From what i’ve heard, with the aging population in developed countries and the birthrate getting lower due to longer life expectancy, population should soon stabilise itself around 10 billions. Seems viable.
Yeah population growth really follows a sigmoid curve:
Not when a fraction of it “needs” everything. But that’s another problem ofc.
There was 3.7 billion people when I was born. Since I’m still alive we can guess that’s within a human lifetime.
Since I was born, 73% of the animals on Earth are gone. Our ecosystems are already crashed, and no one notices.
Remember COVID? When everyone stayed home and quit buying shit, laid low? Remember Venice seeing dolphins in the streets and Asians seeing mountains you couldn’t see before? Remember how quiet it was?
SOCIETY can provide, EARTH cannot. Y’all gonna have to die. But hey, between global warming and tanking birth rates fucking our economies in both holes, win, win! The contraction will be of Biblical proportions. I won’t live it, my kids will. Good luck kids!
I don’t think really that a majority of the population is going to die. I do think significant numbers of deaths will happen around the equator at some point in the near future and spark a functionally unstoppable wave of immigration towards the earth’s poles. This will result in its own strife but again will only cause a small percentage of more of the population to die.
Thing’s will eventually stabilize as human civilization adapts and green energy and carbon capture take off. Most of the population will survive but almost everyone’s QoL will be NOTABLY worse by various conventional metrics. Though likely better in specific ways due to certain medical and automation advancements.
Expect birthrates to continue to drop globally however and the earth’s eco system will drastically change and become much less healthy. Most of existing humanity will cling to life though.
And what makes you think society is suddenly going to change (any moment now?) and your kids would have a better life, would just everyone keep having kids?🤔
I think the thing you have to ask yourself is “would i want to be born today” that will tell you whether you should have kids.
I mean i honestly am quite fine and i think there were always stupid people, but that doesn’t make me wanna have kids? I was also just curious about the argument for kids to save the economy?
I won’t live it, my kids will. Good luck kids!
One of the many reasons I didn’t have kids.
Good riddance, those animals would only get in the way of any future, cyberpunk dystopia or venus cloud city dnb compilation thumbnail luxury space communism.
what about food and place to live? seems to me we are stealing too much land from nature.
Build upwards instead of outwards
Replacing all forms of power generation with nuclear would protect a lot of land but war exists and blowing up a nuclear plant causes longer lasting damage than a solar farm
Uh huh, the glorious Urban Monad…
And where do we put all that radioactive waste?
In my backyard
under the floor, to heat the house
Under
Technically, earth’s land area is big enough to sustain around 24 billion people. Consider this diagram:
It shows that we’re using around 50% of all habitable land for agriculture. Most of the land that we aren’t using is either high up in the mountains (where terrain isn’t flat and you can’t use heavy machinery) or in the tropical regions on Earth close to the equator (south america, central africa, indonesia), or in areas where it’s too cold for agriculture (sibiria, canada). so you can’t really use more agricultural land than we’re already using without cutting down the rainforest.
In the diagram it also says that we’re using only 23% of agricultural land for crops which produce 83% of all calories. If we used close to 100% of agricultural land for crops, it would produce approximately 320% of calories currently being produced, so yes, we could feed 3x the population this way.
However, it must be noted that there’s significant fluctuation in food production per km², for example due to volcanic eruptions. So it’s better to leave a certain buffer to the maximum amount of people you could feed in one year, because food shortages in another year would otherwise lead to bad famines.
Did you know 90% of Earth’s topsoil is at risk of depletion by 2050? It might throw a wrench into this perfect utopia being planned here.
what is soil erosion and why is it relevant? i’ve never heard of it
Top soil is what food grows in. Without top soil, we can’t grow food.
But image if we can provide so much for 8.5 billion, it means we can provid double for 4 billion. There is no reasonable excuse to keep increasing the human population.
Those 8.5 billion are producing all of that 100%. If you had 4 billion, it would be 45%.
Production is absolutely not the bottleneck, here. We are producing too much, constantly.
numbers must go up
This is one of the things that pisses me off about the Star Trek “fans” who point to the Replicator tech (which wasn’t introduced until the Next Generation series) as the reason humanity was able to end scarcity. No, it absolutely was not what ended scarcity in the Star Trek universe. What ended scarcity was the absolute end of capitalism. We have now and have had for over a century, the capability to end world hunger and provide housing for every man woman and child on the planet. We don’t do it because it would remove the overinflated value of those things as well as the obscene wealth of the rich.
Even if that wasn’t true, do you know how much energy it takes to turn energy into mass (unless I don’t understand the tech and it works like a 3D printer or something). If a society has this much (free or at least affordable) energy, even without a replicator there is so much abundance.
Capitalism requires scarcity as its engine.
When scarcity is threatened, it is called the capitalist dirty word “commodity”.
It means there is no more profit in that.
I know the world has more than enough resources and productivity for everyone on it to live comfortably without overworking, but 30% is the lowest figure I’ve ever seen. Would like to know where that came from. I’ve seen so many widely varying estimates of everything.
Someone else posted what it means. It means 10m² living space per person, 4 people share 20m² for bathroom and kitchen, you don’t eat meat, you wash tops every ~3 days and bottoms every ~14 days(laundry is shared with ~20 people). Something like 4 people are expected to share a laptop with specs that were cutting edge 15 years ago(a “gaming pc” would only be able to be used for ~150 hours per year).
It is a MAJOR downgrade from how most people live, even those in poverty, and is just not appealing to all but the most minimalist of people. It’s more akin to living in an RV or “van life”(except you’re not supposed to have a car in this situation either - public transportation only).
It’s also ignoring the fact that we have already surpassed the limitations of what the nitrogen cycle could normally provide. So we would still be relying on fertilizers produced with fossil fuels.
Absolutely.
Also, whenever I see “humans only really need X” I always think of Bill Gates saying no one will ever need more than 640kb of RAM. Sure, today no one will, but tomorrow someone who was held back by that previous number will see the new number and be able to complete a new task and suddenly that will be the new “baseline”. A 1.4mb floppy used to store dozens/hundreds of text files. Now a .jpeg takes up more space. You can’t just settle on some number without commiting to becoming left behind as things progress.
Well, thanks for sharing misinformation.
Meanwhile, in the actual study (provided free via any search engine of your choice):
Also directly from the study you didn’t read:
“It is important to understand that the DLS represents a minimum floor for decent living. It does not represent a an aspirational standard and certainly does not represent a ceiling. However, it is also a level of welfare not currently achieved by the vast majority of people. A new paper by Hoffman et al finds that 96.5 percent of people in low- and middle-income countries are deprived of at least one DLS dimension.”
So no, nobody is coming to take your gaming rig, and no, the majority of people on Earth would get an UPGRADE in living conditions, not a downgrade.
Here is a link if you cannot access a search engine.
So you’re a condescending asshole. That’s all. I’m not gonna engage with you further. Have a day as wonderful as yourself. I will note that everything is said was in your picture. Douche.
I recommend reading the image to find the source
There is a source where the text was taken from at the bottom.
Thank you, dumb me missed it. Their paper talks a lot about measuring poverty. Earlier research showed poverty in China being high in the 80s under socialism and decreasing in the 90s when they became more capitalist. But the formulas for calculating that involved the prices of all consumer goods, including things like airline tickets, cars, big TVs, etc. But If you take these authors’ approach and ignore the prices of things poor people never buy, the math shows poverty being very low in the 80s and rising dramatically in the 90s, because introducing more capitalism brought down the cost of middle-class and luxury goods but increased the cost of the basics.
Define ‘decent living standards’.
I think Maslow’s pyramid of needs would be a good starter. But let’s be more concrete.
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House (60 m2, +20 m2 per extra person in household), with electrification, and which can withstand severe weather events (heatwaves, blizzards, heavy rain and wind, etc.).
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Clean air and environment without fine dust, microplastics, PFAS, asbestos, etc.
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Clean, potable and heatable water available anytime
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Healthy and clean food free from animal suffering made available for all
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Everyday and affordable clothes available for all
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Bodily integrity: only the person themselves can decide over their own body, with the exception of vaccination (because everyone ought to be vaccinated!)
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Labour rights, such as automatic unionisation, workplace democracy and self-governance, no vertical hierarchy (so no CEO, overreaching holdings, trusts, etc). And ideally, a wageless gift economy system based on needs. If not that, then this: any company lacking one of the above/being too big, may never get bailed out.
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Protection of personal property, with private property becoming communal property instead.
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Encouragement of meeting people at sport, hobbies, reading (helps finding friendship)
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Bicycle and public transit infrastructure being widely available.
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Free and high-quality public education available for all
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Same with healthcare. No artificial limit mandating that there be max x amount of doctors or teachers.
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The study does, in fact. Or actually, bare minimum living standards:
Quoting from the article:
“It is important to understand that the DLS represents a minimum floor for decent living. It does not represent a an aspirational standard and certainly does not represent a ceiling. However, it is also a level of welfare not currently achieved by the vast majority of people. A new paper by Hoffman et al finds that 96.5 percent of people in low- and middle-income countries are deprived of at least one DLS dimension.”
I’m sure they define that in the study if you read it
Well would you look at that, it sure does.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292924000493
Recent empirical studies have established the minimum set of specific goods and services that are necessary for people to achieve decent-living standards (DLS), including nutritious food, modern housing, healthcare, education, electricity, clean-cooking stoves, sanitation systems, clothing, washing machines, refrigeration, heating/cooling, computers, mobile phones, internet, transit, etc. This basket of goods and services has been developed through an extensive literature (e.g., Rao and Min, 2017, Rao et al., 2019) and is summarized in Table 1, following Millward-Hopkins (2022).
Looking at Table 1 that’s definitely acceptable. It skips a lot of things but that’s why they say 30% with spare room for luxuries.
It is true there are too many billionaires. We can provide everyone, if some of them also need 10 private jets.
How did they calculate that? I don’t believe it.
https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/124460/1/Hinckel_how-much-growth-is-required--published.pdf
Hickel serves on the Climate and Macroeconomics Roundtable of the US National Academy of Sciences. He is legit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Hickel
Ah hes a degrowther, makes sense. I read through his paper and I really don’t think its realistic or thought provoking. It lacks humanity and applies a utilitarian solution. Its the same as saying we have x humans producing co2 lets reduce the number of humans but instead of humans its goods he deems to be unnecessary.
His entire premise is based on what he thinks a person needs to live a good life. But lifes just not that simple and people all around the world NEED different things this type of strict partitioning fails when applied to the entire world. Part of what makes our current system work is that its dynamic, people create goods they want and those who also want those goods buy them.
What on Earth are you on about?
Quoting from the study:
“It is important to understand that the DLS represents a minimum floor for decent living. It does not represent a an aspirational standard and certainly does not represent a ceiling. However, it is also a level of welfare not currently achieved by the vast majority of people. A new paper by Hoffman et al finds that 96.5 percent of people in low- and middle-income countries are deprived of at least one DLS dimension…we can conclude that 6.4 billion people, more than 80% of the world’s population, are deprived of DLS.”
The authors are not suggesting that everyone be forced on DLS at gunpoint. They are suggesting an absolute bare minimum standard that the overwhelming majority of people on Earth do not yet even have.
How the hell do you get from that to some sort of paranoid fantasy where everyone gets exactly the same thing?
Uh I disagree. The author is suggesting we could cut 70% of the worlds industry because he thinks that represents a good enough standard of living. If he was suggesting that everyone be brought up to the minimum standard then he wouldnt be suggesting large scale degrowth.
Which paper are you getting this from?
No, his argument is that the average human needs this standard. also, it is a model, it is by definition simplified.
Besides, what is the alternative? First world countries living like they own the place, third world countries starving, and we’re all getting killed in the climate war of 2040?
No, his argument is that the average human needs this standard. also, it is a model, it is by definition simplified.
His argument is the average hmuan needs this standard… so we can cut “unnecessary production” and it will be fine. I’m arguing that he cant label things unnecessary because hes found a standard wealth level he thinks is good enough. It wont work as an approach because humans require a diverse range of inputs to live happy lives and that requires a diverse and dynamic production economy.
Does this assume instant, frictionless transportation of goods?
Transportation of goods is mostly a capitalist issue. You don’t need to cover a cucumber with plastic and ship it half way across the world, while selling the local ones to richer countries. The same goes for the vast majority of “goods”. Remove all of that greedy, superfluous shit, and you’re left with minimal shipping needs.
Not everyone has equally arable land.
Edit: Beyond that, have you talked to anyone performative driving one of those child-killing tall pickups? We are a people that lost their shit about straws, and the kind of changes being talked about here are just… [waves arms at all of this]
1
It’s wild how you went from shipping plastic wrapped cucumbers across the world while exporting local ones, to your bougie bs…
I mean, I get that you don’t like how they talk on Lemmy about it, but the quote from the study even talks about how the surplus could be used for additional consumption and everything. Study is here
I think we all have different things we want in life and with such a big surplus there is room for most of us to regularly enjoy that. I do not believe that they argue that we will NEVER be able to enjoy different food. That is as you have mentioned not functional or good for people to work together and live together. Disregarding the many people with different cultures that have moved somewhere else.
I think the study more clearly argues that we can afford to take care of everyone on the world if we wanted to. That there is a viable way and that that way is not as you are implying necessarily a deprived space with tight margins. Because living is about more than slaving away like a 12th century peasant to accumulate more wealth for a king somewhere far off.
Most of what the study is proposing would be a modest decrease in living standards in developed countries, for a drastic increase in living standards everywhere else. It’s not asking you to give up luxury, only for the rate of new luxury to decrease slightly as surplus is more evenly distributed.
And bunch of other sacrifices. One of the points was also about everyone living in a city close by. The study is not applicable to real life, it’s utopia scenario. One of the biggest problems isn’t even resources, but co2 production.
I dunno, I think it would be perfectly doable with good public transit.
Don’t have many big cities, but have mid-sized cities near-ish, and smaller towns near the mid-sized ones. A sort of ‘web’ of cities, if you will.
what you’re describing is called “multigrid” system.
you have grids of varying size, all overlapping each other.
examples:
notice the streets make some kind of “grid” on the landscape
Yes, exactly this was what I was thinking about.
now you also know the name :)
It’s awesome, thanks!
And honestly, I could see this sort of systems being handy - having raillines between the big and mid-sized cities, and bus services for the aforementioned + small cities and towns, and (electric) bicycles for the rest.
The design choices of people who make memes out of their political opinions are so random and funny to me sometimes. Like why is one of them a Russian gopnik? Why is the other one a blushing gamer femboy who paints his nails??
Engagement.
Is there a workable plan to get to that point or is it a theoretical idea like communism
It’s disturbing, how many people eagerly embrace eugenics and anti-natalism as long as they can cite a left-wing cause like ecology as their reason
Gee, I dunno, maybe everyone having 3 or more kids in the long term will lead to overpopulation issues we cannot resolve even with improved technology.
No it won’t. Learn 2 Read.
Antinatalism is a strawman slur against anyone that questions the viability of infinite growth.
So what is calling anyone who has a child a breeder?
Why are you asking me?
Because I’m curious what your opinion is, and you’ve made a point of speaking on a very closely related topic.
It’s a diversion to another topic. No thanks.
What does antinatalism being a slur have to do with the topic at hand?
It looks to me like that same feeling toward any population concerns are the clear sentiment of the op, even if they don’t state it so openly. I guess you didn’t see that? No sense trying to beat this to death, we’re seeing different things.
How are the two on the same level?
Why can’t we just have fewer people too? Instead of finding ways to support 50 billion people, how about we have good birth control facilities, education, and economies not based on constant never ending growth? The reality is unending growth WILL end whether people like it or not- wouldn’t it be better to do it on our own terms rather than in a global catastrophe?
The best way to control population growth is to actually give them a high standard of living and education. One of the most consistent trends in a developing nation is it’s birth rate slowing down as people become more prosperous
Why can’t we just have fewer people too?
Won’t somebody think of the ECONOMY?
A lot of countries around the world are living a so called “underpopulation crisis” even though the population is still growing frighteningly fast. Population going down is only a problem for capitalism, and it’s going to doom us all
Most of the world is far from replacement levels of population and the global trend is a decrease in fertility. Overall, we are at 2.4 kids per woman, the replacement level being estimated between 2.1 and 2.3 (depending how likely you think it is to die from wars). This data has been (mostly) decreasing since the 60s.
wouldn’t it be better to do it on our own terms rather than in a global catastrophe?
The catastrophy is inevitable, it’s just a question of whether any humans will survive.
For example CO2 has a delayed effect of ~40years (if I remember correctly). The effects of global warming are very much obvious now, but the yearly output hasn’t at any point dropped to those levels since.
Why can’t we just have fewer people too? Instead of finding ways to support 50 billion people
line must go up (/s)
