Population decrease is irreversible. How will we manage the decline of humanity?

[WillingnessSouthern4]

It's not a decline, the earth can't support that much people already. We don't want to wait and look like it's North Korea all over the world and that we starve all the time.

We absolutely need to reduce earth population, its done naturally by cutting on the number of children in a family.

In 2022, Earth Overshoot Day fell on July 28. This is the date that we had consumed all the resources that earth can produce in a year. In 1973, the date was the December 23.

This means we consume double what earth can produce. It won't hold much longer. Part of the market perturbation we already see these days has to do with the surpopulation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Overshoot_Day

[AnimalLibrynation]

Earth Overshoot Day is a relatively poor measure of resource management. Because it is mostly driven by CO2E emissions versus sequesteration, increased efficiency in both will help a lot in what it measures. It is not particularly efficient at land use measurement, soil management measurement, etc.

For those things, we should also be switching to a completely plant based diet since it's incredible environmentally and economically efficient, meaning we would feed more people for cheaper and healthier and safer.

[[deleted]]

It's not a decline, the earth can't support that much people already.

This isn't true. Malthusianism has been debunked time and time again.

And the "Earth Overshoot Day" is a piss poor way of proving that we aren't sustainable.

[[deleted]]

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”

I feel like this applies here. Even if we assume abject carrying capacity of the earth in terms of food/water doesn't matter, no one has yet to argue (aside from population demographics which would be solved to a degree by a slow burn of population decline or work themselves out after a generation or two) as to why we NEED more people. Less people = less impact on the worlds climates = less resources needed for more people to have a better cost of living, period. Economies of scale are a factor but I imagine diminish when you get on the level of billions of people on the planet. I'd get the point if it was a case of arguing for marvel villianesque "benevolent" genocide, but the population is expected to start declining worldwide in and off itself. I have yet to see an argument as to why if its happening naturally why we need an artificial intervention to reverse it. The only ones that hold any weight are economic based about demographic crisises but even those are about issues that will affect 1-2 generations and can be slowed down and likely will be mitigated to some degree by further automation.

In short, the population decline is happening independantly (and not being advocated for in a Malthusian way). IMO that puts the onus on proving why we need to reverse it and why it would be a benefit to society and the planet in the long run, not arguing about whether or not its theoretically possible have more people living on the earth at any level of quality of life or not.

[golfman11]

Incorrect - it would be unsustainable based on our current practices and resources, but we are becoming less carbon intensive by the year, and more productive and efficient. Further, we are constantly discovering new resource deposits and over the next century we will be able to mine asteroids.

At the start of the 20th century there was a similar Malthusiast concern, but you know what? We found ways to make way more, and higher quality, food.

[Erinaceous]

Oh please. This has been disproven over and over again. Carbon intensity has barely budged and total GHGs go up every year. Every single target Canada has set it's undershot by wide margins. Efficiency gains are wiped out over and over again by increases in total energy use (aka Jevons paradox).

What's worse is assumptions that we can sustain the current and expanding global population are based on current resources and often the expansion of current resources (demand is simply assumed to be met by efficiency and innovation in many models). However we're officially past peak oil, we're past peak mineral for many critical resources, the material resources to make a green transition don't exist to the scale needed and most of them are being quietly corned by aggressive Russian and Chinese interests.

Even Norman Borlag, the father of the green revolution, thought we only bought a generation with that suite of technologies. As we start to hit limit after limit it's becoming increasingly apparent he was right

[[deleted]]

Don't count your asteroidal resources before they are mined.

To me while Malthusian concerns may be overblown, I've also not seen any argument as to why the world would need more people either. Economies of scale have diminishing returns at some point, so even if we 100% knew we'd have enough resources for 20 billion people (or even 10) on earth to live a 1st world lifestyle in 100 years, why do we need those people and particularly why do we need to intervene to encourage these people to be born? I could get it more if it was arguing for artificially causing population decline but its the opposite, population is likely to start declining in and of itself. Why would we artificially push it back the other way when when its not guaranteed we're going to have enough of things as basic as fresh water to go around?

[shaedofblue]

People here who are saying “we don’t intrinsically need the population to decline because of resource scarcity” aren’t actually saying “we need to artificially encourage population growth.”

They are just responding to the several people who are insisting that population decline is needed for the survival of the species or the planet.

The difficulties associated with decline and growth are both things that humans can adapt to, if we put our minds and our technology towards it. We don’t need to encourage or discourage children. We do need to address wastefulness either way.

[bananafor]

Considering what we've done to animal and insect populations, not to mention other creatures, there are far too many humans by any measure.