Really? Ya think so? cite.
No, I don’t think so.
Plain and simple, at some point the ability to feed the population peaks, after which point you can’t add people more than briefly. They project a huge population growth in Africa, which I think is unlikely due to war, disease, and most importantly lack of expanding agricultural capacity. Their fertility rate is higher in part because their mortality rate is higher and there’s a biological urge to replace the losses.
If some of Africa’s major problems are resolved their population will level off, just like in Asia, Europe, and North America. If they aren’t, there will be episodes that kill off massive numbers of people.
Well, don’t blame me. I haven’t had any kids at all.
And, yeah, while not claiming to be an expert on the subject, I have the impression we have always been on the verge of overstretching our agricultural and water resources, even with the the improvements of the past hundred years or so.
Not a problem. The world can easily support 11-billion. That’s only a 50% increase over the present population, which has just doubled in the much less than the last century.
Feeding 11-billion is no problem. In western countries, it is reliably estimated that close to half of all food that is produced is never eaten, being wasted somewhere between sloppy harvest techniques to being scraped off plates by a dishwasher to simply throwing away groceries that are not pretty. The world’s agriculture is probably producing enough food right now for 11-billion people, and technical efficiency can, if it ever needs to, find a way to distribute that nutrition to whomever needs it.
Furthermore, by the end of the century, the population will stop growing, as increased economic security will minimize or eliminate the perception that large families represent security. This has happened in every country that attains industrialization.
The population of the USA has more than doubled in my lifetime, and I do not perceive this as apocalyptic. It could easily double again, without feeling crowded.
Fertility rates tend to drop to replacement levels or lower with more income, education and healthcare. When will Africa achieve it? At current trends Africa will be 4 billion people in 2100 while the rest of the world’s population is stable or has minor changes.
That’s the United States, one of the wealthiest and most educated nations in history.
They’re projecting a four-fold increase of population in Africa, which has large regions of dire poverty and poor education. No one has optimized crops and agricultural treatments for Africa the way they have for the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Regions of Africa already are suffering widespread malnutrition and lack of food.
Context is important.
Parts of Africa are doing alright and could sustain a larger population… but it’s not even half the continent.
True, not to mention we have too many people already today. The heartland of the U.S. isn’t overcrowded yet but much of the habitable world already is. A sustainable world population is about 2 - 3 billion people, not 7 billion like we have this second and certainly not a 50% increase in that number over the next 75 - 100 years. Just look around if you think the world will do fine with 11 billion people. Most of the problems we have now are a direct or indirect result of today’s overpopulation. I am not saying that we can’t or won’t spike up to 11 billion people for a short period. It could happen but it isn’t sustainable in the long-term and there is also nothing desirable about it. At some point, Mother Nature or mankind itself is going to play a trump card and instantly slap billions of people off the planet to make it sustainable again. That isn’t optional when resources become too scarce to sustain that many people.
Perzactly, This ↑↑↑ Well said. 
Much of the Green Revolution that has allowed us to dramatically increased crop yields in the last 50 years has been a better ability to find and tap into underground water resources for irrigation. Those resources are not inexhaustible, and in fact we’re rather careless with how fast we’re using them now. You can’t increase farming density in the same way that you can increase the transistor count on a solid state chip. We can’t simply project food production growth as if it were Moore’s law. We’re using finite resources to prop up our current production, and once those are tapped, we’re going to have a hard time feeding the current world population cheaply, let alone 50% more.
But the specific case of Africa has no relevance to the overall population of the world rising to 11-billion. The rest of the world will be fine. Africa will also be able, in the next century, to ameliorate the effects of a population increase, through modernized agriculture, effective processing of food for longer shwlf life, better transport for food distribution, etc. If it doesn’t, there will be a massive die-off from starvation, and then the world population won’t reach 11-billion, will it?
Starvation and malnutrition in Africa are not yet anywhere near critical on any widespread scale. There are periodic localized droughts or crop failures, and the problems of refugee resettlement, but generally, Africa today is a continent where a huge majority of the people are getting along OK, probably better than they ever did in the last century.
You are ignoring the fact that we are overpopulated today. It astounds me that the same people that express concerns over water usage/energy/fossil fuel depletion/species extinction/Global Climate Change/deforestation/pandemics and everything else cannot see this. Technology is a wonderful thing but it can’t fix everything. You are still dealing with finite resources combined with a really short amount of time.This is certainly not the time to express the sentiment ‘the more, the merrier’ because it isn’t true.
Some people have a really hard time with math. Let’s convert these predictions into other terms. 11 billion people by 2100 is 4 billion more than we have today. A 50% increase may not sound like a lot until we express it in other ways.
That is an increase of over three Chinas compared to what we have today in less than 100 years (and, as I pointed out, we are already greatly overpopulated as demonstrated by the Earth itself starting to just give up). Looking at all the challenges facing mankind right now, does that honestly seem like a concern that can be shrugged off as the start of a promising trend?
I’m glad to see responses more intelligent than the usual: Heard about overpopulation; got the T-shirt; they were wrong.
Here are excerpts from Stranger On A Train’s post estimating sustainable human population:
No, I am ignoring** your opinion** that we are overpopulated today, which has no empirical basis… Define “overpopulated”.
I know that our current lifestyle on this planet requires treating finite resources like they are infinite and causing pollution that will cause a lot of damage down the road. However I don’t know to what degree famine will be a problem. A good deal of land on earth that could be farmed isn’t, and a good deal that is farmed is farmed poorly and inefficiently. Plus a good deal of the crops we grow are either low in macronutrients or they are used inefficiently (for industrial purposes, or to feed livestock rather than feeding people). If we need to we can expand farmland, expand farm productivity overseas, focus on high macronutrient crops and avoid misusing them (as animal feed, ethanol, industrial purposes, etc).
Plus in theory in vitro meats and hydroponic crops will reduce the % of resources necessary to grow food. Although usually hydroponics are used for fruits and vegetables, not staple crops.
Back to the OP though, a big problem is that dysfunctional people and nations are the ones growing in population. Most developed and upper middle income countries are going to see a population decline this century as most have TFRs below 2.1. It is only the countries that can’t develop basic health infrastructure, or a decent education system, or enough economic growth to reach 5k per capita income that will see their population explode. Nigeria alone will be almost a billion people by 2100 according to this projection.
Here are three basic facts that represent the reality.
- Today, the world has a population of 325 per sq/km of arable land. With 11-billion, that will be 500.
- China has double that, 950, right now.
- China’s population is now sustainably fed and China is a net exporter of food.
That means that if the whole world used its arable land as efficiently as China does today, it could grow enough food on existing arable land to sustain a population of 20-billion.
There are problems with resource depletion to keep farmland productivity up. We need fossil fuels, phosphorus, quality topsoil, potable water, etc. to farm at high yields and all of those resources are running low in various ways and on various timelines.
China probably has lower quality farmland since it is heavily based on manual labor and peasants. One of the links I posted earlier says if all cropland on earth that is currently being used was used to grow corn at US levels of productivity, and all the corn went to feeding people (not to ethanol, livestock, industrial uses, etc) then we could theoretically feed about 77 billion people.
But those problems are easily neutralized by improved capacity to process food for longer shelf life and the inexpensive capacity to transport food great distances to global markets. We have not yet begun to tap wind or solar power as an energy source for agriculture, nor desalination for irrigation water, which does not have to be potable.
However, it is probably true that shortage of fresh water is a much greater threat than nutrition to future global populations, even the 7-billion level we have now. The same goes for pollution of the seas, global warming, oligarchic apocalypse, and a number of other factors, which remain threats regardless of any population increase which is irrelevant to the frightening prospects.
This is like arguing that if a weightlifter can clean and jerk 200 kg once, he can do so twenty times. That China, India, Pakistan, et cetera can support population growth over a certain period does not mean that it can be sustained indefinitely, especially when such growth is predicated on using finite mineral and water resources.
Stranger