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submitted 7 months ago by boem@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world
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[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 14 points 7 months ago

The problem is the word “significant”

We can all agree the population can’t continue to grow. We can also agree it probably needs to shrink, especially by the time this starts making a difference.

However, if it shrinks too rapidly, there’s a lot of potential disruption of society and economy. If it continues to shrink, it could be a serious problem for all of humanity.

We should make changes now to encourage more people to have kids. The goal should be a slow, controlled decrease, to level off, without major disruption

Personally, I like 6B as a good place to plateau. We’re probably already beyond the planet’s carrying capacity so need to be less than today. However a lot of the advancements in society (technology, space, medicine, science, innovation) really require a fairly large population. Establishing a number ought to be someone’s thesis, but in the meantime: 6B

[-] 00x0xx@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago

sonally, I like 6B as a good place to plateau. We’re probably already beyond the planet’s carrying capacity so nee

With the current food growing technologies, we can handle 10 billion comfortable well. We will obviously not reach that number anytime soon. But we are on track to shrinking rapidly in many nations. That will destroy these nations.

[-] 31337@sh.itjust.works 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I doubt that. Current conventional food production is highly fossil fuel dependant (everything from fertilizer to processing to transport). Earth's ariable land and top soil is decreasing quickly. Ecosystems are collapsing from the effects of agriculture and climate change. Most "advances" require more inputs and energy, which means more fossil fuel use, further accelerating resource degredation and climate change. I forget the statistic, but humans already control a significant proportion of Earth's biomass. This chart from https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/17788/how-much-of-earths-biomass-is-affected-by-humans/ might be what I was thinking of:

[-] 00x0xx@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

About 30-40% of food is wasted in the US, in India its 22%, in China 27%. These are the largest nations in the world. The reality is that we can build more efficient infrastructures that can drastically cut down on this. But we don't need to yet, because it's not cost efficient. That's how much 'free' resources we have produced based on current technologies.

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this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
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