Empty Planet, Peak Human Soon?

[Richard Stanley]

The book Empty Planet argues that we will achieve Peak Human at 9 billion, rather than the 11 billion that such as the UN claims. While the authors believe in the popular MMGW construct, they agree that this is an optimistic sign. The video, Don't Panic, uses the 11 billion number and both productions demonstrate that birthrates go down when people, especially women, are more educated and feel better about their life prospects.

The EP authors argue that the USA must increase its immigration, rather than limit it. IMO all this argues for encouraging more automation as our populations age.

 

[Jerry Russell]

While the UN projection is that population will reach a peak in about 2100, the Club of Rome predicted that the peak human population would occur about 2050 (given their business-as-usual baseline scenario.) So, Bricker & Ibbitson's estimates are exactly in line with what Donella Meadows et al. said in 1972.

 

[Richard Stanley]

Bricker and Ibbitson also argue that post-Peak the global population will necessarily go down with increasingly better life quality, which is heavily related to increased urbanization, facilitated by mechanized (> automated?) farming.

Already we see the effects of the aging populaces, especially in Japan. This is one reason that increased automation will be a real benefit, especially if all humans are made stakeholders by birthright.

 

[Richard Stanley]

So, Claude is a closet member of the Yang Gang after all. We'll get you a Yang Gang MATH hat. (Make America Think Harder, only it also works as Make Australia Think Harder)

 

[Jerry Russell]

birthrates go down when people, especially women, are more educated and feel better about their life prospects.

Here's an article by Lisa Belkin of Yahoo News, stating that birth rates are going down because young people, especially women, are feeling dreadfully fearful of their life prospects. MMGW is near the top of their list of challenges.

https://news.yahoo.com/barometer-of-despair-birthrate-falls-as-millennials-fear-climate-apocalypse-100030135.html

The U.S. birthrate is currently at its lowest in 32 years, with 2018 being the fourth consecutive year of decline. Usually births increase at times of economic stability, so these latest numbers have led demographers to wonder what else is on prospective parents’ minds.​

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“The birthrate is a barometer of despair,” Dowell Myers, who studies this data at the University of Southern California, concluded when the latest numbers were released earlier this year. “Not a whole lot of things are going good, and that’s haunting young people.”​

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On the list of “not good things” (lack of long-term job security, mountains of debt, the likelihood today’s children will not do as well economically as their parents), the climate crisis, with its specter of droughts, famines, fires and floods, is near the top. A poll by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation in September found that 68 percent of respondents ages 18-29 say they are “afraid” of the effects of climate change, and 63 percent of teen respondents believe future generations will be harmed a great deal.​

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The article largely consists of interviews with young people who have decided not to have children because of their belief that those children would face a bleak future.