Only by using non-renewable resources that won’t last forever, or even all that long. We’re overpopulated now. We need to push for a lower population, more reliance on renewable/long lasting resources or both before those non-renewable resources run out and our population gets lowered the hard way.
With population curves already trending to a medium term peak (supposedly the population will peak and begin to slowly trend downwards in the next 50 or so years) and new technologies (as well as new sources for energy) already being explored, why do you think this is inevitable?? I see global warming as more of a potential threat than World Overpopulation™, to be honest, though obviously if GW hits and we are at peak population it will exacerbate the situation. But that’s a factor of GW, not of WO per se, and I think the we are ‘more reliance on renewable/long lasting resources or both before those non-renewable resources run out and our population gets lowered the hard way’ as a stand alone argument is a bit weak. Sure, there are limited resources…there always are limited resources. Yet humans have managed to expand our population AND standards of living across the globe continually, and everything I’ve seen technologically wise supports that trend continuing for the foreseeable future.
Maybe it is that simple. There’s a ton of demographic data out there correlating increased living standards with decreases in population growth rates. Do you have any significant data showing correlations going the other way? I’m not saying correlation is causation, but you just seem to be hand-waving away all the data that we do have. What is your opposing evidence?
There’s some speculation that post-demographic transition societies may eventually see increases in fertility, possibly due to changes in the composition of the population and possibly to increasing prosperity. Russia and Israel have started to see fertility increase after long periods of decline, and the same may be true of some European countries. That being said, these are small increases, going (e.g.) from a little below replacement to a bit above. We aren’t going to see fertility rates of 4 children per woman again in the foreseeable future.
Hm. It actually seems to be more robust than just speculation. At very high levels of development, increased prosperity starts being correlated with fertility again.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7256/fig_tab/nature08230_F1.html
Can you give me some of your favorite examples where scientists have used these tools to accurately predict what actually happens?
In Ehrlich’s time, Population Bomb was well respected by a lot of people, including scientists. Peak oil…Y2K…antibiotic resistance out of control…assorted WW3 predictions…
While it’s probably true someone has “calculated” what the earth will sustain, it’s highly unlikely to be accurate, just like the rest of any predictions we make about the future. We’re much better at predicting what happened today based on the past. But we call that computer modeling… 
Because we are dependent on rapidly depleting non-renewable resources like groundwater left over from the last glacial period. And our population is so large that we are lowering the carrying capacity of the planet in other ways, like desertification & destroying topsoil. And there’s massive resistance to those new technologies.
But we aren’t lowering the carrying capacity of the entire planet…what you are discussing here are more regional issues. Water, for instance, is certainly a scarce commodity in arid and semi-arid regions like the south western US, and we are certainly using up those ancient glacial aquifers, but there will be a sort of Darwinian process here wrt population densities in those regions. Use up all the water and don’t come up with a viable alternative = population migrates somewhere else and cities die. This will be regionally catastrophic, no doubt, but the same thing has happened to large cities in other parts of the country…Detroit for instance. People and jobs will simply move somewhere else, assuming we can’t solve the technical problems of either carting water from places where there is excess or massively refining potable water from, say, the vast oceans.
You are right about adoption of technologies, both old and new as being a hamper, but I think that people will change their minds when it’s adopt technologies like GM or nuclear or go hungry and be cold.
Nope, definitely a pattern, and works pretty much everywhere.
A few factors are at play. One is that farming simply requires access to cheap unskilled labor, and children are a pretty handy way to get that. Even in the modern US, farm work is exempt from child labor laws. Added to that is security in one’s later years. In areas without access to banks, investments and social safety nets, one’s childre are one’s only way to have a chance at getting fed when they are too old or sick to farm. Compounding this is the fact that in poor places, lots of children die young, so you have to have a few “extra” to ensure you don’t end up completely screwed.
On the wealth side, wealthy societies reward education. And education is expensive, which is good motivation to have fewer children and invest more in them.
Huh. That’s interesting. Looks like with that dataset, we don’t get quite back to replacement level at the high prosperity levels. So we’d still see some population decrease if we improved everyone’s lot, but it would be slower than what I was originally envisioning.
Overpopulation is a problem that solves itself.
Kinda funny how people always worry about the poor countries breeding too much. Poor people don’t use much energy. We’d need a couple Earths for everyone to live like Westerners.
Japan isn’t exactly going hungry and cold, but despite the economic disaster of the lost two decades, they are one of the most GMO-unfriendly nations. Maybe, though, they will change their minds.
How do you know we are going to hit it eventually?
Birth control technology could still be a lot easier and side-effect free. And some day it will, further decreasing the birth rate.
What about evolution? Won’t humans evolve, culturally first and then biologically, so that those who are inclined towards heavy birth control use die out? Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe we will be post-carbon long before any such Amish/Hasidic/Duggerite takeover could occur. None of us will ever know, and speculating about what is so obviously unknowable isn’t convincing, especially in light of the long history of failed Malthusian predictions.
In some ways, yes, we are. The heavy reliance on fertilizers, for instance, is increasing the salinity of the soil. It’s something we can’t indefinitely keep on doing the way we’re doing it now.
Your argument presumes that there is somewhere they can migrate to that can support hundreds of millions of more people. And potable water is a limited resource everywhere, and getting scarcer.
You’re also ignoring the problems of topsoil being destroyed, deserts expanding and petrochemical fertilizers going away when the oil runs out while the population increases. What largely stopped the old predictions of mass starvation from occurring was the “Green Revolution”; but the ingredients of that Revolution are dying out.
We? As in you? Or as in the people like me who avoid Whole Foods?
If you are right, organic produce will start being cheaper than non-organic, due to the less salty soil. Then price-conscious consumers like me will buy organic, and the problem will be solved.
Except that I don’t believe organic will ever be cheaper. The younger among us will see.
P.S. I agree that farmers can’t indefinitely keep on doing the same thing and prosper. Agricultural challenges of some sort will be with humanity so long as we are carbon-based. A hundred years from now, it may be that raising animals for slaughter will be seen as a disgusting remnant of a brutal past. In 200 years – I’m almost sure of that. And I write this as an omnivore. An end of raising crops to feed animals who will be slaughtered would greatly increase the number of calories available for human consumption.
Or it could be that manufactured meat will be shunned the way GMO is in France today. If luddites win, mass hunger could return, but luddites usually lose.
What about Africa? According to theseVoice of Americaarticles Africa is heading into a baby boom. The articles are low on information. Is this baby boom due to less food or more food? I’m guessing more food. Am I wrong? Maybe someday Africa will be more like some EU countries and the birthrate will drop. The EU and other parts of the world make up for low birthrates with increased immigration, etc. What happens when we’re fresh out of babies because everyone has decided a two-person working household is better off without kids?
Increased living standards may lead to decreasing birthrate, but does it really lead to a shrinking population? What countries are actually shrinking? Russia and Bulgaria come to mind. Russia is overly dependant on oil revenue. There aren’t many, and it’s unclear what the official population is, and what the temporary labor population is. UAE has a small “native” population but imports tons of temporary labor.
There is a lag between the period where improved health care leads to longer life spans, and where economic and social changes lead to a lower birth rate.
Basically the first generation off of the farm does what they’ve always done. The second generation adapts.
China’s solution is to limit each couple to one child. Later that the Population Bomb was The Birth Dearth which lamented the fact that USA and some other countries weren’t having enuff babies and weren’t keeping up and the brown peoples immigrating were bad for these countries. It is also like the people who predicted that the sea level would rise by 3 meters before the end of the 20th century and it never did, but the “True Believers” still pretend that Global Warming is real and a problem.
We, as in a planet with eight billion people to feed.
The amounts of food cannot be produced except with energy intensive methods (tractors for ploughing) and chemically intensive methods (fertilizers.) The energy might be extended substantially when we work out fusion power, but the fertilizers are not sustainable. They lead to salination of the soil, which can only be treated with additional irrigation.
Organic farming cannot produce enough food to feed eight billion people. “The problem will be solved” by massive famines. It’s certainly a “market solution,” but not one that any sane person can admire.
I don’t think anyone here is a luddite. That kind of approach would lead to immense famines and the violent deaths of billions. Only technology can get us out of this situation. A good many of us are arguing to sustainable technology.
Artificial (vat-grown or cloned) meat might very well put an end to animal raising for food; this could serve to free up a lot of land for farming. It seems like a promising path forward.
:sigh:
We had this conversation many times before, there was never a majority of scientists for what you claim here about the 3 meter rise before the end of the 20th century, in fact I have not seen any scientific group declaring that back then. Is there any paper published then that claimed that? Link to it or you need to finally realize that your sources are the pits.
Incidentally most of the ones denying that humans are a reason of the current climate change like Anthony Watts are also against population control, even family planning that experts report is a part of what we have to do to control emissions.