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By 2050 there will be 9 billion carbon-burning, plastic-polluting, calorie-consuming people on the planet. By 2100, that number will balloon to 11 billion, pushing society into a Soylent Green scenario. Such dire population predictions aren't the stuff of sci-fi; those numbers come from one of the most trusted world authorities, the United Nations.
But what if they're wrong? Not like, off by a rounding error, but like totally, completely goofed?
That's the conclusion Canadian journalist John Ibbitson and political scientist Darrel Bricker come to in their newest book, Empty Planet, due out February 5th. After painstakingly breaking down the numbers for themselves, the pair arrived at a drastically different prediction for the future of the human species. "In roughly three decades, the global population will begin to decline," they write. "Once that decline begins, it will never end."
The World Might Actually Run Out of People (archive)
Who do you think is right ? The United Nations or Darrel Bricker/John Ibbitson ?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday February 05 2019, @01:41AM (3 children)
As people get more educated and are able to support themselves better, they have less kids.
That's one reason the west's population is in decline and immigration is needed: to support the current population.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 05 2019, @02:52AM
You need to work on that: FEWER kids (because kids are theoretically countable, unlike fluids and feelings)
No, we don't need immigration. That is called extinction. Wiping out our culture like that actually meets the UN's definition of genocide.
You might as well claim that we should reduce education in order to save ourselves. Well, there is more merit to that than there is to welcoming savages to destroy us.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 05 2019, @03:18AM
That's a very comforting bedtime story. If civilization lasts another 100 years, it will be because it (randomly) happened to be more or less correct.
As people in today's societies get more educated and are able to support themselves better, they tend to have less kids - so that they can focus on "me time" - having a life of their own after work and before they're too old and broken to enjoy the money they've made - they don't want to repeat the mistakes of their WWII fighting parents.
In a post scarcity economy, with improved medical care, what if having children to share your life with becomes the new fashionable thing to do with all your spare time? I live near a Catholic church, families with 5+ children are quite common in the general neighborhood here, a resurgence of that kind of faith could turn things around very quickly, even if the Pope finally grows a pair and comes out unambiguously supporting the use of contraception there can, and will, be other faith based movements which pursue the long term growth strategy of encouraging their followers to multiply like rabbits. When such a faith spreads, population booms follow.
Doom and gloom is not guaranteed, there are possible future scenarios with continuous improvement in the human condition - a cheap and plentiful fusion power based technological revolution would be a nice one, and there are a few others which might support populations of 20B and more. Without major advancements in many fields, population reduction would seem to be the more plausible route to continued civilization - but even that requires social revolutions just as improbable a Mr. Fusion.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday February 05 2019, @02:19PM
I propose, in order to encourage population growth, and tackle over education head-on, we change the 3 R's to Reading, Riding and 'Rithmatic.