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from the On-a-Pale-Horse-vs-Being-a-Green-Mother dept.
The world population is growing because the birth rate exceeds the death rate, so to stabilize the world population either the birth rate needs to drop, or the death rate needs to increase. The most cited reference for population studies is the projections of future population (PDF) made by the Population Division of the United Nations. The UN report projects the world population to eventually stabilize as a result of countries settling in to a birth rate that falls around the replacement level.
A commentary by Stephen Warren in the open access journal Earth's Future takes the UN report to task for focusing on birth rate. He notes that all species generate offspring in numbers well above the replacement level of two, but you don't see historically the kind of population growth like you do with humans. He argues that despite all the negative feedback mechanisms on population (such as war and pestilence), it seems that Malthus (PDF) was correct that food supply is the driving factor, and wonders whether it is even possible to stabilize the world population until food production levels off.
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Non Sequor on Wednesday May 27 2015, @12:19AM
I guess I'm a population neutralist.
An increasing population creates strain on capacity but a declining population means that individual investments in increasing capacity are less likely to have a positive payoff. For example consider that Detroit has been mulling bulldozing some of its abandoned areas. They have infrastructure that could have been useful if the city maintained its peak population but is no longer sustainable. You may see that down the line in China both from the one child policy and just from trying to plan infrastructure too far in advance of when the need for it actually surfaces.
Have you considered the possibility you're focusing on a more obvious infrastructure problem and overlooking what the status quo accomplishes for more subtle problems? The status quo is that family planning is a mixture of accidents and half informed guesses. Yet more often than not, that seems to be allowing societies to make some complex transitions. Maybe those accidents and half informed guesses are in aggregate producing an answer that's reasonable more often than not.
Human reproduction rates do seem to exhibit some selftuning characteristics, so I can't automatically support the conclusion that adding some new society level steering to it is necessarily an improvement.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Wednesday May 27 2015, @09:25AM
My position is as follows. I place great value in First World civilization. I consider myself one of the luckiest human beings to have ever lived, and I wish to ensure that the opportunities I've had are available to as high a proportion of future humans as possible. But there are elements of our civilization's behaviour that are unsustainable, and I fear there is a realistic possibility of its collapse. Things like climate change, and the rapid depletion of non-renewable resources. To me this possibility of collapse outweighs any "subtle problems".
I would argue that we already have society level steering towards increasing population, and that I merely want to put that very slightly into reverse until the population gets down to a level at which it can be sustained (for example, using only renewable resources, and leaving fossil fuels in the ground in case some future generation has an urgent need for them).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:51PM
but a declining population means that individual investments in increasing capacity are less likely to have a positive payoff.
Any business strategy which counts on infinite population growth or a stable population that is ultimately unsustainable is fundamentally broken. Yes, population decline can bring about some headaches, but that is necessary.