Remember: Infinite growth is not sustainable in any natural system
this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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Antinatalism
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The philosophical belief that having children is morally wrong and cannot be justified.
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It is once we become a space faring civilization. For the next couple million years at least. Well, not infinite, but certainly exponential.
The lightcage (limit of speed of light travel) will kick in faster than you would expect. I believe it is less than 1000 years at current growth rates. It's like compound interest.
We’re unable to create a self-sustaining biome on this planet. There’s nothing about space that will make that task easier.
I think given enough time humans can solve almost any problem. We're quite innovative overall.
Space faring 😂 we are more likely do destroy ourselves and everyone on this planet than we are to ever leave our planet. Nevermind the solar system.
I appreciate the concern, and I think it's good to have awareness of a possible future like that, but that's a sad perspective to have.
I'm not saying we will destroy ourselves, I'm just saying given how unfathomably large space is, that even if we could travel at the speed of light... We'd be going nowhere.
Even if we never find a way around the speed of light limitation, and even if we never figure out how to terraform planets, the amount of resources in our solar system is vast and there's still a great opportunity for expansion with O'Neill colonies.
Obviously that requires very futuristic tech and will not be happening for a very, very long time. Still, it's worth working towards because I believe expansion and exploration is in our DNA. We just need to know when we've hit our limit for a given environment and not live beyond our means.
Everyone has heard for DECADES that overpopulation is a problem, soon as humanity self-corrects though its "oh no what about our lack of disposable factory workers". I don't like living on this world can someone take me to the horse head nebula or something
"Overpopulation" is a theory that was floated about for a little bit in the middle of the 20th century. It was quickly disproven on all grounds, but it's a convenient oversimplification so it held on anyway.
There's enough food and water and housing for everyone out there. We just can't figure out how to assign our resources fairly and without enormous amounts of waste.
They mean the number of babies people are choosing to have. Right? Fertility is fine.
Fertility is fine, contraceptives are working, ability to provide for a family is goooonnnneee.
Yeah I hate it when they use the wrong word probably for clicks or some bs.
Natality sells less I guess.
Well, generally yes, though we do see a higher percentage of men with reduced sperm count, which is ripe for conspiracy.
In reality, our sedentary, obese, non smoking lives result in less male fertility.
Are you implying that smoking increases fertility?
Surely not, considering how categorically false that is.
Good thing every single of those lines is below the global average by 2010. In other words: most of the world is not represented in the graph.
Why have South Korea but not the EU?
Or developing countries with high birth rates...
Yes, that would be interesting.
Because SK has the lowest birthrate in the world right now.
Long-term this is a good thing imo. We are too dominant as a species and offering a same high quality of life to 10 billion people (in 2050) just doesn't seem possible. With less humans, the world would be a better place for the remaining humans and animals. With which I'm not saying that less humans alone will be enough to offer everyone on earth a high quality of life, it just would make it a lot easier to achieve that utopia.
"Livestock make up 62% of the world’s mammal biomass; humans account for 34%; and wild mammals are just 4%."
The population has more than doubled since I was born and the quality of life for an average person definitely seems lower. Plus everything is so crowded, all the time. It doesn't feel good. Also, companies don't even need to make their products good because there are billions of people who will buy them anyways.
Maybe make having kids not impossibly expensive.
Best of we seriously decrease the global population before encouraging people to have children.
Maybe make living not impossibly expensive. Forget the kids part. I can't even afford to live as it is.
And here's one of the reasons that some American politicians are pro forced birth.
This is good news in the long run. Will be a tough streak for a few generations but will be worth it
Good
Yay!
This average trend has been some kinda scientifically forecasted.
Mostly industrial countries like in NA and EU f.e. are going down with general birthrate etc, as it's not necessary to get by when older (well.. I have doubts regarding this).
So called third world countries are going up in births, because children secure their later life.
It is expected that the global population will go back down by the year 2100, but also will have the highest amount or peak of 10 billion by 2050.
I cannot back this, since I have read about this years ago and things might have drastically change, since a lot of factors do change unexpectedly.
This is basically it. This has nothing to do with an economic model, it has to do with education and industrialization. There are countries out there paying people to have kids, and it's not really enticing people to have them, because people want to travel and enjoy their lives.
There is maybe one country in the entire world where births are going up. The gist of your argument is correct, but it's not "births going up" but "the birth rate is still higher than in rich countries, even though it's been going down for a while". The general pattern that all countries go through is from high birth rate and high death rate to low birth rate and low death rate. It's just that death rate goes down way faster, because it's mostly dependent on technology, and birth rate going down requires significant behavioural changes. The population explosion in poorer countries is because death rates have gone down way faster (lots of change arrivibg suddenly) than they did in the rich countries (where thus all happened long ago, as the technology was invented). Look up population transition if you want to know more.
Yeah. That sounds solid. I'll look that up, as it's an interesting topic
As of today all continents, but Africa, have a below replacement fertility rate. Current forecasts are Asia and Latin America peaking between 2055-2060, Europes population falling even earlier and North Americas population growing very slowly. Peak global population is supposed to be around 2090. Although there is quite a bit of evidence of this happening earlier, as population growth in Africa seems to fall much quicker then expected and countries like China are shrinking faster then expected too.
Ooh now overlay it with insect numbers for the same time period and I think we'll see a correlation.
Japan is actually rebounding? I keep hearing the opposite.
Now entering "children of men" territory.
i wonder how much microplastics, forever chemicals and others things like that are affecting this
Fertility rates don't actually mean much about the ability to have children, rather it's about the choice to do so.