Antarctica, Greenland ice definitely melting into sea, and speeding up, experts warn

[caseymoz]

24. Actually, looking at the basic biology

We did it to maximize our reproductive success. We're facing a population crash because we became very good at avoiding previous crashes. For example, as hunter-gatherers, as we got too good at hunting and denuded our habitates of game, and couldn't move to another habitate without great losses, because those were occupied by other tribes, we began to cultivate crops. The population crash was avoided. In the '70s, when the world faced starvation, we came up with the green revolution.

But Malthus teaches us that ultimately, the population has to crash. Sooner or later, you run out of luck for your intelligence to exploit. It's flying an airplane. You can defy gravity for only so long.

Simple as that. And we're well-prepared in an evolutionary sense, with our numbers probably peaking at 8-9 billion before the crash. Think of bacteria. A population that massive likely isn't going to go extinct. The population will probably drop to just a million. That's horrible. That's what ecologists call a bottleneck. Evolutionary pressures are going to become greater. Or we could die out. I wouldn't bet against the human species being the survivor in the great die off.

I know that sounds unjust, but humankind is just doing what any other animal would do if it could: reproduce with maximum success every generation. In case you want to check: there is no animal, and probably no species ever that self-regulates its population. No, their population is regulated by their environment, and usually that's enough to avoid massive crashes.

It was never in our nature to restrain our growth. If it had been, that would have been a quality uprecedented in any other life form.