The Truth About Human Population Decline
With birth rates falling, the worldwide human population is getting older and smaller.
When I was a kid, a long time ago, we learned that the Earth would one day be over-populated, with all sorts of dire consequences.
This is one of those cases where circumstances change fairly rapidly, but public perception is much slower.
So... yes, there's a coming population problem: not enough people.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
According to traditional thinking, this spells a future of labor shortages, bankrupt social security systems and overall economic collapse. Before you panic about the end of life as we know it, political demographer Jennifer D. Sciubba has a thoughtful playbook for managing the new normal – including ideas on the future of work and migration – and a reminder that a resilient future relies on present-day action.
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Personally, I doubt there would be any problem at all, if wealth were equitably distributed.
Since this happens all the time in your comments, I am going to interject.
When you hit Enter on a line that is a quote, the quote continues on the next line. Thus what you write appears like a quote. Just click the quote button (far left) on the toolbar and it will unquote the line you just typed.
No.
What does that mean to you?
good luck with that ...
There are still far too many folk on the planet.
Anthropogenic CO2 and methane levels are way too high.
We're way past the point of no return.
If true, this is a problem that is self-correcting. The problem is overpopulation. The growth of AI-based technology complements a reduction in the population.
Fewer people immediately works in favor of mitigating climate change.
Going from 8+ billion down to 4+ billion, for example, through natural attrition seems like a good thing to me.
What kind of natural attrition do you think causes that kind of loss?
Per the video, people are having fewer babies. Why is a multi-faceted answer. Part of it is the reduction in the philosophy that couples should have many babies. Part is the availability of contraceptives. Part is the cost of raising a family (dissuades forward thinking people). Part, it seems, is that younger people are not as interested in raising families (for whatever reason) in comparison to their ancestors.
Frankly I find this to be surprising. Having not researched this (yet) I am just taking the speaker at her word.
I was aware of the drop in natality in tje developed world, but not of the looming drop even in Africa.
We're way past any correction. If we completely stopped polluting now it would take 50 years to get us down to a non-lethal level.
Decades of Koch AGW denial fascism have doomed this planet.
I think in terms of what we can do because thinking we are doomed (i.e. no point doing anything) will not accomplish anything.
Show us your math.
2+2=5?
depopulation is a much bigger problem than over population. The economic consequences will be disastrous.
Depopulation works well with technology. The point where I agree with you is in areas that require massive amounts of human labor that cannot be realistically automated.
A lot of this boils down to timing. If the rate of technology is near the rate of depopulation this could wind up being much better than having massive unemployment due to a lack of decent jobs.
Realistically, it is best for population to decrease in developed nations with the less-developed nations lagging behind in this regard.
Gee, Jennifer Sciubba has created a narrative based upon one graph. She actually didn't say anything meaningful. TED has devolved to infotainment and propaganda.
What did everyone think would happen with greater access to birth control, abortion, and gender confusion? A declining birth rate isn't very informative concerning the rate of pregnancies. The global population certainly hasn't become more prudish; there's sex everywhere today. A declining birth rate is a direct result of scientific progress and social engineering. How could the great progressive thinkers have missed the inevitable consequences? This is what we wanted, worked for, and apparently have achieved. Too late to complain about the consequences now.
Scuibba seemingly attempts to exploit and, possibly, revive a neoliberal worldview that is becoming irrelevant. The tried-and-true factually correct misinformation utilized by activists just doesn't have the same impact today. People have either become more savvy to this type of exploitation or they really don't care anymore. Everyone needs to understand that the neoliberal worldview depends upon inflationary exploitation of a growing human population. The neoliberal worldview is why the rich must inevitably get richer. Neoliberal social prescriptions simply cannot work with a declining population size. Social security isn't in trouble because of age demographics; inflation has destroyed the value of money accumulated to address that problem. The Boomers really did save for the future but the neoliberals sucked all the value out of those savings. And the great progressive thinkers were oblivious to those consequences, too.
We are witnessing the fruition of progressive planning and social engineering that began in the 1960s. And the world allowed neoliberals to exploit that progressive optimism with the promise of prosperity without consequences. But there isn't a free lunch.
Overpopulation is the biggest problem we have and it makes all other problems worse. I have been saying that for a long time here. .
Quality not quantity.
just let me know, I've got a few suggestions on culling the herds...
They wouldn't like your or my ideas, although they may overlap
The Repubs tried to test this theory and wound up calling it The Test ta Cull the herd...They claim they had a ball, and a very happy ending to the test was had by many, especially those that foresaw their own skin in the game. . Helmets with padded leather chin straps were required to participate in the test ta cull the herd. The padded chin straps proved most valuable to absorb the inertia from creating many a black and blue chin up and held high after enough balls had been beaten off that chin , to satisfy a Chinese pseudo phoney bookem Dannoh