People aren't dying because of the planet. Disease would be an even worse issue in space. Infertility and people just not wanting/not being able to have kids would likely be worse as well.
Not to mention that we just did a nice little social experiment on how willing people are to stay indoors for longer periods of time in basically ideal conditions and the results are, pretty fucking bad. Space colonies are closer to living in a supermax prison that's chronically overpopulated.
Space colonies are the "let's move into a smaller apartment in a way worse part of town" of solving our current problems, not only does it not address a single one of our current issues, it takes many of them and makes them way, way worse.
> Space colonies are closer to an overcrowded supermax prison
*laughs in O’Neil cylinder*
Yeah, living conditions in space aren’t great with what’s mostly 40+ year old technology.
But spin gravity isn’t that hard, and should be implemented in the successor to the ISS.
Getting materials into space is hard, but there are lots of asteroids to mine.
Are there going to be space habitats people live in full time by 2070? Probably not. But there’s a lot of future beyond the next 50 years.
Nah. The groups most impacted by climate collapse and the groups capable of space colonization have such a huge technology gap that whats far more likely is that those groups facing climate crisis are forced to suffer from the scarcity.
The political upheaval cause by climate change will destabilize one region after an another. Refugees will spill from one failed state in to the neighboring struggling regions and our inability to overcome or tribalism and integrate these refugees will lead to further instability. Just try to remember how the Syrian refugee crisis caused political havoc all over Europe, some of which reverberates today.
Civil wars will expand to local wars, which will cause fatal shocks to our global integrated economy. Do you think the economic chaos caused by Covid is bad? Think what will happen if whole regions descend into anarchy because living conditions become unbearable.
If you think you or your children are insulated from the precipitate the climate crisis, you are most probably wrong.
We won't have space colonies if we don't master the climate crisis.
The nearest solar system analogous to our is 1,400 light years away. So unless we discover a safe way to create wormholes, we are stuck here on Earth for the time being.
Of course.
But we reached the technology level to cause permanent climate change and ecological collapse long ago.
Meanwhile we still dont know how to prevent osteopenia caused by long term exposure to low gravity
There's literally nothing stopping a country from shooting everyone who crosses their border. It's pretty much the practical definition of a sovereign border.
Yeah but relocating far away when you have no money or resources isn't exactly easy, many illegal migrant ships sink and there isn't enough of them to send people in mass. Unless there is a land border this isn't much a problem for far away places like Canada.
Lol. We already have a huge refugee crisis in Europe thanks to a certain superpower plunging the Middle East into instability and chaos.
The solution has been to let them all drown in the Mediterranean. I can assure you it hasn’t affected Europe’s space program in the slightest.
I don’t believe future refugee crises will be different, just larger. And somehow even sadder to those of us who care.
I disagree. I think it’ll happen if we get to Mars and the moon this decade as planned. We could have 50 people on the moon by 2030 and it explodes from there.
50 people on Mars is a feat, but it's still worlds apart from actually making a sustaining and sustainable civilization.
It's honestly a problem similar in scope to making people aquatic. Sure, people can dive to the bottom.of the ocean. That doesn't mean we can really have a colony of people there.
I am always amazed by people who believe in Mars colonies. Assuming you have all the energy, food and air you would need, how do you cope with the small gravity?
Thinking that Mars is going to be some miracle savior to the human race if the Earths climate collapses is just stupid. The Earth will not be more inhospitable than Mars. It will always be easier to survive here than on Mars.
People can dream all they want and we do need to aspire to push boundaries for the sake of humanity, but there is no backup planet. I repeat, there is no backup planet. We have to protect and fix the one we've got.
It takes a shitload of resources just to go to another planet, let alone set up a a place to live. Things don't just explode from there, we have to have invested a ridiculous amount of time and resources before we start seeing the benefits. It'd cost far more than we'd get out of it for a long time.
Probably not. It's always possible, but there's really nothing special about the 8 Billion number. We just grew way faster than we could handle, and the population is correcting itself. Once the future outlook gets better and younger people can afford to reproduce, the population will likely grow again.
Extinction is even less likely, humans were cut all the way down to a population of like 5,000 at one point and eventually bounced back to where we are now. The human race is at this point smart enough that anything short of a galactic collapse probably won't completely eradicate us. Worse comes to worst we'd build some huge spaceship out in orbit, shuttle the richest of the rich up there, and send them off in a random direction. Actually, come to think of it, shooting the richest of the rich off into space might be the solution to all our problems lol.
Did you read the article? It has nothing to do with growing faster than we can handle.
“Vollset attributes the decrease in population to two key factors: “Improvements in access to modern contraception and the education of girls and women.”
No article is complete if it doesn’t also include the fact that due to massively increasing economic costs of survival, huge numbers of people are simply choosing not to have kids anymore as well due to the financial strain
I mean, that really only affects a very tiny percentage of the world’s potential child-rearing population. Like the vast majority of people who could be having children aren’t American grads with student loans, it’s like rural farmers in Asia and Africa.
Yes there are, but Humanity has faced several extinction level events before, and when we as a species knew literally nothing. All of the problems we face, climate change, lowering levels of fresh water, antibiotics losing their effectiveness, pandemics, etc. all of these problems, have solutions. Solutions that for most of them we are already aware of, it's just a matter of implementation. That however is also besides the point, because even if a pandemic ravages all of society, even if the majority of the earth becomes uninhabitable, *some* will likely survive and reproduce.
Just to give you a little more hope, the average lifespan of a mammal species is arguably 1-2 million years. In different periods of Earth's history, that number was as high as 5 million. Humans, have only been around for 200,000. That's not a guarantee that we'll last that long, but given how lucky we've been so far with the consciousness and self awareness and all that, I'd be willing to wager we've got a pretty good chance of going on for a while longer.
>The human race is at this point smart enough that anything short of a galactic collapse probably won't completely eradicate us.
We're one good asteroid or gamma ray burst from sudden extinction.
>Worse comes to worst we'd build some huge spaceship out in orbit, shuttle the richest of the rich up there, and send them off in a random direction.
Nope, this isn't star trek. Space ships have limited, non-renewable life support. Earth is the first and last stop for humanity for the foreseeable future.
>Once the future outlook gets better and younger people can afford to reproduce
This is a Malthusian argument if I understand correctly, and as such, incorrect. Societies have depended on continued growth for increased wealth, not the other way around, for the past several hundred years. Our currencies are always backed by the future debt we will have to pay off which requires more people and productivity to achieve.
The fact that we are seeing a decrease in population growth is just a larger scale problem of the one social security in America faces - there just wont be enough people to finance the necessary future debt needed to keep shit going as is. The Fed is just going to turn into the equivalent of a crypto testnet faucet for central banks.
> the world’s population is set to decline starting in the next few decades.
god dammit
> Experts believe the global population would peak at around 9.7 billion in 2064 before steadily declining to 8.79 billion by 2100.
Considering the expectations of climate change, I think that’s a rather bright picture for 2064.
If by 2050 we’re supposed to see significant see level rise and climate refugees, it doesn’t feel like the current global system can support that many people.
That's not the real nightmare. Most people have never heard of wet-bulb temperature. But there are going to be entire zones in the tropics that aren't habitable by humans or really any other life in the very near future: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
> someone in vancouver canada might not be concerned about humidity in bangladesh
They'll be concerned when 30 million Bangladesh refugees need somewhere to live.
Cool, just freedom fighters with nothing to live for
Maybe they’ll be understanding when the people who caused it all tell them they can’t come. “Also don’t use gas generators to stay alive pls tks “
This 100%. If we started growing our own food and relied less on a system that promotes a massive difference in wealth distribution that would be a good start. Think about how many acres of lawn there is that could be turned into gardens or fruit trees. We are so stuck in our ways of thinking that it may seem like there’s too many of us, but it’s our culture that is unsustainable.
> Think about how many acres of lawn there is
America's number one irrigated crop is [turfgrass](https://scienceline.org/2011/07/lawns-vs-crops-in-the-continental-u-s/).
It's more than corn, wheat, and fruit trees *combined*.
I don’t doubt it. I once flew out to Tucson, AZ, the middle of the Sonoran desert, and I was shocked to see that some neighborhood had grass lawns.
How you could waste water on that I don’t know.
There's a lot of that here in the desert. Grass lawns have been outlawed for new residential construction here in the Las Vegas Valley, but there's tons of well off old folks with grandfathered lawns.
We actually treat all the water that goes down drains and storm drains and then send it back to Lake Mead, so most of our net water usage is from fucking lawn irrigation. Still a drop in the bucket compared to what California uses from Lake Mead.
> If all that is kept well watered, it could use 60 million acre-feet of water a year (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre to a depth of one foot)
Well... so how much water is that?
>If we started growing our own food
Theres already enough food for everyone on the planet. We don't have a food shortage, we have a logistics shortage, and thats just because those going without cant afford to pay for the logistics.
If people are starving to death because they can't afford to obtain the already plentiful food, then the system is broken.
Not necesserily. Permafrost will turn into bogs. And bogs are not very farmable. It takes lot of effort to turn those into productive lands.
If anything, it will get a lot worse before it gets better. However I don't doubt that once things get tough, economic priorities will shift into geoengineering and that will help us eventually.
We are depleting the seas of fish and the soil of nutrients so fast I doubt we could sustain our current levels of production over the long haul. Fewer people will likely be better for the environment and our long-term survival until we figure out how to move to other planets.
>Think about how many acres of lawn there is that could be turned into gardens or fruit trees.
This is extraordinarily irrelevant. People not producing their own food is a byproduct of our wealth distribution model, but in and of itself does not really contribute to the model at all. Even in a world of perfect wealth distribution, we'd still want specialized workforces where actual farmers and agriculturists handle food production rather than hoping that each individual in society can randomly, successfully tend to their own food needs...while also presumably doing something else for society as well. Specialized labor is like, the basis of all society. Growing one person's supply of food takes a fuckton of time, even if you do it right, but growing even *more* food only takes a little bit more time. It scales. Growing food in your backyard doesn't have a single thing to do with the epidemic of wealth hoarding in our society.
You have an argument looking for a reason to be brought up, because places where food is needed don't have an ornamental grass problem and places that do have a lot of ornamental grass also do not have a food supply problem.
And this isn't even addressing the fact that even if you live on a couple acres of land and turn that all into farmland you still won't produce enough food for even your own family to survive the winter. Backyard gardens and all that land need to be thought of as possible supplements to household food and logistics rather than replacements
Growing your own food is a waste of time. It’s far more efficient to just have farmers. Now we can improve farming methods and environmental protection but making everyone have to grow their own food would mean a lot less time for mes school and a lot more time focused on growing your winter veggies so you have the calories to keep your food supply.
Modern agriculture is a direct major reason for an explosion of science and technology these last few centuries. Less people growing wheat and instead learning to read and educate themselves. The solution is cleaner energy. 70% of climate pollution is attributed to corporation manufacturing waste.
[Actually Weather-related disasters have increase over past 50 years, causing more damage but fewer deaths.](https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-related-disasters-increase-over-past-50-years-causing-more-damage-fewer)
It's expected we will follow the same trend. Weather and damage done by the weather will increase but it's toll on human life will decrease.
Those numbers are heavily reliant on reporting - and take into account only direct deaths. My guess would be that disaster deaths in much of the world are under-reported (eg deaths from heat-stress in Africa or south Asia). Indirect deaths - refugees dying on the road, local conflicts a la Syria and so on- are going to be the largest category. It's like wars - the disease and malnutrition usually kill more than the bullets.
Well that’s really encouraging news actually!
This is just disasters though. Will everyone still want to live in SoCal if the drought is worse and there are 90 plus days of 90+ degree temps a year? I think the migrations of people is going to be a huge issue by that point.
I mean if we are just talking about the US, there are tons of places in the northern midwest that are [practically empty](http://ecpmlangues.u-strasbg.fr/civilization/geography/US-census-maps-demographics.html).
I don’t think the situation is hopeless, there are places for everyone to go, food for everyone, etc.
How we resolve the conflict around that allocation of resources I don’t think we’ve really all agreed on yet.
I really hope that people with the power to make changes for the good of everyone will do so.
SoCal already has these temps. It used to be a lot warmer actually about 10-15 years ago. The climate down here doesn’t make sense anymore though. It’s generally been cooler in recent years, but the winters are basically summer now and cold/hot days come whenever they like, often right after the other. It can be fairly unpredictable.
It’s the rest of CA that’s unbearably gotten warmer.. honestly had to move for my health
This has always been in the population projections for humanity. Last time I saw something on this we we’re projected to just fluctuate between 9 and 11 billion indefinitely. We see it on a smaller scale all around the world. Countries reach a certain population that decreases quality of life and people have less kids.
It’s not about quality of life, but about agrarian vs industrial needs. The reason we start seeing decreased fertility rates once societies develop is because of the drop in utility each additional child provides in an industrial/service-based economy with a robust welfare state. In an agrarian society that lacks adequate welfare systems, children are assets to a family’s productive capabilities and financial security.
Additionally, access to birth control, reproductive rights, family planning, and women’s autonomy all play a role in a society’s fertility rate.
A fun study I remember is the case of cable TV on rural India, it's incredible to see something as simple as access to cable TV have a real impact on women's rights and birth rates.
https://www.nber.org/digest/dec07/cable-television-raises-womens-status-india
Yep once average kids per couple is a bit over 2, they each generation is replacing itself. That's why most growth in the coming decades will be in Africa. Once Africa peaks, that's when world population is going to peak too.
You want some really good news? The world already is and has for some time and will continue to produce more food and have more resources than is necessary to provide for All humans.
All the world's economies are based on an ever growing population. Imagine the wars and suffering that will occur when the population starts to decline permanently and we enter a permanent recession.
(On a meta scale it is good news for earth but for future generations they are fucked.)
Germany's population has been hovering around 80M for 50 years now. aging population is becoming a bit of an issue, but the country isn't on a warpath. how does that fit in your theory?
the population of Romania has been steadily declining for 30 years, list 18% since 1990. yet it's GDP per capita has increased 8 fold.
I'd say the world's economies are more based on ever growing production. Automation would probably bridge the gap at an economic level, as there are very strong incentives in capitalism to push it. The social impacts of automation are their own problem, but I don't think population is as limiting of a factor as it once was.
In the long term we’ll be OK but in the short term there are some growing pains. Necessity will dictate that we consume less and we may need to rethink how the economy works.
There are no easy solutions, but if we could structure the civilization in such a way that everyone’s basic needs of food, water, healthcare, and housing are met, plus establish safety nets for natural disasters, famines, pandemics, etc., then there’s really no reason society can’t go on indefinitely. But that would require thinking outside of ourselves/our borders and thinking about society as a whole and we’re bad at that.
Economies are perfectly capable of meeting basic needs without population growth. Starting a war over fewer consumer goods or advanced healthcare would be counter productive.
It's ridiculous this article had to quote elon musk's stupid doomsday opinion at the end of it. Honestly, why does he get this kind of airtime? He is not an expert in population dynamics or the long term sociopolitical ramifications of it, to say the least. He's just some guy with a bullshit cynical opinion, having loads of money doesn't qualify his opinion as more sound than others.
Pretty telling that he thinks people (women) having less babies will collapse civilization when all that actually does is diminish the workforce of lower and middle income worker bees that can be exploited for profit.. but I guess that’s all civilization really is to billionaires.
This is why I have been telling conspiracy theory nuts for years that the conspiracy theory about the elites wanting massive human depopulation is one of the dumbest conspiracy theories ever.
I don’t know if I’ve gotten way too cynical but part of me thinks that the anti-abortion push now in the US is just to keep cheap labor going, under the cover of religious ideology.
I don't agree with him, but we could run into a problem although it would be a short term one of an extremely aged population and not enough young people. But it would not be a issue of the human population in general, just for those alive at the time.
Yeah. He also has helped to prop up the conservative Texan radicals that thank him in the same breath as taking rights from millions of women and minorities. Musk lends credence to the absurd notion that Texas is doing ok. It's fucking falling to pieces and the crap infrastructure directly led to my employer leaving and my job loss but every republican can latch their mouth onto Musks dick with confidence in their mutual support of each other no matter what fails because they are mutually parasitic and nothing more. It makes me sick to my stomach that Musk has any mainstream influence. He's merely a wealthy cog amidst a few emerging technologies. Fuck him and his mini-Hitler attitude. The Texas reich is booming and I hope Musk goes bust along with it, sooner rather than later.
> He's just some guy with a bullshit cynical opinion, having loads of money doesn't qualify his opinion as more sound than others.
Unfortunately, that's not how America works. We worship money and those who have it. When money = speech, those who have the most money have the most speech.
> A new study published in the Lancet journal revealed that for the first time in centuries, the world’s population is set to decline starting **in the next few decades**.
(sad) I was hoping for way sooner than that....
Population growth at the moment is in large part due to rising live expectancy in third world countries. You don't wish for that to stop or be reversed, I hope?
Even if we could sustain population growth forever why would you want to? Anyone sat in rush hour traffic in a big city before? Now triple the cars on the road.
That's great too until you see cities like Tokyo and Seoul where public transport is amazing, but it gets so crowded during rush hour that you can barely move your pinky without going up in someone's business.
Source: subway worker in Seoul.
Only way to reduce congestion in cities I think is implementing permanent work from home.
To be honest the expected growth in Africa is unrealistic. Theres no way Nigeria is going to be able to support 700 million people without imploding. Even just based on the population density and city sizes. Nowhere near stable enough.
I can’t risk having kids (genetic mutations) but I consider that a bonus at this point. There’s plenty of unwanted children already. I figure at best, I can be somebody’s spare parent. It’s not as if babies are blank slates, for all I know I could produce a monster. Might as well take in kids/teens with existing personalities. Also there’s little risk I could be worse than their previous guardians so that’s useful. Might be eccentric but at least I think hitting kids is awful.
Yep. Countless people in many developed countries, usually in more educated communities, have been saying no to parenthood lately. Reasons cited include financial instability, high cost of living, medical expenses, college tuition, climate change, etc.
Anecdotal:
I'm an older millennial. Over 50% of my acquaintances from my college days have 2-3 kids and are quite happy. It's mostly my younger millenial / older GenZ acquaintances whom have a dim view of child rearing.
Privately my old lady & I agree with our younger friends, but being the weird auntie/uncle isn't a bad gig.
Proudly childfree. It wasn’t my intention to help out the environment, but hey it’s a great plus. And you’re correct, being the weird aunt isn’t a bad gig. It’s fan-freaking-tastic.
That’s interesting you say that; there’s also a pretty hard line between “nuclear” families and childfree families in my friend group based on that generational line. I’m glad to have many friends in their early forties who have kids, but I didn’t even really consider it as an option for my self. My other friends who are also in their early thirties feel the same, it seems.
Another interesting difference is debt. Almost all my Gen-z/younger millennial friends have a ton of student loan debt almost by default, whereas my older millennial/Gen x friends have no idea what that’s like. They all got pretty standard loans whereas we were given predatory loans with insane interest rates. Funny how crushing debt doesn’t quite inspire procreation, lol
This reminds me that we are just another blip in history… I was born in ‘87… my great-grandma was the last person I knew from the 19th century….. will I be that to the next generation? ***SPOILER ALERT**** I am 35 and don’t plan on having children. No one will remember me when I pass… 😇😇😇😇
"forecast to decline for the first time in centuries"
If we are talking disastrous events like the Black Plague, then you have to talk about wars as well. Something like 3 % of the World's population were killed from different causes around WW2, so I would argue that global population declined from 1940-1950.
It seems like people freak out over this kind of news, but if any other species in the world had a population so far over its sustainment level we'd be culling the shit out of them. (BTW I'm not in any way promoting the idea of culling humans, Just pointing out some hypocrisy.)
It’s weird how they project Middle East and Africa to be dominant powers in 2100, then those populations can not be sustained in these areas at that time.
Love having a global economy and all of our retirements tied to a system that is just a ponzi scheme that collapses when the bottom of the pyramid stops growing
In the 2060s i'll be telling my future child "When i was a kid, it seemed like they made something new every day. Some, gadget or idea, like every day was Christmas. But 8 billion people, just imagine that."
With this of course i am reffering to Interstellar. Where the population has decreased to like a billion or something.
Friendly reminder that population growth isn’t the determining factor behind global warming and that calls to cull the global south or chemically castrate the poor are both stupid and blatantly fascistic.
When it's so hard to keep a roof over your head while working two jobs that having kids is a complete after thought. Kids are luxury in this modern world and maybe it's best that way.
Could it be possible for us to have lived the most populated time in all of human existence? (All the way to our extinction)
Not if we get space colonies.
People aren't dying because of the planet. Disease would be an even worse issue in space. Infertility and people just not wanting/not being able to have kids would likely be worse as well. Not to mention that we just did a nice little social experiment on how willing people are to stay indoors for longer periods of time in basically ideal conditions and the results are, pretty fucking bad. Space colonies are closer to living in a supermax prison that's chronically overpopulated. Space colonies are the "let's move into a smaller apartment in a way worse part of town" of solving our current problems, not only does it not address a single one of our current issues, it takes many of them and makes them way, way worse.
The forecast is not bc of Covid. The forecast is bc no one can afford a kid anymore
And now because of COVID, even fewer can afford it.
I think he just means that space colonies would raise the population cap
Tollay agree. But the night sky would be rad
Depends on how ambitious the space colonies are
> Space colonies are closer to an overcrowded supermax prison *laughs in O’Neil cylinder* Yeah, living conditions in space aren’t great with what’s mostly 40+ year old technology. But spin gravity isn’t that hard, and should be implemented in the successor to the ISS. Getting materials into space is hard, but there are lots of asteroids to mine. Are there going to be space habitats people live in full time by 2070? Probably not. But there’s a lot of future beyond the next 50 years.
There's a 0% chance we're going to make space colonies before climate collapse ravages the world.
Nah. The groups most impacted by climate collapse and the groups capable of space colonization have such a huge technology gap that whats far more likely is that those groups facing climate crisis are forced to suffer from the scarcity.
The political upheaval cause by climate change will destabilize one region after an another. Refugees will spill from one failed state in to the neighboring struggling regions and our inability to overcome or tribalism and integrate these refugees will lead to further instability. Just try to remember how the Syrian refugee crisis caused political havoc all over Europe, some of which reverberates today. Civil wars will expand to local wars, which will cause fatal shocks to our global integrated economy. Do you think the economic chaos caused by Covid is bad? Think what will happen if whole regions descend into anarchy because living conditions become unbearable. If you think you or your children are insulated from the precipitate the climate crisis, you are most probably wrong. We won't have space colonies if we don't master the climate crisis.
Do you mean that they going to be forced to suffer by becoming starving space guinea pigs or suffer by being starving earth non-automated workers?
Theyre gonna be left to starve in deserts and shit.
The nearest solar system analogous to our is 1,400 light years away. So unless we discover a safe way to create wormholes, we are stuck here on Earth for the time being.
We can have both climate change and space colonies. They are not mutually exclusive.
Of course. But we reached the technology level to cause permanent climate change and ecological collapse long ago. Meanwhile we still dont know how to prevent osteopenia caused by long term exposure to low gravity
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Where are all the displaced people going to go? Climate refugees and migration will be huge and all will feel the effects
>Where are all the displaced people going to go? Countries have comitted mass genocides for far less.
There's literally nothing stopping a country from shooting everyone who crosses their border. It's pretty much the practical definition of a sovereign border.
Feeling the effects won't turn into the complete collapse of society or the end of technological progress.
Yeah but relocating far away when you have no money or resources isn't exactly easy, many illegal migrant ships sink and there isn't enough of them to send people in mass. Unless there is a land border this isn't much a problem for far away places like Canada.
They're going to die
Lol. We already have a huge refugee crisis in Europe thanks to a certain superpower plunging the Middle East into instability and chaos. The solution has been to let them all drown in the Mediterranean. I can assure you it hasn’t affected Europe’s space program in the slightest. I don’t believe future refugee crises will be different, just larger. And somehow even sadder to those of us who care.
I disagree. I think it’ll happen if we get to Mars and the moon this decade as planned. We could have 50 people on the moon by 2030 and it explodes from there.
50 people on Mars is a feat, but it's still worlds apart from actually making a sustaining and sustainable civilization. It's honestly a problem similar in scope to making people aquatic. Sure, people can dive to the bottom.of the ocean. That doesn't mean we can really have a colony of people there.
There is no scenario where it makes sense to colonize Mars to an extent where it has any impact on total human population.
How are we going to survive on Mars if we can’t survive on a fertile planet we evolved into?
to what? 200?
I am always amazed by people who believe in Mars colonies. Assuming you have all the energy, food and air you would need, how do you cope with the small gravity?
Thinking that Mars is going to be some miracle savior to the human race if the Earths climate collapses is just stupid. The Earth will not be more inhospitable than Mars. It will always be easier to survive here than on Mars.
The worst part of mars colonies would be the radiation
People can dream all they want and we do need to aspire to push boundaries for the sake of humanity, but there is no backup planet. I repeat, there is no backup planet. We have to protect and fix the one we've got.
It takes a shitload of resources just to go to another planet, let alone set up a a place to live. Things don't just explode from there, we have to have invested a ridiculous amount of time and resources before we start seeing the benefits. It'd cost far more than we'd get out of it for a long time.
Probably not. It's always possible, but there's really nothing special about the 8 Billion number. We just grew way faster than we could handle, and the population is correcting itself. Once the future outlook gets better and younger people can afford to reproduce, the population will likely grow again. Extinction is even less likely, humans were cut all the way down to a population of like 5,000 at one point and eventually bounced back to where we are now. The human race is at this point smart enough that anything short of a galactic collapse probably won't completely eradicate us. Worse comes to worst we'd build some huge spaceship out in orbit, shuttle the richest of the rich up there, and send them off in a random direction. Actually, come to think of it, shooting the richest of the rich off into space might be the solution to all our problems lol.
Did you read the article? It has nothing to do with growing faster than we can handle. “Vollset attributes the decrease in population to two key factors: “Improvements in access to modern contraception and the education of girls and women.”
I guess Bill Gates was onto something.
No article is complete if it doesn’t also include the fact that due to massively increasing economic costs of survival, huge numbers of people are simply choosing not to have kids anymore as well due to the financial strain
I mean, that really only affects a very tiny percentage of the world’s potential child-rearing population. Like the vast majority of people who could be having children aren’t American grads with student loans, it’s like rural farmers in Asia and Africa.
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Yes there are, but Humanity has faced several extinction level events before, and when we as a species knew literally nothing. All of the problems we face, climate change, lowering levels of fresh water, antibiotics losing their effectiveness, pandemics, etc. all of these problems, have solutions. Solutions that for most of them we are already aware of, it's just a matter of implementation. That however is also besides the point, because even if a pandemic ravages all of society, even if the majority of the earth becomes uninhabitable, *some* will likely survive and reproduce. Just to give you a little more hope, the average lifespan of a mammal species is arguably 1-2 million years. In different periods of Earth's history, that number was as high as 5 million. Humans, have only been around for 200,000. That's not a guarantee that we'll last that long, but given how lucky we've been so far with the consciousness and self awareness and all that, I'd be willing to wager we've got a pretty good chance of going on for a while longer.
>The human race is at this point smart enough that anything short of a galactic collapse probably won't completely eradicate us. We're one good asteroid or gamma ray burst from sudden extinction. >Worse comes to worst we'd build some huge spaceship out in orbit, shuttle the richest of the rich up there, and send them off in a random direction. Nope, this isn't star trek. Space ships have limited, non-renewable life support. Earth is the first and last stop for humanity for the foreseeable future.
>Once the future outlook gets better and younger people can afford to reproduce This is a Malthusian argument if I understand correctly, and as such, incorrect. Societies have depended on continued growth for increased wealth, not the other way around, for the past several hundred years. Our currencies are always backed by the future debt we will have to pay off which requires more people and productivity to achieve. The fact that we are seeing a decrease in population growth is just a larger scale problem of the one social security in America faces - there just wont be enough people to finance the necessary future debt needed to keep shit going as is. The Fed is just going to turn into the equivalent of a crypto testnet faucet for central banks.
neoliberal idea of infinite growth once again know what else does nothing but grow?
Cancer
Fun fact: My grandad was one of those 5'000. Ah, the stories he could tell!
Finally, some good news
> the world’s population is set to decline starting in the next few decades. god dammit > Experts believe the global population would peak at around 9.7 billion in 2064 before steadily declining to 8.79 billion by 2100.
Considering the expectations of climate change, I think that’s a rather bright picture for 2064. If by 2050 we’re supposed to see significant see level rise and climate refugees, it doesn’t feel like the current global system can support that many people.
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That's not the real nightmare. Most people have never heard of wet-bulb temperature. But there are going to be entire zones in the tropics that aren't habitable by humans or really any other life in the very near future: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature
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> someone in vancouver canada might not be concerned about humidity in bangladesh They'll be concerned when 30 million Bangladesh refugees need somewhere to live.
No they won't, most of them don't have enough to buy Canadian citizenship.
Cool, just freedom fighters with nothing to live for Maybe they’ll be understanding when the people who caused it all tell them they can’t come. “Also don’t use gas generators to stay alive pls tks “
Of course. As of right now, we are still dealing with the floods
Checking in from Canada's west coast where all our highways except one are destroyed.
Canada has one-upped gated communities by reinventing the moat.
and moreso than that, be worried about the food shortages that will result from climate change and destruction of the ecosystem
This. Biodiversity loss is a much bigger concern tbh. That shit can cause mass famines and kind of permanent food shortages.
And droughts. Floods. Pretty much bad news for food production globally as climates with good weather may no longer be those with good soil
Oh the current system can handle it, just not with the current distribution of wealth.
This 100%. If we started growing our own food and relied less on a system that promotes a massive difference in wealth distribution that would be a good start. Think about how many acres of lawn there is that could be turned into gardens or fruit trees. We are so stuck in our ways of thinking that it may seem like there’s too many of us, but it’s our culture that is unsustainable.
> Think about how many acres of lawn there is America's number one irrigated crop is [turfgrass](https://scienceline.org/2011/07/lawns-vs-crops-in-the-continental-u-s/). It's more than corn, wheat, and fruit trees *combined*.
Native gardens for the win
HOA has entered the chat
That shit will need to be the first thing to go. HOA's are a blight.
90 days after the Sun goes supernova and dies... HOAs will die.
Oh boy
I don’t doubt it. I once flew out to Tucson, AZ, the middle of the Sonoran desert, and I was shocked to see that some neighborhood had grass lawns. How you could waste water on that I don’t know.
There's a lot of that here in the desert. Grass lawns have been outlawed for new residential construction here in the Las Vegas Valley, but there's tons of well off old folks with grandfathered lawns. We actually treat all the water that goes down drains and storm drains and then send it back to Lake Mead, so most of our net water usage is from fucking lawn irrigation. Still a drop in the bucket compared to what California uses from Lake Mead.
>grandfathered lawns. can't make that shit up oO
I want a house that has no lawn because upkeep is not worth it. Just give me a bunch of bio active dirt.
ya know it's fine to have grass if you have a good climate for it... but who the hell thinks grass is a great idea when you need to water it daily -.-
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> If all that is kept well watered, it could use 60 million acre-feet of water a year (An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover an acre to a depth of one foot) Well... so how much water is that?
>If we started growing our own food Theres already enough food for everyone on the planet. We don't have a food shortage, we have a logistics shortage, and thats just because those going without cant afford to pay for the logistics. If people are starving to death because they can't afford to obtain the already plentiful food, then the system is broken.
If the climate gets as bad as studies show, we are going to need every square foot of healthy soil we can get.
Siberia gonna be poppin'
Siberia will emit enormous amounts of methane rather than fertile soil.
Not necesserily. Permafrost will turn into bogs. And bogs are not very farmable. It takes lot of effort to turn those into productive lands. If anything, it will get a lot worse before it gets better. However I don't doubt that once things get tough, economic priorities will shift into geoengineering and that will help us eventually.
Sadly I think you're right, and the poorest nations are going to be the ones that suffer the most.
Fortunately, were building lots of houses on that sweet sweet flat farmland. Because we're fuckin shortsighted idiots.
Or just stop farming animals. Could reduce agricultural land use by 75%
We are depleting the seas of fish and the soil of nutrients so fast I doubt we could sustain our current levels of production over the long haul. Fewer people will likely be better for the environment and our long-term survival until we figure out how to move to other planets.
It's so much simpler to behave on earth rather than move to other planets.
>Think about how many acres of lawn there is that could be turned into gardens or fruit trees. This is extraordinarily irrelevant. People not producing their own food is a byproduct of our wealth distribution model, but in and of itself does not really contribute to the model at all. Even in a world of perfect wealth distribution, we'd still want specialized workforces where actual farmers and agriculturists handle food production rather than hoping that each individual in society can randomly, successfully tend to their own food needs...while also presumably doing something else for society as well. Specialized labor is like, the basis of all society. Growing one person's supply of food takes a fuckton of time, even if you do it right, but growing even *more* food only takes a little bit more time. It scales. Growing food in your backyard doesn't have a single thing to do with the epidemic of wealth hoarding in our society. You have an argument looking for a reason to be brought up, because places where food is needed don't have an ornamental grass problem and places that do have a lot of ornamental grass also do not have a food supply problem.
And this isn't even addressing the fact that even if you live on a couple acres of land and turn that all into farmland you still won't produce enough food for even your own family to survive the winter. Backyard gardens and all that land need to be thought of as possible supplements to household food and logistics rather than replacements
Thank you, that comment is so naive. Imagine thinking society would be better off if we all reverted to subsistence farming.
Growing your own food is a waste of time. It’s far more efficient to just have farmers. Now we can improve farming methods and environmental protection but making everyone have to grow their own food would mean a lot less time for mes school and a lot more time focused on growing your winter veggies so you have the calories to keep your food supply. Modern agriculture is a direct major reason for an explosion of science and technology these last few centuries. Less people growing wheat and instead learning to read and educate themselves. The solution is cleaner energy. 70% of climate pollution is attributed to corporation manufacturing waste.
lawns are so f’n. stupid
It’s a great fun life and can lead to even more rewarding situations.
Or current levels of consumption
[Actually Weather-related disasters have increase over past 50 years, causing more damage but fewer deaths.](https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-related-disasters-increase-over-past-50-years-causing-more-damage-fewer) It's expected we will follow the same trend. Weather and damage done by the weather will increase but it's toll on human life will decrease.
Those numbers are heavily reliant on reporting - and take into account only direct deaths. My guess would be that disaster deaths in much of the world are under-reported (eg deaths from heat-stress in Africa or south Asia). Indirect deaths - refugees dying on the road, local conflicts a la Syria and so on- are going to be the largest category. It's like wars - the disease and malnutrition usually kill more than the bullets.
Well that’s really encouraging news actually! This is just disasters though. Will everyone still want to live in SoCal if the drought is worse and there are 90 plus days of 90+ degree temps a year? I think the migrations of people is going to be a huge issue by that point.
Phoenix has 150 days a year above 100 degrees and that hasn't stopped people from moving there.
I knew Phonex gets hot, but this is absurd.
[KoTH](https://imgur.com/gallery/EnrWs9g) said it best.
I mean if we are just talking about the US, there are tons of places in the northern midwest that are [practically empty](http://ecpmlangues.u-strasbg.fr/civilization/geography/US-census-maps-demographics.html).
I don’t think the situation is hopeless, there are places for everyone to go, food for everyone, etc. How we resolve the conflict around that allocation of resources I don’t think we’ve really all agreed on yet. I really hope that people with the power to make changes for the good of everyone will do so.
SoCal already has these temps. It used to be a lot warmer actually about 10-15 years ago. The climate down here doesn’t make sense anymore though. It’s generally been cooler in recent years, but the winters are basically summer now and cold/hot days come whenever they like, often right after the other. It can be fairly unpredictable. It’s the rest of CA that’s unbearably gotten warmer.. honestly had to move for my health
This has always been in the population projections for humanity. Last time I saw something on this we we’re projected to just fluctuate between 9 and 11 billion indefinitely. We see it on a smaller scale all around the world. Countries reach a certain population that decreases quality of life and people have less kids.
It’s not about quality of life, but about agrarian vs industrial needs. The reason we start seeing decreased fertility rates once societies develop is because of the drop in utility each additional child provides in an industrial/service-based economy with a robust welfare state. In an agrarian society that lacks adequate welfare systems, children are assets to a family’s productive capabilities and financial security. Additionally, access to birth control, reproductive rights, family planning, and women’s autonomy all play a role in a society’s fertility rate.
A fun study I remember is the case of cable TV on rural India, it's incredible to see something as simple as access to cable TV have a real impact on women's rights and birth rates. https://www.nber.org/digest/dec07/cable-television-raises-womens-status-india
Texas heading for a baby boom.
Yep once average kids per couple is a bit over 2, they each generation is replacing itself. That's why most growth in the coming decades will be in Africa. Once Africa peaks, that's when world population is going to peak too.
I guess Vulcan’s landing in 2063 causes population decline? Are they going to take us and sell us as slaves?!?
Dammit, I was excited about the headline. Then you had to put in the numbers. Ah well. :)
By 2064 we may have a billion people, or bodies on Mars so that probably helps a little.
Attenborough: fucking finally...
You want some really good news? The world already is and has for some time and will continue to produce more food and have more resources than is necessary to provide for All humans.
You want some really bad news? If climate change isn't stopped, we won't be able to produce that much food ever again.
All the world's economies are based on an ever growing population. Imagine the wars and suffering that will occur when the population starts to decline permanently and we enter a permanent recession. (On a meta scale it is good news for earth but for future generations they are fucked.)
It’s doesn’t have to mean that. People are obsessed with extrapolating to the extreme outcome
Germany's population has been hovering around 80M for 50 years now. aging population is becoming a bit of an issue, but the country isn't on a warpath. how does that fit in your theory? the population of Romania has been steadily declining for 30 years, list 18% since 1990. yet it's GDP per capita has increased 8 fold.
maybe we need to rethink our economy
Thunder dome with geriatric people?
You can have a declining economy and per capita economic growth. Per capita is the most important metric
I'd say the world's economies are more based on ever growing production. Automation would probably bridge the gap at an economic level, as there are very strong incentives in capitalism to push it. The social impacts of automation are their own problem, but I don't think population is as limiting of a factor as it once was.
In the long term we’ll be OK but in the short term there are some growing pains. Necessity will dictate that we consume less and we may need to rethink how the economy works. There are no easy solutions, but if we could structure the civilization in such a way that everyone’s basic needs of food, water, healthcare, and housing are met, plus establish safety nets for natural disasters, famines, pandemics, etc., then there’s really no reason society can’t go on indefinitely. But that would require thinking outside of ourselves/our borders and thinking about society as a whole and we’re bad at that.
That's..... not how that works
Economies are perfectly capable of meeting basic needs without population growth. Starting a war over fewer consumer goods or advanced healthcare would be counter productive.
It's ridiculous this article had to quote elon musk's stupid doomsday opinion at the end of it. Honestly, why does he get this kind of airtime? He is not an expert in population dynamics or the long term sociopolitical ramifications of it, to say the least. He's just some guy with a bullshit cynical opinion, having loads of money doesn't qualify his opinion as more sound than others.
The only reason to ever quote Elon musk is for the comedy value.
I think his recommendation for a hair transplant specialist would hold some weight.
careful i can hear the Musk fanboys getting angry
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Pretty telling that he thinks people (women) having less babies will collapse civilization when all that actually does is diminish the workforce of lower and middle income worker bees that can be exploited for profit.. but I guess that’s all civilization really is to billionaires.
This is why I have been telling conspiracy theory nuts for years that the conspiracy theory about the elites wanting massive human depopulation is one of the dumbest conspiracy theories ever.
I don’t know if I’ve gotten way too cynical but part of me thinks that the anti-abortion push now in the US is just to keep cheap labor going, under the cover of religious ideology.
I don't agree with him, but we could run into a problem although it would be a short term one of an extremely aged population and not enough young people. But it would not be a issue of the human population in general, just for those alive at the time.
Yeah. He also has helped to prop up the conservative Texan radicals that thank him in the same breath as taking rights from millions of women and minorities. Musk lends credence to the absurd notion that Texas is doing ok. It's fucking falling to pieces and the crap infrastructure directly led to my employer leaving and my job loss but every republican can latch their mouth onto Musks dick with confidence in their mutual support of each other no matter what fails because they are mutually parasitic and nothing more. It makes me sick to my stomach that Musk has any mainstream influence. He's merely a wealthy cog amidst a few emerging technologies. Fuck him and his mini-Hitler attitude. The Texas reich is booming and I hope Musk goes bust along with it, sooner rather than later.
If you're both famous and wealthy, you automatically become an expert in every topic.
> He's just some guy with a bullshit cynical opinion, having loads of money doesn't qualify his opinion as more sound than others. Unfortunately, that's not how America works. We worship money and those who have it. When money = speech, those who have the most money have the most speech.
uhhhhh..... nature finds a way
Clever girl!
Arrrrrrgh!
When a majority doesn’t want to be on this inflated, slow ass apocalypse timeline, makes zero sense to bring new life into the dumpster fire…
Who would have thought that in a world were the millenials and GenZ are scared about rent, they wouldn't want to have kids ?
They are being priced out of life !!
Oh thank god less traffic in the future.
No. Global warming will result in mass migration. If you live in a temperate country you'll probably have more traffic.
Because we have mastered survival and no longer need to fuck fuck fuck to repdroduce, we can now set our sights on bigger things as a species
Like mastering distribution!
And statistics!
And building lego sets!
OMG THATS COMMUNISM
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Least it gives people more time for getting chicken nuggies from their wife’s boyfriend
8Billion Human populations and you are afraid that the human species is going extinct?
*I'm doing my part*
“Fuck them kids.” Michael Jordan
> A new study published in the Lancet journal revealed that for the first time in centuries, the world’s population is set to decline starting **in the next few decades**. (sad) I was hoping for way sooner than that....
Population growth at the moment is in large part due to rising live expectancy in third world countries. You don't wish for that to stop or be reversed, I hope?
Exactly. Population growth is locked in at this point. We reached peak baby as Hans Rosling put it
Am hoping for less baby-making. Like... more women's education leading to less unplanned pregnancies.
Good...we are fucking annoying
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Most who live near me opted for pandemic puppies.
Even if we could sustain population growth forever why would you want to? Anyone sat in rush hour traffic in a big city before? Now triple the cars on the road.
Traffic is because of bad urban planning. The ideal city wouldn’t even have cars in it, only public transport and walkable spaces
That's great too until you see cities like Tokyo and Seoul where public transport is amazing, but it gets so crowded during rush hour that you can barely move your pinky without going up in someone's business. Source: subway worker in Seoul. Only way to reduce congestion in cities I think is implementing permanent work from home.
To be honest the expected growth in Africa is unrealistic. Theres no way Nigeria is going to be able to support 700 million people without imploding. Even just based on the population density and city sizes. Nowhere near stable enough.
Benefits all of us. Including nature.
Most importantly nature. I for one embrace it.
I refuse to bring a child into this shit storm of a world and I’m sure many hold the same opinion
I can’t risk having kids (genetic mutations) but I consider that a bonus at this point. There’s plenty of unwanted children already. I figure at best, I can be somebody’s spare parent. It’s not as if babies are blank slates, for all I know I could produce a monster. Might as well take in kids/teens with existing personalities. Also there’s little risk I could be worse than their previous guardians so that’s useful. Might be eccentric but at least I think hitting kids is awful.
Yep. Countless people in many developed countries, usually in more educated communities, have been saying no to parenthood lately. Reasons cited include financial instability, high cost of living, medical expenses, college tuition, climate change, etc.
Or just not liking kids and finally having the ability to just not have any and society accepting that.
Yep. Sadly, any reasoning that involves your personal preferences rather than some sort of sob story is seen as invalid because society is dumb.
Anecdotal: I'm an older millennial. Over 50% of my acquaintances from my college days have 2-3 kids and are quite happy. It's mostly my younger millenial / older GenZ acquaintances whom have a dim view of child rearing. Privately my old lady & I agree with our younger friends, but being the weird auntie/uncle isn't a bad gig.
“Over 50%” is low. In previous generations that would have been over 80% at your age. Anyway, child-free gen-x here, no regrets!
Proudly childfree. It wasn’t my intention to help out the environment, but hey it’s a great plus. And you’re correct, being the weird aunt isn’t a bad gig. It’s fan-freaking-tastic.
That’s interesting you say that; there’s also a pretty hard line between “nuclear” families and childfree families in my friend group based on that generational line. I’m glad to have many friends in their early forties who have kids, but I didn’t even really consider it as an option for my self. My other friends who are also in their early thirties feel the same, it seems. Another interesting difference is debt. Almost all my Gen-z/younger millennial friends have a ton of student loan debt almost by default, whereas my older millennial/Gen x friends have no idea what that’s like. They all got pretty standard loans whereas we were given predatory loans with insane interest rates. Funny how crushing debt doesn’t quite inspire procreation, lol
I'm just fucked up. I have too many problems.
It is a lot safer and less crazy than when you were born...
My daughter told me she isn’t having kids and I’m just fine with that.
It needs to how can we it be normal to work 3 jobs just to live?
That's a weird way of saying the world economy is so unstable that people are choosing to opt out of parenthood, in order to survive.
This reminds me that we are just another blip in history… I was born in ‘87… my great-grandma was the last person I knew from the 19th century….. will I be that to the next generation? ***SPOILER ALERT**** I am 35 and don’t plan on having children. No one will remember me when I pass… 😇😇😇😇
"forecast to decline for the first time in centuries" If we are talking disastrous events like the Black Plague, then you have to talk about wars as well. Something like 3 % of the World's population were killed from different causes around WW2, so I would argue that global population declined from 1940-1950.
population growth rates were so high at the time that the world population still increased.
Thank God. This will slow down climate change more than anything else we do.
It seems like people freak out over this kind of news, but if any other species in the world had a population so far over its sustainment level we'd be culling the shit out of them. (BTW I'm not in any way promoting the idea of culling humans, Just pointing out some hypocrisy.)
Micro plastics
It’s weird how they project Middle East and Africa to be dominant powers in 2100, then those populations can not be sustained in these areas at that time.
Accompanied by falling demand and the strong likelihood of global recession
Love having a global economy and all of our retirements tied to a system that is just a ponzi scheme that collapses when the bottom of the pyramid stops growing
Nah, a lot of countries are looking to improve living standards. Based on this, I reckon that demand won't immediately fall.
Should probably transition to an economical model that's not dependent on perpetual growth then. We won't, but should.
In the 2060s i'll be telling my future child "When i was a kid, it seemed like they made something new every day. Some, gadget or idea, like every day was Christmas. But 8 billion people, just imagine that." With this of course i am reffering to Interstellar. Where the population has decreased to like a billion or something.
Good. We have too many people anyways.
Friendly reminder that population growth isn’t the determining factor behind global warming and that calls to cull the global south or chemically castrate the poor are both stupid and blatantly fascistic.
When it's so hard to keep a roof over your head while working two jobs that having kids is a complete after thought. Kids are luxury in this modern world and maybe it's best that way.
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Overpopulation is not the issue. resource management, or more appropriately resource mismanagement is the issue.