$4 bln renewable energy project

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Well, your reasoning is sound, as far as it goes. You wouldn’t enjoy it.
But it’s a bit of a straw person: there are numbers between 0% and 100%.

Indeed it is a straw baby. My appeal was a sort of idiotic appeal to emotion with the biggest driving piece unstated. Among the most satisfying thing to me in my life are my children. I love having a purpose which goes beyond my (now only about) 20 years of life left. I love the beauty of them, the care and passion with which they live their lives.

Even a fairly casual review of human history and social organizations will suggest strongly that I am not alone among humans in this regard and that there are strong biological reasons that humans might be like this.

Were we “happier” when there were a few 10s of millions of humans on the planet and we hunted and gathered? Probably, but not certainly yes. Can we genetically learn to be happy with 100 billion of us on a planet which requires great technical expertise and coordination to operate? Probably yes.

I would personally never want to go back to hunter gatherers. From my point of view that would be analagous to a 35 year old reasonably successful adult longing to be 3 years old again. I am totally enamored of understanding the world, a project humans have really taken on seriously in the last few hundred years. I am fascinated by what we can build, how we can change the world to support us (and other life) and how we can enhance ourselves and our understanding both with great tools like VR, TV, computers and the internet, and by enhancing ourselves through the use of these tools and ultimately by modifying ourselves.

But that’s just my personal preference. Nothing stops someone else from being enamored of a noble savage life, perhaps 10 million of us living a world curated by AIs who prevent us from overpopulating and keep us happy in a zoo-like curated world. Or whatever else.

One of the advantages of loving the future that I love is that it is probably what we are going to do anyway, so you might as well enjoy it. There is no trivial path to changing the trajectory of the species away from 9 billion members in the next few decades. Given these numbers, the only alternative to a complex technical infrastructure achieved through vast understanding of the world and vast technical projects to support the billions is a collapse and and path to lower population through starvation, and what Diamond’s Collapse suggests would be a lot of violence and cruelty as the population killed itself down to sustainable levels.

Further supporting my own view of a beautiful future are conclusions such as those reached by Bjorn Lomborg. That if you want to improve life for the actual humans who are essentially inevitably going to be on the planet in the next few 100 years, reducing carbon emissions is super low on the list of cost effective things that could be done. The human misery expected from inexpensively fixable health issues is massive compared to the prospect of some people having to move a few miles inland while others build sea-level-rise defenses practically Dutch in their beauty and elegance. The thing that’s false about climate change is not that it is happening and that it is manmade, but that an even vaguely good thing to do about it is to halt the enrichment of the human race by cutting off carbon emissions.

And here we bring it back to Buffett and Berkshire, for those of you that have a fetish for posts on this board being related to these things. Buffett said long ago that the world would be way better off in the future if he spent his whole life ignoring charity and building wealth, which he then handed off to people who were, compared to him, not as good at building wealth but pretty good at spending it to make people better off. The Lomborgian observation can be interpreted in a similar way. The human race is better off getting bigger and much richer, and THEN addressing climate change with its vast expertise, human resources, and wealth, then it would be folding its tent before it has even funded its retirement, as it were, and shivering in the cold in a low-carbon-footprint way.

So yes, Mungo, we could follow the latest fashions and try to shrink western civilization even faster than it seems to want to shrink itself, ignoring the fact that we will be replaced by peoples who aren’t at all interested in shrinking, due to the nature of compound interest applied to different populations’ growth rates. Or we could attempt to remove all sense of guilt or limits from those of us who actually participate in the wealth of western civilization, and continue the trend of expertise and human power that we have followed for the past few 100 years, and which has lead us to unprecedented health, wealth, and dare I say it, opportunities to find meaning, purpose, and happiness in the world. I personally like this second approach, and find more than enough evidence in history and current study to suggest it has a very high chance of succeeding.

Ehrlich is still going to lose all the bets he makes with Simon. Buffett is still going to get rich betting on the economic growth of the planet. Some humans are still going to run around like Chicken Little, and they are still going to be wrong. The rest of us are still going to have a few children who we will love and will love to see learn how to live in the changing world quite successfully, for the most part.

R:)

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22

Slowing the current rise in population, or plateauing at the current level, or even slowly decreasing to somewhere in between 1 and 8 billion, over the next few centuries, seems like something we could do to live in harmony with all species, not just our own. Without needing to throw out any human babies.

I don’t know if anybody has really figured out how it scales, but I am concerned that if we had 1/10 the population on the planet, it would take way more than 10X as long between new iPhone generations. The alternative view to the “we should shrink back to where we were when we were poorer and stupider” is “lots of smart people living relatively free lives produce progress at rates that rise more than linearly with the population.”

Also, I don’t think there is a way to stop population growth short of massive authoritarian takeovers that collapse the world economy and starve us down in population in misery and incompetence. So even if a rosy future with lots of people is not an inevitable outcome, it may be the most morally compelling thing to work towards.

R:

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Slowing the current rise in population, or plateauing at the current level, or even slowly decreasing to somewhere in between 1 and 8 billion, over the next few centuries, seems like something we could do to live in harmony with all species, not just our own. Without needing to throw out any human babies.

Agree with Ralph 100%.

Not having babies, while not quite a modest Swiftian proposal, is not a solution to global warming either; any more than starving yourself is a solution to global hunger.

The Earth can comfortably sustain at least a 100 billion humans IF the humans live sustainably. US will be as crowded as India (roughly 12x density). No big deal.

As some old bald guy allegedly said, the world has enough of everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed.

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Also, I don’t think there is a way to stop population growth short of massive authoritarian takeovers that collapse the world economy and starve us down in population in misery and incompetence.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read up on this subject. So what follows are just my recollections, not necessarily accurate.

First, I recall that growth to circa 9 billion is already baked into current population size and birth/death rates. I guess a more dangerous virus could reverse that, but our science seems to have progressed enough to combat that. Ditto food shortages can be overcome, probably at the expense of the environment. Nuclear war?

Conflicts among humans and environmental damage along the way are almost certain.

But there also seems to be a self-correcting aspect. As standards of living rise, birth rates decline. Already Western Europe, Japan, and China are below replacement rates. I think immigration is what is keeping population growth up in the US. Canada the same? So, again only my recall, we sorta level off at the 9 billion level, and perhaps slowly decline from that. To do so, we’re going to have to help raise standards of living for less developed countries. It’s in our long range best interests.

All well beyond my life expectancy, and probably that of my grandkids. But population growth doesn’t result in human extinction.

And having a child and grandkids has been the most rewarding part of my life - as Ralph says.

Our technical ability to combat climate change with population movements, Dutch type defenses to the oceans, etc. as Ralph also suggests will help mitigate higher temperatures. I think one mistake we’re making now is not having enough focus and resources directed to defending against the probable effects we’re going to see from climate change.

Just some random thought triggered by one of Ralph’s best offerings to this board from my viewpoint.

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Am often saddened by the number of good healthy trees that are periodically cut down along the US interstate highway system. Seems like a waste of trees, labor, fuel etc, just so a huge swath of what was woods and needed zero maintanance can now be mowed, over and over again.

:frowning:

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Seems like a waste of trees, labor, fuel etc, just so a huge swath of what was woods and needed zero maintanance can now be mowed, over and over again.

As someone who regularly travels the same US interstate highway system at unnaturally fast speeds for my fragile fleshy body, I’m glad for the lack of trees falling onto the highway. I can deal with an errant blade of grass striking my windshield, but when the trees get too close- they have to go.

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lol… 3 meters wide should be enough grass.

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lol… value,

Each state does the tree reduction differently.

Have driven a lot of the US Interstate system and wonder where you see trees that are so close to the pavement that they could fall and hit a car? Maybe in the Rockies?

I guess that we travel in different highways?

Are you backing up the truck, or keeping your powder dry?

Sincerely,

jan

:^)

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I don’t know if anybody has really figured out how it scales, but I am concerned that if we had 1/10 the population on the planet, it would take way more than 10X as long between new iPhone generations. The alternative view to the “we should shrink back to where we were when we were poorer and stupider” is “lots of smart people living relatively free lives produce progress at rates that rise more than linearly with the population.”

Also, I don’t think there is a way to stop population growth short of massive authoritarian takeovers that collapse the world economy and starve us down in population in misery and incompetence. So even if a rosy future with lots of people is not an inevitable outcome, it may be the most morally compelling thing to work towards.

The two alternatives are not just keeping increasing our population indefinitely vs going back to the stone age with several million humans and long waits between iPhone generations.

How about just slowing down the increase, or slightly decreasing the population, taking it back from 8 billion to somewhere between 3 billion and 6 billion (the number we had when I was born and when I got married, respectively?) I think we could do that without authoritarian measures and without adding too much wait time before we get a better phone.

For instance, in many countries, we actually have incentives to have more kids. Of course we want to provide good services to the children that people do end up having, and I certainly agree with you that having children and grandchildren can be and has been for me one of the great joys in life. But we should not push people into having more kids by giving them baby bonuses, for instance, and we should help people who want to have less children achieve their goals by making birth control readily available. You don’t need a lot of authoritarian government or mass starvation to achieve a more modest objective, and in fact, a smaller population might mean we need less government meddling in how much carbon we produce.

dtb

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How about just slowing down the increase, or slightly decreasing the population, taking it back from 8 billion to somewhere between 3 billion and 6 billion (the number we had when I was born and when I got married, respectively?) I think we could do that without authoritarian measures and without adding too much wait time before we get a better phone.

This is already happening. The world population will peak at around 10-12 billion by the end of the century and then start to enter a phase of exponential decay. The only regions of the world that are still growing their population are Oceana and Africa. We need to start thinking about supporting family formation before we hit the point of exponential decay. China is currently dealing with an impending population collapse because of their one child policy and rapid urbanization. They are expected to peak at ~1.5 billion in the next five years and then lose 400-500 million people by the end of the century.

https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

Since 1960 global GDP has grown around 3% per annum on average. The world population growth since 1960 has averaged around 1.5%. It’s actually fallen from 2% in 1963 to around 1% today. You can imagine the impact this declining population growth rate will have on economic growth in the coming decades.

We tend to drive with the rearview mirror when it comes to questions of population growth. Despite the fact that the world population is still growing, the real problem approaching us is population collapse.

PP

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exponential decay

I doubt it. Even if we come down from 10 B to 6 B, it is really not that bad, given automation is going to take away many jobs.

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Also, I don’t think there is a way to stop population growth short of massive authoritarian takeovers that collapse the world economy and starve us down in population in misery and incompetence. So even if a rosy future with lots of people is not an inevitable outcome, it may be the most morally compelling thing to work towards.

Education for girls up to 6th grade greatly reduces population growth. That’s a worthwhile endeavor just for its own sake.

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Actually we can expand that further, when the girls go to college, they postpone marriage and often have just one child.

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The world population will peak at around 10-12 billion by the end of the century and then start to enter a phase of exponential decay. The only regions of the world that are still growing their population are Oceana and Africa. We need to start thinking about supporting family formation before we hit the point of exponential decay. …

We tend to drive with the rearview mirror when it comes to questions of population growth. Despite the fact that the world population is still growing, the real problem approaching us is population collapse.

Population growth or shrinkage is always exponential, of course, and that is true whether the annual change is an increase of 1% every year or 5% or even if it’s a decrease of 1% a year. The current 1% annual increase is already a big improvement from the 1970s when it was over 2% a year, and as you and others have said, this increase is slowing, and is projected to be a 0% increase (stable population) somewhere between about 2070 and 2010, when we will likely have a population of between about 9 and 11 billion, maybe closer to 9, according to the latest projections.

Population growth doesn’t turn on a dime, and it took 50 years to go from 2% growth to 1% growth, so talk of population collapse seems a bit exagerated. Here’s what the collapse would look like, if we managed to go directly from a 1% annual increase to a 1% DECREASE right away, which would mean slowing by twice as much, in one year, as we have managed in the last 50 years:

2022: 7.95 billion
2023: 7.87 billion
…
2032: 7.19 billion
2042: 6.50 billion
2052: 5.88 billion
2062: 5.32 billion
2072: 4.81 billion
2082: 4.35 billion

In 50 years, we would be down to 55% of today’s population, or in other words, back to the population we had in about 1980. And being exponential, when it’s negative, actually means the absolute decrease in the number of people gets smaller and smaller.

As someone who was born when there were only 3 billion people, having 4.35 billion doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, even if we ended up getting iPhone generations spaced out a bit more. I would happily trade that for more forests, less pollution, more land per person, and cheaper houses for our kids. Not that it’s likely to happen - we would be lucky to hit a population plateau, in my lifetime. But a modest decrease, over many years, would have a lot of advantages.

Just look at Japan, which has already lost 3% of its population in the last few years (they have an annual decline of about 1/2 a percent), and quality of life seems to be holding up just fine.

dtb

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Ugh.
We are very very far away from the point where the total population affects an individual’s quality of life.
Give it a rest all you non-breeders.

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