Posted on 01/11/2025 1:49:16 PM PST by ChessExpert
Imagine being onboard a giant space vessel traveling through the galaxy in the distant future. You are part of a multi-generational mission meant to colonize another planetary system. The spacecraft you are on is enormous and can support a city-state of human travelers for thousands of years. Then, one day, a member of the captain’s privy council comes to a startling conclusion: at the current rate of the vessel’s population growth, human requirements will exceed resources in a few hundred years.
The captain gathers his trusted advisers in secret to discuss the dilemma. One side is not worried at all. Scientists from this coalition point out that before the ship departed, Earth engineers fully expected future inhabitants to continue innovating and improving the vessel’s capabilities. An agricultural adviser explains that the ship has exponentially increased its food production in the last few generations alone. Speaking to this point, the original doomsayer stands and says, “That’s just the problem. The more food we produce, the healthier our people become. The healthier they become, the more children they have. And the more children they have, the faster we will run out of resources in the future!”
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
FALLING
Nonsense... Even if every family actually had only one kid... When your population is a billion plus... That’s a lot of kids. The population of this earth increases every year... And while western couples are having less children, third world population are increasing substantially.
This world population counter will assist you in realizing that the worlds population is increasing... Not decreasing.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
Overly large human population? Limited resources?
The answer is easy --- SOYLENT GREEN
Faster than that. We are already well below 2.1 babies per woman (steady-state population), but there are enough young women that the world population will peak between 2032 and 2042, assuming no increase in war, plague, famine, or pestilence. So, say 2032, at 8.4 billion.
The decrease will start slowly at first, but will accelerate as fewer women become fertile, while more hit menopause. By 2050, the average will look like these States. By 2062, the world will look like Japan with twice as many deaths as births. That will be roughly 100 million deaths and 50 million births. Average decrease 2032-2062 will be about 18 million per year, so from 8.4 billion to 7.86 billion.
At some point, births will stabilize. If at 50 million per year, with life expectancy of 80 year, then population stabilizes at about 4 billion. However, the distribution will be vastly different, and larger wars will intervene (probability > 99%).
For example, at current trends, the population of Japan in 2100 will be less than 20 million, and more than half of the population will be over 60 years old. Chinese, Indians, Indonesians, or Filipinos will invade, and Japanese culture will be wiped out. Repeat for South Korea, Italy, Greece. First, one country at a time, then entire regions. Demographics is destiny.
Per official numbers India became the largest country in population near the end of 2023, at about 1.45 billion each. China’s population decreased in 2023, officially for the first time, and by a lot. Deaths were reported at 12 million, as expected, but reported births dropped from 12 million all the way to 10 million.
I don’t expect birth rates to drop by 2 million per year for the the next five years, but already the steady state Chinese population dropped from 12 million x 80 = 960 million, to 10 million x 80 = 800 million. If Chinese births continue to mirror Japan’s drop, we can expect a drop to 6 million births per year, and a steady-state population of 6 million x 80 = 480 million. Or lower. Already, there is no point in imperialism, as China already has more housing than people, and the mismatch will only grow over time.
Even Mormons, Amish, and Orthodox Jews have had their fertility rates drop from 8-10 children per family to 4-5 children. That’s a 50% drop. Muslims in Gaza (but not the West Bank) continue to lead the world in fertility rates, so, like Hercules cleaning the stables, the immediate future looks like more shovels. In 100 years? Anything can happen.
Here is part of the story that I think many people overlook.
“One side is not worried at all. Scientists from this coalition point out that before the ship departed, Earth engineers fully expected future inhabitants to continue innovating and improving the vessel’s capabilities. An agricultural adviser explains that the ship has exponentially increased its food production in the last few generations alone.”
I assume this actually the case on planet earth. There is a lot of information here:
https://humanprogress.org/datasets/
I clicked on “Data”, then scrolled down to “The End of Famine,” “Explore the Data.” If you click the Play button, the data plays out year by year.
If I were to think of a poor, overpopulated nation on the brink of starvation, it might be India. Yet per capita GDP and calories are both going up.
It seems that per capita resources have been going down since Adam and Eve. Meanwhile, per capita prosperity has been going up.
“We are... running out of resources.”
Be specific. Peak oil? Peak food? Peak solar energy? Peak nuclear? Peak oxygen?
I don’t see evidence for anything essential running out.
Sure, artificial scarcity is real and far too common. We can have famine, locally or worldwide. We can contaminate all of Earth’s water. But is this inevitable? Is it more likely with a growing population? Or, does a growing population feed innovation faster than the use of the resources required to sustain it?
I think if we had focussed on the conservation of “limited” resources and intentionally reduced the population, we would not have experienced the technological advances that a growing population produces as the result of the wealth-creating increases in resource utilization (for work), productivity (as work) and innovation (as increased work efficiency).
The wealth of the world has steadily increased as we’ve put resources to work for us, and we seem to be approaching exponential growth (i.e. a vertical trajectory) of wealth (and accompanying resource allocation and utilization) per capita. In other words, even the poor today have access to things that even kings could not imagine a short while ago. And the coming generation could potentially enjoy the most massive wealth in history...
That is if we don’t destroy ourselves first. But I think self-destruction is far more likely to come as the result of depopulating forces such as war, disease, and hair-brained schemes to “save humanity”. This includes conservation based on a scarcity mindset or apocalyptic prophecies of the Green religion.
True. I don’t think it’s happened on a global scale except in Noah’s day or during Nimrod’s rebellion at Babel. But today’s slide into depravity is happening hand-in-hand with globalism.
God has wiped out depraved civilizations many times in history, but it only happened once globally. That’s where it is headed now.
As Romans 1 also indicates, salvation from this descent into depravity and the resulting destruction can only be found in the Gospel.
DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population
You may want to adjust that... With about 2 million more births ever day than deaths, we’ll be at 9 billion sometime next year.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
It’s a funny message. Did he really say that? I suppose he spoke in jest.
I remember an economics professor telling the class that if someone wanted to visit their rich relatives, they should visit their children. Well, there are a lot of ups and downs in life, and society overall. On a percentile basis, I’ve probably fallen relative to my father. On an absolute basis, I’m better off. I have no doubt that my daughter and her family will be better off, as long as America repels insanity.
I bought the original 128K Macintosh. Sometime after Windows 3, I switched. I bought a new car in 2023. A lot of things have gotten better.
I don’t know but those two are proven survivors.
Much is said about how future generations will have to shoulder our debt - but history shows that those who rule make the rules of commerce for their time. Like Biden “forgiving” college debts even after the Supreme Court forbade it. When the ultimate defender of law goes out of his way to flout them what do we do as civilized response?
Currency, once the precious metal backing was removed from it, is just a shared allusion we all require for trade and survival. Without our collective suspension of disbelief in it chaos and savagery would quickly overwhelm civilization.
But I’m with you in seeing the positives over the negatives. All things considered our average poor person enjoys hundreds of advantages over the wealthy who lived just centuries ago.
Bookmark to read later.
Yes and no. I believe the Greco-Roman world was very sexually immoral. This was the world with early churches that Paul wrote many epistles to. I've pointed this out to non-believers who've said that the Bible was written for a different culture than today's. Actually, the Roman world in Paul's day had temple prostitutes, killing of babies through exposure (abandoning him in the field), orgies, homosexuality, etc. This was in what was most of the known world at the time.
Meanwhile here in the Americas, was it much different? Today's tribal spokesmen claim that they had gay "marriage" early in their culture. And, of course, the Aztecs did their child sacrifices.
So we've seen it on a global scale since Noah's day. Like you, I agree that the solution to the problem is getting back to God. As much as I want to win the arguments against modern day hedonism (Romans 1:24-32), the more comprehensive solution is winning the argument over the existence of God and that He's worth living for (the verses before that in Romans 1:16-23). We win that cultural battle and the rest of it is solved. Our Christian predecessors won it in the past. Are we going to step up the plate now that it's our turn?
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