On Thu, 24 Apr 2014 11:32:07 Rohan McLeod wrote:
It's predicted to peak at approximately 8 billion. However, this also coincides with an era of global warming in addition to resource constraints and, of course, risks that are hard to estimate, for example the next influenza epidemic. I am surprised by such a low figure; but of course population reduction promises the simplest solution to our environmental woes. Perhaps this anticipates third world nations moving to first world fertility rates ?
Population reduction via educating women and providing a better standard of living reduces environmental problems. Population reduction via famine and war causes environmental problems. Environmental problems make war more likely and a good environment makes it easier to provide good education and a high standard of living. So whether things go well or badly in terms of environment and population there are feedback effects.
An interesting problem which doesn't seem to get much attention, because it has thus far seemed unlikely is: What if fertility rates continued to decline and world population collapsed to to say a tenth of that current , ie to say 600 million. Even if this occurred slowly, say over a several hundred years the cultural, industrial and economic effects would be enormous. In that situation vast amounts of skill, technique and knowledge must likely be lost, for the simple reason there is no one to pass it on to; quite aside from the obvious reduction in market sizes;
If the world population declined to 10% of the current size and everyone was well educated then we could have the same number of people involved in scientific research etc. Advances in online education are reducing the incidence of skill loss as long as we avoid an Internet-destroying catastrophy. Once we solve the environmental problems it would be a good idea to invest in technology to prevent "dinosaur-killer" meteorite strikes. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/