Canem Malum, if you're concerned about human population size and growth, I can recommend the book Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson. They use a sensible statistical approach to show that global population growth will cease in about 40 years, after which there will be major reduction in population sizes in many countries. In my view, if we can limited atmospheric warming to 1.5 degrees by about 2060, the anthropogenic climate change 'problem' will solve itself soon thereafter as fewer people begin to use fewer fossil fuels and other resources. In 100 years' time, people will look back at our current time and ask why were we so worried when economic prosperity was growing so quickly that human population growth stopped and solved the climate change problem with minimal cost to people and the environment.

Bernie Masters,

You have a very poor knowledge of how the world works and your understanding of the current positions of global warming and population growth is totally naive.

But keep thinking that everything will be alright if that is what makes you happy because I don't think you can handle the truth.

To Bernie Masters-

From my reading the longer term expectation medium is that it will reach 11 Billion by 2100- from looking at the figures below this seems likely perhaps even understated.

From this site- the worlds population has increased a billion/ fourteen years since the sixties. China and India have populations four times the size of the third largest US with similar land areas- Chinese and Indian's are two of the largest emmigrant groups.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL

World
2019
7,673,533.97

This is interesting (from 2016)...

http://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/world-population

Here's a timeline of the world population growth:

Year 1: 200 million
Year 1000: 275 million
Year 1500: 450 million
Year 1650: 500 million
Year 1750: 700 million
Year 1804: 1 billion
Year 1850: 1.2 billion
Year 1900: 1.6 billion
Year 1927: 2 billion
Year 1950: 2.55 billion
Year 1955: 2.8 billion
Year 1960: 3 billion
Year 1970: 3.7 billion
Year 1985: 4.85 billion
Year 1999: 6 billion
Year 2011: 7 billion
Year 2025: 8 billion

Most people agree that population increases will continue, but there are arguments about the rate of increase...

The United Nations has gradually been revising its predictions downwards, and now believes that the world population in 2050 will be around 9 billion...

However, others believe that poverty, inequality and continued urbanization will encourage steadily increasing growth, particularly in countries in Africa and parts of Asia, where growth is already much higher than the global average.

Others believe that the current world population is unsustainable, and predict that humanity will simply not be able to produce enough food and oil to feed itself and sustain our industrial economy.

Country Population
China 1,367,485,388
India 1,251,695,584
United States 321,368,864
Indonesia 255,993,674

Rank City Population Country
1 Shanghai 24,256,800 China
2 Karachi 23,500,000 Pakistan
3 Beijing 21,516,000 China
4 Delhi 16,349,831 India
5 Lagos 16,060,303 Nigeria
6 Tianjin 15,200,000 China
7 Istanbul 14,160,467 Turkey
8 Tokyo 13,513,734 Japan
9 Guangzhou 13,080,500 China
10 Mumbai 12,442,373 India

...by metropolitan population Tokyo 36.9, Shanghai 34, Jakarta 30, Seoul 25.5, Guangzhou 25, Beijing 24.9, Shenzhen 23.3 , Delhi 21.7, Mexico City 21.3, and Lagos 21 million.

Hi Bernie,

Yes, the most developed countries now all seem to have stable/stagnant population growth or inexorable population decline, with low birth rates and the imminent threat of a growing proportion growing old, and having to be supported by fewer workers, who would be having even fewer babies.

China's birth rate has reached a peak and is now declining. So in less than a generation or so, its population will start to decline, as it is doing in Japan, most of Europe and Russia. India's population will reach ZPG perhaps a generation later, and most of Africa's another generation after that.

Australia's population is about to reach ZPG, and would start to decline if immigration was stopped completely. And once a population starts to age, with growing numbers of older dependants having to be supported by fewer numbers of workers, then a society is inevitably in trouble, unless some incentives were offered to encourage women to forgo careers for a time and have, say, three kids, as Costello suggested a generation ago.

But of course, babies grow up to be working adults, and in turn, they grow older to become part of the relatively growing population of dependants.

Although food production is technically unlimited, given improvements in food strains, production techniques, use of water, better storage, the opening up of vast areas of land by nuclear-powered desalination plants, etc., this may not be any sort of problem. Older populations needing to be supported by fewer populations is going to be the burden, until countries achieve a dynamic birth-death balance. No country has done that yet.

And of course, any deliberate policy of population reduction would have to be done very slowly across centuries: after all, a deliberate population reduction of, say, 0.1 % p.a. would cut the numbers of young by, say, 5 % between the ages of 0 and 60, i.e. in 60 years: declining numbers in younger generations would have a continual burden of financially supporting a comparatively growing population of dependants.

Joe

Why do the young have to support the old at all?

And everyone over 60 is not useless- many people over 80 are not useless.

If we pair back government services- make sure everyone has modular low maintenance low red tape housing- a low maintenance high quality low cost food supply- then we can reduce taxes on the young and the old.

I think many older people are better at looking after themselves and have more improvisation skills than the young.

Therefore less young people- no problem.

There are a lot of businesses that rely on growing families for their growth perhaps.

I can't see the problem- maybe I don't understand.

I agree with your views of the future, loudmouth2. The population declines in developed countries will actually provide a boost for immigration from developing countries in order to provide the workers to maintain the economy and generate the wealth needed to support rapidly aging populations. So I expect to see developed countries significantly increasing their migrant and refugee numbers over coming decades.