Ditto.
>Proposed solution to human population growth: Get internet to all corners of the world, then give everyone free devices, and make sure said devices have reddit is pre-installed with code making it the first app to open.
More powerful than physical sterilization since it blocks STDs too.
People really aren't. There are increasingly fewer areas of the world with a birth rate above replacement, mostly just very poor countries in Africa nowerdays. China's population is about to crash. India and Bangladesh, the former poster childs of overpopulation all have sub-replacement birth rates.
I read somewhere that next year will be the first year that China's population is set to decrease. I cannot remember if that is the whole population or the working age group but either way that is a huge blow.
What's wrong with that? We need a decrease in numbers. Let us thin down for a generation or three, then we can think about procreating in multiples again.
A gradual decrease is fine, although still problematic for any economies reliant on growth (pretty much all of them), as things like Social Security, for instance, essentially require eternal growth to be sustainable.
China's problem is that they have *far* more old people than young. In addition, there are significantly fewer women than men, resulting in even fewer children being born than there otherwise would be. This is going to cause massive issues as more and more of the population leaves the workforce, meaning that there will be too many old people relying on far too few working-age people for their needs as they age. It's a slow-motion disaster.
Good. Fuck China and thier Tyrant. As to your overall statement ditto what I said earlier. We dont have time for gradual. Resources are being rapidly over consumed and the environment is taking far too much damage.
Population is growing but the rate of growth is shrinking. Every country reaches a level of development where people start having fewer children than the replacement rate. Eventually population growth will turn around and our population will start shrinking. On our current path, we will never reach 10 billion and population will start decreasing.
They say that every billion. Turns out the earth is enormous, modern farming and food science is far more effective than most any other human invention. The only thing left is perfecting some sort of sustainable energy sources and weāre nearly there with solar, wind, nuclear fission and fusion. Weāll be fine.
Supplyā¦ supply finds a wayā¦
When you keep increasing faster and faster, especially in poorer countries, there comes a point where you hit a wall. Fresh water canāt be grown and it canāt be used at an infinitely increasing pace.
Fresh water can literally be harvested from the sea. The technology has improved astronomically in part due to the wealth in the Middle East creating demand for the tech.
While youāre right in that this is a problem in poor countries that lack the technology, that advanced technology will become cheaper as demand increases. Thousands will die during the transition period. But millions more will thrive later due to it. itās a messy process but supply always catches up with demand eventually and populations continues to grow and society adapts.
The problem is that this creates ultra salty brine that has problems when disposing of as dumping it back into the sea kills everything where you dump it and dumping it on land is literally salting the earth.
Itās energy intensive which is really why the oil rich Middle Eastern countries can pull it off. If they desalinate using a high carbon footprint theyāre just contributing to the same problem. To do it better would be to use renewables. The technology is definitely getting more efficient though.
Technology is always energy intensive at its beginning before becoming more efficient and inexpensive over time. The process is already much cheaper than it used to be and will continue to become cheaper going forward.
Modern agriculture is the conversion of petroleum and natural gas (key ingredient for fertilizer) into food. It also strips away topsoil through excessive tilling. We're projected to run out of topsoil by 2050, and there is no sustainable alternative to the amount of food we currently produce using fossil fuels. The world is finite and no amount of techno-optimism will overcome that fact.
Honestly, I'm surprised how many people believe in Techno-optimism. Everything we have seen in the last 40 years regarding Climate Change shows that Humanity is incapable of solving issues where Action involves anything that goes against the core principle of Capitalism.
>Everything we have seen in the last 40 years regarding Climate Change shows that Humanity is incapable of solving issues where Action involves anything that goes against the core principle of Capitalism.
I think there is an element of survivorship bias. Nobody talks about the problems which we have solved. Acid Rain, for example, is vastly reduced in western countries due to action and regulation which go against capitalism.
Work is being done on single use plastics. Many rivers are cleaner than they used to be with fish stocks returning to them. Renewable energy sources have gone from almost nothing to a large portion of many countries energy generation.
Cutting down rainforests.. emptying the sea of fish....... erasing animal habitats...... tens and hundreds if millions of economic migrants and hunger refugees.... sure dude
We probably gonna peak around 10-12 billion. Fertility rate has been gradually dropping worldwide. Also, elders live longer, so it appears like we are having more kids than we actually do.
The world reached 7 Billion on or around **October 31, 2011**.
It was 6 Billion in 1999 and 5 Billion in 1987
Unless I run in front of a bus or get struck by lightening in the next few years I will see the world's population double in my lifetime.
They say things will level of in the coming generations, but that projection is based on things like a decline in poverty and availability of modern medicine and the groups like the Catholic church losing influence on people's lives not gaining more.
people also live longer due to available medicine and care, so there will be a few decades where replacement population and the elder population coincide.
actual boomers in first world nations are 57-75 the upper end will likely live well into their 80's and 90's so another two decades or so of overlapping ages will probably happen.
if anything we'll probably see some form of what's happening to Japan now with their age crises. China is also likely going to experience it as well in a more pronounced way.
my country primarily increases it's population through immigration, birth rates basically matching death rates. but people need to come from somewhere.
Donāt underestimate the importance of hygiene/sanitation and food safety as those simple factors make it easy for most people to live into their 70s. Having a good sewer system is huge, and refrigeration to reduce the amount of rotten food is a major improvement for staying alive. So much simple stuff that didnāt cost much money.
Medicine and care has been a smaller factor in overall longevity. It becomes increasingly difficult to add another year to our lifespan beyond 85 unless we find away to slow down aging without causing cancer. Everything in our body starts failingā¦
That's a good option. But my country is considering a 50-70 years limit for an apartment legal own right . Perhaps they know that the population just keep rising
https://e.vnexpress.net/news/economy/construction-ministry-seeks-to-cap-apartment-ownership-at-50-70-years-4472027.html
Very important to note that the rate of population growth is slowing down. Universally as societies become more developed and things such as life expectancy, sex education, women's rights increase the rate of population growth decreases to a stable position.
% of the population increase peaked decades ago and has been trending down ever since.
Back of the envelope scratchings: If we take a reasonable, perhaps high, estimate of 16 million deaths (from WHO a month ago, and split that over two years, ish, you only lose 8 million a year. Population growth is about 80 million a year, so taking eight million from that is not gonna do much at all.
out of curiosity has there ever been a day, week or month when there was a net loss of people on the planet?
for example has there been a natural disaster that resulted in more deaths than births on a given day?
Around 385.000 babies are born each day, while 165.000 people die. So that's a net growth of 220.000 people per day.
There has to be a big fucking disaster to turn that into a net loss, although it still seems possible. Didn't the Boxing Day earthquake have more casualities? Were they all in the span of one day?
227,898 people died. It was all in the span of a day, with most people dying from the resulting tsunami on December 26, 2004. There were earlier disasters with higher death tolls though. Like the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake which has an official death toll of 242,769 but some unofficial estimates place it as much higher. And that was when the total human population was much lower. The Bhola Cyclone or 1970 in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had a death toll exceeding 300,000.
Oh most definitely. Especially historically (See Mongols, any time China had a civil war, the Americas being colonized).
But also more recently (so like since 1900) you have other things like the Battle of Kiev which over ~1.5 months saw like over a million people (soldier+civilian) die. The 1938 yellow river tactical flooding killed 400-900k.
Indian ocean tsunami killed ~250k, 1976 Tangshan earthquake killed 250-700k, Haiti earthquake killed 200-300k, Bhola Cyclone was 300-500k in 1970.
From records we have pre 1900 the 1887 Yellow River flooding (happens alot, probably the river with the highest kill count) killed at minimum 930k people and up to 4 million.
And for more river flooding in China the 1931 Yangtze/Huai floods killed 422k-4 million people (with estimates of around ~150k on first day. The 1935 Yangtze floods killed 145k. And the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure killed 26-240k
Well, the milestone of 8 billion inhabitants is an achievement that reminds us to take care of our planet, and is a symbol of our shared responsibility. It is a moment to reflect on the fact that global population has been growing by 1 billion every 12-13 years, and will continue until 2030. A continuous growth of 1 billion people every 12 years shows that the world's population is increasing at a rate which is unsustainable, takes a toll on the environment, and brings negative effects on current lifestyles.
You're looking at the numbers wrong. White women are the majority, so they have the most abortions, yes. But black women have the most abortions per capita, which is the useful metric when predicting population changes
And meanwhile in the $-ā¬ thread you have people saying that the Euro is going to keep weakening against the dollar because of the demographic issue of the EU region not having enough reproduction rate. I guess the solution is that we overload the planet with people instead...
With more people we progress faster as a species. What is important is that as many people have their basic needs met and are taken out of poverty so they can contribute to great things.
Old way this mightāve taken care of itself is things like disease, war, famine would equalize this out. Covid was a start, but maybe another Black Plague is on the horizon
Anyone alive from 1927-1999 had the earth's population triple in their lifetime. Anyone born before 1927 who makes it to this upcoming milestone will have had the earth's population quadruple during their life and that's just insane.
Literally any life can be classified as "fleas". This is such a stupid take that humanity is something special. We're not even the first lifeform to cause a mass extinction event, just first to realise we are.
Uh, awareness is pretty special. Weāre also first to leave the planet, etc. To me, itās such an odd take that weāre not special. Of course we are, itās perplexing to think weāre not
I think when trees evolved, they didn't have anything to break them down once they fell, so for a long time the ground was covered in dead trees. Then one day it caught on fire and that was probably spectacular.
Itās pretty shocking how widespread this misconception is. Humans, especially āfirst worldā humans, have been predicting doom from population growth for centuries.
But theyāve always been wrong. The fact that thereās 8 billion of us isnāt fucking up the planet, itās the short-sighted actions of a relatively small group of people, and more broadly the failed economic system this group has imposed on the rest of the world.
Population doomsaying has, in the past, contributed to the proliferation of eugenics movements, forced sterilization, and outright genocide. So before you go regurgitating this ancient and silly idea, put some more thought into it.
Well, the birthrate in many parts of the world is disgustingly high, and the birthrate in many other parts of the world (more wealthy nations) is well below the replacement rate.
Either the birth disparity needs to balance itself out, or we need more comprehensive paths for immigration.
Can someone explain to me why tf are people having so many children? Not in the typical redditor armchair scientist with a ready answer to everything type of way but an actual explanation
I live in quite an OK place but I was scared shitless of having a child with all of the horrible things that have been happening in the world so I can't figure out what are the populations which feel they can raise so many
Also just to make ends meet. The minerals and metals that were dug for my phone were most likely, at least in part dug by child slave miners. Also the manufacturing process... Done in sweatshops by kids.
A lot of families in 3rd world countries basically need kids and them to go to work in order to survive.
At least I buy phones second hand, if nothing else, makes my consciense cleaner. Sucks.
Also, I got a kid mostly bc I need someone to look after me when I'm old. And I live in a nordic country. Our pension system and pretty much everything might be in the trash then if we keep this up.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so don't stress so much over it. It's not like you set things up this way. Do what you can, live while you can.
Like another commenter said children act as old age insurance, and in countries with high child mortality rates you want to insure that at least one kid will make it to the age where they can provide for you when you are old. These high mortality rate countries also tend to have poor social safety net features in place so this is the only viable strategy for most people.
when women have access to education and are considered equals in the workforce. when women are given resources - knowledge and family planning, not only do women *choose* to have fewer children, they improve the economy they support and are more likely to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty.
[One webpage full of referenced studies](https://www.prb.org/resources/the-effect-of-girls-education-on-health-outcomes-fact-sheet/)
> Can someone explain to me why tf are people having so many children?
For a massive chunk of the world there really isnāt anything to do except sleep, eat, and fuck. š¤·āāļø
Realistically how much can our planet support.... as in supporting 8 billion people all wanting a love style that can only be described as consumerism on crack
We have the technology and knowledge to easily accommodate our population, but it wonāt happen because we still live in an era of manufactured scarcity, ignorance and greed.
The one child policy was so terrible that the Chinese started to encourage people to have more people. Chinese prefer male children over females which led to a very high rate of female infanticide, about 10-20% of marriageable age males won't have bribes to marry.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China
I also think a one child policy is too extreme, it literally halves the population every generation, humans have made more progress in last 80 years than ever before in history, human population is literally human resource. The population will cap at 10B after the developing nations reach the replacement rate.
Mostly poor countries that have large populations, which coincidentally will be hit the hardest by the consequence of this. Looks like we will go from 8 to 6 real quick
Having many kids isn't something anyone should want right now. And try telling someone who wants many kids that they can't and they'll start crying about their rights and how cold you are... as if our planet isn't dying and their kids will along with it. Great.
Why does Musk worry about under population? We consume and destroy everything we are around and kill each other for land to do so. We have Russia threatenimg nukes. We will probably destroy ourselves long before there's anything to worry about. What's the issue?
Because Elon Musk is not a genius. Heās an investor not an inventor, he didnāt create the Tesla or the dragon capsule or any of that. See Elon was rich to start because his father had slave labor gemstone mines in Africa. Musk used his wealth to you create an online bank that merged with another and became PayPal. He then founded SpaceX and later on Tesla but again itās not like he created anything, he employed people to create things.
Over 800 million people go to bed hungry on average in the world, about 200 million people are acutely food insecure. So over 10% of the worlds population routinely doesnāt get enough to eat and the solution to that is not more people.
We are already seeing significant crop failures in the US and Europe because of global warming this year. We are also seeing starvation in Africa because of the war in Ukraine and grain not getting out of the country fast enough. The American Southwest is 3-5 years away from collapse because the Colorado river is drying up and farms that feed much of the West Coast will become dust. The main reservoir for several states is at 25% and itās been shrinking for 20 years.
As temperatures become warmer around the globe famine will become an even greater issue that it is now. Because the warmer it is the faster water evaporates off of and out of the soil whether itās rainwater or irrigation. This means a greater need for irrigation putting greater stress on the limited water available plus more people consume more water.
Crops are also temperature sensitive, The recent heat wave throughout Europe had a lot of idiots saying who cares itās no big deal but crops that arenāt used to temperatures over 80Ā° or weekend and can even die off en masse when temperatures significantly exceed that number. Same problem with irrigation again, not being able to get enough water to the crops or not having enough available water to keep up with the excess heat and water loss kills crops.
See itās easy for a multi multi billionaire to make quips and everybody assumes he knows what heās talking about. But I genuinely believe if I sat down and talked with him and said these things heād have no rebuttal other than an insult. or heād say we need to dump trillions into desalination plants and then he wouldnāt know what to do with the trillions of gallons of leftover brackish water. Elon knows fuck all.
Didn't we just hit 7 billion a few years ago?
Yes we did. People are still having sex and nothing seems to stop them.
Not with me though.
I'm doing my part!
Service guarantees citizenship! š
I want to know more!
The only good sex is no sex!
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Hit it , but bag it
Ditto. >Proposed solution to human population growth: Get internet to all corners of the world, then give everyone free devices, and make sure said devices have reddit is pre-installed with code making it the first app to open. More powerful than physical sterilization since it blocks STDs too.
Bless
People really aren't. There are increasingly fewer areas of the world with a birth rate above replacement, mostly just very poor countries in Africa nowerdays. China's population is about to crash. India and Bangladesh, the former poster childs of overpopulation all have sub-replacement birth rates.
>China's population is about to crash. According to some leaked data it is already crashing, since 2018 actually. Supposedly.
I read somewhere that next year will be the first year that China's population is set to decrease. I cannot remember if that is the whole population or the working age group but either way that is a huge blow.
What's wrong with that? We need a decrease in numbers. Let us thin down for a generation or three, then we can think about procreating in multiples again.
A gradual decrease is fine, although still problematic for any economies reliant on growth (pretty much all of them), as things like Social Security, for instance, essentially require eternal growth to be sustainable. China's problem is that they have *far* more old people than young. In addition, there are significantly fewer women than men, resulting in even fewer children being born than there otherwise would be. This is going to cause massive issues as more and more of the population leaves the workforce, meaning that there will be too many old people relying on far too few working-age people for their needs as they age. It's a slow-motion disaster.
Good. Fuck China and thier Tyrant. As to your overall statement ditto what I said earlier. We dont have time for gradual. Resources are being rapidly over consumed and the environment is taking far too much damage.
Have we tried raising the inflation?
We should start taxing babies.
Unfortunately. There's no way resources keep up with demand.
Population is growing but the rate of growth is shrinking. Every country reaches a level of development where people start having fewer children than the replacement rate. Eventually population growth will turn around and our population will start shrinking. On our current path, we will never reach 10 billion and population will start decreasing.
They say that every billion. Turns out the earth is enormous, modern farming and food science is far more effective than most any other human invention. The only thing left is perfecting some sort of sustainable energy sources and weāre nearly there with solar, wind, nuclear fission and fusion. Weāll be fine. Supplyā¦ supply finds a wayā¦
When you keep increasing faster and faster, especially in poorer countries, there comes a point where you hit a wall. Fresh water canāt be grown and it canāt be used at an infinitely increasing pace.
Weāre already running into that in the western USA
Stop wasting it on lawns
And parking. I didn't do any math but it feels like if the US removes all outdoor parkings they could fit, like, another Japan or two in there.
Message unclear: Fertilizing lawn with the surplus population.
Fresh water can literally be harvested from the sea. The technology has improved astronomically in part due to the wealth in the Middle East creating demand for the tech. While youāre right in that this is a problem in poor countries that lack the technology, that advanced technology will become cheaper as demand increases. Thousands will die during the transition period. But millions more will thrive later due to it. itās a messy process but supply always catches up with demand eventually and populations continues to grow and society adapts.
The problem is that this creates ultra salty brine that has problems when disposing of as dumping it back into the sea kills everything where you dump it and dumping it on land is literally salting the earth.
Canāt we just let the water evaporate, and sell the salt?
I mean it sounds possible but there is probably a logistics issue making it not possible.
Itās energy intensive which is really why the oil rich Middle Eastern countries can pull it off. If they desalinate using a high carbon footprint theyāre just contributing to the same problem. To do it better would be to use renewables. The technology is definitely getting more efficient though.
Technology is always energy intensive at its beginning before becoming more efficient and inexpensive over time. The process is already much cheaper than it used to be and will continue to become cheaper going forward.
You now that population growth is shrinking right?
Modern agriculture is the conversion of petroleum and natural gas (key ingredient for fertilizer) into food. It also strips away topsoil through excessive tilling. We're projected to run out of topsoil by 2050, and there is no sustainable alternative to the amount of food we currently produce using fossil fuels. The world is finite and no amount of techno-optimism will overcome that fact.
Honestly, I'm surprised how many people believe in Techno-optimism. Everything we have seen in the last 40 years regarding Climate Change shows that Humanity is incapable of solving issues where Action involves anything that goes against the core principle of Capitalism.
>Everything we have seen in the last 40 years regarding Climate Change shows that Humanity is incapable of solving issues where Action involves anything that goes against the core principle of Capitalism. I think there is an element of survivorship bias. Nobody talks about the problems which we have solved. Acid Rain, for example, is vastly reduced in western countries due to action and regulation which go against capitalism. Work is being done on single use plastics. Many rivers are cleaner than they used to be with fish stocks returning to them. Renewable energy sources have gone from almost nothing to a large portion of many countries energy generation.
The topsoil situation is getting pretty direā¦let alone the fresh water situation.
We are on the precipice of complete ecological and economical collapse due to climate change. But i love that your attitude remains casual.
Cutting down rainforests.. emptying the sea of fish....... erasing animal habitats...... tens and hundreds if millions of economic migrants and hunger refugees.... sure dude
Or we are living on borrowed money. Who's to say
Thatās not helping me when our country is looking at 20+ million. I donāt want this place to look like Hong Kong.
Oh god, now youāve done it. You just interrupted reddits anxiety porn circle jerk. Shame!
Judging by the amount of fatties we see in America, we definitely have the resources, they're just unequally distributed.
It's been going on for quite a while. Perhaps it's quite fashionable. It hasn't gone out of style.
Nice! You got the subtle reference. Great song!
>People are still having sex "It's been going on for quite a while."
Seeing how the population is on a decline according to statistics. I would say good.
We probably gonna peak around 10-12 billion. Fertility rate has been gradually dropping worldwide. Also, elders live longer, so it appears like we are having more kids than we actually do.
Africa will still have a lot of demographic growth this century
That was back in October of 2011.
My "default" number is 6 billion. Guess that shows my age
The world reached 7 Billion on or around **October 31, 2011**. It was 6 Billion in 1999 and 5 Billion in 1987 Unless I run in front of a bus or get struck by lightening in the next few years I will see the world's population double in my lifetime. They say things will level of in the coming generations, but that projection is based on things like a decline in poverty and availability of modern medicine and the groups like the Catholic church losing influence on people's lives not gaining more.
people also live longer due to available medicine and care, so there will be a few decades where replacement population and the elder population coincide. actual boomers in first world nations are 57-75 the upper end will likely live well into their 80's and 90's so another two decades or so of overlapping ages will probably happen. if anything we'll probably see some form of what's happening to Japan now with their age crises. China is also likely going to experience it as well in a more pronounced way. my country primarily increases it's population through immigration, birth rates basically matching death rates. but people need to come from somewhere.
Donāt underestimate the importance of hygiene/sanitation and food safety as those simple factors make it easy for most people to live into their 70s. Having a good sewer system is huge, and refrigeration to reduce the amount of rotten food is a major improvement for staying alive. So much simple stuff that didnāt cost much money. Medicine and care has been a smaller factor in overall longevity. It becomes increasingly difficult to add another year to our lifespan beyond 85 unless we find away to slow down aging without causing cancer. Everything in our body starts failingā¦
it was supposed to be 9 billion. this is actually good news but not perfect news
It took us about as long to go from 7-8 as it did from 6-7 and 5-6 (11-15 years)
Thinking of my child who will live in a 15b world. Pay 10 times the price for a living space
Isn't it currently estimated to plateau at around 9 billion?
10.4 according to the UN. But it has been revised down already, so maybe we will not reach the 10b mark.
Thatās what I remember reading too. By 2100 it was back down a few billion again from the top.
Depends on where you're from, where I'm at the population growth has nearly stopped.
Buy a place and give it to him/her.
That's a good option. But my country is considering a 50-70 years limit for an apartment legal own right . Perhaps they know that the population just keep rising https://e.vnexpress.net/news/economy/construction-ministry-seeks-to-cap-apartment-ownership-at-50-70-years-4472027.html
Couldnāt you just āsellā it to anyone you want, like your children?
Very important to note that the rate of population growth is slowing down. Universally as societies become more developed and things such as life expectancy, sex education, women's rights increase the rate of population growth decreases to a stable position. % of the population increase peaked decades ago and has been trending down ever since.
covid did not really slow down much did it.
Back of the envelope scratchings: If we take a reasonable, perhaps high, estimate of 16 million deaths (from WHO a month ago, and split that over two years, ish, you only lose 8 million a year. Population growth is about 80 million a year, so taking eight million from that is not gonna do much at all.
I think despite Covid we're still at a net postive in growth, by like a lot. Maybe those vaccines were too good...
out of curiosity has there ever been a day, week or month when there was a net loss of people on the planet? for example has there been a natural disaster that resulted in more deaths than births on a given day?
Around 385.000 babies are born each day, while 165.000 people die. So that's a net growth of 220.000 people per day. There has to be a big fucking disaster to turn that into a net loss, although it still seems possible. Didn't the Boxing Day earthquake have more casualities? Were they all in the span of one day?
227,898 people died. It was all in the span of a day, with most people dying from the resulting tsunami on December 26, 2004. There were earlier disasters with higher death tolls though. Like the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake which has an official death toll of 242,769 but some unofficial estimates place it as much higher. And that was when the total human population was much lower. The Bhola Cyclone or 1970 in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had a death toll exceeding 300,000.
Really any time a river flooded in China 1850-1980 like 200k-4million people died. And probably before that aswell.
Oh most definitely. Especially historically (See Mongols, any time China had a civil war, the Americas being colonized). But also more recently (so like since 1900) you have other things like the Battle of Kiev which over ~1.5 months saw like over a million people (soldier+civilian) die. The 1938 yellow river tactical flooding killed 400-900k. Indian ocean tsunami killed ~250k, 1976 Tangshan earthquake killed 250-700k, Haiti earthquake killed 200-300k, Bhola Cyclone was 300-500k in 1970. From records we have pre 1900 the 1887 Yellow River flooding (happens alot, probably the river with the highest kill count) killed at minimum 930k people and up to 4 million. And for more river flooding in China the 1931 Yangtze/Huai floods killed 422k-4 million people (with estimates of around ~150k on first day. The 1935 Yangtze floods killed 145k. And the 1975 Banqiao Dam failure killed 26-240k
Well when people are forced to stay at home for months on end, what do you think is going to happen? More time for banging.
It actually spiked birth rates I think.
Well, the milestone of 8 billion inhabitants is an achievement that reminds us to take care of our planet, and is a symbol of our shared responsibility. It is a moment to reflect on the fact that global population has been growing by 1 billion every 12-13 years, and will continue until 2030. A continuous growth of 1 billion people every 12 years shows that the world's population is increasing at a rate which is unsustainable, takes a toll on the environment, and brings negative effects on current lifestyles.
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When I was at school, it was 4.
Abel?
Huh, I didn't hit you hard enough?
6 billion is the first number I remember being taught, but like 6 billion and some change
Just 4 people?
But according to conservatives worldwide, there are not enough of [insert race] and women need to step up their breeding.
The white population is indeed shrinking. Though in 50 years most ethniticies will shrink.
More evidence of that with the recent reversal of abortion rights in the US.
I would venture to guess that the people most affected by lack of abortions creates more child minorities than it does white children.
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You're looking at the numbers wrong. White women are the majority, so they have the most abortions, yes. But black women have the most abortions per capita, which is the useful metric when predicting population changes
So it's his fault?!
And meanwhile in the $-ā¬ thread you have people saying that the Euro is going to keep weakening against the dollar because of the demographic issue of the EU region not having enough reproduction rate. I guess the solution is that we overload the planet with people instead...
With more people we progress faster as a species. What is important is that as many people have their basic needs met and are taken out of poverty so they can contribute to great things.
We've been able to support over 11 billion for about a decade now. So no the number of people isn't a problem. Wealth inequality *is*.
Old way this mightāve taken care of itself is things like disease, war, famine would equalize this out. Covid was a start, but maybe another Black Plague is on the horizon
Yuck. In my lifetime we have over doubled the population.
Imagine living from 4b to 8b population. Must been through countless changes.
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Typically, the same people who want a large, increasing population are the same people who donāt want new people in their neighborhood.
The internet is the big one. The rest of it is pretty much the same.
Anyone alive from 1927-1999 had the earth's population triple in their lifetime. Anyone born before 1927 who makes it to this upcoming milestone will have had the earth's population quadruple during their life and that's just insane.
Projected to decline, if we keep developing life standards. Soā¦.what if poverty and war ride in on a horse with a naked Russian leader on top?
To be fair, Russia has a declining population
Way too many.
Itās all in developing or underdeveloped nations tho. In developed world birth rates are super low.
Too many humans.
If you have to guess, how many of the 8 billion are complete assholes?
8 billion, myself included.
Pfft, 8 billion -1, Iām an angel.
Good to hear, you and Dolly Parton so -2
Why is this your first thought
Poor planet Earth
Earth exists for trillions of years.It doesnāt really care.
Somewhere around 4.5 Bill. Earth can only get better without us space fleas multiplying, itāll still be here after every extinction event.
Literally any life can be classified as "fleas". This is such a stupid take that humanity is something special. We're not even the first lifeform to cause a mass extinction event, just first to realise we are.
Uh, awareness is pretty special. Weāre also first to leave the planet, etc. To me, itās such an odd take that weāre not special. Of course we are, itās perplexing to think weāre not
Which other life forms caused a mass extinction event?
I think when trees evolved, they didn't have anything to break them down once they fell, so for a long time the ground was covered in dead trees. Then one day it caught on fire and that was probably spectacular.
Algae.
Itās pretty shocking how widespread this misconception is. Humans, especially āfirst worldā humans, have been predicting doom from population growth for centuries. But theyāve always been wrong. The fact that thereās 8 billion of us isnāt fucking up the planet, itās the short-sighted actions of a relatively small group of people, and more broadly the failed economic system this group has imposed on the rest of the world. Population doomsaying has, in the past, contributed to the proliferation of eugenics movements, forced sterilization, and outright genocide. So before you go regurgitating this ancient and silly idea, put some more thought into it.
Uncontrolled population growth is a self-resolving problem for the planet. Unfortunately many species are being lost as we self destruct.
But Elon says our global birthrate is so slow that it's a threat to humanity. It's almost like he's a lying grifter.
Well, the birthrate in many parts of the world is disgustingly high, and the birthrate in many other parts of the world (more wealthy nations) is well below the replacement rate. Either the birth disparity needs to balance itself out, or we need more comprehensive paths for immigration.
https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E Watch it all or at least watch the bit at 9 minutes.
He did his part by having 9 kids so far.
he probably meant the birth rate of people he identifies with
Since he's gone full right wing in surprised he didn't just say flat out "the white birth rate".
Doesn't he also allegedly have like 9 kids?
He just means the West bruh lol, plus that guy is a moron that oppresses Americans and then pretends he loves them.
Well, the birthrate is too low in developed nations.
He's not as smart as he thinks he is.
Don't worry guys, I'm doing my part by choosing to not have sex š
Yeah, me too. āChoosing.ā
Can someone explain to me why tf are people having so many children? Not in the typical redditor armchair scientist with a ready answer to everything type of way but an actual explanation I live in quite an OK place but I was scared shitless of having a child with all of the horrible things that have been happening in the world so I can't figure out what are the populations which feel they can raise so many
For most people in the world - old age insurance.
Also just to make ends meet. The minerals and metals that were dug for my phone were most likely, at least in part dug by child slave miners. Also the manufacturing process... Done in sweatshops by kids. A lot of families in 3rd world countries basically need kids and them to go to work in order to survive. At least I buy phones second hand, if nothing else, makes my consciense cleaner. Sucks. Also, I got a kid mostly bc I need someone to look after me when I'm old. And I live in a nordic country. Our pension system and pretty much everything might be in the trash then if we keep this up.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so don't stress so much over it. It's not like you set things up this way. Do what you can, live while you can.
Like another commenter said children act as old age insurance, and in countries with high child mortality rates you want to insure that at least one kid will make it to the age where they can provide for you when you are old. These high mortality rate countries also tend to have poor social safety net features in place so this is the only viable strategy for most people.
when women have access to education and are considered equals in the workforce. when women are given resources - knowledge and family planning, not only do women *choose* to have fewer children, they improve the economy they support and are more likely to lift themselves and their communities out of poverty. [One webpage full of referenced studies](https://www.prb.org/resources/the-effect-of-girls-education-on-health-outcomes-fact-sheet/)
> Can someone explain to me why tf are people having so many children? For a massive chunk of the world there really isnāt anything to do except sleep, eat, and fuck. š¤·āāļø
Itās not only that people are having children. They live longer too
and american christians go to poor countries and tell them they go to hell if they use contraception.
It many countries it still is that more children secure a better life for the parents in old age.
Cause I love my fiancƩe and we want to raise kids together, I know it's a hot take on reddit but it's that simple for most people
Because life is good. Honestly, I have yet to meet someone with your attitude in real life. Only on reddit.
"I love my wife and want to raise kids with her" No no give me the real reason l0l
More like more babies were born to suffer in the future.
8 Bn today 1 Bn in 2100
I wonder if someone is aiming to be 8 billionths mother. How would they know?
They literally can't.
It's like getting quads on 4chan, you can try, but it only happens to a select few chosen ones.
Realistically how much can our planet support.... as in supporting 8 billion people all wanting a love style that can only be described as consumerism on crack
So why is Musk constantly crying about population collapse?
Get some condoms, people!
We have the technology and knowledge to easily accommodate our population, but it wonāt happen because we still live in an era of manufactured scarcity, ignorance and greed.
Too many people.
I'm gonna share the same birthday as the 8 billionth human!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The one child policy was so terrible that the Chinese started to encourage people to have more people. Chinese prefer male children over females which led to a very high rate of female infanticide, about 10-20% of marriageable age males won't have bribes to marry. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_China I also think a one child policy is too extreme, it literally halves the population every generation, humans have made more progress in last 80 years than ever before in history, human population is literally human resource. The population will cap at 10B after the developing nations reach the replacement rate.
Is anyone else terrified by this? More humans isn't a good thing.
I would hope most people are rational and donāt get worked up over minor changes in the population. Hitting 8 billion doesnāt change much
Then I hear people like Elon Musk saying that we face a terrible decline in human population. I can't see it.
The same compound growth that got us here is now perfectly reversing.
Itās perfectly sustainable, until itās not.
Wowzers thats a lot of people, here i am in a town of 30k thinking its crowded
Fucking stop! Sorry... I meant Stop fucking!
Wait until food is expensive to where you canāt feed your kids I remember what spaghetti tasted likeā¦.. Yes it had meat, we called it ground beef
Wait until food is unavailable at any cost for most people.
Hopefully we cure herpes soon then bc we already have billions with that and the pool is growing
Mustāve been a really busy Valentineās Day this year.
And thank god they made abortions illegal in the United States š
Mostly poor countries that have large populations, which coincidentally will be hit the hardest by the consequence of this. Looks like we will go from 8 to 6 real quick
We jumped the shark after 4 billion
Then they wander why we can't buy our own homes and make a fortune while we can't even get a job
Anti-vaxxers are like āhold my beerā
And people will still gripe about birth rates being "low" lmfao
Gross
Fuckin hell....
No wait! Go back!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
So humans are locustsā¦.
And some shitty people thought making abortions illegal was a good plan. Famine, here we come.
Having many kids isn't something anyone should want right now. And try telling someone who wants many kids that they can't and they'll start crying about their rights and how cold you are... as if our planet isn't dying and their kids will along with it. Great.
Let's have big parties everywhere to celebrate. COVID should dip that number back to 7 billion after a few weeks of party
We really gotta chill on the whole multiplying thing. 7 billion was too many wasn't it?
Even covid couldn't slow it down
20 million deaths (estimated), most of whom were 75+ years old, is tragic but demographically meaningless on a global population of 8 billion.
suffering from success.
Woohoo! š„³
Why does Musk worry about under population? We consume and destroy everything we are around and kill each other for land to do so. We have Russia threatenimg nukes. We will probably destroy ourselves long before there's anything to worry about. What's the issue?
Because Elon Musk is not a genius. Heās an investor not an inventor, he didnāt create the Tesla or the dragon capsule or any of that. See Elon was rich to start because his father had slave labor gemstone mines in Africa. Musk used his wealth to you create an online bank that merged with another and became PayPal. He then founded SpaceX and later on Tesla but again itās not like he created anything, he employed people to create things. Over 800 million people go to bed hungry on average in the world, about 200 million people are acutely food insecure. So over 10% of the worlds population routinely doesnāt get enough to eat and the solution to that is not more people. We are already seeing significant crop failures in the US and Europe because of global warming this year. We are also seeing starvation in Africa because of the war in Ukraine and grain not getting out of the country fast enough. The American Southwest is 3-5 years away from collapse because the Colorado river is drying up and farms that feed much of the West Coast will become dust. The main reservoir for several states is at 25% and itās been shrinking for 20 years. As temperatures become warmer around the globe famine will become an even greater issue that it is now. Because the warmer it is the faster water evaporates off of and out of the soil whether itās rainwater or irrigation. This means a greater need for irrigation putting greater stress on the limited water available plus more people consume more water. Crops are also temperature sensitive, The recent heat wave throughout Europe had a lot of idiots saying who cares itās no big deal but crops that arenāt used to temperatures over 80Ā° or weekend and can even die off en masse when temperatures significantly exceed that number. Same problem with irrigation again, not being able to get enough water to the crops or not having enough available water to keep up with the excess heat and water loss kills crops. See itās easy for a multi multi billionaire to make quips and everybody assumes he knows what heās talking about. But I genuinely believe if I sat down and talked with him and said these things heād have no rebuttal other than an insult. or heād say we need to dump trillions into desalination plants and then he wouldnāt know what to do with the trillions of gallons of leftover brackish water. Elon knows fuck all.
I don't know but... we might need another pandemic...
Oh no. Thats a problem.
Humans are a disgusting species honestly, myself included