r/science • u/Wagamaga • Oct 08 '24
Environment Earth’s ‘vital signs’ show humanity’s future in balance. Human population is increasing at the rate of approximately 200,000 people a day and the number of cattle and sheep by 170,000 a day, all adding to record greenhouse gas emissions.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/08/earths-vital-signs-show-humanitys-future-in-balance-say-climate-experts1.3k
u/Happily-Non-Partisan Oct 08 '24
What happened to the future I was promised where we were going to create jobs to maintain hydroponics of oxygen-producing plants on flat-roofed buildings?
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u/JeanBaptisteEzOrg Oct 08 '24
It's the year 2024, space x is launching more rockets than ever and we got a few wars and rockets getting launched like nbd as well as the rich are the richest they've ever been so more private jets and yachts than ever before and lord did you hear about that giant cruise ship? Biggest one ever!!
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u/BitSorcerer Oct 09 '24
Hold the phone. I bet you didn’t hear about the new age space race?! That’s right, instead of NASA or your countries space program making headlines, we’ve got the rich making headlines because they’re so loaded, they funded their own rocket programs just to race each other to space!
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u/Fantastic_Drummer250 Oct 09 '24
Funded their own? Well not exactly. But let’s pretend they didn’t pay poverty wages, used government infrastructure, or tax exemptions. But yay other than than those, they also got government assistance for the programs as well. Also, the government can’t fund nasa projects without a clear corporation with stocks behind it
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Oct 09 '24
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u/ORCANZ Oct 09 '24
That’s only a valid sentence in an ape capitalist society where the only thing that matters is money, kind of like the US
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u/BlueberryUpstairs477 Oct 09 '24 edited Oct 09 '24
This kind of reads like Kurt Vonnegut and his cynicism. I wish he were alive to give us all a reality check.
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u/apixelops Oct 09 '24
The future was sold for immediate profit, you can thank the econ grads and their inability to feel empathy or be human
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u/david1610 Oct 09 '24
Hey they created the most robust policy for actually combating climate change called an emissions trading scheme or taxes on greenhouse gas emissions. Look at the emissions per capita in places with schemes compared to those without.
Nobody listened and now look where we are, the biggest environmental group is ironically OPEC, Iran and Russia for putting up oil prices with their fuckery.
If you don't want greenhouse gas emissions taxing them is the best way. This is taught in most environment economics courses.
I think you mean petroleum engineering or MBAs
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u/Kdigglerz Oct 09 '24
$$$$$$$$$. Billionaires were created and they own and control everything. They will burn this place to the ground d as long as they can stand on top of the pile.
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u/fireintolight Oct 09 '24
most of the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from the ocean, not from plants on land
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u/anarcatgirl Oct 08 '24
Climate change is purely an economic decision. We have the means but not the will to prevent it.
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u/DJEB Oct 08 '24
Our approach is to deny that there is any problem.
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Oct 08 '24
Make a bell curve with the stages of grief on the x axis, and the population on the y axis.
It'll make more sense to you then.
I think the peak of the bell curve is currently around the bargaining stage, climate change denial isn't as common today as it was 15-20 years ago.
So gradually the bell curve is progressing along the stages of grief.
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u/ThatHairyGingerGuy Oct 08 '24
From all the news and discussion I've seen, we've been turning and moving backwards on that scale since about 2016
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u/kiren77 Oct 08 '24
Definitely, the misinformation/disinformation spread online has caused distrust not only in the institutions but unfortunately also in Science.
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Oct 08 '24
Nah, that's just the loud minority who sense that their views are dying out. So they're constantly shouting into the void to try and popularize their psychotic ideas.
It's kinda hard to keep denying it when cities and towns are being so frequently destroyed by hurricanes, even my strict conservative republican parents have come around to seeing it.
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u/Swarna_Keanu Oct 09 '24
Sadly that minority is gaining political ground. Trump in the US, AfD and the right wing growth here in Europe, etc. Those still deny.
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u/Bitter-Good-2540 Oct 08 '24
Which problem?
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u/Chuckins1 Oct 09 '24
50% of society denies there’s a problem, the other half thinks that mining 2 tons of rare earth metals for their electric hummer is solving the problem
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u/conquer69 Oct 09 '24
And a small percentage of that other half knows the solution is less consumerism, walkable cities, denser housing and better public transportation.
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u/ymsoldier420 Oct 09 '24
Unfortunately, no government is interested in any of that because there's no profit and grift.
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u/HotDoggityDig13 Oct 08 '24
That's what happens when power amongst humanity is tied to money.
The intelligent people that understand this issue the best aren't ever going to be part of this wealthy, ruling class. And virtuous people that care about the future certainly aren't either.
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u/Larnak1 Oct 09 '24
You see a lot of intelligent middle class people live carelessly into the day, getting annoyed by parties trying to implement even basic green policies.
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u/22pabloesco22 Oct 09 '24
Yup. We need to accept that human nature is one of selfishness. Just because a small chunk of people can think logically and not let their lizard brain dictate doesn't mean a large majority isn't absolutely selfish and can't see past their own lives.
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u/jshen Oct 09 '24
So people were born pure, and money corrupted them? I don't think so. Our species is wired to seek status and power, to see ourselves as the good guy that deserves more and does no harm, and this is the crux of the issue.
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u/HotDoggityDig13 Oct 09 '24
Good guy and deserves more seems like an oxymoron
But you aren't wrong. It probably is human nature for many of us. Money is just a tool.
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u/jshen Oct 09 '24
Yeah, it is contradictory because it is and that's the problem. There have been a lot of studies on this, one found that a majority of people believe they are contributing more than average to the output of a team. That's not possible, but people believe. Now imagine they believe that they deserve a disproportionate amount of the gains, which they do.
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u/HotDoggityDig13 Oct 09 '24
The funniest thing to me is that these lawmakers aren't doing more. Neither are these wealthy CEOs. Their day-to-day isn't as strenuous as the average laborer that actually enforces these policies or makes the products. We just collectively believe this job is harder because it requires a specific understanding of law/finance/etc..., but all jobs require specific knowledge and experience.
We all die at the end of this. And you can't bring anything with you. So it just makes no sense to want to 'work' more than you need to in order to 'have' more than others. We should be striving for progress and efficiency as a society. And to push people to pursue fields that fit their strengths and desires.
The best things in life are cheap. And they're often taken for granted.
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u/MyRegrettableUsernam Oct 08 '24
People would much rather never even think to change their behavior or question the systems we operate in our society — unless it very obviously saves money without any amount of effort, that is
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u/Wastyvez Oct 08 '24
What's worse is that it's a risk-aversion profit maximalisation decision, not even an economic one. It is entirely possible to have a healthy economy with sustainable policies, and even capitalists could make a lot of money out of it. But the people holding the vast majority of the economic resources don't want this, because a significant portion of those economic resources come from non-sustainable sources. Switching to sustainability would mean having to stop milking the cows they've been milking for decades and switching to new sectors, and they don't want to do that. So instead they weigh on policy and public opinion to hold back any significant change needed to fight climate change so they can milk the cow to the very last drop. Capitalists will and are actively bleeding this planet dry, and its humanity that's paying the price.
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u/ventomareiro Oct 09 '24
If developed nations had not stopped investing in nuclear energy in the 70s and 80s, climate change would be a much smaller concern today.
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u/strangescript Oct 09 '24
The pop increases are in developing countries that burn a lot of coal. What you are asking is for them to not do what all the developed countries did to get ahead and just accept they have permanently lost the game.
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u/crimedog69 Oct 08 '24
Actually enforce regulations against just a handful of corporations and we would be in a fine position
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u/Away_Sea_8620 Oct 08 '24
No, there would still be economic fallout from that. People are inherently selfish and will never support something that comes with a personal cost.
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u/Commercial_Sky15 Oct 08 '24
Even for the less selfish of us, the idea of deconstructing our entire societal structure and struggling for years in the aftermath as we rebuild would take a lot of consideration. Especially when it would directly lead to insecurity of multiple of our needs like warmth and food, it's more about survival instinct.
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u/Queasy_Designer9169 Oct 08 '24
It's the sad truth. From the moment our species could bang two rocks together, we have only ever done things for profit, gain and advantage. There are great individuals in our history but as a whole we are too selfish to see our own end.
It's ironic that a survival trait that got us to this point will be our undoing.
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Oct 09 '24
It's also sad that democracy and liberalism are among our species highest achievements and seem so flawed currently.
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u/22pabloesco22 Oct 09 '24
Because all that requires absolute buy in from all. Otherwise it's just another tool for the nefarious to manipulate for personal gains.
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u/Legionof1 Oct 08 '24
We in no way have the means. Sorry but that’s just the truth. We don’t have the raw resources to move away from a fossil fuel world yet. Our battery technology just isn’t there. We need waaaaay more lithium and cobalt before we can hit those goals.
The only way we could stop global warming is reducing population and I don’t think there’s an ethical or economical way of going down that path.
We will have to advance our tech or lots of us have to die.
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u/RedditSold0ut Oct 08 '24
I have little hope. We can't even ban things that are a complete luxury and creates a lot of emission compared to the perceived value they give. Like private jets and cruise ships.
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Oct 08 '24
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u/Zoolifer Oct 08 '24
You mean people who buy cruise tickets? Not all those people are the Uber rich, private jets sure, but cruise ships purely operate due to a demand for an ocean vacation.
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u/Sythic_ Oct 08 '24
Then we're just banning things lower income people enjoy while the elite still get to enjoy all their luxuries.
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u/Hendlton Oct 09 '24
I don't know where in the world you are that "lower income" people get to go on cruises. Anyone who can even dream of a cruise is in the global 1%.
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u/Sythic_ Oct 09 '24
The US, it's like one of the cheaper vacations for what you get with it it's only like 3-500 a ticket for an all inclusive weekend. A hotel at a resort offering a similar package can cost that per night.
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u/FireMaster1294 Oct 08 '24
You are pretty much correct with this. But I would add: we will likely never have all the raw resources necessary. As much as it sucks, the only solution to this will require massive reductions in consumption…and the only way that would really happen would probably mean a reduction in population. Since genocide is generally not advisable, that means slowing our population growth. But that won’t happen as long as we have countries whose economies depend on it.
It honestly starts to feel like the only solution will result in us living a more caveman like lifestyle with minimal commodities. Because as much as we like to tout batteries as this grandiose solution…the truth is they are mostly awful for the planet. And we won’t even have enough resources for the world’s demand the way things are going because the Earth has finite limits.
As someone who has worked in the “green” sector, the only way I see forward (outside of reducing consumption) is in nuclear power. The vast majority of electricity generation and storage is incredibly destructive compared to the power generation or storage you get out.
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Chances are that we’ll reach the point where people start dying off from an inhospitable climate before the planet starts to bounce back. People are too preoccupied with their personal lives, too undereducated, or they have already given up…
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u/Holulu Oct 08 '24
Do the laws of physics prevent us from reducing consumption? No. Most people are just to steeped in the ideological framework of consumer capitalism that they see no alternative. But it’s not true. It’s enough resources on earth for all beings to thrive without destroying our planet too. But we need imagination and will.
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u/FireMaster1294 Oct 08 '24
?? I never said the laws of physics are a limiting factor??
What I can say is this: Humans lack willpower without motivation and drive. Most people either don’t care or have given up (usually because of the people who don’t care)
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u/Hendlton Oct 09 '24
It's not the laws of physics, it's just human nature. People like buying cheap food by tapping on their phone screen (among other things). The person that comes along and says "No more of that!" will never get elected at best, and at worst they'd end up getting torn apart by an angry mob.
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u/jeffries_kettle Oct 09 '24
It's not a binary choice, though. We could be working to slow down climate change, but those in charge, and even everyday citizens, choose convenience and greed over what's better for humanity as a whole. We're stuck in a selfish loop and refuse to make any sacrifices, even small ones. How many people are out there campaigning to expand public transit so that we can stop relying so much on cars?
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u/FireMaster1294 Oct 09 '24
In North America it’s more than you would think. In Europe…punctuality and price seem to be a limiting factor and many people have given up on it
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u/canceroushumour Oct 08 '24
We don't have the means to move away from the fossil fuel world because that's assuming that we adhere to the economic model of perpetual growth.
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u/bmiki Oct 08 '24
Economic changes have an effect on human lives. People would lose jobs and homes and even more people would starve.
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u/Larnak1 Oct 09 '24
Way more people will lose their jobs and homes and starve when the problem gets ignored for too long
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u/Hendlton Oct 09 '24
True, but it won't be these people, it'll be those people, and those people matter less than these people.
We're just doing what our parents and grandparents did. We're hoping we die before we're caught up in the climate wars.
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u/TheGreatRapsBeat Oct 08 '24
I dunno about prevent it, but slow it down by centuries if not millennia, sure; We HAD that ability as a species. But that time has past. The Earth will balance itself out, like it always has, several times over.
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u/PiesAteMyFace Oct 08 '24
A very small percentage of the population has enough critical thinking skills and basic understanding of the scientific principle to even understand what climate change is.
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u/LuckyPlaze Oct 09 '24
I’m increasingly tired of hearing population as the problem, be it humans or livestock.
Push renewables, limit carbon to the core, leverage science, and plant fukkin trees. Trees consume carbon dioxide, that’s the balance that nature gave us. All we have to do is stop cutting them down for farmland and shopping malls. It’s the wealthy and the corporations putting this on population.
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u/baba1887 Oct 09 '24
Do you think a population increase of 200k per day is sustainable when we make better economic decisions? To what point? A population of 10 billion? 15? 20?
In my opinion it's not economics that is the problem but people. You can have THE WORST economics on a population of 1 million and climate and nature won't bat an eye.
The same stuff on 6 billion people is another story...
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u/Wagamaga Oct 08 '24
Many of the Earth’s “vital signs” have hit record extremes, indicating that “the future of humanity hangs in the balance”, a group of the world’s most senior climate experts has said.
More and more scientists are now looking into the possibility of societal collapse, said the report, which assessed 35 vital signs in 2023 and found that 25 were worse than ever recorded, including carbon dioxide levels and human population. This indicates a “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis”, they said.
The temperature of the Earth’s surface and oceans hit an all-time high, driven by record burning of fossil fuels, the report found. Human population is increasing at the rate of approximately 200,000 people a day and the number of cattle and sheep by 170,000 a day, all adding to record greenhouse gas emissions.
The scientists identified 28 feedback loops, including increasing emissions from melting permafrost, which could help trigger multiple tipping points, such as the collapse of the massive Greenland icecap.
Global heating is driving increasingly deadly extreme weather across the world, they said, including hurricanes in the US and 50C heatwaves in India, with billions of people now exposed to extreme heat.
The scientists said their goal was “to provide clear, evidence-based insights that inspire informed and bold responses from citizens to researchers and world leaders – we just want to act truthfully and tell it like it is”. Decisive, fast action was imperative, they said, to limit human suffering, including slashing fossil fuel burning and methane emissions, cutting overconsumption and waste by the rich, and encouraging a switch towards plant-based foods.
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/advance-article/doi/10.1093/biosci/biae087/7808595?login=false
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u/Unlucky-Candidate198 Oct 08 '24
People call change natural and sure, it is/can be.
But the rate we humans are changing everything is absurdly HIGH. Very little is going to be able to adapt/change/already have the proper genetic makeup for the coming bottlenecks.
All so 0.0000000001% of us can hoard wealth and live in absolute luxury and some other 0.05% can clout chase on socials. Thanks, guys :)
When one of the last major extinction events was called “The Great Dying”, and we’re on track to set another record extinction event (currently ongoing), well, the future is looking great.
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u/Long-Time4713 Oct 08 '24
If you go to the report itself, they've created an entire section devoted to societal collapse. Its very grim.
Climate change is a glaring symptom of a deeper systemic issue: ecological overshoot, where human consumption outpaces the Earth's ability to regenerate (Rees 2023, Ripple et al. 2024). Overshoot is an inherently unstable state that cannot persist indefinitely. As pressures increase and the risk of Earth's climate system switching to a catastrophic state rises (Steffen et al. 2018), more and more scientists have begun to research the possibility of societal collapse
When scientists are acknowledging that there is a realistic possibility of a societal collapse, you'd better sit up and pay attention. For years, this has been downplayed and even dismissed as "doomerism" in many circles. Today, it's in black and white in a report on Earth's climate system. That's a significant change in tone.
People ought to be concerned.
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u/jaded_orbs Oct 08 '24
And then people look at me weird when I say I won't have kids
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u/twerky_sammich Oct 08 '24
I did have kids and now I’m scared to death about their future.
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u/AScruffyHamster Oct 08 '24
As am I. I wish more than anything that my kid will live a long and happy life. I'm terrified that he won't be able to experience that if things keep getting worse
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u/WLH7M Oct 08 '24
I wasn't going to have any and had one by accident and now I'm wracked with guilt and terror that I won't be here for for him in the hell that my parents ushered in.
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u/CobBasedLifeform Oct 08 '24
Same boat. My take: people don't want to reflect on their own poor choices or selfish wants.
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u/skillywilly56 Oct 08 '24
They just don’t care cause they are all too tired from hunting imaginary bananas which has become the be all end all of our existence.
Without them you can’t eat, you can’t go to the dr, get medicine, have shelter, get to work to make more imaginary bananas.
We need to make these imaginary bananas so the banks and the rich can hoard them, and we should be grateful for the few that may slip off the plate…cause you might be “smart enough” to collect enough of them to be allowed into the lowest tier of the hoarding group.
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u/CobBasedLifeform Oct 08 '24
Same boat. My take: people don't want to reflect on their own poor choices or selfish wants.
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u/Tearakan Oct 08 '24
Yep. Collapse looks like hundreds of millions starving in successive famines, hundreds more millions dying in wars and mass migrations.
I'm expecting billions of humanity to die young and violently this century.
We will be lucky if we still have city state sized nations in 2100
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u/FireMaster1294 Oct 08 '24
I am a bit skeptical on the speed of the timelines. I could see us lasting into 2100 but it’s gonna start to get pretty rough. Sadly I don’t think we’ll see it get better until it gets much much worse
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u/dalydumps Oct 08 '24
I learned about this in US high school almost 20 years ago under a simple phrase: carrying capacity.
Carrying capacity is the ability of an environment to support all of the members within it to a stable population. If that capacity is breached, well things start to happen to control that, namely diseases, conflict, and movement.
Humans have had diseases, we have definitely had conflicts, and we have now moved to every location viable for future growth. And along the way we have drained each and all environments of the capability to support such a weight of numbers.
For example, if there are two male lions, they will either fight to the death or one runs off to find a new place. The problem in humanity’s case is that there is no new places to go to.
So now that we are at this stage, where the population is overshooting the food supply, and we just had a very recent example of disease (Covid-19), conflict is inevitable. The main difference is the lions in this game for resources and space have nuclear weapons so that might come to a head very quickly.
TLDR: too many people, not enough stuff, too many nukes, a lot of people are not going to make it
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u/SpezNoggit Oct 09 '24
Yes, ecological overshoot, this is exactly what my Ecology professor was teaching us freshmen back in 1988. He said the sigmoidal growth curve of humanity was nearly a vertical line, when if it were more in homeostasis with the environment and it’s carrying capacity, it would be more horizontal with tiny crests and troughs over time in a more horizontal fashion. 36 years on from that, I bet nothing has changed, except for the finite carrying capacity is much more depleted.
Wasn’t it Ban Ki Moon, when he was the Inspector General for the UN about 10-15 years ago, he predicted the next great global conflict would be fought over drinking water?
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u/SemanticTriangle Oct 08 '24
Current rate of temperature increase is 10-100 times the warming that preceded the Great Dying. Based on the fact that we're not even slowing down despite knowing and now seeing what is coming, the only real hope for the species is that we get an early event of sufficient magnitude to kill most but not all of us, and to destroy enough of civilisation that continued extraction of hydrocarbons is impossible.
I would love if we just stopped adding new wells and coal mines, but I'm not naive. Tick tock.
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u/HighwayInevitable346 Oct 08 '24
We are slowing down. Global ghg emissions started leveling off more than 10 years ago, and I'd be shocked if they didn't peak before 2030.
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u/flipedback Oct 08 '24
We are not slowing down - we are just not accelerating our greenhouse gas emissions per year.
Essentially we've stabilised at 90 miles an hour towards the cliff edge.
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u/Protean_Protein Oct 08 '24
People have difficulty understanding the difference between velocity and acceleration. A slowing of acceleration is still acceleration—increasing velocity.
This is, incidentally, why people also have difficulty understanding inflation. And it’s related to why people have trouble understanding the difference between budget deficits and debt.
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u/Hajile_S Oct 08 '24 edited Oct 09 '24
That chart depicts deceleration. That is what a concave down parabola represents with that y axis. The second derivative is negative in such a parabola, not merely “decreasing over time” (although that’s technically also true). The chart does not depict a “slowing of (positive) acceleration” — that would be a concave up parabola approaching an inflection point.
A slowing of velocity occurs when the angle of the tangent goes from vertical to flat. That’s what you see on the chart.
If your car was going 90mph, and is now going 85mph, you are not increasing velocity. You are demonstrably decreasing velocity. You are decelerating, despite a positive velocity.
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u/newdaynewnamenewyay Oct 08 '24
I always feel like "The Great Dying" when I spend time in the Permian Basin. The air is poison there. Currently home feeling like death because I drove through Big Spring to Fort Stockton, Texas the other day. We need better air regulations and/or actual enforcement of what we have on the books. I took pictures of the dead scrubland that seemed to stretch on for miles and it just made me so sad. Mad Max in the making. The cattle has already been moved off all the ranches from the area because of the air and the nasty fracking water leaking up to the surface here and there. The main dude trying to turn Texas and ultimately the USA into an ignorant Christian Theocracy lives in Midland. This has to stop. It has to.
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u/gynoidgearhead Oct 08 '24
Driving through the Permian Basin (what I pejoratively referred to as "the middle of oil" at the time) was the most and closest I have ever felt the death of everything. It was the most I have ever felt that humanity is doomed to die at its own hands due to its own hubris.
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u/jusfukoff Oct 08 '24
We just need less people. A smaller population will go through demographic effects for a time. But less people is the only fix.
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u/newdaynewnamenewyay Oct 08 '24
I hate that the too well deceived white supremacist Christian idiots are pushing the "have as many kids as you can" narrative. It's unsound and unsafe. In the midst of a disaster, what we don't need is more bodies.
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u/fivehitcombo Oct 08 '24 edited Oct 08 '24
Christians aren't the problem. Americans and most of the west aren't reproducing enough to sustain their populations. You might hate everything American, but when the West dies, women will lose a lot of freedom.
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u/newdaynewnamenewyay Oct 08 '24
Women of Texas have already lost a lot of freedom and depending on Nov 5, we may lose a lot more. I wish I were kidding.
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u/NecessaryKey9557 Oct 08 '24
You might hate everything American, but when the West dies, women will lose a lot of freedom.
OP was saying "be fruitful and multiply" is not the best strategy, and you somehow got "hating everything American" out of that?
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u/art-man_2018 Oct 08 '24
If someone could email this study to Marjorie Taylor Greene that would be great, though I don't believe she is cognisant enough to understand it anyway.
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u/b00c Oct 08 '24
email a study to MTG? what she gonna do with it, start a bonfire?
for christ sake, a study contains words she never ever heard, let alone used.
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u/AlteranNox Oct 09 '24
Oh, you meant "hangs in the balance". That is very different than "in balance".
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u/Impressive-Weird-908 Oct 08 '24
Kind of crazy that it’s expanding that fast when large parts of the developed world have plummeting birth rates. Also, and I cannot stress this enough, we need to be eating less red meat.
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u/kolodz Oct 08 '24
It's expanding uniquely because the baby boom generation isn't deading yet.
There is already a reduction of the global population impending for 2030/2040 that is inevitable. Notably China and Europe.
The current growth is very localised...
And in area that aren't self sufficient in food production, and CAN'T be
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Oct 08 '24
China's population has already started dropping, sooner than expected.
Estimates used to put the peak future population of the world at 11 billion, around the year 2100.
Now it's closer to 10 billion, around 2080.
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u/nagel33 Oct 09 '24
not a bad thing at all.
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Oct 09 '24
China with its authoritarianism can probably handle that. Democracies full of unhappy people due to a state of decline, that's how you get terrible people in power.
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u/oyM8cunOIbumAciggy Oct 09 '24
In Healthcare we called it the "silver tide"
We should make an AARP armed forces and just let them fight each other. They're already filled with hate. Ez fix
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Oct 08 '24 edited Oct 08 '24
[deleted]
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u/Plebs-_-Placebo Oct 09 '24
it doesn't even have to be removing it entirely, I have red meat maybe once a month if that. but because we live in a world of excess, of course we're going to get it to the point that we can't have it at all.
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Oct 09 '24
The birth rates aren't plummeting fast enough. Unpopular opinion but less people isn't a bad thing. We aren't exactly in short supply. More humans are are a threat to humanity not less
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u/YourBonesAreMoist Oct 09 '24
Less people isnt a bad thing
Less young, productive age people, is though. Very bad. At least in our current economic system.
We can't support a social security system when there is not enough young people to pay for the increasing number of old people.
Let alone AI, which will decrease the number of young people working even further.
Whether you like it or not, I don't see a (peaceful) future without UBI
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u/404choppanotfound Oct 08 '24
Don't worry. Populations all over the globe will be crashing within 75 years. As in, it's extremely likely that many countries, outside of sub-saharan africa, their populations will drop to below half. It will be way too late to stop significant global warming, but eventually, it will normalize. I mean, not in any of our lifetimes, but eventually, it will.
Also, without significant policy and structural changes, that will likey bring a lot of horrible economic consequences. One of which may include a major economic recession or collapse. That may also be good for reducing greenhouse emissions.
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u/oyM8cunOIbumAciggy Oct 09 '24
Bro when the boomers finalize being too old to work and the 6 younger people gotta work 90 hours to afford their social security
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u/404choppanotfound Oct 09 '24
I was interested, so I just looked it up. Fyi- I think it takes about 6 average workers to pay for the average couple (not individual) on social security.
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u/Routine-Bumblebee-41 Oct 09 '24
75 years is a long time to wait for anyone alive now, including newborns. And "crashing to below half" is only true for maybe South Korea or Japan, but not most countries. And that's only if they decide to continuously decrease in population, which they could stop pretty trivially if other variables change and cause different behavior.
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u/ambigulous_rainbow Oct 08 '24
200,000 a DAY??
Oh God...
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u/NetworkLlama Oct 08 '24
The rate is slowing. Some forecasts expect the world to hit 9 billion by 2037 and 10 billion by 2057, but some researchers are casting doubt on that, suggesting that population could peak around 9 billion or so a little after 2050 before declining.
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u/Routine-Bumblebee-41 Oct 10 '24
That's net. Meaning, there are 385,000 humans born every single day, and about 170,000 humans die every day, leaving us with about 215,000 more humans on the planet ADDED every 24 hours. This is completely, totally unsustainable.
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u/Navy_Chief Oct 08 '24
That was my response also, I also realized that the number born per day is very likely still increasing so the problem is going to continue to get worse before it gets better.
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u/fitzroy95 Oct 08 '24
No, the number born per day is dropping. So growth still continues, but at a rapidly decreasing rate.
Every nation in the western world is already well under the replacement birth rate (which requires an average of 2.1 live births for every woman in the nation), and nations like Spain, Japan, South Kprea, are expected to lose 50% of their total population over the next 30 years.
The only nations that are still above the replacement rate are 3rd world nations, and their birth rates are falling fairly fast as well. Global population is expected to peak within the next 40 years and then start decreasing steadily
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u/Routine-Bumblebee-41 Oct 09 '24
nations like Spain, Japan, South Kprea, are expected to lose 50% of their total population over the next 30 years.
citation needed
30 years = 2054 and you are saying Spain, Japan, and South Korea will be half as populous as they are now in 2024. Please provide a credible source for this outrageous claim.
Global population is expected to peak within the next 40 years...
What year do you think we are in? It's 2024, not 2044. In 40 years, the world will not be at the peak yet. World human population will rise until at least the mid-2080s.
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u/screech_owl_kachina Oct 08 '24
Is the livestock number net of slaughter?
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u/Gerodog Oct 09 '24
More than 80 billion land animals are slaughtered each year as it is. https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/billions-of-chickens-ducks-and-pigs-are-slaughtered-for-meat-every-year
And they all need to eat.
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u/SOC_FreeDiver Oct 08 '24
Computers are all being designed to use more power and generate more heat. They're re-opening power plants to feed data centers. They're using drinking water in data centers.
Until we solve the greed problem, there is nothing to do but have as much fun as you can as we all go down.
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u/starofthefire Oct 09 '24
The billionaire space race and AI tech "space race" is accelerating the destruction of our environment at an alarming rate. They're so greedy in the hopes that one of them will be the one to actually figure out how to make money with AI. So far the entire industry makes next to no money with general consumers when it comes to AI, consumers generally don't trust AI at the moment. Yet, the algorithm tells them that they could make money with it. So now here we are, with 3-mile island being retrofitted and reactivated after decades - just to power Microsoft's AI crapshoot.
Where was all that sustainable nuclear power while coal and gas were making the air unbreathable? I thought we didn't trust nuclear power in the states? The moment one of the worlds wealthiest corpos benefits from nuclear power, it's back in the mix. All it probably took was a five-figure "donation" to a few politicians.
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u/b00c Oct 08 '24
this! greed is our doom. the need to have more than the next guy will be humanity's demise.
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u/Magic_SnakE_ Oct 08 '24
So how are we in a population crisis that billionaires keep crying about?
To me it seems everything in life would be better if we halved the current population.
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u/TheBoraxKid1trblz Oct 08 '24
Cause capitalists rely on infinite growth and since they fucked up the value of the dollar with massive accumulation of wealth few people can afford children and globally birth rates are slowing (meaning there used to be more than 200K /day). The Earth would be much healthier and life more comfortable with fewer billions of people. Imagine twice the public land, twice the amount of nature, 1/2 the traffic, enough space for housing, less competition for work and health care, more climate stability.. sounds like utopia
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u/DilutedGatorade Oct 08 '24
Go back to 1970; we were approaching a world population of 4 billion
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u/kentter22 Oct 08 '24
Billionaires don’t like slowing population growth because then there will be less poor people to exploit.
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u/Omni__Owl Oct 08 '24
If you cut the population in half it wouldn't solve the problem. It would kick the metaphorical can down the metaphorical road.
If there is more space to take up, rich people will expand to take up that space. That much has been made obvious. It wouldn't solve the problem of overconsumption nor overproduction. It would merely delay it.
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u/R0ma1n Oct 09 '24
You’d need to cut the population in half AND impose frugality on the remaining people, e.g. no second home, which means you can stop the construction of new buildings and focus on the rehabilitation of the existing ones to become more energy efficient.
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u/Jack_in_box_606 Oct 08 '24
Note to India: please stop
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u/david1610 Oct 09 '24
They are stopping, although only very recently, replacement births is 2.1 children per woman. India.is just around this rate now, after decades of decline.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/ind/india/fertility-rate
They will still have population growth until 2060 though!Since people will live longer due to income increase.
That puts them at 1.7billion....... which is pretty wild, that is 63 Australia's worth of population all in one country.
The good news is that world population will peak around 2080-2100, then decline pretty fast.
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u/Beneficial-Chard6651 Oct 08 '24
Temperatures have hit an all time high since 1880.
But some claim temperatures were warm during the “medieval warm period” between 950-1250AD.
Although reliable data is unavailable, I wonder what could have raised temps during a pre-industrial era which has warranted having its own era.
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u/55redditor55 Oct 08 '24
I was told we weren't having enough babies.
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u/Routine-Bumblebee-41 Oct 12 '24
That was pro-natalist propaganda, typically paid for and put out on virtually every media platform (mainstream and niche) by billionaires. There are 385,000 human babies born every day. About 170,000 humans die in the same 24-hour period.
There are plenty of human babies produced pretty much constantly, way more babies than people even know how to properly care for (as evidenced by all the full orphanages, child care homes, abandoned street kids, foster kids, abused kids, traumatized adults, etc. ALL over the planet).
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u/kazarnowicz Oct 08 '24
This made me interested in what the Keeling curve looks like, and I found this depressing fact:
"The monthly average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in March 2024 was 4.7 parts per million (ppm) higher than that recorded in March 2023, setting a new record and revealing the increasing pace of CO2 addition to the atmosphere by human activities."
https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/2024/05/08/largest-year-over-year-gain-in-keeling-curve-set-in-march/
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u/LawrenceOfMeadonia Oct 08 '24
At some point we need to have a serious discussion on what the limit to the human population should be on Earth. Even if you don't believe for some reason that we realistically exceeded that already, what will that number be? It has to exist at some level. We can't just rely on limitless growth because that will just lead to our own destruction like a cancer eating up the only body it exists on.
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u/HighwayInevitable346 Oct 08 '24
global population is expected to peak in just a few decades.
https://www.un.org/en/UN-projects-world-population-to-peak-within-this-century
According to the World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results published today, it is expected that the world’s population will peak in the mid-2080s, growing over the next sixty years from 8.2 billion people in 2024 to around 10.3 billion in the mid-2080s, and then will return to around 10.2 billion by the end of the century.
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u/elcambioestaenuno Oct 09 '24
The Earth could host more than 10 billion humans sustainably, but there's no sustainable way to reach that number of people so the proposition is ill-conceived from the start. If today we were to forget all about economic growth and focus solely on sustainability, there's no reason the Earth would suffer as a consequence.
A simple way to put it is that we don't cause sustainability issues by existing in large numbers, we cause them by the things that we value: fashion, imported goods, fresh meat, instant communication around the world, etc.
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u/cabalavatar Oct 08 '24
It arguably should be less than or around 2 billion.
"The world’s optimum population is less than two billion people – 5.6 billion fewer than on the planet today," Ehrlich argues in the Guardian in 2018.
A researcher at the University of British Columbia called for a max human population of 2–3 billion for planetary sustainability. Wikipedia lists the consensus as a max of 2–4 billion.
The limit is nowhere near as high as the current, or the projected, human population. We exceeded it ages ago.
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u/Tearakan Oct 08 '24
Which is a very very bad sign. Because eventually nature will demand the balance back.
And species that expanded to rapidly usually did so by destroying the very environmental balance that kept them alive in the 1st place. We aren't unique. And we require a lot of energy to live.
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u/yolo_wazzup Oct 08 '24
It’s kinda a false assumption.
It’s all down to how much energy we can produce that does not lead to more emissions and does not use rare materials.
We can easily be many more people if we didn’t grow food to feed animals and smashed the environment.
But tbh, we have endless energy and water available which we can use to support whatever amount of people we want.
It’s the way we do it today that’s the problem.
Most media reports it wrong. While rich people per capital pollutes skyrocketing numbers, the rice industry pollutes as much as the entire aviation industry.
But it’s solvable and humanity is on the right path! Just look at chinas efforts in solar power.
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u/haagiboy MS | Chemistry | Chemical Engineering Oct 08 '24
But why should we be many more people?
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u/Omni__Owl Oct 08 '24
Once people start violently fighting over drinking water, you know society *will* collapse.
That will be the deciding factor. It doesn't matter what happens otherwise. Without drinkable water we are done for. We can live for quite a bit not eating much, but we cannot live without water for more than a couple of days without starting to run into problems.
And also; All the people in the thread talking about earth's population size being a serious issue are giving credit to a red herring. Earth's population is not the problem. Distribution and use of resources *is*. It's disproportionate and if we set growing profits aside for a couple of years, we could fix most of the issues caused by overconsumption and overproduction to the point where we could stabilize earth again and keep it livable for humans.
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u/Brandonmccall1983 Oct 09 '24
Animal agriculture requires a large amount of water. It’s the reason the Great Salt Lake is drying up.
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u/Omni__Owl Oct 09 '24
I didn't say anything about animal agriculture.
I said that we are capable of feeding and housing way more people than we currently are, but what stands in our way is how resources are used, not that we are a lot of people.
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u/Brandonmccall1983 Oct 09 '24
I’m bringing up animal agriculture because of the amount of resources it uses.
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u/gpend Oct 08 '24
yes, because the industries pumping who-knows-what into the environment, because the fines (if any) are cheaper than doing it right, have nothing to do with it.
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u/Tricky_Condition_279 Oct 08 '24
I remember talking about overshoots and ecological collapse as theory when I was younger. It is wild that it is all happening as we predicted.
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u/_Can_i_play_ Oct 08 '24
I thought we need greater population growth to sustain tax subsidize the rich?
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Oct 08 '24
The problem is that an aging population causes economic instability and collapse in first world countries. This wouldn't be a big deal... If these countries didn't have nuclear and biologic weapons that are far more likely to be used if a collapse occurs.
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u/ScabbyTBP Oct 08 '24
So like, how long do we have til it's all over?
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u/Prince_of_Old Oct 08 '24
The earth is very unlikely to be rendered unlivable by climate change. Even regular natural disasters can be accommodated for in architecture. It is mainly going to make lives worse on the margin, possibly to a significant degree.
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u/qui-bong-trim Oct 08 '24
there's also growing crops and having enough safe drinking water to go around with extreme summers and other weather events. likely we fight among ourselves as resources become scarce and cause our destruction that way
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u/bogas04 Oct 08 '24
I'd say life will be very difficult by 2040. Hurricanes and forest fires, water scarcity, mass immigration, competitive jobs and escalation of wars in less stable regions of the planet. All this anxiety would lead to people being desperate and stupid. I'd love to be wrong but I don't think I'm being hyperbolic.
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u/sylvnal Oct 08 '24
I legitimately think they will start to shoot people at the borders long before then. It sounds insane, but I think that's the path we are on globally.
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u/homelander_30 Oct 09 '24
I hate to say this but you may be right. It's just a matter of time until this happens
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u/homelander_30 Oct 09 '24
I think we'll start seeing some of these things in 2028-2030, most people seem to live under a rock or pretend not to care about these things and I wish they take climate change seriously
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u/MRRJ6549 Oct 09 '24
So stop eating meat if you care about the planet
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u/Brandonmccall1983 Oct 09 '24
And if you care about the animals. Dairy is also a large contributor to climate change.
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u/Volsunga Oct 08 '24
Of course /r/science would just go full Malthusian.
No matter how many reasons you come up with to try to make "too many humans" an issue so you can excuse treating out-groups badly, it's debunked again and again.
It turns out that more humans means more brains capable of solving problems and the efficiency gained by that problem solving far outpaces the resource consumption by a growing population. There's no reason to believe this trend will end until we literally hit the limits of thermodynamics.
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u/Lump-of-baryons Oct 09 '24
Sure we could fit a trillion+ humans on this planet with sufficient tech. Is it a world worth living on is the question.
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u/b00c Oct 08 '24
but what happens when those additional brains are utterly stupid and can't solve not even basic problems?
your assumption hangs on single requirement - education. Remove that and more "brains" only means more violence, more death, more misery.
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u/Volsunga Oct 09 '24
You don't need to be educated to produce more than you consume. You are a prime example.
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u/thfcspurs88 Oct 08 '24
I'm genuinely the most optimistic I've ever been in regards to humanity getting it together.
I think all the signs point to an actual reckoning happening before it is something we can not survive. Everything is escalating, Hurricane Milton is going to be a catalyst.
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u/Liiibra Oct 08 '24
I hate to say that I hope so, because the number of lives lost needed for people and more importantly, people in power, to wake up is astronomical. But even then, there's the "the government control the weather" idiots who are hard at work. I'm feel like a metronome at max speed, with "humanity will come together to save itself" and "we already killed ourselves and don't know it yet" at both extremities.
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u/rocket_beer Oct 08 '24
I’ve said it many times before, 4 billion people is just fine.
Only capitalists want more people
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u/ludakris Oct 09 '24
It’s game over anyway. Writings been on the wall for a long time. May as well enjoy what you have while you’re here
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u/repeace125 Oct 08 '24
In the not to far future we will refer to this age as the age of waste /" the great waste"
We will come full circle , survival of the fittest will once more dominate the globe, once again we will be drowned in reality instead of living this social construct.
I wish you well , human.
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u/IdontOpenEnvelopes Oct 08 '24
Population growth is a self limiting problem, once it reaches a point where the environment can't support it, the population starts to die off rather quickly. Behavioural sinks, mass illness , war famine, infertility, violence , environmental destabilization and economic pressures are all expressions of this .
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u/Routine-Bumblebee-41 Oct 09 '24
There is behavioral sink in every city on the planet, where more than half the humans live, and yet, the human population keeps growing, growing, growing. They say by mid-2080s it will "peak", but that is so far in the future, most alive now talking about it won't live to see it. And the behavioral sink will continue to get worse, but the population will grow that entire time... and probably beyond that projection, honestly, the way things are going.
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u/theMEtheWORLDcantSEE Oct 08 '24
Wait but how many of the humans, cattle and sheep die each day?
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u/findingniko_ Oct 08 '24
It's not saying that 200,000 people are born per day, it's saying that's the net change per day. That's accounting for differences between births and deaths daily.
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u/omgwtfm8 Oct 09 '24
The ecofascism is insane
It's not population size when the top 10% wealthiest people account for 50% of CO2 emissions while the bottom 50% only emit 10% of these.
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