Global fertility rates hit an historic tipping point and are unlikely to recover, experts say
  • aeronmelon@lemmy.world
    8613·
    9 months ago

    Unpopular truth: We don’t need 8 billion humans. We don’t even need 1 billion. Not for a terrestrial species occupying only one planet.

    Ideally, the global population would stay about the same, but slowly rise and fall in seasons like the temperature.

    This is a windfall that we should use to sort out the food distribution problem. But we won’t.

      • aeronmelon@lemmy.world
        3822·
        9 months ago

        Well, an aptitude test sure wouldn’t hurt.

        The truth is, once we outgrow the religious imperative to just crank out babies like it’s a contest, and make it legal and easy for anyone to have sex without worrying about impregnation, then there would be little need to regulate reproduction.

      • CompostMaterial@lemmy.worldEnglish
        176·
        9 months ago

        It’s not really about who gets to reproduce, it’s about infant mortality.

        Pre-1900 there were just around a billion people, yet it was very common to have 7-10 children. Most didn’t make it to reproductive age, so the population wasn’t growing at that same rate.

        Now infant mortality is low, very low in developed countries, yet it is still common to have 4-6 children. Nearly all of whom will reproduce.

        Realisticly, no one needs more than one children. Two would be generous. More than two is excessive.

          • Blueberrydreamer@lemmynsfw.com
            81·
            9 months ago

            It doesn’t need to be forced. All that’s needed is education and easy access to birth control. There’s a reason birthrates are declining in virtually all developed countries. When given a real, educated choice, the vast majority of women choose to have fewer children.

        • deafboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          no one needs more than one children

          So… this is how it ends. Some predicted a virus, a climate change related natural disaster or an asteroid. But what finally got us, was some bad math.

      • FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today
        4·
        9 months ago

        1. Enshrine medical rights for women’s bodies that allows them to abort pregnancy, and allows doctors to make that decision for them in case of early complication leading to emergency (a conscious woman not at risk would never be forced to accept treatment that would endanger a viable fetus, but a nonviable fetus would never lead to undue risks in a more ideal world than what we live in).

        2. We’ll start with a democratic system of laws with a philosophy of marginal satisfaction offset by an aversion to suffering taking priority, a good first step would be to simply incentivize education and remaining childless, perhaps with tax credits or guaranteed income welfare.

        3. Introducing or reintroducing publicly funded community buildings for education on human reproduction and a distributor of contraceptives.

        4. Then, if the majority agrees, we can strip felons of reproduction rights with the outlined and protected by law ability to sue the state in assumption of prejudice based on protected class. Finally, punish people with excessive childbirthing habits, like more than five or six, perhaps with fines and risk of prison time as well as a three strike system for upgrading to felony.

        Or at least that is usually how it works. Definitely cannot skip the order in this, though, the education step needs to come first or second and could probably solve this issue alone single-handedly. If we implemented this in reverse order then it would probably just end up in history books thirty years from now as “that time we almost lost entire demographics to racist eugenics” and that would just be awful.

      • PanoptiDon@lemmy.world
        51·
        9 months ago

        We must all come to a consensus on how it is decided or overpopulation will diminish the resources needed to survive

      • RatherBeMTB@sh.itjust.works
        45·
        9 months ago

        Capitalism. You need money to feed kids. People are having less kids mainly because today having a kid is too expensive.

        • deafboy@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          People were popping out 10 kids under the feudal rule, living in a hut made out of mud. Today, we live better than the aristocracy did back then. What changed is the attitude. We no longer want to see half of our kids die of hunger, or a preventable disease. And not only that, we prefer them to have a better life than ourselves. People actively choosing whether to have children based on the circumstances have my fullest respect.

    • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
      206·
      9 months ago

      meh. theres no need for any humans to exist.

      i seem to recall that you could fit 8billion people into a single city double the size of texas. you could then feed those humans with an equivalent land mass.

      this notion of overpopulation is more about resource use than existent numbers of humans. as you point out, distribution is the real issue and the fact that humans are greedy fuckers.

      the planet doesnt care if its hit by a meteor, has its surface wiped by an expanding red dwarf or falls into jupiter. it has no agenda or purpose other than what we, humans decide to do with it. we only get that honor because we are the only ones here.

      • aeronmelon@lemmy.world
        111·
        9 months ago

        I’m speaking from the context of human survival. I support the continued existence of the human race. You’re speaking from a more nihilistic standpoint than I prefer, but i do agree with what you said in general.

        Though, forcing everyone to live in DoubleTexas sounds like hell on Earth.

      • teft@lemmy.world
        42·
        9 months ago

        i seem to recall that you could fit 8billion people into a single city double the size of texas

        Do you want Mega-City One? Because that’s how you get Mega-City One.

    • Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world
      34·
      9 months ago

      We need around 69 trillion to populate the entire Orion arm. We gotta start multiplying like god commanded rn so we can conquer both hell and heaven!

  • 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    52·
    9 months ago

    “In many ways, tumbling fertility rates are a success story, reflecting not only better, easily available contraception but also many women choosing to delay or have fewer children, as well as more opportunities for education and employment.”

  • Diplomjodler@feddit.de
    302·
    9 months ago

    After listening to Malthusian panic from “conservatives” for over 50 years, I savour the irony.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
      11·
      9 months ago

      It’s not even conservatives, there are some doomers who get off being excessively pessimistic. r/collapse used to be hysterical about overpopulation. When I showed them the video of late statisticians Hans Rosling showing trend data of declining fertility rate, thanks to growing wealth of developing countries, and why their fears are unfounded, they just brushed it off. It is in recent years when mainstream news finally started reporting declining fertility rate and the UN project the global population to plateau, r/collapse finally stopped being hysterical on the topic.

  • Drusas@kbin.social
    25·
    9 months ago

    Good. Now if only we could get the wealthy and powerful to switch to a form of economy which prioritizes stability over infinite growth.

  • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
    194·
    9 months ago

    With how unaffordable life is in general, it’s not exactly surprising that people are having fewer kids. They’re a giant drain on your already scarce resources.

    Frankly I was also hoping for corona to… do a little housekeeping as it were. But it didn’t really do much in terms of actual population decline.

    • PriorityMotif@lemmy.world
      41·
      9 months ago

      There are huge inneficiencies in the labor market that, if corrected, would allow a lot more people to live comfortably. There are a large number is companies that don’t deserve to exist, let alone waste people’s talent and abilities on complete nonsense.

    • Player2@lemm.ee
      56·
      9 months ago

      Without societal change, even a die-off as extreme as half of everyone dying will have absolutely no effect beyond the immediate term. Just look at the Black Death as an example: about half of Europe among others died over its period and yet we are still facing overpopulation issues not 7 centuries later.

      The general populace just needs to learn and understand that maybe staying well above replacement level is not good, actually.

      • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
        7·
        9 months ago

        Of course, when the Black Death happened, the world in general was much smaller. People weren’t quite as aware as to what was happening elsewhere. And given that things like infant mortality were much higher, life expectancy was lower, no real contraception etc… people really had no real incentive not to procreate again. So they did.

        These days we’re generally more aware and more in control. I like to think that if corona HAD wiped out half the planet, the survivors would see clear benefits: less overcrowding, nature is restoring, the air is cleaner, etc etc. You saw some of that during the pandemic when, for example, the canals in Venice turned crystal clear because of lack of humans.

        I’d flip that coin right now. Whoever lives inherits a paradise. Use it wisely and learn from previous mistakes.

        • Player2@lemm.ee
          1·
          9 months ago

          Maybe I’m just a cynic but I don’t think mentality has really changed since then. If that were the case we would see more rapid population decrease instead of it just being due to financial pressure

      • nikscha@feddit.de
        22·
        9 months ago

        Stop down voting him, he’s right. Earth day is on April 22, so we would need to shrink earths population to a third in order to make our current way of living sustainable… (Shrink the rich first)

        • Player2@lemm.ee
          1·
          9 months ago

          While I appreciate the sentiment, my whole point was that this action would probably not be an effective solution :D

  • BurningRiver@beehaw.org
    9·
    9 months ago

    My grandparents came over after world war 2, with my grandfather barely speaking any English. He got a job as a busboy and could afford to rent a house and have my grandma raise my mom and uncle (and my aunt, later) while he worked.

    10 years or so ago, he lamented how nobody was having kids like they used to. I asked him to repeat his situation when he got here, then explained to him that my wife and I barely have enough to pay our mortgage and have some fun while we both work full time, with no kids.

    We’re actually doing fine financially now, but the window for kids passed. Even if it were still a possibility, I’m not sure I even would. Just so I can raise some wage slaves to keep this klepto-plutocracy alive and well? Nah, fuck that.