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Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

I think it's interesting that Homo sapiens evolved during the last ice age where the climate was significantly different than today's climate. We already "won" a major climate change once despite having a level of technology barely better than sharp sticks and pelt cloaks.

Instead of defining success based on climate stability itself, I think it makes more sense to define success in terms of what we care about: a thriving environment for humans and diverse other forms of life.

I think we'll be "winning" climate change, regardless of average temperature or CO2 level, as long as we're able to avoid catastrophic loss of human population and the rate of extinction is within some acceptable limit.

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> catastrophic loss of human population

At the same time, the population has been booming to the point that close to half of the humans who ever existed are alive on Earth right now. This is a significant part of the current crisis actually.

I remember reading, admittedly in a couple of science-fiction books, that the estimated number of humans that have ever existed is about 100 billion. Was that estimate wildly exaggerated? Or has it been dramatically reduced in recent decades?

No, it seems you are right and I am the one who misremembered. So it’s only 7% of the grand total. That sounds less impressive.

i've seen the same, the 100 billion stands afaik

https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived...

True, but that curve is flattening out. The UN predicts human population will peak 10.43 billion in 2086 and begin to decline from there:

https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

(Obviously, the error bars for a prediction like that are large.)

Many developed countries are already losing population:

https://www.worlddata.info/populationgrowth.php

An even larger fraction of developed countries would be losing population already if it wasn't for immigration. This suggests that as the developing world becomes more like the developed world, human population will be less of a concern for the global environment.

My perhaps radical position is that two best solutions for surviving climate change are birth control and education for women. The fewer people we need to keep alive, the more easily we'll be able to adapt to the changing climate.

Yep and there is broad disagreement regarding when the peak will be. I remember at least one analyst for a large found implying it would be much sooner that what the UN model predicts. It’s apparently surprisingly hard to give good long term prediction for population growth.

I think it’s a bit late for what you are proposing however. Most of the world population is quite young.

I mean, the entire shape of that graph changed radically with the invention of the Pill, so it's probably very hard to predict going forward when we have no idea what upcoming technological innovation or cultural change will affect birthrates.

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