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[Darvi]

GP fucking S. Just in case whoever you're talking to thinks that satellites are only good for nuking planets.

[Kilroy the Grand]

It's not to late to vote green, or to sacrifice a few thousand grizzly bears to resurrect Roosevelt

[GlyphGryph]

Well, ignore the kids. It's like putting off saving for your retirement (or any sort of saving or investing) until you're "financially secure" and, presumably, have an abundance of cash. It's a really, really stupid idea.

[Shadowlord]

Though on that, a lot of people are going to need to go without kids if we're going to maintain civilization. The majority of people who are going to cause our collapse don't exist yet, and if they never exist the resources they would otherwise take will be freed up.

I don't particularly like the idea of putting restrictions on reproduction, but if it's that or our entire civilization...

Not in the United States. Our population growth is mostly from immigration.
http://www.census.gov/population/www/projections/2009summarytables.html

With no net migration we would be projected to have gone from around 300,580 (thousands of people) in 2013 to around 323,020 in 2047, at which point it would start trending down. That, of course, is an unrealistic scenario, as we do have international migration. Under their 'Low Net International Migration Series' they projected the US having around 316,669 thousand people in 2013 and 328,131 in 2017 (gaining 11.462 million people in 4 years, which would cover Romney's term if he were elected), and 413,764 in 2047. The low net international migration series appears to be the closest to our current population, from what I could tell.

Anyone pay attention to Romney saying he was going to add 12 million jobs in 4 years? I wonder if his campaign calculated it so that would be just above population growth, expecting that almost nobody would check any projections. I noticed, but it doesn't seem like anyone in the media has.

It is well known that population growth is higher in less advanced countries, and slows down as a population gets a higher standard of living. You can't simply ban more than one birth in the entire world, either.

P.S. I doubt they projected the effects of climate change as far as disasters, reduced living space, reduced arable land, changed weather patterns, etc. I would expect the population in the US to eventually start to drop and the population in Canada to increase more rapidly as it will be more habitable eventually and much of the US is going to no longer have any arable land, but that population shift could be some time away. (Also, Siberia is supposed to become more habitable, which is to say, actually arable (assuming the dirt isn't unfarmable), I think, after a hundred or more years, IIRC. Depends on how fast stuff goes, it keeps going faster than projections. It's supposed to be at the end of the IPCC projections timewise, but they've turned out to be conservative underestimates of how fast it's going.)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Irrelevant. The actual growth is unimportant compared to the actual number of people and the resources they consume. Immigrants will have to refrain from children, but so will Americans if we are to ultimately collapse our population growth.

While such a thing is counter-intuitive and will have negative consequences in the short term, it is in the long term the only pathway to shrinking our population to a post-oil sustainable level. Japan thinks it is cursed due to its collapsing population, but in reality all nations will need to seek to emulate that kind of reduction if we are to avoid a breakdown of social order as the starving masses seek sustenance. Even a partial shortfall will lead to riots and unrest, which will in turn reduce production further and create a downward spiral that will, in the best case scenario, end with 1.2 billion living humans on Earth. Worst case scenario is global thermonuclear war and the extinction of humanity.

[GlyphGryph]

Luckily, all estimates say population (and consumption) is pretty much set to level LONG before we've reached full capacity.

There's basically no chance of starving masses (at least in the states), under any conceivably circumstances other than sudden mass immigration, which we'd be unlikely to allow anyway.

We certainly don't need anyone to refrain from having children completely.

[SalmonGod]

There's basically no chance of starving masses (at least in the states), under any conceivably circumstances other than sudden mass immigration the currently ongoing extreme environmental collapse, which we'd be unlikely to allow anyway is likely to continue accelerating unabated.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Luckily, all estimates say population (and consumption) is pretty much set to level LONG before we've reached full capacity.

Your estimates rely upon uncertainties. We cannot assume that the post-oil transition will go over as smoothly as we believe it will, nor can we accurately predict some of the more dramatic consequences of climate change.

There's basically no chance of starving masses (at least in the states), under any conceivably circumstances other than sudden mass immigration, which we'd be unlikely to allow anyway.

Incorrect. The Haber-Bosch process is a vital aspect of modern agricultural yields and relies upon hydrogen derived from oil and natural gas to complete. Without it Green Revolution levels of agricultural production will be impossible and will collapse back into either pre-Green Revolution industrial production or sustenance production, depending upon the level of chaos caused during the die off. The former will support approximately 2 billion humans, and the latter will support just under 1 billion, but either way the majority of the species will be consigned to death through starvation or violence. While there is an alternative in electrolysis of water through renewable energy this will not be sufficient.

We certainly don't need anyone to refrain from having children completely.

That's your pro-natalist culture talking. The enamored attitude towards childbearing needs to be rejected if we are to reduce the population with any level of success to avoid a collapse. Having children is ultimately the act that will doom us, as without a large population we do not need a large level of resources and may sustain ourselves further. The human population could be peacefully reduced to a level that is able to sustain us, or centuries of progress could be undone by our stubborn reproductive attitudes. Either way the human population will fall, the only question is as to the state of our society afterwards, if there are even any of us left to have a society.

Two children per woman will sustain a population, one will cut it in half quickly, less than one is what we need to go from 7 billion to 1 billion in the next century.

[Owlbread]

But surely the problem isn't caused by people in modern, western countries having too many weans, it's people in countries like India and the like who have are poorly educated and have vast amounts of children en masse. How on earth are you going to stop them from having so many kids? Given that some of these countries, like Mali and Somalia, can barely enforce the rule of law?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

But surely the problem isn't caused by people in modern, western countries having too many weans, it's people in countries like India and the like who have are poorly educated and have vast amounts of children.

Incorrect. Westerners have less children but we also consume more resources, by orders of magnitude. Both consumption and population must be taken into account to paint an accurate picture of the situation.

How on earth are you going to stop them from having so many kids?

The least heavy handed method would be to offer young people temporary incentives in exchange for permanent sterilization. While the choice is ultimately voluntary, combining a sufficient benefit with the growing cost of children could be enough to destroy future population growth. It goes without saying that heavily subsidized birth control would also be an aspect of this plan.

The second path would be legislation to make having many children undesirable or illegal, unfortunately with the infamy of China's badly implemented One-Child Policy I doubt any such thing would pass, and while crazy things like forcibly aborting viable fetuses are completely out of line it would be the picture painted by pro-natalists to oppose it, and would likely cause a moral panic that would ensure any such initiative's failure.

The third path is the kind of drastic measures I would only want to be resorted to in an existential emergency, like putting sterility drugs in the water supply. We are nowhere near this kind of desperate and likely won't be for decades, but I assure you that governments will consider it if it looks like a collapse is imminent.

[Lord Shonus]

ALL developed nations except the US (which retains massive amounts of space and resources in a variety of comfortable climates) and possibly Canada (I don't actually know about Canada, but it has the same space advantage)  have either plateaued in population growth or actually begun a slight decline. Most of Europe maintains population through immigration, having a negative birth/death ratio. Sociologists differ on the reasons for this, but it holds true even in countries where large families are traditional such as Italy and Greece. The mass population growth is found solely in developing countries such as China and India, and China is projected to have a large population decrease within the next 50 years, as their bubble population is aging.

As for resources, few are truly finite in any human scale. Except for organic byproducts such as coal or petroleum, everything we need could be provided by space mines, quite possibly at lower cost than any earthly source. With increased recycling and reclamation projects, there is every reason to think that we will be able to support the likely population comfortably.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

ALL developed nations except the US (which retains massive amounts of space and resources in a variety of comfortable climates) and possibly Canada (I don't actually know about Canada, but it has the same space advantage)  have either plateaued in population growth or actually begun a slight decline. Most of Europe maintains population through immigration, having a negative birth/death ratio. Sociologists differ on the reasons for this, but it holds true even in countries where large families are traditional such as Italy and Greece. The mass population growth is found solely in developing countries such as China and India, and China is projected to have a large population decrease within the next 50 years, as their bubble population is aging.

Again, you are failing to recognize the actual problem. I will make it plain: We are already at an unsustainable population that must decrease rapidly if we are to avoid a collapse.

While the growth and the centers of it are bad, it doesn't matter how much growth is going on if the number of people who already exist are taking up more than we can spare. Even though a plateaued population does not grow in number it does continue to use resources at a fluctuating rate.

You all have been fed this popular line about how the West is not the problem, and most buy into it because it allows us to live without concern because it's just "those other people" who might end up being the problem. But that is not how this problem works.

As for resources, few are truly finite in any human scale. Except for organic byproducts such as coal or petroleum, everything we need could be provided by space mines, quite possibly at lower cost than any earthly source. With increased recycling and reclamation projects, there is every reason to think that we will be able to support the likely population comfortably.

Collection of resources from space will not happen overnight. Until then we need to maintain civilization at a level that we may in fact eventually have said resource collection. This requires shrinking the human population.

[Lord Shonus]

I've seen reliable analysis at the local university that this planet can support four to six billion with no changes except modernizing the farming methods used in undeveloped areas such as Africa. Similar projections suggest if cash crops such as cotton and tobacco (both notoriously fertilizer hungry and space intensive) were greatly reduced or eliminated, and the area given to livestock is reduced (not even eliminated), that capacity will reach six to eight. Radical measures such as Asimov's Civism would cause that number to go even higher. With proper reclamation, virtually all the resources put into food production can be retrieved, and that's the real bottleneck. Lowering the other resources we use in large quantities would largely be a reduction of luxuries and petty conveniences.

[GlyphGryph]

The US and Canada are perfectly capable of feeding their current population if the oil runs out.

They probably won't be feeding anybody else, mind you.

But there is nothing about the US population that is unsustainable.

Do you actually have any information contradicting this that I don't?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Do you actually have any information contradicting this that I don't?

I already told you, Haber-Bosch. Our agricultural yields are tied directly to it.