Why Is Population Growth Seldom Discussed?

[SheilaT]

76. It does get discussed, but not as often or in the way it should be.

The discussions here, while interesting, don't change anything.

Several have pointed out correctly that many nations on this planet have already achieved zero population growth, or even negative population growth (Italy, Japan, and several others). But our entire economic world -- and it doesn't matter if you're talking about consumer capitalism or socialism or any other system -- depends on growth. More things need to be produced and purchased, so more workers are needed and the cycle is endless and ultimately, given that this planet is a closed system, cannot go on forever.

Resources are finite. But we humans evolved in circumstances where resources were, for all practical purposes, infinite. There were enough animals to hunt, berries and nuts to gather, to keep a small band going, and when they ran out of animals or berries they could move on to another territory. Because of high infant mortality and other things that kept most babies who were born from reproducing, population growth was almost non-existent. Then we developed agriculture, then manufacturing of various things, and conditions changed so that more of those babies lived to reproduce.

We are hard wired to reproduce, and those who choose not to, while an excellent choice these days, are behaving counter to our evolution. As several here have said, they are mindful of the fact there are already too many people, and are doing their own small bit to save the planet.

Eventually human population will decline, and decline precipitously. Whether that happens because of world wide catastrophe as in the exceptionally-deadly-and-fast-moving disease, global nuclear war, or simply a slower die-off due to things like environmental degradation and disease, we can't begin to know at this point. There is a small hope that the slowing of population growth world-wide will continue, but it is my personal belief that we are already well above this planet's carrying capacity. If we could magically reduce the world population to about a billion people overnight and keep it at that number, that might solve the problems of too many people. But at the rate we are collectively using up resources and dumping garbage everywhere, I'd guess that the long run sustainable number will be half of that.

Looking at population growth graphs, it's scary to see that the Black Death in the 14th century is only a very small blip in population growth. And as terrible as WWI and WWII were, they did not noticeably slow it down.

The only questions left are when will world population decline, and how quickly will that decline take place?