Prediction 118
By 2060 the total population of humans on earth will be less than it is today.
Prediction 118
Duration 57 years (02003-02060)
Predictor
Kevin Kelly
Challenger
TBA
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The biggest driver of the shift from large families to small families is communication technology and education. As these techniques come into place the switch to lower birth rates is faster than what demographers have expected. And they are more permament.
Current estimates of the world's peak population are made with assumptions that don't take into account the major role that globalization is having.
This means the earth's population will reach its peak sooner than official forecasts predict and because there is no visible counterforce compelling the majority of couples to have more than 3 kids each, world population will rapidly fall after reaching its peak.
It will diminish to our level by 2060 and keep falling.
Kevin Kelly is negotiating the terms of a bet about this prediction. It will soon be added to Bets on the Record.
By 2060 the total population of humans on earth will be less than it is today.
A heck of a lot of analysts are predicting this will be the case, although it often seems (to me) influenced by a heavy dose of wishful thinking.
I can believe this one could easily go either way.
This sounds like wishful thinking to me as well. I'm of the opinion that even with the shift to smaller families by some groups, we are just an overpowered, lustfull species and will grow in number despite how foolish that may be. We will grow until we reach a pragmatic crisis, and then that crisis will lead to the development of new ways to sustain growth. Ceilings will be broken again and again but until we move our individual conciousnesses out of these water-bodies and into new bodies made of light, we won't stop. We don't have the self-control.
I agree about our self-control, as a species. Realistically, one of the things our species generally does not do well is long-term planning. (Not that I'm saying that most other species are so great at it, either.)
But, many folks who argue that population levels will drop base their arguments on indirect factors. For example, as wealth and education go up, they may say, population growth tends to go down. They predict one trend, link it to a correlated population trend, and thus make a compound prediction.
Personally, I think the real key is the issue of crisis. I'm not the doomsaying type, but I've been seriously expecting a major international epidemic of some kind for over a decade now.
There are plenty of high-population, low-sanitation, poor-medicine places in the world perfect for breeding the next Spanish Flu, say, and there's more than enough travel and internationalization to spread one around the globe in less than 96 hours.
Additionally, global warming will bring disease hosts (mosquitoes, for instance) into new regions. Malaria and the major known arboviruses (eg, West Nile) will probably be controlled fairly well, but this sort of vector shift is ideal for creating plague conditions.
And, of course, we could always have a major war (nuclear, say) or natural disaster (Yellowstone caldera eruption, say). I expect a population crash, driven by relatively rapid external forces, to be much more likely than a major shift in growth due to personal choice, cultural changes, or indirect social factors like wealth and education.
Still, there's no guarantee, and maybe the population will simply keep rising, into numbers currently considered unrealistic but supported by new technologies and social adaptations. Remember Malthus, after all.
I can definitely see the logic behind such an assumption, but can't believe that the whole human race is going to find itself on the same page in 57 odd years.
Kelly's argument about restraint, education and communication sounds plausible. But two other things standard predictions don't take into account are dramatic increases in longevity and in Earth's carrying capacity.
Kelly's prediction means billions of people who are less than one hundred years old now, dying less than 60 years from now. Do the math, he's talking about people dying at less than 160 years old! Hardly "optimistic".
The population aging process has been well underway in the West since about The Enlightenment. It's a fairly predictable process driven by changes in mortality (mostly declines in early death, but some from pushing longevity along as well) and fertility (average number of children per woman falling below replacement levels.) These are fundamental demographic parameters; we can hypothesize all we want about what influences them, but they have been on a pretty steady vector for well over 200 years.
Considered in national terms, the case is complicated by international mobility, but in Canada (the case I know best) we are looking at aging-driven population decline occuring about 2040 or so.
The prediction makes sense to me if the demographic transition process -- which in the West we call "aging", and which many have supposed is related to what we call "modernizing", "industrializing", what-have-you -- goes global. Which it hasn't quite. China and India are still growing, with India set to eclipse China in population by mid-century or so.
I believe the prediction is likely to prove out, but the timing may be off. My hunch (I'm too lazy to do the detailed research and the math just now, thanks) is later this century or early next.
War, disease, environmental disaster: events of this order could well disrupt the process. In that type of case, all bets are off.
I think we will decide to reduce our population. I do not think this will be the mere outgrowth of any trends of any kind. We will employ a variety of rewards and punishments to achieve this goal. The idea will be to reduce population to the point where everyone who is alive will live well in all dimensions.
The idea that the world will reduce itself in population by 2060 is wishful thinking. We all hope that humans had self-constraint to limit the population, but that is not the case. Decades of population management in China has not reduced the Chinese population, has it? Growth rate has reduced, yes, but population has not. To accomplish a reduction in population in another two generations would require either:
A) an immediate enforced global limitation on birthrate FAR BELOW two children per couple, because people live longer than ever before;
B) long-term disease or food shortage; or
C) a disaster of global proportions.
Given that 'A' contradicts the trend of growing democracy in the world, and that all powers of the world are hard at work successfully eliminating 'B', then only a disaster would decline the population by 2060. No one can predict that, but increased education and affluence -- proposed by many to be the force behind a decline in birthrate in rich nations -- are also the fundamental forces behind the eradication of the agents of disaster and the protection from disasters.
A population decline thus will gradually occur when energy, food, and water resources become truly rare -- far after 2060. Some calculate that the sustainable population of the earth is far below today's, but we still have one more generation of fossil fuels left (more or less), which will continue our expansion. With no apologies to the IT experts, there is little evidence to show that we suddenly have the knowledge and education to trump human short-sightedness.
I believe world population has the potential to decline based on First World birthrate trends in the last 30-35 years. But, that would require a radical rise in living standards in the 3rd world based on health, education and social safety nets without the commensurate rise in energy consumption.
And that is the rub- how to raise living standards and not overconsume resourses.
Resolve that and yes, the prediction is valid. At current rates of consumption, no.
you could have said the same thing 100 years ago; that "...advances in communications, technology, and education would....etc." right?
I tend to agree because the two nations contributing the most to population explosion namely India and China are turning it around in a big way and in the next 50 years will
see a very, very slight decrease(even a 0.1%) will make major number decrease. Also communications improvement in th
next 50 years with internet etc. is at least 1000 times greater than advances in communications in the previous 100 years and hopefully show in educating the masses also. Besides, WEurope, Russia, Japan,US and so many other nations
will be making appreciable negative population growth. So the only question mark is Africa.But in Africa, population growth is being nullified by rampant diseases out of control
When diseases get under control in Africa through education
etc. the same education will help in control of population in Africa also.
I agree with the bet, but think that economic and social change in the developing countries is just part of the reason.
Note that population in the United States, which is undeniably a "developed" country, is increasing - as Malthus predicted would happen in general. Prosperity throughout India and China will probably result in net increases in population - especially as the "brain drain" from these places to US, Britain and Europe tapers off.
I think, however, that humanity's intrusion into primeval forests throughout the world is fraught with the peril that diseases like AIDS, Ebola, Marburg, Lassa, Machupo (anyone familiar with the history of emerging diseases could triple this list without trying hard) will continue to be introduced into civilization. Current evidence seems to show no reason why in the future a new virus would not be as deadly to humanity as Ebola reston is to monkeys.
Existing diseases seem to be responsible for a decrease in population in places such as sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (both stricken hard by AIDS), while breakdowns in public health infrastructure are responsible for waves of drug-resistant TB in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere.
While hunger and war may have been the big killers in the Twentieth Century, pestilence - diseases of all kinds - will give them a run for their money in the Twenty-first. Of course, the relative ease with which bioweapons can kill compared to artillery and small arms mean that war and pestilence may overlap in reducing the population of the Earth below its present levels. I also wish to stipulate that once the population has been reduced in this way that a population boom is probably inevitable, so that the world's population will probably exceed current levels by the end of the century.
I don't agree with the bet. Not to say I strongly believe that the population by 2060 will be higher or lower than it is at present. But the arguments made ignore some future posibilities:
1) The world average life expectancy stands at 63.95 years (according to CIA World Factbook). By the time we hit 2060, the people educated to current developed world standards will also have life expectancies of atleast current developed world standards (77.14 years for the US), that alone is a 20% increment in world population - Ignoring the possibility that people will live longer in the coming decades.
2) People make the connection between education & lower fertility rates. But I believe it goes a step deeper than this, people with good education tend to be the busy ones who have to work 9-5 and have to take their career very seriously, this affects women mainly, as if they wish to just one child, that means they have to take many months off work in maternity leave, and can risk losing their jobs.
I could go on, but the bottom line is, we humans put our careers above everything else. Why because we need money, why do we need money, 'cause basic commodities like Food, Water, Accomodation, Education, Medicare, Power cost money.
By 2060, I'm pretty sure that most of these commodities will be free, or if not then they'll take up far less of the average person's expenses, due to the laborers behind Food manufacturing, Construction (Accomodation), Education, and Power will be robots/computers. The largest expenses for people in the future will be intellectual property, entertainment, art, i.e. the things that robots/computers will replace last.
So if people in 2060 don't have such high expenses, then there becomes less need to work, or atleast to work 9-5 every weekday from age 18 to retirement. If people aren't kept busy working, then they'll find something else to keep them busy... procreating. A family in the future with 10 children, won't be significantly worse off than a family with 2 children if my predictions of the cost of commodities proves true.
The prediction assumes that less advanced countries will advance to the level that supposedly has negative effect on birth rate. Which I don't think will happen by 2060.
I am not rude to you Vance;I'm glad we're on the same wavelength about the total population by 2060 and agree.
No problem, Raj. Sorry I got "strident" in the "Democrat will be President in '04 thread"
I agree with you, the more that people of good will realize they can agree on many things, the more evolved our whole world culture will be.
Several posts mention the Demographic Transition without naming this theory. Increased well-being (which I di not think will be the global average per capita) can impact fertility IF the cultural changes such as increased careers for women, higher average education levels, and realization that lower infant mortality decreases need of higher births. However, several generations are normally required for old values and habits to change. In the interim, pop. growth usually accelerates!
This is an aspect of the Opportunity Theory of fertility. See Virginia Abernethy _Population Politics_ or her papers. During hard times in Ireland (famine) births dropped alot. Same before French Revolution. As soon as things looked to improve in those cases, births rose rapidly.
The techno-optimist comments assume no energy, water, or food constraints, That is a bad bet, as petroleum currently drives the global economy and the peak is imminent. Modern agriculture is the conversion of petroleum to food. (Prof Albert Bartlett) Desalinisation, purification, and pumping of potable water is petro dependent.
I agree with the risks of epidemic, terrorism (bio or other) and nuclear attacks or mistakes. All in all, I'd have to agree with the bet, but not agree with the optimistic causation given in the argument.
Andrew is likely correct. Third world countries will likely make some progress and perhaps halve their birth rate by 2060 but there will still be perhaps 5 billion children born on Earth in the next 57 years. There could be as few as 4 billion deaths, which would put Earth a bit over 7 billion. It could take another 30 years to lose that extra billion, maybe centuries, as there will be little enthusiasm for less than zero population growth.
We need an effective education campaign teaching that it is morally wrong to bring even one child into the world except with two parents who can provide for them both emotionally and economically without depending on society, relatives etc.
With adequate contraception and success in convincing teenagers, we might halve the birth rate in a single year. Neil
I agree that human population will be lower in 2060 than it is today, but do not agree with the reasons given.
Neither economic nor human demographic models account for any biophysical limits to growth. Both industrial and population growth are inherently exponential, but the resources, material and energetic, that allow this growth are finite. Economists believe in the ability to switch to new resources as old ones become depleted, but you can't substitute for the basic building blocks of life--e.g. fresh water, nitrogen, phosphorus, etc. And technology has not improved this situation one bit, it has only accelerated depletion of ancient aquifers and fossil fuel reserves.
We are literally fed on oil. We use it to make fertilizers to place on topsoil that is rapidly being destroyed. We use oil to transport goods and services from productive to non-productive areas, e.g. Las Vegas should be a ghost town and will be some day. Most "solutions" don't add up. Biofuels? Would take the entire agricultural output of the U.S. to replace oil as a transportation fuel. The hydrogen economy? Well, that needs a feedstock too, and I don't see enough windmills to get us there.
No, the human population will not "chose" to be smaller. It will become smaller because mortality rates will soon greatly exceed birth rates. Ain't no way to stop it. Just look at one indicator. Per capita food production. We are beyond the peak for this and are in a rapid decline (look at www.fao.org). Less food=less people. It is that simple.
Just look at one indicator. Per capita food production. We are beyond the peak for this and are in a rapid decline (look at www.fao.org). Less food=less people. It is that simple.
I happen to agree that mortality rates are likely to go way up in the near future, in what future historians will probably call a 'correction', but I don't think that food production limits will necessarily be a principle cause.
Your argument is essentially Malthusian, and you're making the same error Malthus made -- namely, that existing methods of production will be the future methods of production.
It seems pretty likely that food processing using GMO (genetically modified) micro-organisms and/or nanotechnology will arrive in a big way in the next twenty to twenty-five years. At that point, food will basically make itself, at production rates far greater than current agriculture can sustain.
Management will still be necessary, of course, and business monopolies may well keep prices high. But food production will then be potentially accelerated enormously according to energy input. If fusion comes along, let's say, then energy input will not be an issue either.
Using solar power alone -- at current efficiencies -- realistic nanotech should be able to process food from sunlight far, far more efficiently than current food crops can. By an order of magnitude or more.
There are no guarantees these kinds of technologies will mature at any given rate, but I think the likelihood is high enough so that food production limits are not a serious concern of mine. Historically, food production limits have not been a problem -- it's logistics and politics that cause mass starvation. That will likely continue into the future, but I have no reason to believe it will happen at proportionally greater levels.
I am of the opinion that the 'carrying capacity' of the Earth is much lower than the current population level. As near as I can discern the carrying capacity lies between 250 millions and 750 millions of people, assuming average technological usage would be between the level of an early 1950 developed nation and today's developed nations. At over 6 billions, we exceed that level by 8 to 24 times. However the natural difficulties arrising from this situation will not seriously affect the population's size on a timescale less than centuries. As to human caused difficulties, such as war and domestic policies, yes, we will, I believe have at least two wars larger than WWII by 2060, but short of complete deployment of the nuclear arsenals, war will not be a limit to population, as the numerous conflicts of the 20th century can attest to. Disease, whether naturally occuring or engineered could dent the population significantly, it is true, but disease likely could not halt the increase of population. The bubonic plague in the 14th century killed a sizable fraction of a society that was largely ignorant of germ theory and had both a small mobile segment and relatively soft governmental coercive power. Even with the advances in transportation, the ability to enforce a quarantine is very high today, and will only increase. The question as to whether population expansion will be arrested by increases in the knowledge individuals possess is a valid one. It is true that most people opt for a smaller number of children when medical knowledge and techniques reach the area they are in. It is not true that all will opt for a family size that would produce a net stasis or decline, however. It must be considered that the time frame to 2060 covers a likely three generations, each of which may well react against thoughts that a small family is ideal. The widespread, apparently, idea that communications rates can increase through the roof can be questioned. Satellite communications are at the core of a possible expansion, and insufficient resources are being employed to maintain even a proxy human space presence over the 2060 time frame. Overall, I disagree that the human population of Earth will be at a lower level by 2060, I would contend that a population of 8 to 12 billions would be the level that can be expected by 2060.
The United Nations just released last week a very unusual report on the world population in the year 2300. This is a 300 year forecast for the population of the planet, with regional sub totals.
The PDF can be found here:
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/Long_range_report.pdf
They developed four scenarios. A high scenario where the average global birth rate is above replacement level, two mid scenarios, one at zero growth and one at slightly above ZPG, and one low average.
In the low scenario, the population of earth becomes less than the total on earth right now somewhere around 2075.
However, their low fertility rate isn't very low because they assume that after dipping to 1.85 or something in the next decades that it will slowly rise again. I have trouble in seeing what cultural factors would make it rise once it was lowering. We haven't seen any populations that have made the demographic transition, abadon it.
So I am going to stick to my prediction of 2060, and I would welcome anyone who is willing to bet on this. But please read the UN paper first!
One should never trust demographers. I've read the report regarding forecasts to 2300. The fact is, the demographers do not use the same population biology models employed by real population biologists. They use complex life tables that break down fertility and mortality rates per age class for each country and then guestimate what those rates will be in the future. Your wonderment at their method is justified. No biologist would ever do this for long time periods because these models ignore environmental feedbacks and only look at population "momentum."
One of the most prominent demographers, Joel Cohen, wrote this in the journal Science last year:
Abstract: By 2050, the human population will probably be larger by 2 to 4 billion people, more slowly growing (declining in the more developed regions), more urban, especially in less developed regions, and older than in the 20th century. Two major demographic uncertainties in the next 50 years concern international migration and the structure of families. Economies, nonhuman environments, and cultures (including values, religions, and politics) strongly influence demographic changes. Hence, human choices, individual and collective, will have demographic effects, intentional or otherwise.
Opening paragraph: It is a convenient but potentially dangerous fiction to treat population projections as exogenous inputs to economic, environmental, cultural, and political scenarios, as if population processes were autonomous. Belief in this fiction is encouraged by conventional population projections, which ignore food, water, housing, education, health, physical infrastructure, religion, values, institutions, laws, family structure, domestic and international order, and the physical and biological environment. Other biological species are recognized explicitly only in the recent innovation of quantifying the devastating demographic impacts of HIV and AIDS. The absence from population projection algorithms of influential external variables indicates scientific ignorance of how external variables influence demographic rates rather than any lack of influence.
See the problems? They admit their models are bunk and then claim their ignorance is intractable. But this is disingenuous. As Russ Hopfenberg in the latest issue of the journal Population and Environment showed, a simple logistic growth model using known food supply as the K variable (i.e., carrying capacity) has a good fit with human population increase. More food literally has meant more people. If you want to slow down human population growth, you need to produce less food.
Decline in food output is already happening. Alarm bells are starting to go off about this (e.g., Lester Brown) but why worry so much if we are overpopulated? Well, political instability is one problem. We produce way more food than we can eat, so we feed it to animals to eat (something like 70% of US grain goes to animal feed). Yet if you live on less than a few dollars a day (probably half the people in the world do) how can you buy a burger?
We also understand that modern agricultural yields are a result of intensification permitted by the fossil fuel windfall. The approximate doubling of global food supply between 1960 and 2000 occurred with almost no rise in the area of land under cultivation, but a near doubling of the proportion of land irrigated, and a 4-7 fold increase in fertilizer application. Where do we get fertilizers? How is it possible for only ca. 1-2% of the US population to farm and support the rest? Hint: Our machines don't run on contemporary solar energy.
Without fusion, the modern techno-industrial civilization will collapse pretty soon as we rollover the peak in oil output. With that collapse, food output, processing, storage and distribution will also collapse, and hence population will decline.
Many Long Bets folks are incredible techo-optomists, but my computer and all the research and engineering that goes into various schemes for nanotech would be useless without cheap energy to produce excess food to support so many creative dreamers and power the electric grid that brings those dreams to fruition.
Th following is admittedly a minority view. However, I agree with it. The 4 horsemen will exacerbate mortality more rapidly than humans (optimists by nature) expect.
I made a bet (# 126 I think) re UN Millennium indicators. I'll repost this there.
Posted on Tue, Nov. 02, 2004
A century of increasing life expectancy may be ending
By Robert S. Boyd
Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - A century of steadily lengthening life spans may soon be over, a prominent population expert warned at a recent conference on aging and health.
"The modern era of dramatic increases in life expectancy is about to come to an end in the developed world - including the United States - as well as in the underdeveloped world," said Jay Olshansky, a demographer at the University of Illinois in Chicago.
"Life expectancy might very well decline in this century," he told last month's annual meeting of the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.
Other population specialists agree with Olshansky that the trend toward longer lives probably will level off in coming years, but they doubt life spans will shrink.
Olshansky blamed the rising tide of obesity and the re-emergence of deadly infectious diseases for threatening to dash Americans' confidence that each new generation will live longer than the one before.
A baby born in the United States in 2002 is likely to live, on average, to the ripe old age of 77.4, according to the National Center on Health Statistics. That's 30 years longer than a child born in 1900 - a gain of more than three months per year - thanks to modern medicine and public health measures.
World life expectancy has more than doubled over the past two centuries, from roughly 25 years to about 65 for men and 70 for women.
"Many people share the view that life expectancy will not increase much more, and a few people think that life expectancy will decrease," James Vaupel, an expert at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, said in an e-mail interview.
However, Vaupel said, "most demographers and other experts think it is likely that life expectancy will continue to tend to increase in most countries."
There are contrary trends. Russians, on average, live seven years less than they did before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, according to the World Bank. A dozen sub-Saharan African countries have seen their life spans shrink, largely because of AIDS.
"Biology can play out quite differently in different countries at different times," said Richard Suzman, associate director of the Institute of Aging at the National Institutes of Health.
"Jay Olshansky's position is a minority perspective in demography," Suzman added. "However, majority positions in science sometimes turn out to be wrong, and so minority positions should certainly be entertained."
"There is a small chance - less than one in 100 - that Olshansky's prediction of declining life expectancy might possibly prove correct," Vaupel said.
Another skeptic is James Oeppen, a researcher at the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure in Cambridge, England.
"If Dr. Olshansky is correct, he won't have to share the accolades with a large group of like-minded contemporaries," Oeppen scoffed.
Despite the doubters, Olshansky says "there is sufficient evidence to support the conclusion that human life expectancy will decline in the 21st century."
"We see two storms approaching: obesity and infectious diseases," he told the Washington aging conference.
Obesity, he said, is "a global pandemic" that's already reduced life expectancy worldwide by 3.5 years. The impact of obesity on longevity is about the same as cancer, he said, and will double or triple in coming years, shortening lives by seven to 12 years.
In addition, Olshansky said, "we have created a tinderbox for the re-emergence of infectious diseases." The causes include growing resistance to anti-bacterial drugs, more and swifter travel among countries and higher susceptibility to disease in an aging population.
He said deaths due to infectious diseases had risen by 39 percent since 1980, after declining sharply since the development of antibiotics in the middle of the last century.
Olshansky admitted that his shorter-life scenario may not come to pass. "No one has a perfect crystal ball to tell what is going to happen in the 21st century," he said.
---
For more information on the Web, go to: www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/tables/2003/03hus027.pdf
In this discussion, I think any argument that is talking about "sustenance of life" issues (e.g.: there's only so much food; only so much energy; medical science is making big leaps in increasing life spans; etc.) is missing the point. It's simply about the balance of deaths and births.
As each graduating class of humans heads off into the ultimate long-bet, the nub here is how big are the cohorts of newborns that are backfilling? Over the long-term, if you have more births than deaths you get population increase. Very simple process when you look at it from that level.
In the parts of the world we used to call Western, industrialized, or developed -- those regions for which people like me sure would like a nice new word -- there are far fewer babies made than are required to reproduce the population. In populations and regions we used to call "developing", the aging process is kicking in with early death becoming less frequent along with the sound of crying newborns. It is the behaviour and decisions around reproduction, made daily by countless millions of people in all kinds of real life contexts, which produces the high-level outcomes we're talking about here. And it *seems* as if the farther along you are on the ladder of wealth or "well-offness", the less likely you are to produce children.
If you're talking population increase in this discussion, I'd like to see you line up with 3 or more kids, and bring along everyone you know with their 3 or more kids. Then we can have a population increase party.
In the meantime, empirical reality says many of earth's human populations are not reproducing themselves at a rate sufficient to prevent decline. This discussion is merely about *when*.
And, once again, there are jokers in every deck: along comes a virus, a war, an environmental event and all bets are off.
Education and technology will not save the world from human beings. We have been reproducing and consuming for millenia. The only thing that will slow population growth is the coming environmental collapse of our planet's natural balance, ie. (famine, flood, disease, drought, pestilence, etc.) and the wars for water and recources that will surely follow. People and their needs are stronger than technology and it's promise. I fear it is too late for us even if we stop reproducing exponetially.
I would reckon that a biological incident will seriously decrease the world population over the next few years
It might sound bizarre for this topic, but I’m wondering has anyone considered cultural motivation effect. For example some groups may simply want to increase in numbers, so that they may have bigger say in a democratic world. If such hypotheses may have any bearing, we may have to look back on other models for predicting the world’s population. Specially at certain points of time during the next century.
For countries with high population growth (most of the developing world) even a sharp and immediate reduction in the fertility rate, will not result in an immediate cessation of poulation growth. This becasue of a phenomenon known as population momentum. Growth will not slow immediately because the previous history of high fertiltiy has built up a large bank of potential mothers. For example China's population has only recently begun to slow its gowth, even though the fertility rates were dramatically decreased in the late 1970s by government control.
Kevin didn't mention what the population was in 2003, when he made the prediction. UN estimates I've seen put the world population at 6.3 billion in 2003. So in 2060 the population must be lower than that for his prediction to be right. Right?
According to one of the population clocks, when I made this comment, the following applied:
World 6,658,172,534
20:59 GMT (EST+5) Mar 30, 2008
This is a ridiculous prediction, and a ridiculous bet. The population is now growing at the rate of approximately one billion people every eleven years, and even if that rate of increase slowed to a near halt within the next decade, the momentum of increase would continue for many decades. Consider China and its one child policy, its population still rising. Poverty breeds children. Until the poverty level decreases significantly, population will continue to increase. I bet that, barring catastrophe, the population will double by 2060. Those who wish to take no environmental action are fond of predicting such things as global cooling, and population reduction. Would that these predictions were so.
There will be a nuclear war in which the population will dramatically drop and the radiation will cause even more deaths after the bombs are dropped
I think Kevin is absolutely correct. I like to call the phenomenon "Economic Birth Control". I think one can use the population of Japan as an example of that. The global economy is taking shape in two of the most heavily populated countries in the world, those being China and India, which could very easily take a similar path as Japan in regards to economic development. Cultures can, and more than likely will, change over time. Sooner or later, as in Japan, the economic development in those countries will take hold, and the rest will be history.
So, yes, I think he is correct in his prediction.
A significant percentage of the people presently alive will still be alive in 52 years. Global population growth rates are very likely to continue upward for at least 20 years. What percentage of the people born in the next 20 years are likely to live until 2060? I think if you look at it that way, you may agree that the prediction is very unlikely to prove true. Also, you may want to consider defining what beings count toward population totals. Genetics technology could easily blur that definition. Just a thought.
the human race is too violent to be permanent in the first place, and will cease to exist in several centuries anyway.
In the scenario of this bet, however, war, famine and desease seem to have been left out. Call me a doomsday-thinker or apocalyps-freak, but it is already more than obvious that a major war is about to commence; the war between "The West" and the rest. As a result, nuclear weapons will be used, destroying not only a significant portion of mankind, but also flora and fauna worldwide. Seas and land will become polluted, more natural disasters will occur (though one could ask how "natural" those would really be) and foodproduction and supplies will grow lower and lower as a result. In other words: yes, i agree with the prediction.
Specific external factors such as devastating war, global pestilence, or catastrophic natural events could forcefully lower the global population below current levels by 2060. Such lowering would be quick and violent. I judge the mathematical probability of any one of these happening before 2060 to be negligible.
We are then left with the key internal factor of human fertility. It takes a few "child-bearing generations" for a particular total global fertility rate (global TFR) to be reflected in the global birth rate because the global age distribution must reach equilibrium. In particular, even when the global TFR drops below the global replacement-level fertility rate (global RFR, estimated to be 2.3 in 2002 and projected to decline to 2.1 by 2050), global population will continue to grow for an estimated 50 – 75 years because the most recent period of high fertility rates produced large numbers of young couples who would now be in their child-bearing years.
This phenomenon is known as population momentum or the population-lag effect. This time-lag effect is of great importance to the growth rates of human populations and to this bet.
The details of the bet might be correct, but the timing and magnitudes are off. Taking into account the surprising decline in global TFR being revealed this decade, and depending on the assumption of rising, steady, or falling birth rates (known as variants), consensus estimates appear to be a peaking of global population at between 7.5 billion and 10 billion people somewhere between the years 2050 and 2070.
The odds are heavily stacked against Kevin’s bet as worded.
There is a concept known as the earth’s carrying capacity that takes into account improvements in technology. I believe improvements in technology and in the global social order will raise the earth’s carrying capacity to that required to support a global population of 8 billion or so. Global population will tend asymptotically to earth's carrying capacity.
Essentially I believe the predictor since the Hubbert's peak oil theory held true in 1970, it will as well for World oil supply peaking by 2010. If this happens the world will not have enough resources to sustain and will go into population decline. Alternatives will not satisfy the energy requirements of tomorrow and we'll end up not being able to sustain even the current population in the near future.
I agree with Kevin Kelly, but my argument is a bit different. The rate at which the pollution is going up,the layers that cover the atmosphere is getting thinner will definitely lead to various side affects in the human life. the more technology you use,the more advance you become, you will start using more chemicals or by products,again that is harmful for human lives.
The average rate of life expectencies is reducing..signs of a radical transformation.
Well,I believe that the world will see population unmatched to the current statistics, being on the lower side.
I don't agree!
-Steven Burda
www.linkedin.com/in/burda
You know, I really don't know what to say on this one. On one hand:
1) Oil is supposed to reach it's peak 2015, and oil really sustains mankind. For example, without oil, pens, plastic toys, a bulk of electricity, computers, games, candles, plastic bags, would all be gone
And on the other:
2) The life expectancy is growing rapidly, and so is the population. I do not see any reason except for oil, and disease, that the world's population growth should slow.
Wishful thinking? Yes, wishful thinking.
But notice the prediction applies to population on earth. What about alternative planets? And I don't mean Nebraska..
It will happen in world if other countries population gets less . But i cant say about india because it's population is rapidly increasing their is no sign of decreasing world population will decrease but not of india in my sight.
Yes, you are about Earth having limited resources and I support you but, I think human beins are intelligent enough to support a 9,000,000,000 human population,I think there are preety well chances of the world population to go around 16 billion, have a international food crisis, everbody blming each-other, water crisis and energy crisis and even inflation, then population will deceraese because of starvation, epidemics (In poor countries not able to cope up with inflation) and byproducts of global warming. Ultimately I think if Human spiecies survivies and earth is not blown up (Like the case with dinosaurs0 then, there are nice chances of earth having more than 9 billion humans alive ! And a personal message to Jackey D. Saraf on Jun 24, 02008 at 12:38AM that I am an proud indian and believe me india is progressing and population will be under control though not as early as the deadline !
The current world life expectancy at birth is somewhere around 66 years (64 years for males, 68 years for females). I expect that by 2060, this world life expectancy at birth will be near 100.
The declining death rates (from developments such as better cancer detection and treatment, stem cell treatment of hearts...or even artificial hearts) will mean that population will increase, even if birth rates continue to decline.
Barring global thermonuclear or biological war (or takeover by machines), I'd expect the human population to be over 9 billion in 2060.
predicted europe and north africa would have hurricines storms of
exceeding preportion, causing the loss of much human life, just how
true are his predictions is not really known, but he did predict the 9/11, i'm assuming that the terrible weather of north Africa and Europe will be before 2o6o.And the Bible endtime scriptures Tell me
that the signs that this world will experience are here now meaning the second coming of christ is very close that the world will be ruled by Christ before it even reaches 2o6o.estimation is Christ is mostly to have returned before 2o25.
life expectancy continues to increase. population growth has never been affected significantly in the course of human history by disease, war, natural disaster, or famine.
I think that this is a very naive prediction. Catholic families and Muslim families produce many more children than non-religious families. Religion often praises children as gifts from God. You might say that religions are on the decline, but that is a rather short-sighted perspective. By 2060, Europe will probably have at least close to half of their population as Muslims. Some of the most populous states of the US (California, Texas) already have a huge number of Mexican immigrants (the majority are full citizens), and they often have many, many children starting early.
One thing about these demographics groups is that more Catholic babies tend to breed more themselves, leading to a classic survival of the fittest scenario: if a demographic group removes themselves from the gene-pool by not having as many kids, they soon become irrelevant. Religion still tends to be largely hereditary, especially among groups like Mexicans or Muslim immigrants who are not as likely to convert to agnosticism or atheism since they view their religion as an integral part of their family and identity. Just because godless intellectuals are "right" about population growth does not mean that they are immune to the effects of removing themselves from the gene-pool by following their own advice of not procreating!
Think about it this way: if you treat zero-populatio-growth advocates as an organized religion, they just automatically eliminated the most common way of growing a religion (i.e. procreation). How likely are they to continue to spread their religion? Through intellectual debate? Either they will disappear or they will have to use non-democratic means to force their view on the rest of the (more-proliferate) masses. Most likely, they will just disappear.
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