Thread: How much will world population continue to grow?

i'm interested in this topic. i have generally argued that the three inevitable populations controls are war, famine, and disease. as population increases, the probability of some combination of these population controls becoming a significant factor approaches one. this past week, i heard about a study that makes overpopulation even more nuanced :

Behavioral sink - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How Mice Turned Their Private Paradise Into A Terrifying Dystopia

pretty interesting stuff.

Originally Posted by SouthernDemocrat

As women become more empowered in the developing world, they choose to have fewer kids. This is why most predictions have us topping out at about 10 billion people or so. Don't get me wrong, I think there are too many of us as it is, but its not going to be catastrophic.

i think in the long run it'll have more to do with birth control. Tons of men don't want kids either, but now there are so many methods to avoid unwanted pregnancy. Think i read somewhere half of pregnancies in the US used to be accidental

It's pretty catastrophic already: 70F in antarctica, 98% of species wiped out by 2200, pollution so thick in shanghai you can't see the sun

Originally Posted by SouthernDemocrat

The furthest you can get from a road in the entire state of California is 12.53 miles in any direction:

Peakbagger.com Large Map Page

Looks to be in the middle of King's Canyon National Park.

Yeah and even in the middle of the amazon, you can only travel 100 miles without running into modern human cities

Pretty undeniable that nature is dwindling into nothing as a direct result of human activity

Originally Posted by brothern

The population growth is a real problem and will result in a lot of resource stress for us if we don't address it.

However everything seems to point a solution where our number one priority should be to improve the quality of life for the world's poor. In almost all developed countries, the populations tend towards negative growth rather than positive growth if you exclude first-generation immigrants. And if you look at birthrates of developing nations, their birthrates are dropping in sync with the improvement of their population's quality of life.

Or said another way, once parents have confidence in their countries health care systems (low infant mortality), their education system (know their kids will be educated), and are confidentthat they will be able support themselves in old age (i.e. retirement nest eggs & social security nets exist); the motivation to have a third, fourth, fifth, etc. child is no longer there.

We have to pull out in order to achieve that.

Half the reason so many third world countries are in the kind of shape they're in is because of the West: the austerity programs we've forced on them, their farmers that we've run out of business with subsidized grain, our constant tinkering or outright take-over of their governments for our own interests, etc.

The best thing that could happen to Africa and the Middle East is the West ending all involvement. That includes forgiving all debt and relinquishing all territory.

We cannot force them to develop, and the more we try to do it on our terms, the worse things are going to get.

At any rate, mother nature will have her say sooner or later, and most likely sooner. We can't sustain at this level of growth and resource use/waste. There are already signs of distress in most ecosystems, and some have collapsed entirely. People seem to forget that there have actually been quite a number of human societies that have gone extinct due to destroying their own land. Hell, that was half the Great Depression. How do people get so foolish as to think that can't happen again?

Originally Posted by Helix

i'm interested in this topic. i have generally argued that the three inevitable populations controls are war, famine, and disease. as population increases, the probability of some combination of these population controls becoming a significant factor approaches one. this past week, i heard about a study that makes overpopulation even more nuanced :

Behavioral sink - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

How Mice Turned Their Private Paradise Into A Terrifying Dystopia

pretty interesting stuff.

Researchers in Brazil have discovered drug-resistant bacteria in the sea waters where sailing and windsurfing events will be held during the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

The "super-bacteria" are usually found in hospital waste and produce an enzyme, KPC, resistant to antibiotics.

Brazil Olympics: Super-bacteria found in Rio sea waters - BBC News

Some vids on this topic.

David Suzuki on exponential growth.

Originally Posted by SouthernDemocrat

I agree that everyone can certainly have climate control, hot water, sewers, refrigeration and so on. However, I don't see a lot of uninhabited land as a bad thing. I think having functioning ecosystems and wilderness is a very good thing. Particularly considering its such a finite resource. Even in a country that is not overly dense like the United States, the furthest you can be from a road in the lower 48 is just a little more than 20 miles (as the crow flies) in the southern end of the Yellowstone ecosystem. In all my backpacking / backcountry fishing trips the furthest I have ever been from a road as the crow flies was just 18 miles in any direction. The furthest you can get from a road in the east is just 12 miles in any direction in the Everglades or 10.5 miles in any directions in the Boundary Waters. In the whole state of Texas you can't ever get more than 2 to 3 miles from a road in any direction. In Northeast the furthest from a road you can get is about 5 miles in the middle of the Adirondacks. This is all in the United States where we have done a lot to preserve our wildlands. The situation is much worse in the majority of countries. In fact, I would say the only countries were its better would be Canada, Australia, and Russia and those only because of much lower population densities and the shear size of them.

I don't think we are much in disagreement, I just prefer to keep optimistic about the future.
There is a path forward where everyone's lifestyles can improve.