That said, the world's total fertility rate has been declining for some time and will continue to decline, so the world's population is not expected to continue increasing at an exponential rate for very much longer. — Thorongil
What would these actions "look like" in human populations? Random violence, complacency, reproductive and mating changes, etc. When "humanized" into a "social issue", how and where do these "signals" show up? Can we see them happening today in areas where humans are similarly packed together (like modern urban centers)? How about this part "... retreated into their bedding and rarely ventured out. Simply eating, sleeping, and grooming." - can we add "shopping" and "surfing the net" as a couple of items?Days 315-600: The “Equilibrium” period. It was here that the social roles of mice began to break down. Mice born during this period found they lacked space to mark out territories in, and random acts of violence among the mice began to occur. Many males simply gave up on trying to find females. These males retreated into their bedding and rarely ventured out. Simply eating, sleeping, and grooming.
Same set of questions - what do the human versions of these behaviours look like? And, can we see them happening today?Days 600-800: The “Die” phase. The population, which maxed-out at 2,200, began to decline. No surviving births took place after day 600, and the colony ultimately died out. Individuals removed from the colony and placed in similar units continued to demonstrate erratic behavior and also failed to reproduce. The mice were remarkably violent at this time, for little reason.
He felt it was plain that the problem was having too many individuals for meaningful social roles, saying that after that point: “only violence and disruption of social organization can follow. ... Individuals born under these circumstances will be so out of touch with reality as to be incapable even of alienation. Their most complex behaviors will become fragmented. Acquisition, creation and utilization of ideas appropriate for life in a post-industrial cultural-conceptual-technological society will have been blocked.”
* 75-90% of which live in medium to large, polluted urban conglomerates and centers.
* Technology and automation (and potentially A.I.) remove "work" for the bulk of the population.
* Cooperation on climate change, per the usual Prisoner's Dilemma outcome, is rendered ineffectual.
* Scientific advancement to mitigate negative factros is curtailed by social and economic upheaval.
* Social upheaval and climate change create mass migrations.
* Mass migrations create and exacerbate existing social and economic upheaval.
* Mass population collapse. Even survivors of city and urban areas are so psychologically damaged they don't survive and don't reproduce. — Uneducated Pleb
not only the oil, also food, water, metals, etc. — René Descartes
As the population grows this century and as temperatures, humidity, disruptive storms, droughts, floods, and other disasters become more intolerable, we will reach a crunch where a lot of people are going to die off.Mass population collapse. — Uneducated Pleb
In those groups where growth is the highest, I believe the primary motivation to have children is still economic survival. — Monitor
Perhaps a mitigating factor is that countries with such high standards of living also tend to have lower fertility and population growth rates... — prothero
Perhaps with education, opportunity and family planning services it will turn out all right after all. Remains to be seen, in any event not much to do except the above. — prothero
I was not trying to present it as inevitable, just from a synthesis of my own study on the issue - this is what is most probable (in my opinion). The more up in the air question for me is the timeline. Climate change is the big variable.We don't know how certainly inevitable all this is. It is conceivable that wise, thoughtful, scientific and socially enlightened solutions could be devised which would render these calamities moot. — Bitter Crank
Yes they are, but are they "market" worthy? Also, the net energy use to mine, manufacture, and implement these solutions, plus the fact that the energy needs of the world is going to go through the roof (even by todays standards), these technologies will be hardpressed to meet those needs.The means of generating fairly clean energy from nuclear, solar, and wind are available. — Bitter Crank
Getting the political will, the funding, and then the incentives to remove the population from their cars and make them share buses and trains more so than already done - that would be a neat trick. What would you propose? What would you do for people that refuse to do so because simply because it is their right to drive their car where they want and how much they want? If that gets done, say in the US, would the same pressures work for China? For India? For Iran? Too many players, too many chances to defect from the game.The cities can be cleaned up; they don't have to be smoky, filthy, garbage-strewn shit holes...A major piece of that is not using cars to move people around. Do it with mass transit, foot traffic, and bicycles. — Bitter Crank
That is true - they are not the same. But, as you noted, we do have limits. We are constrained by Nature and her biology. The question is - what are the responses? And, are we already seeing them? From work done by Stanley Milgrim, by Philip Zimbardo, and others we are shown that we can easily culturize and adopt the worst tendencies simply from social roles in a conducive environment for "evil", but in the end, they are evolutionary adaptations (that are not so savory or noble) that, given the right conditions, become part of culture. Between the work of psychologists and game theory, at least in my reading of them, the problem of climate change is going to be a reality with the same effect on people and populations as the Ice Ages but done in a shorter timeframe than the onset of an Ice Age. It will be an evolutionary bottleneck for our species...but as the optimist I am, I think we will survive it as a species. I liken it to the Ice Age meets the Dark Ages with the addition of, at the beginning, the Rwandan Genocide.Human responses to stresses aren't quite the same as they are for rat populations; we (presumably) have more flexible response capability that rats. — Bitter Crank
I read somewhere that when the social class of elites gets a sniffle and cough, the poor die of pneumonia. When you say "solution" it sounds as though it is a planned, meditated response. From what we have observed in nature - those individuals and groups that have "lesser status", or less access to land and resources, are the most likely to die off first when there are stressors in and of the environment. So, I don't think it is part of "The Solution", but I do think it is going to be a fact regardless of any solution put into place or not.Unpleasant Questions: Is a massive die-off among the poorer populations (who simply can not keep body and soul together under the stresses of population and climate change) part of the solution? — Bitter Crank
I am not sure it is a question of "letting it happen" or not. Look at past history and all that is happening now as far as displaced populations - the Rohingya, the Syrians, the Mediterranean migrant ships. All of these people leaving lands that will be most affected by climate change in the future - what are the results of the mass flow of people now? Political (and military) upheaval in the countries these populations are escaping to. Now multiply that problem to the entire or bulk of the populations of those countries and I think we get an idea of, based off today's responses, what we can expect in the future but with an exponentially more drastic response.Should we let this happen or not? — Bitter Crank
In order to stop it, once it began, we would have to know "when it began" and "what it looks like" first, would you agree? What line would be drawn, when is the category created, of "climate induced die off" or even "climate induced famine/migration"? One of the thoughts behind the Syrian civil war was the fact that the country experienced a climate change exacerbation of a natural drought cycle, which then sent all the farmers (young men) into the cities looking for work. Upon not finding that work, unrest followed and was then met with severe reprisals from the government. Then, floods of refugees of the war - but couldn't you also say that all the Syrian refugees are really "climate refugees"? The war was the reason they left, but the mechanism behind the war would be labeled as climate change. How do we tell the difference between war induced migration and climate induced migration?Is there anything we might do to stop it, once it began? What if there are, simply, too many people? — Bitter Crank
What is the difference between bacteria and humans when it comes to "finding new ways" to increase populations? There is a loooong bacterial history, both in depth and scope of "changing environments" in order to adapt. In these regards, bacteria are actually better than humans and have a longer evolutionary history that places the high score firmly in their column. I think you give bacteria too little credit, they are (so far) the clear winners of evolution (adaptation to conditions, exploitation of resources, and adaptation of the environment itself). Hell, without bacteria, humans would not be able to do anything we currently do, including digesting a meal.but unlike Bacteria, humans keep finding new ways to allow for further population growth and to exploit nature. Humans adapt the environment for themselves. I'm slightly skeptical about the comparison. — René Descartes
I think because, in part, the definition is slippery and differs between groups. Even the vegan, bicycle riding minimalist in the West will have different ideas of what "overconsumption" is than someone like a San hunter.That is what almost always seems to be ignored in the narrative about the problem of population growth: overconsumption. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
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