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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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That's good. Infinitely growing populations aren't sustainable, and I don't know that there are any viable arguments for continued population growth.
The problem is the word “significant”
We can all agree the population can’t continue to grow. We can also agree it probably needs to shrink, especially by the time this starts making a difference.
However, if it shrinks too rapidly, there’s a lot of potential disruption of society and economy. If it continues to shrink, it could be a serious problem for all of humanity.
We should make changes now to encourage more people to have kids. The goal should be a slow, controlled decrease, to level off, without major disruption
Personally, I like 6B as a good place to plateau. We’re probably already beyond the planet’s carrying capacity so need to be less than today. However a lot of the advancements in society (technology, space, medicine, science, innovation) really require a fairly large population. Establishing a number ought to be someone’s thesis, but in the meantime: 6B
Maybe society needs to be disrupted. There is lots of room for improvements
Maybe, but I think of disruption sort of like mutation. We all like to think it creates superhuman but most same actually negative , and reality is we get more improvements with continuous increments
Mutation is random and if as people we cant do better than random change we deserve the hardships it brings.
The math says that the planet could sustainablely support 10B humans and the supporting ecosystems. Just not with the current system in place.
With the current food growing technologies, we can handle 10 billion comfortable well. We will obviously not reach that number anytime soon. But we are on track to shrinking rapidly in many nations. That will destroy these nations.
I think that there are a lot of 8 billion people who would disagree with comfortably well. That number needs to be closer to two, to be sustainable with earth's resources. At least that's my understanding, not disappointed if wrong.
The problem is not the resources, it's the distribution. No political will to end global poverty, no profit in feeding the hungry.
Oh absolutely, people gonna keep being people. The truth seems to be that we don't really know, but it's likely somewhere between 4 and 16 from the little bit of reading up I just did.
Yeah, I tend to most notice reports of overfishing. Food from land sources is almost entirely farmed but we still get a lot of seafood from wild sources plus don’t have aquaculture anywhere near as advanced as agriculture: there’s not much we can do. Loss of a marine food source is a big deal, and we keep doing that with more species. One solution is fewer people
A lot of the higher estimates assume we can overcome limitations like this with better management of resources, but that is against human nature and our current incentives. It’s not going to happen, even if lives depend on it
Let's not forget water.. And eventually, oxygen.. But keep buying/selling those trinkets people, for the economy.
And well, how much of these resource estimates leave enough for other life too, or does all other life just exist to feed us?..
I doubt that. Current conventional food production is highly fossil fuel dependant (everything from fertilizer to processing to transport). Earth's ariable land and top soil is decreasing quickly. Ecosystems are collapsing from the effects of agriculture and climate change. Most "advances" require more inputs and energy, which means more fossil fuel use, further accelerating resource degredation and climate change. I forget the statistic, but humans already control a significant proportion of Earth's biomass. This chart from https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/17788/how-much-of-earths-biomass-is-affected-by-humans/ might be what I was thinking of:
About 30-40% of food is wasted in the US, in India its 22%, in China 27%. These are the largest nations in the world. The reality is that we can build more efficient infrastructures that can drastically cut down on this. But we don't need to yet, because it's not cost efficient. That's how much 'free' resources we have produced based on current technologies.
There is the repugnant conclusion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox but I don't really buy it.
I can’t initially agree that A+ is better than A. I think A is better. So his argument falls apart right there.
Median happiness is the important factor not average happiness.
The basic paradox is that you're better off with more miserable people who barely want to live than with less people who enjoy their lives a tiny bit more than that.
I ultimately think it's a load of bunk, but that's the supposed paradox.
That's like saying perpetual war isn't sustainable and you have to make peace. Formally true, but in practice:
Your country (a developed one, with virtually universal literacy, functional school education, water and electricity everywhere, universities, internet, etc) stops growing in population.
Some another country (with basically nothing except for dirt and dirt-poor people who mostly can't read, sometimes burn witches and kill infidels) doesn't fscking stop.