[HN Gopher] There are now 8B of us - but soon we'll hit a declin...
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There are now 8B of us - but soon we'll hit a decline we'll never
reverse
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 33 points
Date : 2022-11-12 21:40 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abc.net.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abc.net.au)
| phpisthebest wrote:
| As I get older the number of these long term predictions that
| never come that I have personally live through increases. I never
| believe anyone of them now.
|
| I wonder if that is why there is such resistance to climate
| change among older people...
| version_five wrote:
| People "resist climate change" because most climate change
| rhetoric is transparently trying to get them to vote a
| different way or buy some different thing. If it was stated
| just in terms of a causal relationship, like rising CO2 raises
| global temperature, fewer people would object.
|
| Put another way, one group conflates the fact of CO2 increases
| + greenhouse effect with suggested political acrions. Another
| group counters by conflating not agreeing with political
| actions with disputing the underlying physics.
| akudha wrote:
| I don't know about other predictions, but at the end of 2022,
| if someone denies climate change, it is just dumb.
|
| My guess is that these older people probably think they'll be
| gone soon anyway, so why give up air travel, gas guzzling cars
| etc? It is a problem for younger generations to deal with
| jemmyw wrote:
| The original climate change predictions were pretty much on the
| mark even though they weren't complex models.
|
| The problem is usually the media rather than the science.
| Journalists turn everything into sensationalist claims.
| taberiand wrote:
| Do you have examples in particular of those long term
| predictions that haven't eventuated?
| mahkeiro wrote:
| The one I remember for my country was that by year 2000
| (prediction made in 1980s) half of the forest will be gone
| because of acid rain. I remember as a kid magazines with
| illustrations showing large dead forest everywhere. Lack of
| ozone layer was also supposed to kill most of the planet.
| Fortunately when the danger is identified people start to
| act, this make long term predictions very difficult.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| "Never" is a very long time. Is there any reason to think the
| human population won't reach some kind of a steady-state
| eventually?
| jacknobody wrote:
| So who's amazed, anyway. We've seen population growth and decay
| curves and noted that our species has more characteristics in
| common with the short lived species that only go for a few
| million years than it has with the long surviving genus of
| cockroaches for example. We're a species which must die out. We
| must make our peace with that fact, just as we face our personal
| deaths.
| thriftwy wrote:
| In Babylon V the TV series, in the season 4 we casually find out
| that Centauri Prime, the home planet of one of strongest races
| who decide fate of universe, host less actual people than some
| irrelevant humanoid species' home planet (was it 4B vs. 8B?)
|
| There are also some ancient races who are very powerful
| individually but only have a few hundred individuals left
| (sometimes, one).
|
| It seems that individual power tends to rise but overall numbers
| tend to dwindle as a race develops, and quality * quantity would
| eventually peak.
|
| Maybe it's how it works in the real life as well.
| jemmyw wrote:
| Not sure you can draw conclusions from a TV show. I thought the
| point of the Centauri was that they were declining due to
| decadence.
| thriftwy wrote:
| But who isn't decadent these day? The Minbari were quite
| obviously declining too, and the Vorlon were obviously thin
| in numbers.
|
| TV show is what may give food for thoughts.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| > Cities are growing, chewing up arable farmland.
|
| Um, what? City area growth is slow and mostly vertically, and
| effect of farmlands have been minimal, at least compared to other
| factors.
| idlehand wrote:
| Many cities grow by adding more suburban areas. It's a very
| land-intensive way to grow, but popular among families as they
| don't have to live in apartments.
| lionello wrote:
| "We're getting older and older, which means there are fewer
| people able to work to support more people who can't."
|
| Well, if we're getting older and older, isn't that because we're
| getting healthier and healthier? Wouldn't the number of years
| we're "able to work to support more people" increase as well?
| bakuninsbart wrote:
| I'm 30 now and having the first minor issues of my body not
| working as great as before, I can't imagine how it is at 70.
| The simple fact is that almost no full-time career job (except
| for politician apparently) can be fully filled by the average
| 70 year old.
|
| Either the vast majority of our productivity gains will to to
| pensions in the future (as they already do in Europe), or
| retired people will have to live with severe cuts to living
| standards.
| WalterSear wrote:
| Not equally.
| mertd wrote:
| Birthrates are falling too. Meaning less young people to pull
| down the average age.
| thr0wawayf00 wrote:
| > isn't that because we're getting healthier and healthier?
|
| Not necessarily, just look at the obesity epidemic. 40% of
| Americans are now obese. Not overweight, obese. Our society has
| tackled large scale public health issues that used to kill lots
| of people (cholera, polio, etc.) But living longer is no way an
| indicator that we are healthier than we used to be. There's not
| as much out there to kill us when we're young.
|
| 0: https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-
| communities/articles/...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| "Older and older" means the average age.
|
| This is driven more by the number of old/young people rather
| than a small % increase in life expectancy.
|
| Look at a graph of the distribution of people in age groups
| LaserDiscMan wrote:
| I wonder how countries will attempt to deal with declining
| populations. Immigration isn't really a solution, as the
| countries with positive fertility rates (falling fast) are not
| producing enough children to balance the decline. I find the
| geopolitical implications fascinating to think about. If a
| country is declining and cannot tempt migrants, does it perhaps
| become a tax haven? Is it absorbed by a larger country (either
| willingly or by force)? Does it join a union of other countries
| to form the start of a global government?
|
| Economically, could the deflationary pressures of a declining
| population lead to low/negative interest rates and hyper QE?
|
| It's going to be interesting to see.
| idlehand wrote:
| More importantly, the countries with high birth rates do not
| have enough human capital to replace aging Westerners.
|
| Their kids aren't equipped to take the millions of vacant
| Western jobs, because they won't have the necessary education,
| especially when it comes to language.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Sweet, sweet Malthusianism.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism
| XorNot wrote:
| This has nothing to do with the article, which is about the
| natural decline in the number of children per woman, slated to
| fall below replacement levels in the next 100 years.
| Animats wrote:
| Birth rates are already below replacement levels worldwide,
| and well below it in all but Africa. "Peak baby" worldwide
| was in 2013. Japan's population peaked in 2017. Outside of
| Osaka and Tokyo, the country is emptying out. Look to Japan
| first to see how this plays out.
|
| China's population is peaking now. So is the US native-born
| population.[1]
|
| Almost all the population growth worldwide is in sub-Saharan
| Africa. That region may not survive global warming.
|
| [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU00073413
| jefftk wrote:
| Predictions this far out are pretty silly given how much
| technological and change we've had in the past century and how
| much we can see on the horizon. Still, even if you held our
| technological state constant a permanent gradual decline is very
| unlikely given biological and cultural evolution: the children of
| people who have more kids than average will likely do the same,
| undoing the demographic transition.
| skissane wrote:
| The article is only considering the social majority and
| ignoring the existing of minority groups - for example, ultra-
| Orthodox Jews - who appear to be consistently maintaining high
| birth rates and avoiding any demographic transition. While they
| are only a tiny minority in most countries (Israel being the
| exception), if they continue on their current trajectory for a
| few centuries, they (and similar groups) will come to make up
| the majority of the population.
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| It's hard to take any kind of wholesale prediction of population
| calamity seriously after _The Population Bomb_ bombed in the
| early 1970s. But this article claims to be able to predict the
| future of civilization 100 years into the future. Assuming we
| even _make it another 100 years_ , there is no way to know what
| our population will look like then, or whether we could pull
| another technological/logistical food revolution out of our
| asses, or whether global cultures would start to embrace a
| further explosion of population. WW2 resulted in unprecedented
| population growth in the USA. There's no way to know if a similar
| event, here or in other countries, might shake what we _expect_
| growth to be, or why. The biggest mistake we could make is to
| expect consistency.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Assuming we even make it another 100 years, there is no way
| to know what our population will look like then, or whether we
| could not pull another technological/logistical revolution out
| of our asses, or whether global cultures would start to embrace
| a further explosion of population.
|
| It feels like women in pretty much all cultures where women
| achieve financial independence and have control over how many
| children they have, choose to have 0, 1, 2, or rarely 3. Which
| makes sense given the risks and costliness of childbirth for
| them.
|
| So I would guess that any culture that results in population
| explosion would have to either have medical advances that
| address the risks and costs of childbirth, or go backwards on
| women's independence. Or really sweeten the deal in terms of
| financial and other incentives, but I don't how well that would
| fare.
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