The demographics are clear. When countries become more prosperous and the standards of living rise, women have fewer children. More survive to adulthood. Fewer are needed to work the fields when agriculture is more efficient.
So why the angst? There is nothing inherently great about an ever increasing population and much to be said about providing a better quality of life to future generations. People are adaptable and ingenious and we will handle big numbers of people. There is no reason to be upset if these big numbers are slightly smaller.
No, but it will take a lot of highly educated people to figure out how to produce cars and phones without cobalt and/or extract cobalt from the earth in a more humane manner.
Are there environmental negatives to higher population? Yes, but there are also positives, and ignoring that is why Malthusians keep on being mistaken.
It may be that, as at least one poster suggested earlier in the thread, stable population is best. What has been clear for a long time is that prosperous nations with reproductive freedom (something I favor) tend towards below-replacement fertility. So long as it seems we are going that way, I intend to remain pro-natalist.
Actually, this is entirely incorrect. Batteries do not use rare earth elements, they use common elements. The primary actual rare earth element that appears in electric vehicles is Nd, which is good for making really powerful magnets that make electric motors very efficient, thus requiring less battery to get farther.
Unlike battery stuff, the magnets in motors do not really wear out and the metal is highly recoverable/reusable, meaning misch metal mining is less of an issue than you make it out to be.
If global population declines to 1-2 billion I feel pretty confident that those survivors will adapt and possibly even thrive with the cultural, technological and environmental changes that result.
But the transitional decades should worry those destined to experience them. The demographic pressures will be difficult to manage and the potential for panic at the highest levels of governance immense.
It comes down to people don’t want to produce more biological children of their own, and their society won’t tolerate the immigration of large numbers of people who aren’t them. It’s an extreme example of nativism, but the sentiment exists across Europe and the US among a non-trivial percentage of the population.
In post-industrial society there are significant drawbacks to having and raising children. Adding some incentives on top of that doesn’t change the underlying problems and issues.
I would think that countries, such as the US and Canada, which are multicultural and historically open to new immigrants will do better in the time of population decline than will countries that are not (China? Korea? Japan?). In particular the populations of India and Nigeria (as I remember the NYT article in the OP said that Nigeria’s population is expected to exceed a billion) are growing, so if a country is willing to accept brown and black people, they will have a net influx.
The article is paywalled, but that’s a little dubious to me - predictions I’ve seen top out at 800 million. And that’s in 80 years. Which is prediction with a large degree of uncertainty to it.
Also note that Nigeria isn’t that massive a source of people - lots of people migrate to it as well, it has a net migration rate of around only -0.2/1000. That’s pretty neutral.
I think you have a slight misunderstanding. When the article says “By the end of the century, Nigeria could surpass China in population” this is both because Nigeria’s population will grow and because China’s will decline. Not that Nigeria will grow to China’s current billion+ population. This article has a nice chart illustrating the demographic crossover:
Japan is the country we armchair demographers are watching the closest to see how a wealthy industrial nation manages de-population.
I don’t know how they’ll manage, however, without a monumental change in immigration values. It’s like what someone recently said about Hungary: Orban would rather there be NO Hungary than a Hungary with a large number of non-Hungarians.
I think we’re about 25 years away from the US having immigrant recruiting stations set up in Lagos.
Japan’s population has been decreasing since 2014, if not longer. South Korea’s hasn’t started decreasing yet, although will soon. At least that’s the UN population estimates, which tend to be on the high side. Other estimates may have different numbers.
The contradiction in this opinion is that, no one cares whether there are humans or not except humans (aside from, say, individual pets missing their owners if they were gone). Thus, if there were fewer humans or none at all on the planet, none of the animals would be cognizant of this fact or aware of any improvement.
IOW, your negativity toward humans is, ultimately, just a human value, not one that can transcend humanity and retain any meaning.
I think we should be thinking “quality” and not “quantity” when you take into account the fact that humans world wide are living far longer than at any other time in their disease ridden and war plagued history. If you look at the statistics, it is the first world countries with the highest standard of living that are having significantly fewer children than their poorer counterparts, and their quality of living is much better.
You have no way of knowing whether “anyone would notice or care” so your definitive statement really isn’t one. You are, it appears to me, one of the many reductionist thinkers who cannot imagine that anything in the world is sentient the way we are, is self aware in any way, or is aware of the environment changing, etc.
I am not negative toward humans per se; if they didn’t degrade or destroy everything they touch, I’d feel quite positively toward them.
Why would I imagine I transcend human values? How could I even do so? Where would I stand to look?