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this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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A falling birth rate is not bad for the planet. But it isn't falling globally.
It IS falling globally. It's also been proven in studies that it will not matter to the current environmental crisis, our consumption habits are what matters.
How does there being less people not matter? If there's more people, there's more people that can consume. It's not the only variable, but it's absolutely relevant.
A billion people will consume more than a million people do.
Because of the time frames. Birth rates take a long time to be reflected in population numbers, on the order of decades to centuries. Climate change however, is something we're facing right now, and we better find a solution to it in the next couple decades or we're fucked. It's not that population numbers don't affect consumption, it's that it doesn't affect our current climate crisis.
But kids consume resources too? It's reflected immediately, even if it might not be the immediate full effect.
The assertion is not that population change does not affect consumption, but that the decline in population is not significant enough to make a difference in the near future, at least compared with other factors
I haven't seen any studies showing the birth rate is actually falling below previously recorded levels globally. I have seen the rate of births have slowed from an annual significant increase in population to an annual lesser increase in population. Still increasing population, but the rate at which we are increasing has slowed.
Yes, that's the definition of a decreasing birth rate. If it continues to decrease (it's happening worldwide, and nobody's figured out how to reverse the trend yet), we hit peak population this century and start declining.
https://archive.ph/YjTq7
This is a very interesting read for anybody who wants to know more about the topic
I think I know how to reverse the trend. Make the world a not shit place, make it so the world isn't literally ending around us, and provide financial security so people feel safe raising children.
That being said, dunno why we would actually want more people until we head to space.
I really wish the article did more to support it's position that a declining population is bad for human progress towards the back half of this century. Seems like a pretty important pillar of the discussion but it has maybe two throw away sentences with references to papers that are actually unrelated to its claim.
Meh, that didn't bother me. That wasn't the purpose of the article to delve into every implication of the data, and doing so would call into question the motive for posting the factual information it was providing with some of its audience. They kept if fairly objective and left the more subjective questions to the readers.
This statement suggests that we can't do math and can't accurately predict whats going to happen with population increases or decreases. We know how old a human being generally has to be to give birth, and we know how many humans we have of each cohort. Its pretty easy to see that what the population increases or decreases will occur when the younger cohorts come of age.
The number we care about is "replacement rate". A growing replacement rate is: 2.1. This means that each parent will replace themselves with a new child, and then 1 tenth of another. Practically this means 9 out of 10 of two parents have two children and the 10th of 10 parents will have 3 children.
So we just have to look up the replacement rate for each country, and for it to grow from domestic population growth alone.
Countries being discussed in trouble:
Country being discussed doing okay:
So why is the USA okay while China and Russia are in a bad place if everyone is below 2.1? New births aren't the only way to increase a country's population. Immigration also works.
So with immigration the USA is doing fine and dandy, Russia is barely holding on while marching its child bearing age men into the meat grinder of war, and China is having people not have babies all the while thousands of them are leaving the country at the same time.
Just to note, immigration only works as long as there are source countries with high birth rates. Even those countries (many African ones) are seeing declines in their birthrate.
How do you figure that? If a country is a horrible place to be, and even has a replacement rate below 2.1 there a can be emigration far greater from that country with the population going elsewhere. Present day Venezuela is a good example of this.
I meant from a global perspective. A lot of people think falling birth rates in western countries are fine since they can sustain via immigration from countries with high birth rates. They generally don't realise that the birthrate is falling globally, and then it's just a matter of which country gets fucked first.
If you're talking from the perspective of the survival of humanity, sure. However that's far enough out that much larger factors (like climate change related war and famine) are going to threaten human growth long before the global replacement rate is an issue.
Oh yes, I fully agree. As I mentioned in my first comment the birthrate decline isn't going to help us with any of the issues we're currently facing, it's just going to throw a bunch of new issues at us and most people don't even realise that.
I think the distinction between our two perspectives is you are looking globally which blurs the lines and "smooths out" the problem a bit until everyone is experiencing problems, where I'm focusing on nation states. Some of which will be hit much much harder or much faster than other nations. Just a guess on my part, but the difference in countries feeling this could be separated by 3 generations or more. Some are countries experiencing it right now while other countries great grandchildren will be the first to experience it.