Global overpopulation

[Otern]

How come no one's really talking about overpopulation anymore? We're soon having 8 billion people in the World, while India and China keeps getting a larger middle class, demanding even more consumption and energy use.

90% of the World's energy comes from fossil fuels, and 75% of its electricity production comes from fossil fuels. It's pretty much impossible to replace all of that with renewable sources, and it's even more difficult as the global population both increase, and consume even more.

Negative birth rates in the west are negated by mass immigration, because we keep pushing for a growth economy, while at the same time, birth rates in poor countries are still positive. UN projections are overly optimistic, saying the population will stabilize, then lower, while ignoring that every country absolutely refuse to take a short term economical hit by accepting lower birth rates, and instead keep increasing their population through immigration.

The World lose more and more of its agricultural land through over exploitation and aquifer depletion, while at the same time pushing for using the remaining agricultural land for renewable biofuel production. Renewable energy is proclaimed as the solution to all of this, but it's impossible for renewable energy to supply a population of over 4 billion with a living standard keeping the population growth neutral.

[StCapps]

Overpopulation is not a problem, even in countries with high birth rates currently, they are dropping fast, and once immigrants from these countries move to low birth rate nations, their numbers drop of even quicker than they will in their home countries, and the number of kids second and third generation families have is basically average for the nation.

As the world gets wealthier, the birth rate declines. At this point underpopulation is more of a problem. Moral of the story, the coming of demographic doomsday was greatly exaggerated.

[Otern]

Overpopulation is not a problem, even in countries with high birth rates currently, they are dropping fast, and once immigrants from these countries move to low birth rate nations, their numbers drop of even quicker than they will in their home countries, and the number of kids second and third generation families have is basically average for the nation.

As the world gets wealthier, the birth rate declines. At this point underpopulation is more of a problem. Moral of the story, the coming of demographic doomsday was greatly exaggerated.

It's already starting to become a problem in lots of areas. There's a reason why most migrants to Europe come from western Africa. Pakistan and India are ramping up because of water shortages, caused by overpopulation.

Birth rates are dropping, sure. But the positive effect from birth rate drops are far smaller than the negative effects of the wealth required to drop the birth rates to a sustainable level. We're already overpopulated, but the effects haven't hit home yet.

And no, we're not going to see starvation in the West anytime soon. But there's every reason to believe it will hit Congo and Nigeria hard next year. Their populations are still rising, while their food production have stagnated, while natural disasters all over the world is projected to cause a rise in wheat prices globally. A rise in food prices was what triggered the Arab spring, but this time it's much, much worse.

[StCapps]

Overpopulation is not a problem, even in countries with high birth rates currently, they are dropping fast, and once immigrants from these countries move to low birth rate nations, their numbers drop of even quicker than they will in their home countries, and the number of kids second and third generation families have is basically average for the nation.

As the world gets wealthier, the birth rate declines. At this point underpopulation is more of a problem. Moral of the story, the coming of demographic doomsday was greatly exaggerated.

It's already starting to become a problem in lots of areas. There's a reason why most migrants to Europe come from western Africa. Pakistan and India are ramping up because of water shortages, caused by overpopulation.

Birth rates are dropping, sure. But the positive effect from birth rate drops are far smaller than the negative effects of the wealth required to drop the birth rates to a sustainable level. We're already overpopulated, but the effects haven't hit home yet.

And no, we're not going to see starvation in the West anytime soon. But there's every reason to believe it will hit Congo and Nigeria hard next year. Their populations are still rising, while their food production have stagnated, while natural disasters all over the world is projected to cause a rise in wheat prices globally. A rise in food prices was what triggered the Arab spring, but this time it's much, much worse.

Even Nigeria and Congo's birth rates are falling fast enough for overpopulation to not be that big of an issue in a few decades, emigration and falling birth rates ftw.

Will there be short term issues, sure, but long term, it's not really much of a problem at all. Long term, global under population is more of an issue than global overpopulation.

[Speaker to Animals]

There was never a population boom. We just developed drugs and surgeries that drastically reduced the death rate, and then we exported those technologies to the entire world.

There was just more old people. In fact, the actual birth rates have plummeted. We have the opposite problem of overpopulation.

[Speaker to Animals]

I think the overpopulation myth was perpetrated on whites by globalists in order to rationalize the impact of mass migration from the nonwhite world. Cities are getting crowded because we keep importing assholes from the third world. If we did not do that, we'd be in a population decline like Japan. So to balance that out, they act like we *need* these immigrants for the economy. Then when people take note that we haven't enough jobs, they talk about how automation makes a lot of jobs irrelevant, so we need a bigger welfare state.

But without the immigration, the automation combined with falling birth rate worked out perfectly..

[Zlaxer]

Overpopulation is not a problem, even in countries with high birth rates currently, they are dropping fast, and once immigrants from these countries move to low birth rate nations, their numbers drop of even quicker than they will in their home countries, and the number of kids second and third generation families have is basically average for the nation.

As the world gets wealthier, the birth rate declines. At this point underpopulation is more of a problem. Moral of the story, the coming of demographic doomsday was greatly exaggerated.

It's already starting to become a problem in lots of areas. There's a reason why most migrants to Europe come from western Africa. Pakistan and India are ramping up because of water shortages, caused by overpopulation.

Birth rates are dropping, sure. But the positive effect from birth rate drops are far smaller than the negative effects of the wealth required to drop the birth rates to a sustainable level. We're already overpopulated, but the effects haven't hit home yet.

And no, we're not going to see starvation in the West anytime soon. But there's every reason to believe it will hit Congo and Nigeria hard next year. Their populations are still rising, while their food production have stagnated, while natural disasters all over the world is projected to cause a rise in wheat prices globally. A rise in food prices was what triggered the Arab spring, but this time it's much, much worse.

Did you not watch the video by the Swedish (now dead - unfortunately) dude? We're headed for a much lower population over the next 100 years...

Third world culture is slowly changing from pumping out babies (expecting 7-10 to die) to 3-4 kids...soon it will be 1-2 kids....

1-2 kids means population goes down.

[Hastur]

[Otern]

Did you not watch the video by the Swedish (now dead - unfortunately) dude? We're headed for a much lower population over the next 100 years...

Third world culture is slowly changing from pumping out babies (expecting 7-10 to die) to 3-4 kids...soon it will be 1-2 kids....

1-2 kids means population goes down.

Of course I have, but the guy is not getting the whole picture. Yes, the third world will get less children, as they're getting out of poverty. And yes, the population growth is starting to flatten out, and will reach its top in not too many years.

But the average consumption per human will need to go up for this to happen. And it's simply not possible to do so at a sustainable level. There's no way renewable energy can replace the fossil fuel consumption of 8 billion people, with the average wealth we have now. And for the population growth to stabilize, the average wealth of the people globally would have to rise a lot, making it even harder to replace fossil fuels with renewables.

The world could probably carry over 10 billion people, if a stable population is given. We have the resources to keep 10 billion people alive, but not to keep them prosperous enough to reach stability.

This is what Hans Rosling ignores. He's looking at the population projections isolated from resource projections. Depletion of farmland, mining, aquifers, oil, gas and coal will be a real problem, as the exploitation of these resources above its replenishment rate will lead to shortages. Norman Borlaug's green revolution wouldn't be possible without these non-renewable resources, and at some point, the consequences of transitioning to renewables will require far less people on the Earth than we have now.

[StCapps]

Did you not watch the video by the Swedish (now dead - unfortunately) dude? We're headed for a much lower population over the next 100 years...

Third world culture is slowly changing from pumping out babies (expecting 7-10 to die) to 3-4 kids...soon it will be 1-2 kids....

1-2 kids means population goes down.

Of course I have, but the guy is not getting the whole picture. Yes, the third world will get less children, as they're getting out of poverty. And yes, the population growth is starting to flatten out, and will reach its top in not too many years.

But the average consumption per human will need to go up for this to happen. And it's simply not possible to do so at a sustainable level. There's no way renewable energy can replace the fossil fuel consumption of 8 billion people, with the average wealth we have now. And for the population growth to stabilize, the average wealth of the people globally would have to rise a lot, making it even harder to replace fossil fuels with renewables.

The world could probably carry over 10 billion people, if a stable population is given. We have the resources to keep 10 billion people alive, but not to keep them prosperous enough to reach stability.

This is what Hans Rosling ignores. He's looking at the population projections isolated from resource projections. Depletion of farmland, mining, aquifers, oil, gas and coal will be a real problem, as the exploitation of these resources above its replenishment rate will lead to shortages. Norman Borlaug's green revolution wouldn't be possible without these non-renewable resources, and at some point, the consequences of transitioning to renewables will require far less people on the Earth than we have now.

You don't have to replace fossil fuels, you get better at finding them and extracting them with improved technology, which boosts the reserves because you can now extract fossil fuels you couldn't before or didn't know they were there, they ain't running out.

You are ignoring technological growth to create a picture of unsustainablilty that is will not come to pass anytime soon. Just because the resources are finite doesn't mean they are going run out any time soon.

They said we would hit peak oil by the year 2000 back in 70's and 80's, based off the current rate of consumption at the time and the stated reserves at the time, yet we are nowhere near peak oil even as we speak. Technological growth makes a massive difference, and claims of running out of fossil fuels have been greatly exaggerated by people who don't know what they are talking about.

You're Malthusian Doomsday analysis never takes into account the growth of technology, and neither did Malthus when he predicted mass starvation due to overpopulation based on current rates of consumption and available resources at the time, this is why his predictions were so off, and why your predictions are so off.

From the dawn of time people have been claiming the Earth was overpopulated, and they were as wrong back then as you are now. Malthusian SIFCLF's, always crowing about the sky falling due to overpopulation, they never learn from constantly being proven wrong again and again. They simply claim their previous estimate was off due to "unforeseen" factors, but it's right around the corner this time, there are no "unforeseen" factors now, you'll see. Give it a rest already.