We are becoming an infection that the earth will eventually jettison.

It is pretty much on its way to being a hellhole like Venus.

It takes natural processes ~800 years to remove 1 ppm of CO2 from the atmosphere. We are currently 130 ppm over the pre-industrial level - 130* 800 = 104,000 years.

Every year we pump CO2 into the atmosphere sets the world's return to normal back another 1500 years.

We may not have fucked the geological planet, but we've sure upset the biosphere.

It's in a feedback loop. That's the facts, not wishful thinking.

Some days this is the only thing that gives me hope.

The earth/this rock planet will be fine but most folks just use the word earth as a shorthand to mean "life on earth."

Cockroaches will most likely be fine.

renamed as The Population Connection.

Here's the URL to their website (though it doesn't seem to be opening at the moment): www.populationconnection.org/

End ALL tax incentives for having children. There are many, many governments that still subsidize it through tax deductions, tax credits and outright cash payments for each child.

Slowly phase them out.

ALL of them

no stupid glorification of families with a dozen kids.

Her conclusions, through profound, are not comforting:

Human population growth rate

Globally, the growth rate of the human population has been declining since peaking in 1962 and 1963 at 2.2% per annum. In 2009, the estimated annual growth rate was 1.1%. The CIA World Factbook gives the world annual birthrate, mortality rate, and growth rate as 1.86%, 0.78%, and 1.08% respectively. The last 100 years have seen a rapid increase in population due to medical advances and massive increase in agricultural productivity made possible by the Green Revolution.

The actual annual growth in the number of humans fell from its peak of 88.0 million in 1989, to a low of 73.9 million in 2003, after which it rose again to 75.2 million in 2006. Since then, annual growth has declined. In 2009, the human population increased by 74.6 million. Each region of the globe has seen great reductions in growth rate in recent decades, though growth rates remain above 2% in some countries of the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa, and also in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

Some countries experience negative population growth, especially in Eastern Europe mainly due to low fertility rates, high death rates and emigration. In Southern Africa, growth is slowing due to the high number of AIDS-related deaths. Some Western Europe countries might also encounter negative population growth. Japan's population began decreasing in 2005.

The United Nations Population Division expects world population to peak at over 10 billion at the end of the 21st century but Sanjeev Sanyal has argued that global fertility will fall below replacement rates in the 2020s and that world population will peak below 9 billion by 2050 followed by a long decline.


Growth rate of world population (1950–2050).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth

pretty much the only place left with a big population growth problem is Africa.

so, its safe to say, we'll have right wing responses (ignore them, fence them in, let them starve, not our fault/not our problem), and left wing responses (we are all human beings after all)

Humanity is already in overshoot, by somewhere between 2x and 1000x. In addition to that, our activity level is too high by a factor of 20 or so.

Simply lowering our growth rate won't fix it, That would be like trying to get out of a 100 foot deep hole by simply digging a little slower.

http://paulchefurka.ca/Sustainability.html

In developing countries the median age to first reproduction it is high teens to low twenties. In developed countries it is mid twenties to thirty. This has even more effect than number of children because it stretches out generations. Also of course when a woman doesn't have a child until she is thirty she generally has fewer children. The combination of having children later and having fewer children are the main reasons population growth rates have declined so quickly since the 60s in the United States. By the time my mother was 30 she had 5 children. I did not have my first child until I was 29 and I only have 2 children.

Look for doom and youll find doom. Look for those green sprouts of hope and youll find those.

Also, over the next 3 decades you'll see an explosion in nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics. Start seeing things exponentially instead of linear.

Great video here;

There are 7+ billion people, but not all of them are completely hooked into the global economy. At least not in a fair way. So even if the number of people added every year is going down, we're of course still adding tens of millions of people, and we want to see them all have the same access and opportunity that first world citizens have.

Still adding people, and adding an increased need for more resources. For the people already here, and all of them that are still being added. Not to mention that every first world citizens doesn't even have everything they need or want.

It's not really a problem with a solution.

if you reduce the younger generation - which is necessary to eventually lower the overall population, unless you impose some sort of killing program to kill off the less favored - then how will the older generation continue to be supported?

Obviously, 1, the older generation can reduce its consumption. But it's rather cruel to start there.

The answer is for the economy to work as demographics shift to an older population, economic production also has to shift so that people are being productive later in life.

The thing is, in economics, "growth" is valued. Everything is about "growth" - how do we "grow" the economy?

The problem is we can't continue to grow forever. (Assuming we don't find an infinite, exploitable cache of resources somewhere.) I know some people will yuk yuk "Malthus was wrong!" and all that but he was just wrong in the details, not the general concept. Unless one denies the premises that

a) human life has access to resources which are limited
b) each human life requires some minimal amount of resources to survive, even in a miserable existence, but more for a pleasant existence

then one must accept that at some point, we WILL outgrow our resources, unless we find a way to reverse growth.

That reversal can be voluntary, or it will be involuntary.

I say we take our inspiration from Zhang Xanzhong.

"The earth has given us so much, and we have done nothing in return."

They are evolving (they always do) and we aren't keeping up. Soon, our old standard antibiotics and vaccines will be useless. It's really only a matter of time, sooner rather than later IMHO.

Knowing the facts of the matter, it's morally irresponsible to have more than one child. However, I still see plenty of religious people opposed to birth control or any kind of population control. Gotta multiply and be fruitful and all that.

Short of a global 1 child policy, or some kind of pandemic plague I don't see this situation improving at all. Get ready for 10 billion, then 15 billion etc.