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CNN - The world's population is nearing 8 billion. That's not great news
It took thousands of years for the global population to hit 5 billion, which happened in 1987. Some 32 years later, we're closing in on 8 billion. This explosive growth concerns leaders at the United Nations, who created World Population Day in 1989 to raise awareness about the problems caused by overpopulation. The holiday is observed annually on July 11. Some areas are actually losing population According to the UN, 27 countries or areas have seen their populations shrink by 1 percent or more since 2010. This drop is caused by sustained lower levels of fertility, most notably in countries like China amd[sic] Japan. In fact the global fertility rate fell from 3.2 births per woman in 1990 to 2.5 in 2019 and is projected to decline further. But these shrinkages are dwarfed by population booms in other regions. The population of sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is projected to double by 2050.
The Guardian - Global population of eight billion and growing: we can't go on like this
Crucially, the vast majority of the extra 3 billion human beings that could be added to Earth's population will be born in Africa. Today there are about 1.2 billion Africans. By 2100, there will be more than 4 billion. Our growing population crisis therefore needs to be tackled there as a priority: by boosting women's rights, by making contraception easily available and by improving education for all. The remarks of President Magufuli suggest that this is going to be a very hard task. Nor have the actions of Donald Trump's White House helped. By slashing funds to international birth control programmes, the US is now undermining hopes of limiting Africa's population growth.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:28PM (5 children)
Numbers are actually shrinking for pale people (especially natural redhead or blond, with blue or green eyes) and Japanese. These two subspecies are going to become extinct if we don't do something.
The sensible thing is a breeding program. For example, this is how the California Condor was saved from extinction. We capture them all, make them breed, and thus increase the population. I think if we can get to about 3 billion pale people and about 3 billion Japanese people, we can consider releasing them back into the wild again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:31PM
11 AM: The temperature has been rising all morning, we are all going to burn to death!
12 hours later: Oh god, the temperature will just not stop dropping we're all going to freeze!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday July 11 2019, @09:50PM (2 children)
Just do widespread whole genome sequencing to capture as much variation as possible. Store many genomes, and later you can "remix" the DNA with a computer program to create new genomes on demand. Add "designer traits" at this point. Then synthesize and grow.
Biotechnology renders these concerns obsolete (although there will probably still be less redheads, etc. around). Even if a huge solar flare somehow wiped out all the sequenced genomes on digital data storage, you could just dig centuries-old skeletons out of the ground and sequence more genomes from those.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 11 2019, @10:12PM (1 child)
But we're going to allow gingers to go extinct, right?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday July 11 2019, @10:37PM
Nope.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair#Extinction_hoax [wikipedia.org]
They may become a smaller group as a proportion of the population, but probably not smaller in absolute numbers.
Even if they were going to "go extinct" in 40 or 100 years [news.com.au], by that time we'll have designer babies, which should become cheaper than today's IVF treatments at some point. You'll be able to spin up a ginger child loosely based on your own DNA if you want.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday July 12 2019, @06:21PM
Make America Mate Again?
This sig for rent.