Population decline is a good thing

It's bad for capitalism* and the elderly, but good for the Earth and good for humanity in the long term. Unfortunately, governments are panicked because they're far more interested in the former two than the latter.



*Actually, I don't even know that it's bad for capitalism, since automation is steadily minimizing the demand for labor. I don't see why it all won't work out.

Agree or disagree?

I actually agree.

For every child I have, I plan to abort three more.

There are downsides - nations that fund yesterdays promised social programs using the current tax base, pretty much need an ever expanding tax base to fund those programs, or a very well managed deflationary plan, and an ageing demographic tends to trend both right and nationalist.

Europe has been a great example of that, with Western Europe (including the UK) cheerfully denuding Central and Eastern European nations of their younger citizens to make up for their own shortsightedness, and those nations Overton windows usually heading rightwards, and without a corresponding lurch left in those Western nations - quite the opposite.

Covid had a lot of economic migrants head home, and if they remain there, be interesting to see what happens to those nations politics (Poland has certainly become less problematic to Brussels of late, Hungary not so much) and if they start reverting towards the centre ground.

I'm not sure quite what a combination of the asset stripping of relatively poorer nations workforces, and then watching them start to turn nationalist will achieve, but I'm thinking 'peace' isn't on that particular menu.

So yeah, lots of advantages to it, but need to figure out how to mitigate the downsides. We didn't do that with globalisation, and our collective arse cheeks have the bite marks to prove it.

Indeed.

I saw an interesting article recently about Elon Musk’s take on this. His take is that the fewer people there are, the more fragile society becomes to catastrophe, and that there’s a minimum number of people needed to both maintain civilization and actually make progress, as the low-hanging fruit was picked ages ago. He might be right. It’s a concept I’ve wondered about as a Great Filter… civilizations don’t go out with a bang, but instead it just gets too expensive to keep improving things, so they never become interstellar, and die off when a plague or something reduces the population below the minimum maintenance level.

I think Bill is wrong on this and has succumbed to fear mongering from the left.

You lost me at elon musk.

Blaming individual human beings for climate change is corporate gaslighting. In 2017, 100 companies were responsible for 71% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

https://www.theguardian.com/sustain...-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change

There's a whole lot of variables involved with such things, however. For starters, there's evidence that humanity's numbers once plunged to the low tens of thousands after a natural disaster ~70K years ago. So, clearly, we can take a big hit, and bounce back from it.

Next, we have to look at what causes the population to decline, how fast it declines, and where it declines. If we continue to see populations in industrialized nations decline due to low-birth rates, that's not really a big deal. It isn't a fast process, and we can deal with that thanks to immigration. But if it's a rapid decline (let's say that COVID was a bit more contagious, and a lot more fatal), then we might be fucked as a species. That depends upon how well we're able to slow the spread and develop vaccines/treatments for it. Or, let's say that some weird event happens and everybody on Earth outside of NYC suddenly drops dead. We're fucked. There's not enough people in NYC to handle things like proper body disposal, safely shutting down nuclear reactors, growing food, etc. to keep the population going. The odds of that happening, however, are pretty slim.

lessee... since I was born, world population has more than doubled

it's up eightfold since 1900

now, we've figured out how to grow enough food to keep feeding everyone, but the water to grow that food with? that's a bit trickier.

John Oliver of all people had a really good presentation on it, specifically the part about the Colorado River watersheds.

we're having a similar issue here as the limited good farm lands in southern Ontario are being given over for development, dwindling local supply while increasing demands

Does Musk have a formula for calculating this minimum maintenance number?

Was humanity actually more fragile in 1800 when it had just 1 billion people? We have dramatically better civilization-sustaining tech than they did, so why can't we comfortably have 1/8 the population we do now?

Okay, but would individual consumers be happy if those companies stopped producing the goods and services that they do? It's question of supply vs demand for greenhouse gas-generating activities.

Civilization didn’t, so far as we know, exist 70kya. 200 years after the event probably didn’t look terribly different from the day before it. We have a lot further to fall.

Sure, and it doesn’t have to be complete extinction, just a civilizational collapse at the wrong time. Either would be a sufficient Great Filter. Say we master fusion power as oil is running out, and then a super volcano or whatever reduced our numbers to 5 or 6 figures again. Even if the remaining people survive, they’re not going to be able to restart civilization as even we know it. Their descendants too will be blocked on a lack of oil. No gasoline or kerosene means no early rockets, or even heavier-than-air aviation. Maybe they’ll figure out better alcohol engines or something, but odds are good they never make it back to fusion, even if they figure out how to make it happen hypothetically. Mankind never leaves Earth, and some evolutionary process (or an asteroid or GRB) drives us to extinction.

There's plenty of room for billions more human beings, plenty of resources, too, and we don't need to have a declining population, because it's a eugenicist's argument where the poor and most needy who die first. What we could do is reduce the number of billionaires by a few thousand, and the problem will become far more manageable much more quickly. As it stands right now, the earth isn't in danger because of overpopulation, but because a distinctly tiny minority cannot contain its greed, and has no desire to do so.

Define "civilization." Not being sarcastic here, but as discussed in this thread we've got some really screwy ideas about human societies in the past that we're only starting to recognize. We give credit to Democritus for coming up with the concept of the atom, even though he was just pulling things out of his ass. Native Americans have long thought all species on Earth were interconnected, but until recently, Western societies have put humans at the top of all species on Earth, and are only now starting to say that we are all interconnected. How different was a Medieval peasant's understanding of the world and the universe from a hunter-gatherer in 60,000 BCE? If the sun spat out a massive EMP in Plato's time or even George Washington's time, it wouldn't have fucked civilization up. Now? It'd really fuck us up.

Meh. Don't make the assumption that because our civilization advanced the way it did that this is the only way it could have happened. Hero figured out the basics of steam power waaaaay before Newcomen ever did. It's likely that culture determined why no one ever built upon Hero's work for millennia. Not to mention there will be books and artifacts leftover that the survivors can use to figure out how to do all kinds of things. I mean, while no human has been propelled to space entirely thanks to a solid-fueled rocket, they most certainly have been lifted quite high into Earth's atmosphere thanks to them, as any space shuttle astronaut will tell you. Yeah, a bit more dangerous, but if it's the only bus out of town...

Yes, for the most part they absolutely would. Most of them are fossil fuel companies, most of what they provide can be replaced with alternative energy sources if the political will is there.

We are seeing right now how unhappy and in pain people are with fuel inflation during the Ukrainian war. Those alternatives aren't arriving cheaply or fast enough.

Because corporations have a short term focus on generating as much profit as possible, and so those alternatives, which are already robust and exist, are kept locked away, or their research marginalized, because oil companies own many of the patents. If you've never seen it, I highly recommend "Who Killed The Electric Car?"

@14thDoctor

Well, the political will is not there. Consumers like guzzling their fossil fuels and won't stop until supply shocks and/or governments force them to (which they should, incrementally and in the long term). But those companies you're demonizing are only giving the people what they want; the blame on the population for their demand cannot be discounted.

These corporations put themselves in a position where people have no choice. It would be one thing if there were dozens of options, and people chose the worst one anyway, but when it comes to vehicles, people buy what they can afford, they buy something that is tailored to their needs, and they buy what is available, and a lot of corporations have made themselves the only game in town.

Yeah, there are people who buy Hummers and live in the city, but this still falls to corporations to find ways to reduce the environmental impact, but they don't, because that would cut into profits, which makes investors skittish, and stockholders sell. Quite frankly, while individual choices do matter, the biggest culprits have nothing to do with the majority of the population. It's not individuals who are creating giant fire whirlpools in the middle of the ocean, or strip mining vast swathes of Africa. It's not individuals just looking for a car for their family that causes deforestation of the Amazon rain forest at breathtaking speed. Corporations do this because they create the demand, and then when people accede to that demand, those same corporations justify the increased demand, and bypass environmental restrictions through government largesse, who is all too happy to accept campaign "donations" for a little one on one backscratching.

Yes, individuals can change certain behaviors to better take care of their homes, their environment around them, but if we're talking protecting the earth's resources, it's future, we must talk on a massive scale, beyond the power of 1, or even one million, human beings.

Holy fuck, they're really not. "The people" might want energy, but they'd happily use cheaper cleaner energy if they had the option. It's the companies that insist on offering only dirty and expensive energy while doing everything in their power to undermine the cheaper cleaner alternatives because that might hurt their bottom line.

I don't deny that corporations are guilty of deliberately slowing the clean energy revolution, but that alone does not account for why consumers are still dependent on fossil fuels. Not even close.

It's not in their hands to control. People need power, they need energy for transportation, food storage, medicine, communications infrastructure, hygiene. Who are they going to petition if their local energy supplier tells them to eat shit? Most cities, counties, states, have only one energy supplier per region. Sure, you can get a third party supplier, but the energy itself is supplied by the very same power company you think you're switching away from, it's just that the money goes to a third party who splits the difference with your local energy supplier.

Deregulation has fucked us over in a big way here in the US. The moment you deregulate something, you leave it to the mercies of the "free" market, and all the fuckery, for lack of a better term, that deregulation entails. Corporations and the government hold the keys to our global climate crisis, but they can't see the burning forest for all the piles of money they're making by maintaining the status quo and just inching progress along when it comes to alternative energy sources. Hell, the US military produces more global pollution than most small countries. You think Bill and Jane in their Tahoe is going to change course of climate when we have that kind of environmental destruction taking place from day to day?

Huh. A actual not-entirely shitty take from Bill Maher.

Must be a blue moon outside

Ah yes, Bill Maher the open islamophobe who grouches that The Kiddos™ are too sensitive over comedians and wears his "centeralism" like a badge of honor is afraid of leftists

I've never seen a take this stupid on goddamn Twitter, for fucks sake

I don't think so, but he thought it was in the billions. Maybe not 8, but IIRC it was at least 2.

I suspect there is a lot more to it than just raw numbers when it comes to fragility, as greater numbers also increase risk of not just encountering a novel risk (say, a virus) but spreading it. Trade provided plagues, from the Black Death to Covid, with routes to move along, so smaller and isolated communities are also an insurance policy for a species.

We're still so reliant on fossil fuels because of physics and technology, renewables should be doing more lifting, but we've still not cracked using them for a baseload.

Take oil, anyone who has spent any time in the vicinity of a fractional distillation diagram will realise that it doesn't just provide fuel, but also feedstock for plastics and fertilizer, as well as bitumen. All those electric cars still have a major reliance on oil for their parts, what their driver is wearing and what they drive on, and one of the things allowing us to support more people by increasing crop yields is crude oil.

The Haber process is also energy intensive, so there is a direct correlation between being able to feed a population scale and energy usage to do that. There are a lot of efficiencies that could be done there (Africa, especially)

Then there's coal, again has other uses then just fuel, for example coking steel. So again, we find a lot of so called fossil fuel free technologies actually have a reliance on them further down the manufacturing pipeline.

Next we've the fact that fossil fuels are energy dense, they're the most energy dense fuels we have until you hit uranium, and so you can support more people using less space - in the UK we're sacrificing farming land for solar generation, which is borderline insanity.

Add in energy grids have been designed to punt power in one direction - from the generator to the user - and renewables complicate that as there are times wind turbines draw energy, making it a two way street.

A great use case is Germany, here is a nation that drove a renewables policy that was lauded the world over, and anyone suggesting a bit of greenwashing was going on got shouted down. Just don't check how many of those wind turbines are actually connected to the grid. Or how much renewable energy is getting filtered out (the electricity grids have generally been designed for smooth power inclines/declines, something else we still need to crack with renewables.) Or the increasing CO2 emissions. Or how all of a sudden they're terrified of freezing half the population the death and are going to plunge into a recession because of a reliance on Russian gas supplies.

The UK has actually quietly done a lot better in reducing geographic emissions, albeit some of those have been exported to China, just like everyone else has done. There are a few projects at the moment about introducing hydrogen into gas feeds (although depending on its 'colour', that isn't entirely non-fossil fuel either) without rotting the metalwork.

Now this isn't a crack at renewables, they're part of a solution, but we've kind of got to be adults about this. A lot of these problems are engineering ones, and can be overcome, but some are also fundamental and not so easily overcome no matter what politicians demand.

And we're also seeing some new technologies come on line, such as plastics generated from wood and paper making byproducts, but these are likely decades away from becoming mainstream and replacing oil.

Civilisation's energy intensive, nature of the beast.

Another thing to add (last post was a little rushed as was supposed to have a meeting) is infrastructure.

Some suburbs of London have just been told no more houses, why? The electricity infrastructure can no longer support them, and that also means it may not support any more charging points, it certainly won't support the next gen fast recharge ones.

The reason they can no longer be supported is all the data centres guzzling power - parts of Ireland are hitting this too.

So, the plan to move everyone to electric cars? Not happening without some major upgrades to the national grid and more power being brought online - which is why the current government have been literally going nuclear, which in itself has some issues as since every single government has kicked the energy issue up the road until it can be kicked no more we're relying on crappy EDF (which was recently nationalised to stop it going bump) as we got rid of out own native nuclear knowhow when Blair mothballed nukes - which is a shame as we'd be in a position to have Net Zero now otherwise. EDFs history with nukes is spotty, their geologists were certainly not top of their classes, and you've a government desperate for power generation and an energy company desperate for money ran by a government (France) desperate to offload their decommissioning costs to anyone else...

It's probably going to be an expensive mistake. But we've got Rolls Royce with the "mini" nukes - only they're not that mini. What was supposed to be able to be parked just outside a city actually needs more space (their example designs give that game away by always being pictured next to a coast.)

And in terms of upgrading the grid, this should be of major interest to all nations in case of another Carrington Event, most grids have been using cheaper parts, rather than ones hardened for when the sun eventually unleashes a hefty solar fart in our direction. In the US' case, if one hit tomorrow and frazzled the place, everyone in an electric car is pretty much going to be some rednecks bitch, toilet and Sunday roast.

Realistically, what the UK should be doing is pumping money into R&D and not Net Zero, as the UK's emissions are not what's heating the world up, and British ingenuity would be better turned to coming up with solutions we can sell to the US, China, India and all those up and coming nations wanting cheap energy to improve their peoples lot in life which are/will be major sources of emissions. That would be a force multiplier in cutting emissions, where as what we're doing may not be designed to be performative, but that is what the results will be.

eventually, maybe. as mentioned, we can grow the food, but we don't necessarily have the water required for it-let alone the useful land.

sort of like the sudden condo concentration that's affected Toronto. Sure, we can make space for all these people, but we did so without improving transit infrastructure, green spaces, school access, etc., let alone figuring out how to have all that shiny without displacing those who were already here.

We've increased the world population eightfold in barely a century... I heard somewhere that's pretty much how many people had ever even existed prior to 1900. Growth is inevitable, but "stewardship" of the earth implies responsibility for the impact we have upon it.

In short, we have to build the capability before we can continue to increase capacity.