We are overloading the planet: Now What?

[bigfield]

Personally, I think we may be limited by resources to less than 2 billion people 200 years from now. If that is the case, then the time to talk about humane voluntary population reduction is now.

People are already engaging in voluntary population reduction and have been doing so for decades. We've already reached "peak child", which means that the world's population will peak this century, in line with the UN projection.

Population Growth

Explore global and country data on population growth, demography, and how this is changing.

ourworldindata.org

Regarding the fact that population is leveling off, welcome to the thread! We have discussed this many times. See, for instance, this post--
https://iidb.org/threads/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what.27921/page-14#post-1154396 -- where I show the UN population projection.

Are you going to use me for a reference?

Now do you care to address the point that you responded to?

We have discussed this many times:

https://iidb.org/threads/too-many-people.27312/

It is pretty clear that I was responding to your point: we don't need to talk about voluntarily population reduction because it's already happening. Turns out that women just tend towards having fewer babies once they are empowered to make that choice.

 

[Bomb#20]

OK, so if the population is 10-12 billion and needs to drop below 2 billion

It doesn't.

Why would it? How would that help anything?

It would reduce the pressure to convert remaining wildlife habitat into farmland, and thus help reduce the rate of loss of endangered species.

Yes, I know you think that will be a long time from now, perhaps many millions of years.

The likely human population in "many millions of years" is zero. Few species survive that long, and there seems little reason to assume humanity to be one of the exceptions.

How do you figure? Species go extinct because all their members are in a confined area that's hit by a local disaster, or because they have some systematic ecological problem they can't solve. Humans are everywhere, and we're the world champs at problem-solving, at least among the multicellular.

I don't think you have any grasp at all on either the massive size of the lithosphere, or the fact that the Earth is effectively a closed system. We literally cannot run out of anything*, as long as we have access to energy.

* Except Helium.

We've already run out of all sorts of things. Wooly mammoths, dodos, passenger pigeons, Tasmanian tigers, Chinese paddlefish, ...

 

[Bomb#20]

OK, so if the population is 10-12 billion and needs to drop below 2 billion, I see two options: 1) Voluntarily reduce births or 2) allow starvation, deprivation, and resource wars to reduce the population. When we come to that choice, which would you prefer? Its not a hard question. Please answer.

Yes, I know you think that will be a long time from now, perhaps many millions of years. But regardless of the time frame, someday it will likely be a choice that needs to be made. Which would you choose? If faced with the choice, would you ignore the question?

Well, if you're serious about considering a million-year time scale, it's not a hard question: (2) allow starvation, deprivation, and resource wars to reduce the population. It's not a choice; it's an inevitability. As Charles G. Darwin* argued, "voluntary birth control (family planning) establishes a selective system that ensures its own failure. The cause is that people with the strongest instinct for wanting children will have the largest families and they will hand on the instinct to their children, while those with weaker instincts will have smaller families and will hand on that instinct to their children. In the long run society will consist mainly of people with the strongest instinct to reproduce." Voluntarily reducing births is just a stopgap that kicks the can down the road.

(* The quantum physicist, not his more famous grandfather.)

 

[Merle]

It is pretty clear that I was responding to your point: we don't need to talk about voluntarily population reduction because it's already happening. Turns out that women just tend towards having fewer babies once they are empowered to make that choice.

Maybe I didn't make my point clear enough. Let's try again.

I think we may well be in a situation where we need to get the population down to 2 billion people in 200 years or less. (https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/).

You point to the UN estimate that predicts population will level off around 10 billion. I think even you will need to agree that leveling off at 10 to 10.5 billion is not the same thing. So please don't pretend they are the same thing.

The first thing to discuss is whether we are indeed in that situation where we need to reduce that rapidly. And that was what the opening post was all about: whether we are in a situation where we need to reduce population to a fraction of the current population, perhaps in a century or two. I present my argument at https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/ .

If we are truly in that situation, I don't know if we can even reduce far enough fast enough. But, if we are in that situation, we should try. We can perhaps do things like aggressively explaining the need to reduce population; making it be cool not to have children; making contraceptives and abortions easier to obtain; doing a better job of helping women get better education and more self-determination; providing better security for countries that have nothing like a social Security System; and making tax incentives.

Regarding the last idea, we could perhaps make parents begin paying most of school expenses beginning with the class of 2050. If we think that would put too much burden on the poor, we could distribute the rest of taxes that would have gone to schools to the poorest people in the community. Then they get the money, regardless of whether they choose to have children. That is one example of an idea we can put on the table..

 

[Merle]

OK, so if the population is 10-12 billion and needs to drop below 2 billion, I see two options: 1) Voluntarily reduce births or 2) allow starvation, deprivation, and resource wars to reduce the population. When we come to that choice, which would you prefer? Its not a hard question. Please answer.

Yes, I know you think that will be a long time from now, perhaps many millions of years. But regardless of the time frame, someday it will likely be a choice that needs to be made. Which would you choose? If faced with the choice, would you ignore the question?

Well, if you're serious about considering a million-year time scale, it's not a hard question: (2) allow starvation, deprivation, and resource wars to reduce the population. It's not a choice; it's an inevitability.

Sadly, you may be right. It could well be that we will continue our struggle to reach the top, with each trying to get the most. In some countries, that may involve trying to have the most wealth and the most toys. In other countries, that may involve trying to have the most children in the hope that this gives them security in old age.

All of this pushes the planet to the limit. And yes, we might all just push the planet as far as it could go and then have a massive fight over what is left, perhaps even ending our species. That might be inevitable.

One wishes that we as informed humans would see this coming, and at least our species would make the effort to stop it.

If it all falls apart in resource wars, as you suggest, then I want my epitaph to say, "At least he tried".

 

[bilby]

As Charles G. Darwin* argued, "voluntary birth control (family planning) establishes a selective system that ensures its own failure. The cause is that people with the strongest instinct for wanting children will have the largest families and they will hand on the instinct to their children, while those with weaker instincts will have smaller families and will hand on that instinct to their children. In the long run society will consist mainly of people with the strongest instinct to reproduce." Voluntarily reducing births is just a stopgap that kicks the can down the road.

(* The quantum physicist, not his more famous grandfather.)

Quantum physicists clearly shouldn't opine about evolution, any more than evolutionary biologists should opine about quantum physics.

This dangerously simplistic "popular science" misconception about how evolution works is flat out wrong; And is particularly popular amongst scientists from fields other than evolutionary biology.

There are no genes for instincts; There are no genes for desired family size; And evolution works at the population level, particularly for social species, so even of such genes did exist, the precicted consequence would not necessarily arise.

The same logic and reasoning used by Darwin above predicts that homosexuality will (very rapidly) cease to exist. But it hasn't, and it won't.

It also predicts that worker ants and worker bees will die out; Eusociality shouldn't be possible under this stripped down evolutionary theory. Yet many insects and even some mammals have evolved this trait.

People who don't have children nevertheless contribute to the success (or otherwise) of their genes in subsequent generations, and consequently participate in the evolution of humanity.

Evolutionary biology is a bit like meteorology; It's the study of a hugely complex and chaotic system, in which predictions are difficult and frequently wrong, but post-facto explanations are surprisingly easy. Ask a meteorologist to predict when the next category four hurricane will hit New Orleans, and he will probably get it wrong. Ask him what caused the last category four cyclone to hit New Orleans, and he can give you a very detailed and specific account.

But he can nevertheless give you a pretty solid answer to the question of whether or not a category four hurricane will hit New Orleans sometime in the next century; The answer is "almost certainly".

 

[bilby]

I think we may well be in a situation where we need to get the population down to 2 billion people in 200 years or less.

Nobody cares what you think. What can you demonstrate?

Lots of people think that we may well be in a situation where the devout will be raptured up to heaven to be with their God within a few years.

We shouldn't let those people dictate policy, either.

 

[bilby]

I want my epitaph to say, "At least he tried".

But it might say "He was distracted by an obsession with an irrelevance, and completely failed to act on things that were actually important".

Pascal's wager is a poor way to reason, even when you are contemplating pseudoreligious belief in an idea like "overpopulation", rather than an explicitly religious belief in an idea like "god".

 

[TSwizzle]

These population control cranks that want to urgently or rapidly reduce the human population always go to great lengths about how they don’t want to enforce anything drastic or authoritarian but their (final) solutions always, always nibble round the edges of forced suicide, mass slaughter or Logan’s Run hair brained nonsense and forced sterilization, particularly for women.

 

[Merle]

We've already reached "peak child", which means that the world's population will peak this century, in line with the UN projection.

Population Growth

Explore global and country data on population growth, demography, and how this is changing.

ourworldindata.org

Here is the chart from your link. I overlayed a red line showing the trend I see in child population since 1985. It looks like it is rising to me. OK, if you just look at 2017 onward, there is a little downturn. How would you extrapolate the curve from here? When I look at this chart, I don't see a clear downward trend.

Yes, 2017 looks like it could be a peak, but there was a time when 1959, 1975, and 1991 all looked like peaks.

So no, this chart alone is not evidence to convince me we are at peak child.

 

[Merle]

I want my epitaph to say, "At least he tried".

But it might say "He was distracted by an obsession with an irrelevance, and completely failed to act on things that were actually important".

Oh, I do hope people are nicer to me than that when my time comes to go.

 

[Merle]

These population control cranks that want to urgently or rapidly reduce the human population always go to great lengths about how they don’t want to enforce anything drastic or authoritarian but their (final) solutions always, always nibble round the edges of forced suicide, mass slaughter or Logan’s Run hair brained nonsense and forced sterilization, particularly for women.

False. There are many in the scientific community that are calling for a population reduction. Have you even read what they say?

Please go by what people actually say, instead of making stuff up.

I give many links to scientists concerned with population at https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/ . Is it too much to ask that you read what they actually say, rather than making stuff up?.

I promise not to lie about you if you promise not to lie about me. Deal?

 

[Elixir]

Please go by what people actually say, instead of making stuff up.

Merle, you probably know this but, it doesn’t matter what they say. It only matters what kind of apocalyptic nastiness will happen if “they” get their way!

Welcome to the SoCal Right Wing Bubble Community, Merle. No science needed, just FOX.

 

[TSwizzle]

These population control cranks that want to urgently or rapidly reduce the human population always go to great lengths about how they don’t want to enforce anything drastic or authoritarian but their (final) solutions always, always nibble round the edges of forced suicide, mass slaughter or Logan’s Run hair brained nonsense and forced sterilization, particularly for women.

False. There are many in the scientific community that are calling for a population reduction. Have you even read what they say?

Please go by what people actually say, instead of making stuff up.

I give many links to scientists concerned with population at https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/ . Is it too much to ask that you read what they actually say, rather than making stuff up?.

I promise not to lie about you if you promise not to lie about me. Deal?

I’ve read enough of your blog to know that you want the human population rapidly and significantly reduced within 20, 30, 40 years or so but that ain’t happening. So you have NO solution but nibble round the edges of eugenics, forced sterilization and suicide or starvation or whatever because that is the ONLY way to reduce the human population in that time frame.

 

[Merle]

These population control cranks that want to urgently or rapidly reduce the human population always go to great lengths about how they don’t want to enforce anything drastic or authoritarian but their (final) solutions always, always nibble round the edges of forced suicide, mass slaughter or Logan’s Run hair brained nonsense and forced sterilization, particularly for women.

False. There are many in the scientific community that are calling for a population reduction. Have you even read what they say?

Please go by what people actually say, instead of making stuff up.

I give many links to scientists concerned with population at https://mindsetfree.blog/we-are-overloading-the-planet-now-what/ . Is it too much to ask that you read what they actually say, rather than making stuff up?.

I promise not to lie about you if you promise not to lie about me. Deal?

I’ve read enough of your blog to know that you want the human population rapidly and significantly reduced within 20, 30, 40 years or so but that ain’t happening.

Really? How would you know that? I certainly don't say that.

Here is the representative curve of what I think we may be up against. And as I emphasize, all this changes if we come up with significantly better technology that we use or if we have a significant reduction in affluence levels. This suggests we may need a reduction in half.

That appears to be possible if we just commit to a voluntary reduction of one less birth per woman during her lifetime.

If we needed to do that, it would be very difficult to achieve, yes, but not impossible.

 

[Merle]

No science needed, just FOX.

LOL, I know some people like that.

 

[TSwizzle]

Really? How would you know that? I certainly don't say that.

Whatever the time frame, you want the human population reduced. Significantly. 50% or more. That is not going to happen without very unpleasant things happening.

Here is the representative curve of what I think we may be up against. And as I emphasize, all this changes if we come up with significantly better technology that we use or if we have a significant reduction in affluence levels. This suggests we may need a reduction in half.

That appears to be possible if we just commit to a voluntary reduction of one less birth per woman during her lifetime.

If we needed to do that, it would be very difficult to achieve, yes, but not impossible.

As DBT said, already happening in the developed world. China even. Japan.

 

[bigfield]

We've already reached "peak child", which means that the world's population will peak this century, in line with the UN projection.

Population Growth

Explore global and country data on population growth, demography, and how this is changing.

ourworldindata.org

Here is the chart from your link. I overlayed a red line showing the trend I see in child population since 1985. It looks like it is rising to me. OK, if you just look at 2017 onward, there is a little downturn. How would you extrapolate the curve from here? When I look at this chart, I don't see a clear downward trend.
View attachment 45209
Yes, 2017 looks like it could be a peak, but there was a time when 1959, 1975, and 1991 all looked like peaks.

So no, this chart alone is not evidence to convince me we are at peak child.

That's a pretty blatant example of cherry picking, no different than climate deniers who use the same tactic to claim there was a "pause" in global warming for 18 years.

Many countries have undergone demographic transition to low birth rates. Fertility has dropped well below replacement (2.1 births per woman) in all developed countries. We should expect the same to happen in other countries as well, for the simple reason that people are all fundamentally the same and will make the same family choices as access to contraception improves.

https://population.un.org/wpp/Publications/Files/WPP2022_Methodology.pdf

 

[bigfield]

I think we may well be in a situation where we need to get the population down to 2 billion people in 200 years or less

Instead of telling me what you think, maybe you can link me to where someone has shown their work.

I've checked your sources and I can't find the author who proposes this ridiculous target.

You point to the UN estimate that predicts population will level off around 10 billion. I think even you will need to agree that leveling off at 10 to 10.5 billion is not the same thing. So please don't pretend they are the same thing.

The population won't level off, it will peak and then immediately go into decline.

The first thing to discuss is whether we are indeed in that situation where we need to reduce that rapidly.

See the old thread from several months ago that you've conveniently forgotten about. The answer is that we don't. We need to change the behaviour of the minority of people and corporations that are doing a disproportionate amount of damage to the environment, and leave most of the billions of people alone.

If we are truly in that situation, I don't know if we can even reduce far enough fast enough. But, if we are in that situation, we should try. We can perhaps do things like aggressively explaining the need to reduce population; making it be cool not to have children; making contraceptives and abortions easier to obtain; doing a better job of helping women get better education and more self-determination; providing better security for countries that have nothing like a social Security System; and making tax incentives.

Once again, this is just stuff that has already been happening for decades.

 

[Bomb#20]

As Charles G. Darwin* argued, "voluntary birth control (family planning) establishes a selective system that ensures its own failure. The cause is that people with the strongest instinct for wanting children will have the largest families and they will hand on the instinct to their children, while those with weaker instincts will have smaller families and will hand on that instinct to their children. In the long run society will consist mainly of people with the strongest instinct to reproduce." Voluntarily reducing births is just a stopgap that kicks the can down the road.

(* The quantum physicist, not his more famous grandfather.)

Quantum physicists clearly shouldn't opine about evolution, any more than evolutionary biologists should opine about quantum physics.

If quantum physicists are insufficiently qualified to opine about evolution, the qualifications of rabbit-bandicoots are surely even more inadequate.

This dangerously simplistic "popular science" misconception about how evolution works is flat out wrong; And is particularly popular amongst scientists from fields other than evolutionary biology.

There are no genes for instincts;

Are you from some planet where the life-forms have immaterial souls whose character are formed by their contracausal free-willed choices and/or impressed into them by the grace of a divine heart-hardener? Of course there are genes for instincts; not only that, the notion that there are any instincts animals don't have genes for is creationism. Go ahead, explain by what embryological pathway you imagine an animal could grow a brain that has an instinct it doesn't have genes for.

There are no genes for desired family size;

That is entirely possible and entirely irrelevant. If in fact there are no genes for desired family size it's because back when we evolved our instincts there was no schooling, no birth control, and no understanding that sex causes babies, so there was no mechanism by which desired family size could influence actual family size. That environmental feature of the selection landscape no longer exists. Today desired family size has a huge influence on actual family size; for a lot of us it's the most important contributor. Assuming voluntarily reducing births remains a thing in our species long term, any mutation that slightly changes the odds of a person wanting to reproduce will be under strong selective pressure. So in the event that you are correct that there are no genes for desired family size right now, well, in a million years there will be.

And evolution works at the population level, particularly for social species,

Evolution works at the gene level, particularly for all species. See Dawkins' The Selfish Gene.

so even of such genes did exist, the precicted consequence would not necessarily arise.

The same logic and reasoning used by Darwin above predicts that homosexuality will (very rapidly) cease to exist.

Nonsense -- there are any number of mechanisms by which maladaptive traits can persist in a population at low levels. Sickle-cell disease isn't going away any time soon. The same logic and reasoning used by Darwin above predicts that if gay people founded a society that started out 90% gay the incidence of heterosexuality would rise; but homosexuality persisting at the 10% level is perfectly compatible with his logic. Likewise, a society where most people refuse to practice voluntary birth control but a minority who do persists indefinitely is also compatible with his logic.

It also predicts that worker ants and worker bees will die out; Eusociality shouldn't be possible under this stripped down evolutionary theory. Yet many insects and even some mammals have evolved this trait.

It's very rare outside the wasp family, which has anomalous sex-determination rules that favor it. And worker non-reproduction isn't voluntary in mole rats; it's enforced. Humans could probably prevent the formation of genes for wanting more kids if we collectively decide to make family planning compulsory. But that's an option (3); it wasn't included in Merle's challenge.

People who don't have children nevertheless contribute to the success (or otherwise) of their genes in subsequent generations, and consequently participate in the evolution of humanity.

And? It's not like having children prevents people from also contributing to the success (or otherwise) of their nieces and nephews. It only takes an epsilon of difference in the contribution to the success of a gene in order for natural selection to have something to push on.

Evolutionary biology is a bit like meteorology; It's the study of a hugely complex and chaotic system, in which predictions are difficult and frequently wrong, but post-facto explanations are surprisingly easy. Ask a meteorologist to predict when the next category four hurricane will hit New Orleans, and he will probably get it wrong. Ask him what caused the last category four cyclone to hit New Orleans, and he can give you a very detailed and specific account.

But he can nevertheless give you a pretty solid answer to the question of whether or not a category four hurricane will hit New Orleans sometime in the next century; The answer is "almost certainly".

True that. And if desired family size continues to have it's recently-acquired influence on reproductive success, will it become an object of selection pressure? The answer is "almost certainly".