Opinion: A declining world population isn’t a looming catastrophe. It could actually bring some good.

Post Reply
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8732
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Opinion: A declining world population isn’t a looming catastrophe. It could actually bring some good.

Post by wjfox »

Great piece by Kim Stanley Robinson (my favourite author).

-----

Opinion: A declining world population isn’t a looming catastrophe. It could actually bring some good.

June 7, 2021 at 1:00 p.m. GMT+1

Thanks to scientific advances in medicine and public health, humanity’s population shot from 2.5 billion in 1950 to 7.7 billion today. People on average are staying healthier and living longer. Over the past six months, the United States has seen the inauguration of the oldest president ever, a Super Bowl victory by the oldest quarterback ever and a major golf title captured by the oldest winner ever.

I myself am like a lot of older people: I would have died some years back without modern medicine, but thanks to medical interventions I’m currently in good health.

Now, though, this steep population increase is not only slowing, demographers say, it may well start reversing over the coming decades as fertility rates around the world decline. On Monday, news came that China — apparently frightened by the portents — is raising its family-size limit, allowing women to bear three children instead of two.

President Xi Jinping isn’t the only one fretting. The vision of a dwindling global population is widely depicted as a looming catastrophe.

“The world is ill-prepared for the global crash in children being born which is set to have a ‘jaw-dropping’ impact on societies,” the BBC reported last summer. This media staple got a boost a couple of weeks ago from a New York Times article headlined “Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications.” While trying to find some bright spots (lower demand on resources!), the article mostly focused on the “hard to fathom” negative implications.

I’d prefer to fathom the good stuff.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... n-problem/
User avatar
Ken_J
Posts: 241
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 5:25 pm

Re: Opinion: A declining world population isn’t a looming catastrophe. It could actually bring some good.

Post by Ken_J »

good. for now. This infinite growth, spamming the world with people, need to stop until we've taken the time to address major issues. We have enough houses, and enough food now, but we do not manage those well enough. People go hungry while food is thrown away, and they go without shelter while properties sit empty.

if the population numbers are fewer people added than are removed for a few decades that's not going to suddenly result in the world falling apart from too few humans existing. Literally we could go the entire rest of this century and more before we'd reach numbers like the total numbers of humanity during the early days of the industrial revolution. the world wouldn't even suffer all that much should we fall back to world populations on par with after the plagues wiped out millions of people and estimated to have dropped the world population down to less than 500 million.

eventually when we move off world to fill the solar system with life, we should expect to be able to allow 10s of billions of humans to exist. and as we get to a point where death can become a rare surprising event, we may benefit from slowing the replacement rates to sustainable levels when coupled with loss rates. Not through some draconian lottery system for who gets the right to reproduce, but just more in line with the cultural refocus on the idea that not every person needs to have a child, and that you don't have to have one until you are ready to commit the years to one.

I think that if people lived 1000 years or more and could choose to be a parent at any one of those centuries, that most people in a reasoned and stable culture would take time to find themselves and live a life for themselves, and then maybe eventually come to a time where they might wish to have a child. and after we've culturally worked passed this notion that we can't let a child be an only child, that we might get to a point where human populations come to a sustainable course.

colony ships might have population booms for a few generations but settle out. and eventually we will hit a point where we may feel thinly spread, and we could expand the population if we like, but I'd wager by the time we reach that point we could very well have artificial citizens and have changed so much ourselves that what a human world colony might look like would be so hard to even imagine, that the idea of population management would be something that doesn't even make contextual sense.
User avatar
erowind
Posts: 544
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 5:42 am

Re: Opinion: A declining world population isn’t a looming catastrophe. It could actually bring some good.

Post by erowind »

I love Kim Stanley Robinson, his novels have had an immense affect on my life. But I think this is a misread. Population increase isn't the problem, consumption per capita and gross inefficiencies within the supply chain are. If classism were abolished our emissions would immediately drop by at least 40%. I'm being conservative, the number is likely much closer to the 52% of emissions that the 10% of the richest people in the world are responsible for. The emissions reduction gains will always be lower than that 52% figure because some of the budget gained would have to be used to guarantee a quality of life to the 10% of formerly rich population just as with everyone else.

So, if we weren't wasting so much on plastic garbage like funko pops, yachts, mass-consumer air travel, and a million other ultimately useless consumer pleasantries--the carrying capacity of the Earth would be much greater. This is a change that could be enacted rather quickly with no technological or logistical limitation. It's entirely a cultural problem.

Source on the emissions of the rich, many upper middle class people within the imperial cores are included in this statistic mind you.
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases ... f-humanity

If you are in this demographic, consider that if you must fulfill ambitions of immense worldwide travel or consumer hoarding that there will be a vibrant emissions free marketplace of used consumer goods that can fulfill that desire due to the colossal industrial output dedicated to consumerism over the past 120 years. There's nothing wrong with cycling around Eurasia, sailing around the world on a used boat, nor with collecting used books or video games, etc.

The inefficiencies of the supply chain don't stop with mere consumption statics though. Production itself is grossly negligent and inefficient by in large as private firms have no financial incentive to be efficient when they can simply join cartels of other inefficient firms. Real efficiency in terms of natural resources is irrelevant to the current stage of the capitalist mode of production, only monetary efficiency is relevant, and that's something that can be fixed, corrupted and otherwise manipulated with less cost than it takes to genuinely increase material efficiency in many cases. In many cases this results in a compounding effect of loss of resources and damage to the biosphere caused by the improper extraction, transport, storage, and processing of said resources.

A few choice examples. Imagine this on a global scale.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKBN23N1NL



https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... y-fuel-ban

Okay, so what if we abolish class and simply fix capitalism's gross inneficiencies without any major technological, logistical, or humane consumption reduction breakthroughs? Where would that scenario leave the economy in terms of emissions reductions? Maybe that 40% number suddenly becomes 50, 60, or maybe even 70%? I don't have a statistic on it but considering the global scale and the mass of emissions wasted on the rich I'd contend it would at least be proportional to that rough ~40% number.

Think about that, simply abolishing class and taking care in the supply chain would reasonably at least solve half of our species emissions problems. Without any change to renewables, without any disruption to supply chain, etc. A simple cultural change.

And what if we as a species do decide to do what humans do best and adapt ourselves to the conditions around us? What happens when we do start making and deploying technological breakthroughs on a scale and efficiency that monopoly capitalism could never achieve? Industrial armies planting permaculture food forests. Armadas of autonomous sailing drones combing the seas of waste, plastic and otherwise. Fusion reactors in every metropolitan region. Insulation for every home and real homes for all! I think we are capable of being good stewards to the Earth and ourselves, we simply must try, not revert to a malthusian fatalism, nor a hobssian fetish for violence and "law."

In light of class is it only so clear that population degrowth under capitalism will only see an increase of consumption at the hands of the rich as the rich gain an ever greater proportion of the world's wealth and hold no quarter in consuming all of it. Overpopulation is a myth.



Image
Post Reply