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Comment by igravious | Hacker News Reader

This data should mandatory in all school curricula throughout the world. One of the greatest impediments to understanding the social reality of the world around us is the general population's ignorance of this data.

We need people to (a) understand that the world's population is increasing but that the rate of increase will inexorably slow and that (b) this means that the population will plateau. We then need people to ask themselves can the Earth support that level of population of 11 billion. The answer is an incontrovertible "yes". Anybody who claims the Earth cannot support 11 billion people is factually incorrect. Is it going to cause environmental stress? Yes. Will it cause environmental collapse? No.

People also fail to understand this other simple fact. Even though there will be more mouths to feed, there will be more hands to make the food. And given economies of scale, it'll arguably be easier to feed 11 billion than 7 billion.

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I would love to see a citation for 11 billion people not causing an environmental collapse.

At our current population 40% of insects could be extinct in the coming decades, and over the last 50 years 60% of animal populations have been wiped out: https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/22/health/food-biodiversity-repo...

Citation that it will rather than the typical conjecture?

The accelerating rate of extinction outlined in the latest UN biodiversity report, out last month: https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment

Again. I'm not talking about species extinction or even the rate of species extinction. I'm asking for a citation for environmental collapse.

Finding such a citation depends on what you call an ecological collapse. In 2019 we have an environment where global indicators of ecosystem extent have declined by 47% from baseline. If the stock market lost 47% of its value in 150 years, it would be in a state of ongoing collapse. 85% of wetlands were lost between 1700 and 2000- I would certainly say that is an ecological collapse.

Species extinction and animal population decline is not the same thing as environmental collapse.

edit: To clarify, people say that we have exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth or that we'll exceed it as the population mushrooms. This data proves the population won't mushroom, and I assert that 11 billion is well within the carrying capacity of the Earth. Do I have any proof? No. But neither do the doomsayers who claim otherwise. That's the specific narrative I'm trying to push back against.

what do you think is the environment? we can't survive without biodiversity

We both know what the environment is.

What you meant to say is that we can't survive below some threshold of biodiversity. Nobody's talking about zero biodiversity. What do you think that threshold is? I think we can survive (and the environment will be okay with) less biodiversity. How much less that turns out to be I guess we're going to find out.

A 50% increase in people means a 50% decrease in wildlife. (at least it has in the past).

Never seen that stat, but a decrease in wildlife is not the same thing as environmental collapse which is the doomsday narrative I'm trying to counter-signal.

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