I am of the age to have kids, some of my friends have them, but I have mixed feelings about it, just wondering about other people’s experiences.
I am of the age to have kids, some of my friends have them, but I have mixed feelings about it, just wondering about other people’s experiences.
Not to argue your decisions, but you might want to take another look at your over-population if that’s a concern.
Yes, we seem to be passing a sustainable level of population and too many people are still held in poverty partly by over-population. However the long term trend is the opposite. By all studies, population will plateau in the next few decades, then start to decrease. While that also sounds good, it looks like it is likely to drop fast. We are more likely to have instability and disruption caused by population falling too rapidly.
If replacement value for a stable population is about 2.1 children per women, most developed countries are already well below that and their populations will drop significantly as older larger generations pass. Was it Korea that hit 1.1? That means cutting their population in half over the space of one generation While I have no idea how to fix the chronic war state between the Koreas, a sudden (in one generation) loss of both population and economy is all too likely to be seen as an opportunity for the war state to turn hot.
Even in the US, we’re a bit protected but our birth rate is well below replacement value. We’re still growing in both population and economy on the strength of immigration. Most countries don’t benefit from that and current politics may impact this and cause us to start shrinking as well. While some is a good thing, a lot of shrinking too quickly can be equally bad as overpopulation. We need to figure out how to stabilize at a reasonable birth rate more like 2.0, to steadily reduce population without disruption
When you say that’s “not good” do you mean economically or environmentally? I am concerned about biodiversity die-off, deforestation, ocean acidification etc etc… I am not concerned about economics. I know the latter can effect the former, but nothing will effect it like levelling the amazonian rainforest so every person gets to eat the beef they believe they’re entitled to
That’s at least as much a lifestyle question. As more people develop higher living standards, they tend to copy those before them. Ecologically we can’t afford for all the developing countries to live like the US, even with a much smaller population
But yeah, I’m more concerned about economies. Unstable economies tend to lead to wars and oppression. The only thing worse than our current environmental exploitation is human suffering, and we need to develop a more sustainable lifestyle that avoids that.
If you look at history of environmental protection, you’ll see that generally wealthier countries can afford more of it. If we want people to be able to afford taking care of our environment, they need to have a stable economy and be relatively well off.
I mean I dont disagree with anything youre saying. Wait, I actually disagree that human suffering is worse than a global extinction event. I often play druids when I play d&d though, so there you go
I did some research on the population today. Every page I’ve looked at says it’s going to peak around the 2080’s at around 10.4 billion and then start declining.
Granted there’s a wide range, depending on too many variables. The UN official prediction is as you said but many recent studies with updated birth rates have made much earlier predictions.
Reading some of these studies, the earlier predictions seems much more plausible, and they’re connected with a steeper dropoff. While “UN Medium” is too high, I’m more afraid of “UN Low”, and how that will disrupt the world my kids and grandkids live in