Overpopulation is last millennium’s meme. The birth rate in most regions of the world has now crashed below extinction level, and the remainder look likely to follow as soon as they develop their economies. Frankly, apart from the compelling moral and humanitarian reasons for opposing death, from the most dispassionate ‘good of the species as a whole’ perspective, a major reason we need to do so is as a stopgap against the ongoing population decline.
The birth rate in most regions of the world has now crashed below extinction level
Less dramatic version: The fertility rates in Europe, North America, Oceania and the Far East have gradually fallen to or slightly below replacement level, and would lead to “extinction” in the UK in a mere 5000 years assuming everything stays the same. (Extinction in the USA would follow in a mere infinity years.)
World fertility rate is still about 2.5 children per woman.
and the remainder look likely to follow as soon as they develop their economies.
Which so far just means competing for the same depleted resources without making noticeable progress towards developing new ones. ‘Overpopulation’ is relative to the resource base. Ours may be shrinking alarmingly over the coming years.
ongoing population decline.
Less dramatic version: the ongoing decline in the population growth rate. In the UN’s 2004 projection, even in the “low” scenario, the population peak isn’t reached until about 2040. The “medium” scenario puts it at 2080 (which is surely beyond the point at which current predictions mean anything.)
Less dramatic version: The fertility rates in Europe, North America, Oceania and the Far East have gradually fallen to or slightly below replacement level, and would lead to “extinction” in the UK in a mere 5000 years assuming everything stays the same. (Extinction in the USA would follow in a mere infinity years.)
United States: 2.05 - already less than replacement level, and even this figure as I understand it depends on high birthrates among early generation immigrants, and would rapidly drop if not continually fed by immigration.
United Kingdom: 1.82
Russia 1.34
Japan: 1.27
A birth rate as low as Russia or Japan means the population drops by more than half in two generations. That means even if the status quo were maintained all the way to the end—which of course it can’t be—the sum and total of all future lives lived after that point, the sum of all joy and laughter, of all thought and effort and progress driven by that thought and effort, will be less than in these next two generations.
Two generations. That long ago, we already had nuclear energy, satellites, transistors, jet airliners and mainframe computers. Two generations just isn’t very much time in which to get things done.
Which so far just means competing for the same depleted resources without making noticeable progress towards developing new ones.
On the bright side, I have noticed some progress—the graphs for solar energy in recent decades are looking encouraging, for example. More importantly, we are still seeing progress in critical foundation areas like robotics, biotech and nanotech; those are the things we need to master if we want to take off before our runway runs out.
‘Overpopulation’ is relative to the resource base. Ours may be shrinking alarmingly over the coming years.
It may.
One of the things I’m worried about is this:
I would like to think if we don’t make it this time around, civilization can pick itself back up for another shot. Even difficult goals can often be attained if you get to try as many times as you want.
But the development of industrial technology was based on abundant and easily obtainable deposits of coal, oil etc. We haven’t run out of those yet—but the easily obtainable deposits thereof are mostly already gone. Yes, we can imagine a future reconstruction of industrial civilization by other pathways, but would that really happen?
Nobody knows. I’d rather not try the experiment. I think we need to behave as though we have to take off on this attempt.
I would like to think if we don’t make it this time around, civilization can pick itself back up for another shot. Even difficult goals can often be attained if you get to try as many times as you want.
But the development of industrial technology was based on abundant and easily obtainable deposits of coal, oil etc. We haven’t run out of those yet—but the easily obtainable deposits thereof are mostly already gone. Yes, we can imagine a future reconstruction of industrial civilization by other pathways, but would that really happen?
Nobody knows. I’d rather not try the experiment. I think we need to behave as though we have to take off on this attempt.
I worried about this for a long time, but recently I’ve been thinking that perhaps this isn’t such a high barrier to jump.
If a form of civilization based on agriculture is maintained after the technological fallback the next time around it seems plausible that we may also have a higher IQ and be generally better adapted to life in mass society. Human brains are pretty good at finding substitute resources.
Of course Hanson would point out that the farmer forager value compromise would skew more heavily towards farmers the next time. But since I seem to have a slightly more farmer predisposition than most and counting on the seemingly reasonable presupposition that wealth will again make them more forager than might seem at first glance possible, I would be pretty ok with this scenario.
The kind of specialized investment required to maintain and develop technology at our current level requires market sizes not much smaller than the current ones (e.g. check out what a modern microchip factory costs.) If we didn’t mind going back to town-blacksmith tech levels, sure, population could get a lot smaller—but that would, among other problems, kill off the idea of meeting everyone’s basic needs.
I think there’s a pretty large range between blacksmith levels and modern society. I’m pretty sure I could be happy living with 50s era technology. I don’t know what strides have been made in medicine and agriculture since than that might be contingent on having 6 billion people instead of 3.
On the other hand, 50s era technology depended heavily on nonrenewable resources. (Not just the obvious fossil fuels either, e.g. I’ve seen it claimed, can’t verify or refute of my own knowledge, that agriculture is going to start running into trouble after another few decades of depletion of phosphate deposits unless we find a solution.)
We have good reason to believe resource depletion problems can be solved if we continue to make progress rapidly enough. But how long a window of time we have, and how long things could be kept ticking along at industrial era tech level, nobody knows, and I’d rather not find out the hard way.
The kind of specialized investment required to maintain and develop technology at our current level requires market sizes not much smaller than the current ones (e.g. check out what a modern microchip factory costs.)
I’ve read this claim many times, but I’ve never seen a convincing argument for what exactly would count as “much smaller.” My impression is that three orders of magnitude smaller would almost certainly be too small, two orders of magnitude possibly also, but I’m not at all sure about one order of magnitude.
Is there some kind of critical analysis of this I can read? What technologies are the most vulnerable to stagnation at lower scales? It seems like a lot of technological progress is one-way, in that markets have already selected for the most efficient form of technology. It could then be scaled down significantly. Computer chips maybe not so much, but what about (say) farming?
I haven’t come across any reasonably complete and in-depth analysis of this (just a bunch of scattered and more or less tangential fragments to which I didn’t keep a list of references) - if anyone else has links to such, I’d be interested in taking a look.
One big problem with regarding technological progress as one-way is that a great deal of technology relies on nonrenewable resources. To take your example of farming, today’s agricultural techniques rely very heavily on fossil fuels and perhaps on less obvious resources: consider phosphate deposits, soil erosion and pesticide resistance—all problems which might be solved easily with sufficiently advanced technology, but not necessarily otherwise.
The conclusion is that it’s hard to know how much time we have, but one thing is clear: stagnation is not stasis. It is, in the end, death.
Overpopulation is last millennium’s meme. The birth rate in most regions of the world has now crashed below extinction level, and the remainder look likely to follow as soon as they develop their economies. Frankly, apart from the compelling moral and humanitarian reasons for opposing death, from the most dispassionate ‘good of the species as a whole’ perspective, a major reason we need to do so is as a stopgap against the ongoing population decline.
Less dramatic version: The fertility rates in Europe, North America, Oceania and the Far East have gradually fallen to or slightly below replacement level, and would lead to “extinction” in the UK in a mere 5000 years assuming everything stays the same. (Extinction in the USA would follow in a mere infinity years.)
World fertility rate is still about 2.5 children per woman.
Which so far just means competing for the same depleted resources without making noticeable progress towards developing new ones. ‘Overpopulation’ is relative to the resource base. Ours may be shrinking alarmingly over the coming years.
Less dramatic version: the ongoing decline in the population growth rate. In the UN’s 2004 projection, even in the “low” scenario, the population peak isn’t reached until about 2040. The “medium” scenario puts it at 2080 (which is surely beyond the point at which current predictions mean anything.)
Where are you getting those figures? Here are some from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_fertility_rate
United States: 2.05 - already less than replacement level, and even this figure as I understand it depends on high birthrates among early generation immigrants, and would rapidly drop if not continually fed by immigration.
United Kingdom: 1.82
Russia 1.34
Japan: 1.27
A birth rate as low as Russia or Japan means the population drops by more than half in two generations. That means even if the status quo were maintained all the way to the end—which of course it can’t be—the sum and total of all future lives lived after that point, the sum of all joy and laughter, of all thought and effort and progress driven by that thought and effort, will be less than in these next two generations.
Two generations. That long ago, we already had nuclear energy, satellites, transistors, jet airliners and mainframe computers. Two generations just isn’t very much time in which to get things done.
On the bright side, I have noticed some progress—the graphs for solar energy in recent decades are looking encouraging, for example. More importantly, we are still seeing progress in critical foundation areas like robotics, biotech and nanotech; those are the things we need to master if we want to take off before our runway runs out.
It may.
One of the things I’m worried about is this:
I would like to think if we don’t make it this time around, civilization can pick itself back up for another shot. Even difficult goals can often be attained if you get to try as many times as you want.
But the development of industrial technology was based on abundant and easily obtainable deposits of coal, oil etc. We haven’t run out of those yet—but the easily obtainable deposits thereof are mostly already gone. Yes, we can imagine a future reconstruction of industrial civilization by other pathways, but would that really happen?
Nobody knows. I’d rather not try the experiment. I think we need to behave as though we have to take off on this attempt.
I worried about this for a long time, but recently I’ve been thinking that perhaps this isn’t such a high barrier to jump.
If a form of civilization based on agriculture is maintained after the technological fallback the next time around it seems plausible that we may also have a higher IQ and be generally better adapted to life in mass society. Human brains are pretty good at finding substitute resources.
Of course Hanson would point out that the farmer forager value compromise would skew more heavily towards farmers the next time. But since I seem to have a slightly more farmer predisposition than most and counting on the seemingly reasonable presupposition that wealth will again make them more forager than might seem at first glance possible, I would be pretty ok with this scenario.
Except for its effect on the odds of my revival.
I don’t think there’s a compelling reason to KEEP the population at its current levels, until/unless everyone’s basic needs are being met.
The kind of specialized investment required to maintain and develop technology at our current level requires market sizes not much smaller than the current ones (e.g. check out what a modern microchip factory costs.) If we didn’t mind going back to town-blacksmith tech levels, sure, population could get a lot smaller—but that would, among other problems, kill off the idea of meeting everyone’s basic needs.
I think there’s a pretty large range between blacksmith levels and modern society. I’m pretty sure I could be happy living with 50s era technology. I don’t know what strides have been made in medicine and agriculture since than that might be contingent on having 6 billion people instead of 3.
On the other hand, 50s era technology depended heavily on nonrenewable resources. (Not just the obvious fossil fuels either, e.g. I’ve seen it claimed, can’t verify or refute of my own knowledge, that agriculture is going to start running into trouble after another few decades of depletion of phosphate deposits unless we find a solution.)
We have good reason to believe resource depletion problems can be solved if we continue to make progress rapidly enough. But how long a window of time we have, and how long things could be kept ticking along at industrial era tech level, nobody knows, and I’d rather not find out the hard way.
rwallace:
I’ve read this claim many times, but I’ve never seen a convincing argument for what exactly would count as “much smaller.” My impression is that three orders of magnitude smaller would almost certainly be too small, two orders of magnitude possibly also, but I’m not at all sure about one order of magnitude.
Is there some kind of critical analysis of this I can read? What technologies are the most vulnerable to stagnation at lower scales? It seems like a lot of technological progress is one-way, in that markets have already selected for the most efficient form of technology. It could then be scaled down significantly. Computer chips maybe not so much, but what about (say) farming?
I haven’t come across any reasonably complete and in-depth analysis of this (just a bunch of scattered and more or less tangential fragments to which I didn’t keep a list of references) - if anyone else has links to such, I’d be interested in taking a look.
One big problem with regarding technological progress as one-way is that a great deal of technology relies on nonrenewable resources. To take your example of farming, today’s agricultural techniques rely very heavily on fossil fuels and perhaps on less obvious resources: consider phosphate deposits, soil erosion and pesticide resistance—all problems which might be solved easily with sufficiently advanced technology, but not necessarily otherwise.
The conclusion is that it’s hard to know how much time we have, but one thing is clear: stagnation is not stasis. It is, in the end, death.