lot different than others (considering it started off with a higher base than other countries also): http://visualeconsite.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/po...

It was the 2nd largest by population even in 1000 CE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...

India, like every other country, was affected by vaccines and other developments that reduced the death rate and caused population to explode.

amriksohata3• 8 years ago

My point is the rate of growth rather than the baseline, were these vaccines you mention available in 1700? To the general poorer population? Highly unlikely.

21• 8 years ago

A few other taboo "bombs": water wars and climate change.

Same basic mistake, assuming nothing will change.

For example, for water wars: desalination using solar power (see Israel)

For climate change: carbon sequestring strategies or market pressures - CO2 credits, reputational risk (being "green"), ...

Gys• 8 years ago

The article is very happy to point out that the trend changed 50 years ago. Then shown a graph with a 100 years forecast, based on that changed trend.

Sure, from now on the fertilization will play nicely along.

macintux• 8 years ago

Did you read the supporting arguments for why the rates have historically not gone back up?

rsuelzer2• 8 years ago

Has anyone else here made an active decision to not reproduce? Even with low birth rates in my country and small families being the norm, I still find myself being pressured to have children, as if my genetic code was critical to the survival of the species.

rukittenme6• 8 years ago

The species will be fine. Its your phylo-genetic tree you have to worry about.

scythe• 8 years ago

Your decision not to reproduce on Malthusian grounds amounts to nothing more than a selection effect against people who care against overpopulation. If you're happier without kids, by all means, enjoy it, but don't imagine you're saving anyone.

Markoff• 8 years ago

good luck finding wife with same attitude

rsuelzer2• 8 years ago

Already done.

retox• 8 years ago

The population is so high we need to stop having kids, and the population is so low we need to import low skilled workers, and the job of the future will be fully automated.

Modern policy is a cognitive dissonance minefield.

RobLach2• 8 years ago

I feel like all these estimates of "overpopulation" are massively overblown. These issues are almost entirely political/social.

The capacity for Earth to hold humans is massive.

Currently only a tiny sliver of the surface has people on it and if that becomes a problem we can build vertically (up and down).

We're barely capturing relatively free energy such as sunlight, wind, geothermal, and tidal. Think of how much of the Sahara isn't a solar energy production plant.

If the labor of 1 human can feed at least 2 people you can have a society. With technology 1 human can work to feed thousands if not millions with increased automation. Food production can be fully automated with the ambition to.

The only real bound of food production if you consider vertical hydroponic farming alongside nuclear and freeish energy, is the amount of nutrients plants and insects require to produce adequate amounts of human nutrition. Virtually all plant nutrients have evolved to be highly recyclable through natural processes, most of which can by accelerated with technology.

dredmorbius3• 8 years ago

https://www.worldcat.org/title/how-many-people-can-the-earth...

thebigspacefuck• 8 years ago

Tldr?

natecavanaugh• 8 years ago

eventually, population growth will overwhelm the Earth’s ability to provide calories.

Really? When? And how? Because I don't see how a planet that can support at least a factor of 10 times our population size currently is going to realistically start running out of calories, short of moronic political decisions, some of which are perpetuated by statements like that.

Where are these calories going? They're evaporating into the ether, never to be reclaimed?

Or is it possible that we're losing out on massive amounts of human capital because, like NIMBY activists that argue against new housing development, we're trying to maintain a status quo out of fear?

MR4D• 8 years ago

So, in the next 30 years, we’re adding about 2 billion more people (net) to the planet.

The odds that it goes smoothly is small. First, 30 years is a long time to not have a big population event. Second, 2 billion people will strain resources considerably (its a 25% increase over today).

The impacts on disease, pollution, war, etc., are significant even if food supply can handle it. And what about climate change, or increasing algae blooms (due to pesticide use)?

There are so many things that’s ave to work to not have a population event, that it’s a pretty scary proposition. Sure, the birth rate has declined dramatically, but Malthus may yet be proven correct.

nootropicat• 8 years ago

the ultimate, final victory

Famous last words. What happens evolutionary is that genes that make it more likely to have children in the industrialized society setting - whatever they are - are getting an enormous boost.

dragonwriter2• 8 years ago

What happens evolutionary is that genes that make it more likely to have children in the industrialized society setting - whatever they are - are getting an enormous boost.

No, whatever makes it more likely to have children that survive to reproduce, not just tomhave children, would be getting the boost, but the environment is probably shifting faster than can give a consistent boost to anything.

danieltillett• 8 years ago

We know exactly what those genes are - or more accurately their phenotype.

dennisgorelik• 8 years ago

What is the phenotype of the genes that increase chances of having children in industrialized society?

dailycrud• 8 years ago

The late (and quirky) Julian Simon wrote on this topic, and on the related notion of ostensibly limited resources. Worth checking out if you are not already familiar with his viewpoint:

The Ultimate Resource, 1981, Princeton University Press, ISBN 069109389X.

The Ultimate Resource 2, 1996, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0691042691. http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

X6S1x6Okd1st• 8 years ago

For anyone that wants a deeper look Charles C Mann's recent publication The Wizard and the Prophet covers the figures behind over population concerns & modern environmentalism as well as the figures behind the green revolution which played a large role in pushing famine and food insecurity down to the level that exists at today, even with a growing population.

pascalxus• 8 years ago

As worldwide population increases, resources become increasingly stretched and per capita income goes down (relative to the cost of living). This, in first world countries will probably result in a decline in the birthrate.

You only need to look towards CA to see where this is already happening. CA with it's excessive regulations has decreased the prosperity of it's people to the point of where it now has x3 times the number of poor people per capita than the national average (that's living cost adjusted ~ mostly due to housing cost and excessive energy costs and countless other regulations that increase living costs). I suspect this has played a roll in the decline of the birth rate in CA, now at the lowest its ever been since the great depression (it's been going down for the last 3 decades). As life becomes increasingly harsh, people have less babies - it's kinda hard to have a kid when your sharing a room in your parent's house, or live 6 to an apartment.

horsecaptin• 8 years ago

Another reason why California has 3x the homeless people is because it is friendly to homeless people - weather and services inside big cities.

The Population Bomb Has Been Defused

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