What you are saying here is different from what Samm said. He pointed out like the article did that medical advances are one of the key reasons for the exponential population growth we have seen. Whereas you are claiming that the reasons are economic. The fact is that in countries with advanced economies are seeing stagnant and even declining population growth. In the US for example if it were not for immigration we would see our population decrease. People in advanced economies see children as economic liability and hence have few if any children.
I would have thought that number - 280 ppm to 410 ppm - would have been much larger especially when you consider deforestation. So if I understand you correctly the planet has been trying to compensate for the excess CO2 being produced but cannot deal with all of it?
Thatās one way to look at it. But in truth, there is no set amount of CO2 in the atmosphere on which to determine āexcess.ā Using that same reasoning, one could look at it as when the concentration was at 280 ppm, there was a shortage of CO2.
By the same token the entire world fully industrializing might save us. Birth rates decline as countries advance through industrialization and move into service economies.
So thereās some hope in terms of overall population.
The big problem, IMO, is that when that happens the living standards will rise worldwide. And developed countries actually use significantly more natural resources than agricultural nations still holding on to elements of feudalism. The issue then is can we find new ways to provide this standard of living with existing resources, even if the population stabilizes and reaches equilibrium.
I actually think our ultimate foe will not be an exploding population but a resource crunch that fuels a new wave of open warfare to gain access to more utilizing even more lethal technology than we have today.
Do you really think that living standards are going to rise worldwide? Look at this whole caravan situation. Decade after decade thereās still no improvement in all these Latin American countries? People are still fleeing these countries year after year? I donāt see things getting better in these countries. I see population growth as the elephant in the room nobody wants to really talk about. More people means more trees have to come down and itās hard to deal with carbon when you have fewer trees.
If these countries are ever to stabilize their governments, which is key to successful industrialization, then the living standards will rise albeit slowly. Even tyrannical government can push industrialization; the Soviet Union is a good example.
With that comes reduced birth rates. Itās happened in every country that has made it through the crisis of early industrialization.
But you could be right.
If the population stabilizes itāll be at around 10 - 12 billion. We may see it slowly decrease after that. Or it could continue to increase.
But itās all hypothetical theories. We wonāt know what will happen until it happens.
Isnāt the around 6 billion now? You anticipate that it will double from where we are today? If thatās the case population growth could very be the biggest threat the planet faces.
Assuming global trends stay as they are Africa will provide the majority of new population growth from now till 2100. Developing nations in south east Asia will come in second. Latin America third.
We went from 2 billion in the aftermath of World War II to 6 billion by the time the 20th century closed. Just 60 years. By all accounts famine should been common considering the mass explosion of population.
But food production actually increased several times over the population explosion.
If history is a teacher and assuming we (as a species) decide not to fight a nuclear war then food production will continue to increase as technology improves.
We need to stabilize the population, though. Thereās a limit to how many people the planet can support in the long term. And itāll be an extremely long time before we can even seriously consider building habitable space colonies or colonizing Mars or other planets.
But Iām also a bit of a negative Nancy when it comes to humanityās future anyway. Iām fully convinced that at some point we will off ourselves or at the least destroy modern civilization.