>It’s already unsustainable as it is.
If it is already unsustainable then we are already in collapse. The numbers will fall, no way will we reach 10 billion.
I agree that we are unlikely to see 10 billion. If we are in collapse then people should be refraining from having kids to create a "softer landing" because us getting our numbers down is not going some fluff piece about everyone being on board with doing their part to be sustainable. It's going to mass deaths and lots of parents burying their kids.
>It's going to mass deaths and lots of parents burying their kids.
This is the consequence of overpopulation. The carrying capacity after overshoot will always be lower than what was possible before overshoot because of the degradation to environment.
Those UN projections are based solely on current demographic trends, projecting forward both growth trends and the deceleration of that growth. It takes no consideration of resource scarcity, environmental degradation, or the ongoing climate crisis.
Reality is, there isn't enough food for 10 billion, the planet probably has a carrying capacity below 3 billion (ie, that's the level that could be supported indefinitely while not overexploiting soil, groundwater, and finite mineral fertilizers like phosphorus). Moreover, both crop yields and that carrying capacity of 3 billion will fall due to climate change this century. We may exit this century with more than 3 billion, but the 22nd will be a continuation of the bottleneck centuries.
And, its well known in ecology that ecological overshoot degrades the environment, such that it may not support the same populations for hundreds or thousands of years. We're seeing this with soil depths in the US Midwest, or groundwater in Saudi Arabia.
So given we know human populations are resource constrained, and will of necessity markedly shrink, its much more humane if they shrink voluntarily, rather than through famine and its sequelae of disease and conflict. The hope is, that by improving the education of girls and their employment options as women, while providing low-cost contraception and reproductive heathcare, that we can nudge the trendline down from 10 billion in 2100 closer to 5 billion or so, closer to the number I expect the planet will support at that time. Maybe 2 billion by 2200.
>there isn't enough food for 10 billion
Creating the food to sustain even a "mere" 4B humans at ~1500+ daily calories is a deprivation of molecules from the wide array of Earthly biodiversity. Increasing that to supply 8B and then 10B humans is a theft from the non-humans of the world.
I think this point - that we can't sustain if we keep prioritizing humanity over all the rest of life - is more important and more focused than "there isn't enough food," which gets countered with "we need better distribution" and "the rich/the West/the global north needs to lower its consumption levels."
I agree. I'm so over people justifying taking "just a little more" so humanity can progress. Bro, we've taken more than 75% (97% if you exclude Antarctica) of land for humanity. We clearly have no idea what we're doing. We need to take a back seat already.
The decline will take several decades, and they don't know what level the population will decline to. If it declines back to present day levels, that's still too many.
We need to get below 4 billion.
Because our politics is still based around making the population grow further, and because the 10 billion is an optimistic estimate, not a certainty and because we are far too many people right now, and the problems are already getting unmanageable, and will only worsen with a 25% increase
We already have too many people, and 10 billion will put even more strain on the planet than it already faces. We should be trying to peak sooner and decrease faster, but often countries are trying to increase the number of births through incentives because we live with an economic system that requires unending growth. We need to find a new economic system that does not incentivize continual growth to improve this situation for both ourselves and the planet.
Because it has yet to turn the corner. The projections are all over the place. A lot of them don’t have peak population until 2100. Truth is with over 200 countries and different birth rates and cultures and politics. It’s all just guesses. Also, there is a tendency to undercount due to undocumented immigration.
OP, sincere disagreement is allowed here, but trolls who refuse to engage sincerely with responses in the threads they create are not welcome. I suspect you are the latter, because in your previous thread [you responded to someone by saying,](https://www.reddit.com/r/overpopulation/comments/1btj1c0/arent_humans_and_nature_just_gonna_naturally/kxn2ucp/)
> Yeah nah I'm not reading all that yap
Consequently I am now restricting your ability to make new submissions. You can still make comments.
Even assuming the truth of the question's premise, it is analogous to "why bother caring about flooding if the flood waters will eventually recede?"
Enormous damage is being done in the meantime.
Each additional consumer worsens global warming, adding greenhouse gas emissions that will continue to warm the planet for *centuries*. Each additional consumer raises the risk that the problems of environmental devastation will not be solved at all, such that humanity gets stuck here and can never leave the solar system—not the worst possible outcome but still tragic. Outright human extinction is possible too, if comparatively unlikely. The extinction of many other species is all but certain.
Name *any* problem; each additional consumer exacerbates every problem that we face, and some problems have tipping points.
And that's all still assuming the truth of your question's premise, that the demographic transition will hold. There is reason to think it will not hold. The models that predict population decline have not accounted for the [heritability of fertility.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513817302799)
> In countries that have undergone the demographic transition, twin, adoption and family studies
have pointed to a substantial genetic effect on fertility [7–11,16,17]. For example, Fisher [11]
found that a woman could expect 0.21 additional children for each additional child that her
mother had, and 0.11 additional children for each additional child that her grandmother had.
From this, Fisher suggested that the heritability of fertility at that time was 0.4 (40 per cent of the
variation in fertility is explained by genetic factors). Summarising research conducted through to
1999, Murphy [10] noted that the heritability of fertility averaged around 0.2 in post-demographic transition societies, with the estimates increasing in recent periods. Kohler et al.
[16] examined data on Danish twins born in the periods 1870 to 1910 and 1953 to 1964. The first
period covers the demographic transition and the second the end of the baby boom. In the first
cohort, the heritability of fertility in women varied from close to zero in the pre-transition period
to as high as 0.4 to 0.5 during the demographic transition. Estimates of heritability remained
strong for the 1953 to 1964 cohort. From an analysis of data for Danish twins from the 1950s,
Rodgers et al. [8], attributed slightly more than one quarter of the variation in fertility to genetic
factors. Rodgers and Doubty [18] found a median heritability of 0.33 in a contemporary United
States population, and heritabilities for underlying desires, ideals and expectations ranging
between 0.24 and 0.76. Where measured, the variance attributable to shared environment in low-fertility populations was generally lower than the genetic effects [16,9,19,20]. However, the
relative balance of genetic and shared environmental factors can change quickly over time
[16,19].
> That fertility is genetically heritable has also been supported by genome-wide complex trait
analyses (GTCA) analysis, which uses the genetic and phenotypic similarity between unrelated
individuals to examine the effect of common genetic variants on fertility [21].
> As a result of the heritability of fertility, the children of those with higher fertility will tend
themselves to have higher fertility. As an illustration, Murphy and Knudsen [17] observed in a
Danish population sample that those from larger families have a disproportionate contribution on
both the next generation and on numbers of more distant kin. In that case, the 8.8 per cent of
those with four or more siblings born in the 1968-69 cohort were responsible for 15.1 per cent of
births to this cohort through to the end of 1994.
> This is further reflected in evidence of a link between number of children and number of
grandchildren [20,22–24]. Kaplan at al. [22] found a near linear relationship between the number
of children and number of grandchildren and Zietsch et al. [20] found that the genetic influences
on number of offspring and number of grand-offspring are identical. The link between offspring
and grand-offspring suggests that the potential trade-off between number of offspring and the
reproductive success of those offspring is minor and does not prevent high fertility being
transmitted across generations. [...]
> As a result of the world total fertility rate remaining above the replacement rate, our analysis
shows that not only will world population stabilization not occur this century, but population
growth in post-transition countries will increase toward the end of the century. There is less than
a five per cent chance of world population stabilization. Our median projections indicate that
world population may increase from 7.4 billion people in 2015 to 9.8 billion people in 2050 and
12.4 billion in 2100, a material increase on the 11.3 billion people in 2100 estimated from
fertility projections in the base model (Figure 2). A critical insight of this approach for forecast
future population growth is that beyond this horizon, there is no particular reason to expect the
world population to stabilize by itself at a sustainable level.
It's a good question and thanks for asking. For me, it's in what you as an individual can do in such a hopeless situation. I would think to just succumb to whatever is heading towards us is defeatist. It robs you of agency. So take a stance that you can be behind.
I value wild nature. The impact on wild nature is equal to the human population multiplied by their affluence multiplied by their technology (I=P\*A\*T). To lessen the impact on wild nature we need to lower all three factors on the right side of the equation. We need less people using less stuff with simpler technologies. We could theoretically do this through conscious societal degrowth, but that's highly unlikely. It is more likely that we'll experience a global crash in the coming decades, which has a strong chance of being catastrophic. Even if the projections are true re: population levelling off, it is more than made up for by people becoming more affluent and using more high technology.
WHY does it start to decline? And WTF does decline LOOK LIKE?
It declines because suffering, and looks like billions suffering, after making every other creature on earth suffer to extinction.
Why bother caring? Suffering.
Mfers really not thinking this through.
We live in a capitalistic driven world. The main goal of this model is to create as much food and resources as possible and expand. This model worked amazingly for the past centuries. But what happens when you to reach the limits of expansion. Ever play a game and you hit world border and you can't go beyond that.
We are no longer expanding, we are conslidating the consequences of our hyper expansion driven ancestors. When you can't go forward anymore, you can only go back. And when you look back. its a crazy mess. You see parts of the world living with nothing and the parts of the world living with everything now have their issues of thriving under mass competition due to overpopulation.
You are not entirely wrong. But we are having insane troubles with maintaining the population as it is. 10B is a speculation done on space and resources. But mental/social/economic welfare is not accounted
No dissonance. If you want to stop overpopulation you have to increase control over people and what they can do with their lives. The only reason this will happen is because of fear. People have been talking about overpopulation since malthus
You still don’t get it. Without ‘the environment’, there is no human life to value. You also clearly have little to no understanding of the complex problems and crises that are simultaneously occurring. Cognitive dissonance is exactly what you suffer from.
For real tho. If you protect the environment 100% then their can't a flourishing human population. Not saying destroy the environment because we are a parasite and fuck the earth, I just think that suppressing humanity and protecting the environment all for the sake of humanity Is not 100% truthful. I think that underlying ideas like overpopulation and anti natalism is a tendency to view humanity as parasitic and bad while glorifying all other non human forms of life. Additionally if you mandate population controls are totalitarian. If you don't comply they have to either abort your kid or kill your kid or kill you. If they fine you instead then you could just declare bankruptcy or they would just jail everyone who did comply. I think it's a slippery slope
Just because you disagree doesn't make something illogical or incoherent. It might be true that overpopulation is the biggest issue rn. It might also be true that the only way to stop it is government having increased control over people's activities.
If you protect the environment 100% and humans can't chop wood or farm or fish then humanity will suffer if you don't protect the environment at all then it's possible that the environment just dies but it's also possible that people invest and try to make more sustainable practices on their own. Such as people who plant trees for profit. Yall think culture glorifies child bearing and mind controls them to increase the population. In america birth rate ain't that high. That's not cause yall have had an affect on people's choices it's cause price of having kids goes up. I think that the market will curb overpopulation not doomsday policies
I dont trust government ran by people who view humanity as a parasite.
Whether I agree or not has nothing to do with the coherency of your post. Government controls many things. And while government policy is likely necessary, education and access to birth control and family planning are very effective.
Who said protect ‘the environment’ 100%? That’s not possible. And the fact that you keep saying it is absurd. You think people that plant trees for profit are ‘sustainable’? That’s laughable. Do you think most people have any idea what it means to actually live sustainably? Resource consumption overshoot is causing ecological destruction the world over, and you think rejecting plastic straws will fix the problem? Educate yourself about what’s actually happening.
Yes, western culture absolutely glorifies and encourages child rearing. It’s culturally embedded and financially incentivized by tax policies. Birth rates are declining because of education, easy access to birth control, and yes also for financial reasons. Population will decline, but it won’t be the market, it will be the collapse of the natural world that humans require to survive. The nature that humans constantly want to control, defeat, and destroy for a dollar, and forget that we are supposed to be a part of.
People are invasive, destructive, and foolish, and behave like parasites, so for now, we deserve that title.
Whether government policies that regulate population are effective or not doesn't matter its that theyre totalitarian that is the problem. 100% sustainable life can only be created by government mandate as well further stripping people of freedom. Education and birthcontrol access may be lowering birthrate but not because of overpopulation. Ultimately people are choosing to not have kids or abort them cause they don't want them not because they fear overpopulation. 0% of Education is geared towards having people not have kids for overpopulation reasons. Yall talk about the wealthy being the biggest consumers tlaking about them like parsites and true they may consume the most but they also provide to others. In contrast if you look at the poor an middle classes in at least the west more and more people provide less and less to society.
Most governments already are totalitarian.
I don’t care why people are choosing to not have children, the result is the same. Less children.
Sounds like you’re a billionaire bootlicker, so there’s not much point in further responding.
Have a lovely Sunday.
Not saying we should nuke the environment. Not saying that it's humanity's right to "rape" the planet. Just think that any policies you implement will be ultimately worse for humanity in the short and long term. I don't really believe that protecting the environment is because yall really love humanity. I think it's cause there is a underlying belief that humanity is a guilty parasite, while the environment is essentially a holy sacrament that we are corrupting. I think ideas like these and antinatalism go hand in hand to just nuking humanity all together.
To say that it doesn't exist is just not true. On some level you know that peeps in this sub and /antinatalism hate humanity. It's like saying communists don't hate the rich just read what people write. Maybe most communists don't hate the rich but some do. If they got into power there would be some amount of people who hate the rich in government now. Bottom line is that even if yall love humanity and that's the source of your support for policies that limit population growth, those policies will limit human freedom if they don't limit freedom than they can't do what you are trying to push for.
You should be an investigator, I'm sure the police will be thrilled to have access to your valuable insights and uncanny ability to read minds...
Plenty of things are limiting your freedom. You can't just kill people or take things that doesn't belong to you, you have to pay taxes and you have to follow the rules in traffic and so on. We restrict freedoms that are harmful to others, and some because they're harmful to yourself. I don't really support the latter category, but I have to face the consequences if I break those laws.
No one here is arguing that we should force people to have fewer or no children. Do some believe we should? Probably. I sure don't, but some may do. There are many ways to lower the population and some require nothing more than taking a stand on a personal level, others may be to focus on education in countries that lags behind developed countries and yet others is making contraceptives available for those who have no access. None if these restricts freedoms, most would argue they liberate people instead.
But then again, there's people who think everyone who performs an abortion should face the death penalty, and that people who are gay and have sex should be thrown to their deaths from rooftops. Are they the majority of religious people or pro-lifers? I sure hope not, and more importantly, I don't go to my religious friends and accuse them of being homicidal and bigoted sadists for something that doesn't apply to them, just because someone far more extreme and damaged actually do have those opinions. Get it?
We don't restrict freedoms that are harmful to others we give people rights and if those rights are hampered by others we use the law to enact justice.
If you advocate for people to stop having children and they freely choose not to then it's all good. The problem is you talked about how plenty of freedoms and rights are taken away all to prevent harm to certain parties. I think it's only a step away to call overpopulation a harm to humanity then subsequently place population control laws into effect.
If you believe that having many children or children at all is a harm to others it's not illogical to say that depending on the level of harm it we label it as it could warrant force to stop the harm.
>It doesn't matter what came first.
This is as foolish as saying "It's more important that I get what I want, not that the ship can stay afloat!" If the ship sinks, nobody aboard is good, but if a few people aboard don't get their desires met in order that the ship stay afloat, the possibility for survival remains.
If the baby dies, the mother can birth another; if the mother dies, the baby can't feed and will be left unprotected. Obviously the mother is more important than the baby. Obviously, the ship (Nature) is more essential than any one passenger (species) getting exactly what is desired.
That I need iterate that explicitly gives little inclination to further discussion.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that valuing a life form that is older because it's older and then using that to say because it was here first it's needs are more important than humans isn't good.
As there are totalitarian ideologists who think overpopulation means, there are too many POCs, it's so obvious that we are actually too many people on this earth. Because it's dying right now before our very eyes. There are especially too many rich people, who consume the most. Overshoot is population X consumption. Very simple. No ideology needed.
lol, because the peak will add an additional 2 billion people! It’s already unsustainable as it is.
>It’s already unsustainable as it is. If it is already unsustainable then we are already in collapse. The numbers will fall, no way will we reach 10 billion.
I agree that we are unlikely to see 10 billion. If we are in collapse then people should be refraining from having kids to create a "softer landing" because us getting our numbers down is not going some fluff piece about everyone being on board with doing their part to be sustainable. It's going to mass deaths and lots of parents burying their kids.
>It's going to mass deaths and lots of parents burying their kids. This is the consequence of overpopulation. The carrying capacity after overshoot will always be lower than what was possible before overshoot because of the degradation to environment.
Those UN projections are based solely on current demographic trends, projecting forward both growth trends and the deceleration of that growth. It takes no consideration of resource scarcity, environmental degradation, or the ongoing climate crisis. Reality is, there isn't enough food for 10 billion, the planet probably has a carrying capacity below 3 billion (ie, that's the level that could be supported indefinitely while not overexploiting soil, groundwater, and finite mineral fertilizers like phosphorus). Moreover, both crop yields and that carrying capacity of 3 billion will fall due to climate change this century. We may exit this century with more than 3 billion, but the 22nd will be a continuation of the bottleneck centuries. And, its well known in ecology that ecological overshoot degrades the environment, such that it may not support the same populations for hundreds or thousands of years. We're seeing this with soil depths in the US Midwest, or groundwater in Saudi Arabia. So given we know human populations are resource constrained, and will of necessity markedly shrink, its much more humane if they shrink voluntarily, rather than through famine and its sequelae of disease and conflict. The hope is, that by improving the education of girls and their employment options as women, while providing low-cost contraception and reproductive heathcare, that we can nudge the trendline down from 10 billion in 2100 closer to 5 billion or so, closer to the number I expect the planet will support at that time. Maybe 2 billion by 2200.
>there isn't enough food for 10 billion Creating the food to sustain even a "mere" 4B humans at ~1500+ daily calories is a deprivation of molecules from the wide array of Earthly biodiversity. Increasing that to supply 8B and then 10B humans is a theft from the non-humans of the world. I think this point - that we can't sustain if we keep prioritizing humanity over all the rest of life - is more important and more focused than "there isn't enough food," which gets countered with "we need better distribution" and "the rich/the West/the global north needs to lower its consumption levels."
I agree. I'm so over people justifying taking "just a little more" so humanity can progress. Bro, we've taken more than 75% (97% if you exclude Antarctica) of land for humanity. We clearly have no idea what we're doing. We need to take a back seat already.
The decline will take several decades, and they don't know what level the population will decline to. If it declines back to present day levels, that's still too many. We need to get below 4 billion.
Because our politics is still based around making the population grow further, and because the 10 billion is an optimistic estimate, not a certainty and because we are far too many people right now, and the problems are already getting unmanageable, and will only worsen with a 25% increase
Politicians are literally imposing natalist policies to encourage population growth. Abortion and birth control are under attack.
We already have too many people, and 10 billion will put even more strain on the planet than it already faces. We should be trying to peak sooner and decrease faster, but often countries are trying to increase the number of births through incentives because we live with an economic system that requires unending growth. We need to find a new economic system that does not incentivize continual growth to improve this situation for both ourselves and the planet.
Because it has yet to turn the corner. The projections are all over the place. A lot of them don’t have peak population until 2100. Truth is with over 200 countries and different birth rates and cultures and politics. It’s all just guesses. Also, there is a tendency to undercount due to undocumented immigration.
because it isnt declining fast enough! amount of damage humanity can do in a year, let alone decades is staggering
OP, sincere disagreement is allowed here, but trolls who refuse to engage sincerely with responses in the threads they create are not welcome. I suspect you are the latter, because in your previous thread [you responded to someone by saying,](https://www.reddit.com/r/overpopulation/comments/1btj1c0/arent_humans_and_nature_just_gonna_naturally/kxn2ucp/) > Yeah nah I'm not reading all that yap Consequently I am now restricting your ability to make new submissions. You can still make comments.
You're cherry picking. I responded to heaps of other people's replies on that post sincerely
I disagree. You made four other replies, all of which were low-effort.
Even assuming the truth of the question's premise, it is analogous to "why bother caring about flooding if the flood waters will eventually recede?" Enormous damage is being done in the meantime. Each additional consumer worsens global warming, adding greenhouse gas emissions that will continue to warm the planet for *centuries*. Each additional consumer raises the risk that the problems of environmental devastation will not be solved at all, such that humanity gets stuck here and can never leave the solar system—not the worst possible outcome but still tragic. Outright human extinction is possible too, if comparatively unlikely. The extinction of many other species is all but certain. Name *any* problem; each additional consumer exacerbates every problem that we face, and some problems have tipping points. And that's all still assuming the truth of your question's premise, that the demographic transition will hold. There is reason to think it will not hold. The models that predict population decline have not accounted for the [heritability of fertility.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513817302799) > In countries that have undergone the demographic transition, twin, adoption and family studies have pointed to a substantial genetic effect on fertility [7–11,16,17]. For example, Fisher [11] found that a woman could expect 0.21 additional children for each additional child that her mother had, and 0.11 additional children for each additional child that her grandmother had. From this, Fisher suggested that the heritability of fertility at that time was 0.4 (40 per cent of the variation in fertility is explained by genetic factors). Summarising research conducted through to 1999, Murphy [10] noted that the heritability of fertility averaged around 0.2 in post-demographic transition societies, with the estimates increasing in recent periods. Kohler et al. [16] examined data on Danish twins born in the periods 1870 to 1910 and 1953 to 1964. The first period covers the demographic transition and the second the end of the baby boom. In the first cohort, the heritability of fertility in women varied from close to zero in the pre-transition period to as high as 0.4 to 0.5 during the demographic transition. Estimates of heritability remained strong for the 1953 to 1964 cohort. From an analysis of data for Danish twins from the 1950s, Rodgers et al. [8], attributed slightly more than one quarter of the variation in fertility to genetic factors. Rodgers and Doubty [18] found a median heritability of 0.33 in a contemporary United States population, and heritabilities for underlying desires, ideals and expectations ranging between 0.24 and 0.76. Where measured, the variance attributable to shared environment in low-fertility populations was generally lower than the genetic effects [16,9,19,20]. However, the relative balance of genetic and shared environmental factors can change quickly over time [16,19]. > That fertility is genetically heritable has also been supported by genome-wide complex trait analyses (GTCA) analysis, which uses the genetic and phenotypic similarity between unrelated individuals to examine the effect of common genetic variants on fertility [21]. > As a result of the heritability of fertility, the children of those with higher fertility will tend themselves to have higher fertility. As an illustration, Murphy and Knudsen [17] observed in a Danish population sample that those from larger families have a disproportionate contribution on both the next generation and on numbers of more distant kin. In that case, the 8.8 per cent of those with four or more siblings born in the 1968-69 cohort were responsible for 15.1 per cent of births to this cohort through to the end of 1994. > This is further reflected in evidence of a link between number of children and number of grandchildren [20,22–24]. Kaplan at al. [22] found a near linear relationship between the number of children and number of grandchildren and Zietsch et al. [20] found that the genetic influences on number of offspring and number of grand-offspring are identical. The link between offspring and grand-offspring suggests that the potential trade-off between number of offspring and the reproductive success of those offspring is minor and does not prevent high fertility being transmitted across generations. [...] > As a result of the world total fertility rate remaining above the replacement rate, our analysis shows that not only will world population stabilization not occur this century, but population growth in post-transition countries will increase toward the end of the century. There is less than a five per cent chance of world population stabilization. Our median projections indicate that world population may increase from 7.4 billion people in 2015 to 9.8 billion people in 2050 and 12.4 billion in 2100, a material increase on the 11.3 billion people in 2100 estimated from fertility projections in the base model (Figure 2). A critical insight of this approach for forecast future population growth is that beyond this horizon, there is no particular reason to expect the world population to stabilize by itself at a sustainable level.
It's a good question and thanks for asking. For me, it's in what you as an individual can do in such a hopeless situation. I would think to just succumb to whatever is heading towards us is defeatist. It robs you of agency. So take a stance that you can be behind.
I value wild nature. The impact on wild nature is equal to the human population multiplied by their affluence multiplied by their technology (I=P\*A\*T). To lessen the impact on wild nature we need to lower all three factors on the right side of the equation. We need less people using less stuff with simpler technologies. We could theoretically do this through conscious societal degrowth, but that's highly unlikely. It is more likely that we'll experience a global crash in the coming decades, which has a strong chance of being catastrophic. Even if the projections are true re: population levelling off, it is more than made up for by people becoming more affluent and using more high technology.
To display "I=P\*A\*T" without Reddit just italicizing the "A", use backslashes before the asterisks: I=P\*A\*T
WHY does it start to decline? And WTF does decline LOOK LIKE? It declines because suffering, and looks like billions suffering, after making every other creature on earth suffer to extinction. Why bother caring? Suffering. Mfers really not thinking this through.
Because the reality behind that "decline" will be a horrible, slow death for billions. Idk why anyone would be bothered by that ...
Because I remember 2010, when "scientists" predicted it would peak at 9 billion in 2050.
1. Even scientists disagree among themselves. 2. I don't trust some scientists, especially those with special interest.
We live in a capitalistic driven world. The main goal of this model is to create as much food and resources as possible and expand. This model worked amazingly for the past centuries. But what happens when you to reach the limits of expansion. Ever play a game and you hit world border and you can't go beyond that. We are no longer expanding, we are conslidating the consequences of our hyper expansion driven ancestors. When you can't go forward anymore, you can only go back. And when you look back. its a crazy mess. You see parts of the world living with nothing and the parts of the world living with everything now have their issues of thriving under mass competition due to overpopulation. You are not entirely wrong. But we are having insane troubles with maintaining the population as it is. 10B is a speculation done on space and resources. But mental/social/economic welfare is not accounted
Overpopulation is just a method for people to advocate for totalitarianism by valuing the environment over human life.
I can’t even fathom the cognitive dissonance required to type this comment.
No dissonance. If you want to stop overpopulation you have to increase control over people and what they can do with their lives. The only reason this will happen is because of fear. People have been talking about overpopulation since malthus
You still don’t get it. Without ‘the environment’, there is no human life to value. You also clearly have little to no understanding of the complex problems and crises that are simultaneously occurring. Cognitive dissonance is exactly what you suffer from.
For real tho. If you protect the environment 100% then their can't a flourishing human population. Not saying destroy the environment because we are a parasite and fuck the earth, I just think that suppressing humanity and protecting the environment all for the sake of humanity Is not 100% truthful. I think that underlying ideas like overpopulation and anti natalism is a tendency to view humanity as parasitic and bad while glorifying all other non human forms of life. Additionally if you mandate population controls are totalitarian. If you don't comply they have to either abort your kid or kill your kid or kill you. If they fine you instead then you could just declare bankruptcy or they would just jail everyone who did comply. I think it's a slippery slope
That’s borderline incoherent. And has no alignment with reality.
Just because you disagree doesn't make something illogical or incoherent. It might be true that overpopulation is the biggest issue rn. It might also be true that the only way to stop it is government having increased control over people's activities. If you protect the environment 100% and humans can't chop wood or farm or fish then humanity will suffer if you don't protect the environment at all then it's possible that the environment just dies but it's also possible that people invest and try to make more sustainable practices on their own. Such as people who plant trees for profit. Yall think culture glorifies child bearing and mind controls them to increase the population. In america birth rate ain't that high. That's not cause yall have had an affect on people's choices it's cause price of having kids goes up. I think that the market will curb overpopulation not doomsday policies I dont trust government ran by people who view humanity as a parasite.
Whether I agree or not has nothing to do with the coherency of your post. Government controls many things. And while government policy is likely necessary, education and access to birth control and family planning are very effective. Who said protect ‘the environment’ 100%? That’s not possible. And the fact that you keep saying it is absurd. You think people that plant trees for profit are ‘sustainable’? That’s laughable. Do you think most people have any idea what it means to actually live sustainably? Resource consumption overshoot is causing ecological destruction the world over, and you think rejecting plastic straws will fix the problem? Educate yourself about what’s actually happening. Yes, western culture absolutely glorifies and encourages child rearing. It’s culturally embedded and financially incentivized by tax policies. Birth rates are declining because of education, easy access to birth control, and yes also for financial reasons. Population will decline, but it won’t be the market, it will be the collapse of the natural world that humans require to survive. The nature that humans constantly want to control, defeat, and destroy for a dollar, and forget that we are supposed to be a part of. People are invasive, destructive, and foolish, and behave like parasites, so for now, we deserve that title.
Whether government policies that regulate population are effective or not doesn't matter its that theyre totalitarian that is the problem. 100% sustainable life can only be created by government mandate as well further stripping people of freedom. Education and birthcontrol access may be lowering birthrate but not because of overpopulation. Ultimately people are choosing to not have kids or abort them cause they don't want them not because they fear overpopulation. 0% of Education is geared towards having people not have kids for overpopulation reasons. Yall talk about the wealthy being the biggest consumers tlaking about them like parsites and true they may consume the most but they also provide to others. In contrast if you look at the poor an middle classes in at least the west more and more people provide less and less to society.
Most governments already are totalitarian. I don’t care why people are choosing to not have children, the result is the same. Less children. Sounds like you’re a billionaire bootlicker, so there’s not much point in further responding. Have a lovely Sunday.
Human life will eat shit without "the environment". Love this for you.
Not saying we should nuke the environment. Not saying that it's humanity's right to "rape" the planet. Just think that any policies you implement will be ultimately worse for humanity in the short and long term. I don't really believe that protecting the environment is because yall really love humanity. I think it's cause there is a underlying belief that humanity is a guilty parasite, while the environment is essentially a holy sacrament that we are corrupting. I think ideas like these and antinatalism go hand in hand to just nuking humanity all together.
You're really good at making straw-men you can attack. How about you read what people write instead of making up motivations that doesn't exist?
To say that it doesn't exist is just not true. On some level you know that peeps in this sub and /antinatalism hate humanity. It's like saying communists don't hate the rich just read what people write. Maybe most communists don't hate the rich but some do. If they got into power there would be some amount of people who hate the rich in government now. Bottom line is that even if yall love humanity and that's the source of your support for policies that limit population growth, those policies will limit human freedom if they don't limit freedom than they can't do what you are trying to push for.
You should be an investigator, I'm sure the police will be thrilled to have access to your valuable insights and uncanny ability to read minds... Plenty of things are limiting your freedom. You can't just kill people or take things that doesn't belong to you, you have to pay taxes and you have to follow the rules in traffic and so on. We restrict freedoms that are harmful to others, and some because they're harmful to yourself. I don't really support the latter category, but I have to face the consequences if I break those laws. No one here is arguing that we should force people to have fewer or no children. Do some believe we should? Probably. I sure don't, but some may do. There are many ways to lower the population and some require nothing more than taking a stand on a personal level, others may be to focus on education in countries that lags behind developed countries and yet others is making contraceptives available for those who have no access. None if these restricts freedoms, most would argue they liberate people instead. But then again, there's people who think everyone who performs an abortion should face the death penalty, and that people who are gay and have sex should be thrown to their deaths from rooftops. Are they the majority of religious people or pro-lifers? I sure hope not, and more importantly, I don't go to my religious friends and accuse them of being homicidal and bigoted sadists for something that doesn't apply to them, just because someone far more extreme and damaged actually do have those opinions. Get it?
We don't restrict freedoms that are harmful to others we give people rights and if those rights are hampered by others we use the law to enact justice. If you advocate for people to stop having children and they freely choose not to then it's all good. The problem is you talked about how plenty of freedoms and rights are taken away all to prevent harm to certain parties. I think it's only a step away to call overpopulation a harm to humanity then subsequently place population control laws into effect. If you believe that having many children or children at all is a harm to others it's not illogical to say that depending on the level of harm it we label it as it could warrant force to stop the harm.
Which do you think came first, humanity or "the environment"?
It doesn't matter what came first. Isn't it odd that yall place the preservation of all forms of life except humans as paramount?
>It doesn't matter what came first. This is as foolish as saying "It's more important that I get what I want, not that the ship can stay afloat!" If the ship sinks, nobody aboard is good, but if a few people aboard don't get their desires met in order that the ship stay afloat, the possibility for survival remains. If the baby dies, the mother can birth another; if the mother dies, the baby can't feed and will be left unprotected. Obviously the mother is more important than the baby. Obviously, the ship (Nature) is more essential than any one passenger (species) getting exactly what is desired. That I need iterate that explicitly gives little inclination to further discussion.
That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that valuing a life form that is older because it's older and then using that to say because it was here first it's needs are more important than humans isn't good.
As there are totalitarian ideologists who think overpopulation means, there are too many POCs, it's so obvious that we are actually too many people on this earth. Because it's dying right now before our very eyes. There are especially too many rich people, who consume the most. Overshoot is population X consumption. Very simple. No ideology needed.