I don’t know where to ask this so I decided to ask here. Anyways, do you guys remember how narrative used to be Earth’s overpopulation years ago? Now there are so many news about population decline.
I don’t know where to ask this so I decided to ask here. Anyways, do you guys remember how narrative used to be Earth’s overpopulation years ago? Now there are so many news about population decline.
Comments
Covid and millennials not having babies.
It is a decline in birth rates in more modern counties and increase in birth rates in more impoverished countries. This map shows it well. The world population currently grows by 70 million a year and yes, we’re still overpopulated overall because we haven’t figured out a way to live even remotely sustainably.
The narrative was wrong. The Malthusian overpopulation theory assumed that population growth is constant as long as there is sufficient food. So in his idea the population grows exponentially until there are insufficient resources and we suffer. But, humans are not bacteria on agar plates.
This idea of unchecked population growth was thought to be true in 1798 when the idea was published, due to the Industrial Revolution massively increasing food production and quality of medical care such that many preventable deaths stopped and the populations skyrocketed. It seemed like population was increasing nonstop year after year.
But we know that it is certainly not true in the modern day. Birth rates everywhere are falling and population growth will actually start to go negative within this century. This has been attributed to higher education, less agriculture societies, ease of contraception / abortion etc.
Same place as Global cooling, acid rain, and getting a tan because it was “healthy”. Times change.
Racism decided to go a different direction.
The problem is in the act of resolving itself.
That’s yesterdays doomsday story. Same as being overdue for an ice age. We’ve moved on to newer end of the world stories!
This narrative started changing even before COVID. I remember pre-MAGA Musk advocating against it too.
Earth is still overpopulated, but I think Covid made people realize that the population won’t just continue to grow exponentially. The more densely packed humans live, the more will die in each pandemic.
Dramatic hot takes that sell books or get clicks don’t need to be well thought out or even based in reality.
Rapid population decline IS the other half of rapid population increase. These aren’t different problems, they are the same problem.
The doomsayers transitioned to climate change.
In the 60s there was a top selling book The Population Bomb. I think the writers name was something like Erlicson? The “news” spoke of this book in reverence as it was a manual of the truth, lol.
It’s the demographic shift that happens once a country industrializes/modernizes and much of the population shifts from rural to urban/suburban. It’s well documented in many countries around the world. Birth rates fall below replacement level, and then the only thing propping up a country’s population becomes immigration. It’s particularly bad in places like Japan where they have a very skewed population age distribution. Lots of older people but very few children.
This gun’s video gives a greatexplanation.
The ecological decline is clear.
We are witnessing the extinction of a lot of species due to human pressure.
We are producing anthropogenic climate change.
Conclusion:We are already overpopulated. We consume many more resources than is sustainable.
Population decline is happening in some relatively rich countries, which poses local economic challenges.
Earths overpopulation is still a problem, looking through the frame of the loss of biodiversity and destruction of natural habitat.
You dont hear a lot about it because it makes people uncomfortable, seeing themselves and their family as a problem.
When they cant handle this they will say YoU wAnt gEnocide or something or some strawman related to Malthus.
While policy solutions can also be making contraception very easily available, education and good retirement policy.
Ask Bill Gates
It is a complicated topic. On one hand, things like land use scale roughly linearly with population, so habitat loss, cropland expansion, and certain other aspects of ecological catastrophe are directly related to expansion of population. If there are more people, more resources get used.
On the other hand, narratives about overpopulation tend to focus on overpopulation in the developing world, a demographic that causes far less ecological harm and uses far less resources than developed nations. In a very real sense, (for example) India is not overpopulated but America is—the world can produce enough resources for 8 billion median Indian people, but not 8 billion Americans. In this sense, the overpopulation argument is often used as a means of avoiding hard discussions about resource overuse by wealthy nations
It’s still overpopulated. When there is a big shift like this though of course people are talking about it. It comes with its own long resume of issues but it is still better than having way too many of us
It seems to have taken on an air that it’s inherently dangerous or racist. Here’s why:
Some believe we can reduce consumption to a point that we can reach sustainability if richer people consume much less, more similar to those living in poverty or simpler lives.
Humanity consumes resources at a rate equivalent to 1.7 Earths, meaning we use 70% more resources than what the planet can regenerate. This means we are exceeding Earth’s ability to replenish resources and absorb waste. The wealthiest 20% of the world’s population consume 80% of its resources, while the poorest 20% consume only 1.3%.
I still disagree with this line of thinking. Many many people living in lesser conditions are working hard to live on conditions where they would be able to consume more (hey, we all want some comfort), making the situation inherently not sustainable. There are 8 billion people on the planet… and we meanwhile have seen a 73% average decline in the size of wildlife populations.
I’m not sure what you;re confused about. The huge population of humans on earth causes many problems like pollution and destruction of the natural world, and the earth’s population more than doubled from 3 to 8 billion in less than 100 years.
However that rate of increase has changed and things are beginning to level off, but the 8 billion population is still causing many problems and things are still increasing for now.
You would think that with population decline in many countries their attitudes to immigrants would be more favourable. Not really working out that way.
people aint fuckin nomore
It was a narrative.
If you actually look into it and find the census data, country by country and add it up, the worlds population is lower than what they were harping on and many countries have been in decline for decades.
Access to family planning, health care and education in developed nations changed the curve.
Globally in the 1960s a woman on average had 5.3(!) kids. Now the number is 2.2. The replacement rate is 2.2 due to not all children living to adulthood. It’s expected to decrease further so that the world is no longer hitting that replacement rate target.
So back when we had that 5.3 kids per woman, we were heading towards overpopulation, but as contraception and educational opportunities became available to women the fertility rate has plummeted and now we’re facing a declining population especially in developed countries.
It was a reasonable predicion when it was raised as an issue, but womens access to contraception, education and healthcare has changed the situation and thus the prediction.
You can start by looking at the wikipedia page.
I don’t think we’re overpopulated in the sense that there isn’t enough room or resources to accommodate.
I think we’re overpopulated in the sense that the people here are harming the atmosphere and planet at an alarming rate. Without addressing these issues, more people will exacerbate them.
Just my opinion, though 🤷
narrative means falsehood, which this is not. hoogle away.
Elon Musk is the US president now and he has a breeding kink. That’s it, really.