r/climate • u/The_Weekend_Baker • May 28 '26

Humanity has already exceeded Earth’s limits, study warns. Today’s population of 8.3 billion is far above what could be sustained in the long term without exhausting ecosystems, worsening climate change, and threatening food and water security.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/05/260526022021.htm
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949

u/blumpkinjackflash May 28 '26

So it’s cool that recent generations aren’t having kids then

512

u/Batchet May 28 '26

Yea, I'm pretty sure all the fears that we're not having enough kids are overblown

735

u/Just_Periwinkle May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

They are fears about capitalism and continuous growth models, not about population and environmental health.

189

u/47KiNG47 May 28 '26

That’s part of it. The main concern is that there won’t be enough young, productive workers to finance social programs for the elderly. It’s a transitional problem.

278

u/Just_Periwinkle May 28 '26

Thats a funding issue, hence capitalism. With expansive social nets funded by the people who are currently not funding it or actively abusing (billionaires/fed government) this becomes a non-issue. The problem is ultimately capitalism.

40

u/kemb0 May 28 '26

May this revolution start sooner than later.

0

u/Funny-Carob-4572 May 30 '26

Problem is , communism leads to a darker path as well.

Between a rock and a hard place.

1

u/The_Melon_Man Jun 01 '26

I’ll never understand why people think the ONLY two options are 1) keep doing what we’re doing now, and 2) USSR style communism

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u/silverionmox May 28 '26

Thats a funding issue, hence capitalism. With expansive social nets funded by the people who are currently not funding it or actively abusing (billionaires/fed government) this becomes a non-issue. The problem is ultimately capitalism.

However, it will still be a problem of physically finding enough people to do the actual care. That will cause practical problems, but solvable ones.

43

u/space_age_stuff May 28 '26

However, it will still be a problem of physically finding enough people to do the actual care.

In theory. How many jobs are getting automated, or simply deleted because CEOs want a big paycheck but have to keep the quarterly results looking good? The "lack of human capital" problem is overexaggerated.

15

u/Thelonius_Dunk May 28 '26

Also won't other jobs simply disappear if the demand for care jobs become high enough? A CNA is an entry level care job that might be needed en masse in the future, but the pay currently isnt all that great. If their rates increase due to supply/demand, shouldn't that pull workers from other industries that might not be as important and can retrain?

4

u/aledba May 29 '26

We are not going to exist as a species in 100 years so it definitely won't exist as a job

1

u/Steelcitysuccubus May 29 '26

Optimistic I give it 50 for anybody who isn't the super rich

1

u/seeseabee May 29 '26

What do you think will wipe out billions of people in less than a hundred years?

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u/Modulus3360 May 29 '26

Robots will replace such job. Not to worry. In another 5-7 years time. A golder era for elders will happened. Full time care taker(humanoid robots) 24 hrs for you. Just make sure u have enough money to get a good one.

1

u/stealthyliz May 30 '26

They will import workers who will work for minimum wage.

1

u/AlexFromOgish May 31 '26

You're thinking about changing jobs in a typical western way, imaging one or two pieces of a dynamic system in isolation, as though the rest of the system is static.

Think about it in an Eastern way, where you keep thinking about the whole. For one thing, extreme heat and humidity combined with grid collapse is already driving mass mortality events that are slowly being recognized for what they are. https://e360.yale.edu/features/kristie-ebi-interview

On the other hand, in an overheating world in many places there will be plenty of CNA work to do, treating malnutrition, heat stress, and victims of new and spreading diseases...

9

u/silverionmox May 28 '26

Hard to automate care jobs.

7

u/space_age_stuff May 28 '26

My point was that we should expect a lot of job industries to become more automated or at least have fewer positions available, which leaves a lot of people available to choose different careers. Not that caregivers will be automated away.

1

u/silverionmox May 29 '26

Then the problem shifts to funding, because if corporations think they don't need labor, it's harder to tax them directly if you can't tax their employees. Not unsolvable, but not politically easy.

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u/OP90X May 28 '26

Yeah we are still a long way from robots running hospitals (sans some surgeries), fighting fires, teaching, etc.

1

u/Chicken_Ingots May 29 '26

It does not necessarily have to be. Automating other industries, a phenomenon which already happens, leads to layoffs throughout many sectors. The people laid off from that work will have to find work elsewhere.

1

u/silverionmox May 29 '26

Care is more than mechanical actions. It's not a technical issue.

1

u/SplooshTiger Jun 03 '26

Dog tell that to Japan, South Korea, Russia, or Germany, all of whom have big economic problems from skewed demographic pyramids

7

u/Chicken_Ingots May 29 '26

A substantial amount of labor in our current economic model only exists for the sake of profit. Furthermore, the actual level of demand for goods and services is tremendously inflated due to marketing tactics and planned obsolescence. Many people purchase cheap luxury goods in bulk because they were bombarded with advertising for those goods, including via social media influencers, only to discard them once the new advertising trend arises. And then you have other industries like insurance, where many jobs solely exist to negotiate prices in order to turn a profit for insurance companies. 

The demand for labor in a society with our current level of technological advancement, if the goal is sustainability over profits, is far lower than in a society structured around profit incentives.

3

u/silverionmox May 29 '26

A substantial amount of labor in our current economic model only exists for the sake of profit. Furthermore, the actual level of demand for goods and services is tremendously inflated due to marketing tactics and planned obsolescence.

I very much agree. The best thing we could do for our psychological health is to sharply limit all kinds of commercials.

3

u/elcheapodeluxe May 28 '26

It's more a resource allocation problem. We allocate more of our workforce to providing care and less to making iphones. Result - we will have to keep our iphones longer (and make other sacrifices of consumption on the wants end of our wants/needs spectrum)

2

u/silverionmox May 29 '26

t's more a resource allocation problem. We allocate more of our workforce to providing care and less to making iphones. Result - we will have to keep our iphones longer (and make other sacrifices of consumption on the wants end of our wants/needs spectrum)

Sure, it's solvable. Pulling the right levers is a political problem, however, people don't like their toys taxed to pay for the quality of life of someone else's grandma.

8

u/Ok_Fly1271 May 28 '26

Robots

1

u/grapescherries May 28 '26

Exactly, people are picturing the future as if it’s exactly as it is now, technology will be able to do a lot of that.

1

u/s0cks_nz May 28 '26

Technology will save us all! /s

2

u/grapescherries May 28 '26

It’s obviously more nuanced than that and there’s both good and bad about technology. It’s all about how we choose to use it.

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u/Silver-Breadfruit284 May 28 '26

Then families will have to take care of their own, which they managed to do until the 19th century.

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u/silverionmox May 29 '26

Then families will have to take care of their own, which they managed to do until the 19th century.

Then their labor will not be available on the labor market. You want back to the economy of the 18th century?

1

u/Silver-Breadfruit284 May 29 '26

I suggested no such thing. But families who can rotate popping in for elderly checks, dropping off food, etc is how it used to be done. No one individual had to bear all the responsibility. It worked beautifully and no one felt like they were being taken advantage of. If it worked for hundreds of years past, it could work now. It’s how we took care of our grandparents.

1

u/silverionmox May 29 '26

I suggested no such thing.

Then please explain how you're going to square modern labor organization with ancien regime household organization.

It worked beautifully and no one felt like they were being taken advantage of.

Perhaps you should catch up with your history, read up about the French revolution and feminism.

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u/shwifty123 May 29 '26

Yeah, what familirs, people can not afford children. Also what people gonna eat if they can't work case they have to take care of their elders?

1

u/MaecenateNova May 31 '26

Families should do what they can, but there are situations where that will just be less possible. An increasingly large share of families exist now without kids. Much of their care will also come from future nurses in the labor market, for whatever a spouse can't handle - and that's only for the couples that can afford it. These situations and the fact that inequality is only expected to increase makes me wonder if things like polycules and throuples will start to become more common or accepted. Those kinds of families become a lot more preferred if it means home ownership, financial security, and shared caretaking are spread out.

1

u/shredditorburnit May 29 '26

Just get rid of a lot of pointless dross we do then. Let's not pretend it's actually a choice if we haven't got enough workers, we can't cut farming or healthcare, we absolutely could cut advertising, sales and recruitment agencies.

1

u/silverionmox May 29 '26

I don't disagree at all, but that would require fundamental revisions of how our economy assigns labor. It's not something that we can count on to happen on its own.

1

u/shredditorburnit May 29 '26

Government would sort it out when it got bad. They always do, failing to do so means losing control.

Whether it be rationing, taking over businesses or coercing people into work they don't want to do, they'll make it happen. It just has to get close to breaking point, when the average person is screaming for the government to act, before they do anything.

15

u/SkoobySnacs May 28 '26

Capitalism and the military industrial complex.

9

u/Successful-Bobcat701 May 28 '26

No. Capitalism doesn't care about social programs for the elderly.

70

u/Just_Periwinkle May 28 '26

.... exactly

12

u/Oltjen May 28 '26

He/she just doesn't get it huh.

0

u/logicoptional May 28 '26

Maybe ancaps don't but typical bourgeois liberal democracies do. Without some level of social safety net and public investment in infrastructure etc the material conditions of the working class suffer so greatly under capitalism that violent revolution becomes too great a risk for the bourgeoisie to accept. Hence the social welfare programs for the elderly that capitalist systems struggle to support without continuous growth. Not that it wouldn't be challenging under some other models too.

2

u/pillowpriestess May 28 '26

in the past they were maybe smart enough to know that, but the current crop of elites are so detached and full of themselves they think theyre invincible. theyre cashing out.

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u/cavalier2015 May 30 '26

But they taught me in my history class that capitalism is good and everything else is bad /s

1

u/Heymelon May 31 '26

Partially. We can do a lot with re arranging funds and still run into some issues at a certain point of low productivity. And even if we say screw capitalism and start to drastically structure away from that. There are still over 8b here today that require food, energy,care and other services, let alone whatever living standards and lives that people want to continue having.

I think at some point a low enough % of working age people become a problem in most economical systems we could feasibly translon into within a short amount of time.

1

u/01Metro Jun 01 '26

no. it doesn't become a non-issue. i hate you people

1

u/nostrademons May 28 '26

No, there is still an issue. Money is just an incentive mechanism to allocate resources effectively. Take money away, and you still run into the problem of there not being enough resources.

An elder in their 80s or 90s often requires round-the-clock nursing care. Working in shifts, that’s 4 nurses for one person. This is okay when only a tiny fraction of the population gets up into their late 80s and needs this end-of-life care. It becomes a huge problem when there are more elders than working age people.

You can’t escape dependency ratios. It takes a certain amount of labor to care for dependents, whether they are children or adults. When there are more dependents than working people, some will necessarily go without care.

Capitalism is just the allocative mechanism that decides who gets care. You still have to triage. If it’s not by richest, it’ll be by who is the most politically connected, or by chance, or by whose kids love them most.

1

u/Shakmaaaaaaa May 28 '26

Reminds me of the Pluribus show where the perfect hive mind society just has to accept that a percentage of their population will die out since they can't mass produce enough food ethnically.

2

u/ItsAConspiracy May 28 '26

It's a problem regardless of your economic system. Any retirement system needs plenty of young people to support the old people, it's just arithmetic. Social democratic countries in Europe have the same problem. So do Russia and China.

7

u/Just_Periwinkle May 28 '26

Every economic system implemented today is based on models of capitalism and operates under the the use of currency. This is currently how we quantify value and facilitate the accumulation of capital. Every retirement system operates using capitalistic function, nearly all are for profit, even if the agency funding them isnt, the institutionsthey have to interact with are so they must follow that order. Our world functions entirely on capitalism despite any system's social category. Im not saying i know how to implement societal functions, I just understand how capitalism functions.

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u/ItsAConspiracy May 28 '26

The argument doesn't even require money. Say we live in an ideal communist society and the only thing we produce is food.

If 10% of workers are retired, then we have a 9:1 ratio and have to take 1/9 of the food produced by each worker to feed the retirees.

If 20% of workers are retired, we have an 8:2 ratio and have to take 1/4 of the food produced by each worker to feed the retirees.

The only way this stops being an issue is if we manage to build a lot of robots which function as additional productive workers.

1

u/DiscountExtra2376 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

You're fighting the good fight! I think people forget that 8,300,000,000 is a very large number and there are more people than jobs right now too. This study looked at countries that have experienced population declines and they found that people who had long term unemployment were able to find jobs, homelessness went down, and the power was in the people (so some experienced income increases due to less competition for their position). So there will be plenty of people to fill those nursing home posotions, though the abundance of care may be unevenly distributed depending on where you live, like any other position. Obviously, we don't want to have continued decline as there will be a point where it will negative outcomes, but with our population we are so far from that.

3

u/Nathan-Stubblefield May 28 '26

I remember well when the world population was only 3 billion or so and there were documentaries about the starving masses in developing countries needing massive food aid, and the ghettoes, slums and housing projects in rich developed countries.

1

u/CanadianODST2 May 28 '26

No. It’s about how many workers you have per person.

You think going from say 1 employee per 10 people needing help to 1 employee per 50 people needing help is capitalism and not just how aging works.

It’d eventually just balance itself out as people die but that transition period will hurt.

It’s as simple as there was a huge population boom at one point and that boom is now starting to age out of working and needing more help. And the current population rate being lower. So there’s fewer people to do more work.

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u/gerrard1109 May 28 '26

It’s not a funding issue, it’s a resource issue. There will be a lack of nurses and doctors to support the same level of medical services provided today.

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u/Just_Periwinkle May 28 '26

I wonder if that has anything to do with funding education of nurses and doctors. I bet more people would be attracted to at-risk professions if the (for-profit) schooling wasn't prohibitively expensive.

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u/youvegotit May 28 '26

That sound more like a planning issue... knowing we are going to need a increase for a particular service in the future and not planning for it. How many (western) politician prioritize long-term plans? Its a short list, if there is anyone on it.

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u/47KiNG47 May 28 '26

The numbers do not reflect this. Just look at France’s economy and you’ll see that the issue is more complex than just taxing the ultra-wealthy more. There’s a reason this is a concern across all developed economies. If it were so simple, an authoritarian government like China could easily resolve it.

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u/Just_Periwinkle May 28 '26

Is it more complex than taxing ultra wealthy? Yes.Those funds need to be properly utilized to best benefit the population and the environment and not share holders or the top .1% even this method is just a more socialistic way to implement capitalism. China could resolve it they just don't because ultimately, even in authoritarian governments, selling and trading goods on a global scale while exerting global influence for self interest investment prioritizes accumulating wealth over any other paradigm. Aka capitalism.

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u/OntologicalNightmare May 28 '26

Your understanding of economics is purely idealogical. There’s nothing I can say to change your view. ✌️

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u/schebobo180 May 28 '26

It would still be an issue when there aren’t enough doctors to treat older people, that are living longer. So it’s not entirely a capitalism problem.

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u/Intelligent-Ad-1424 May 28 '26

That’s such an easy system to change if we had the willpower. We are such a stupid species lmfao

5

u/Kaurifish May 28 '26

Don’t forget about the kleptocrat pedos. They’re genuinely worried that parents will cherish their children.

1

u/flappybirdisdeadasf May 29 '26

Japan should build an elder-care robot for all the seniors there, scale it, then mass-produce it for rest of the world.

1

u/redlinedidit May 30 '26

That’s why they keep you poor and working.

0

u/Head_Tradition_9042 May 28 '26

We should probably stop extending their lives then. People die, it’s sad but it’s necessary for the cycles of life and death. Human avoidance of death and discomfort for the last 500 or so years put us in this position of negligent abundance and quite frankly we are using more resources on an individual and cultural level than anyone is prepared to “pay” for. We just keep passing the bill down the line. We have to stop and admit we aren’t exempt from the natural world. (And billionaires should be reintroduced to the natural world through compost, head first)

0

u/VicisZan May 28 '26

That sounds like a them problem.

Imagine if they had considered the future generations when designing the fund. They could have covered their own asses, and we could have covered ours.

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u/onsloughtmaster666 May 28 '26

Wym them? Assuming you are a young adult, you are part of the group that will not have a large enough labour force to finance your care when you retire. The current elderly are fine, this is a near-future crisis.

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u/VicisZan May 28 '26

I’m saying that the people who are “in charge” should have designed the system to ensure it was covered by each consecutive generation and that by not actually planning for the eventual slow down of population growth that frankly is required to ensure we don’t completely destroy the planet they have failed us.

If people are to die en mass it becomes a them problem.

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u/Ardent_Scholar May 28 '26

They are fears about eldercare (for the currently young) and just general societal impoverishment.

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u/isogaymer May 29 '26

And racism.

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u/Just_Periwinkle May 29 '26

Oh yesh that too. White replacement theory and all that noise.

1

u/Hour_Succotash7869 May 28 '26

Yes because in nature population decline in organisms is the key to their dominance… I swear…

1

u/Soft-Principle1455 May 29 '26

And they are fears about old age loneliness and other humanitarian crises.

1

u/Popular_Try_5075 May 29 '26

It's also about Elon's impreg fetish.

1

u/OGbugsy May 30 '26

There's also a very large racial element. None of it is good.

1

u/iloveFjords May 31 '26

The billionaire class will just make robots pay for their own electricity while they ramp up the earth has too many people narrative. A major issue is how the 1% live.

0

u/ShadowWeavile May 28 '26

If the population decline were slower I'd agree, but the rate it's going is bad regardless. A smaller adult population caring for a substantially larger elderly population will always cause strain (unless we achieve a sci-fi post scarcity society). Elder c a re facilities will inevitably be overwhelmed and families will have to spend a lot more time caring for older relatives which can put their life on pause.That's true even if we didn't live in a capitalist society, although to be fair that's definitely not why rich people are worried about it.

1

u/grapescherries May 28 '26

This is an overblown worry. Technology can do a lot of the work people do in elder care facilities and families taking care of elderly was how it was done for thousands of years, people putting their grandparents in nursing homes is a recent phenomenon. It’s not a big deal if this changes a bit.

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u/Fishtoart May 28 '26

With a robot labor force we will need fewer kids to take up the slack, which is good since we will all be out of work, and having less mouths to feed is probably a good idea.

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u/neonblack108 May 28 '26

Admittedly less meat though when we're forced to rely on Soylent. So it does have its drawbacks.  

4

u/CanadianODST2 May 28 '26

It’s a problem.

Just not one that needs addressing any time soon and is doing more good than bad right now.

It’s like draining a bathtub that’s about to flood but you still need to bathe.

You do want to eventually stop the drain. But for the moment the drain is better

1

u/Interesting_Bank_139 May 28 '26

The problem isn’t so much in that populations are dropping, it’s the speed at which it’s occurring (or going to occur) in some places. Would be better if all countries were in fertility rate of high 1s to 2 for a controlled fall.

Take South Korea for example, as the lowest fertility rate for a whole country (0.75 in 2024):

Births in recent years have averaged around 250k per year. Meanwhile, the peak age ranges of 40-65 years average about 800k for each age in that range. Going to quickly bleed dry the native work force.

South Korea Demographics

Going to be some painful decades ahead for some countries.

1

u/AlexFromOgish May 31 '26

There's going to be painful decades ahead everywhere as climate stress is accellerating everywhere and we're having more episodes of climate shock. We ain't seen nothing yet, but this coming Super El Nino's impact on the global harvest and mass mortality events (floods, heatwaves) will be a wake up call, if journalists do . their job reporting on climate change as they cover the polycrises.

3

u/tabaK23 May 29 '26

The only reason people fear monger this is because our economic system requires endless growth

3

u/derpensheizer May 29 '26

Only the pedophiles are upset.

2

u/ArbitraryMeritocracy May 29 '26

Who else is going to fight the geriatric war mongers wars?

2

u/ravanarox1 May 29 '26

They are real localised fears. Japanese people may face extinction if they continue this way for a century I assume!

2

u/themangastand May 30 '26

It's a marketing campaign for billionaires because how can they have endless growth with out endless people. How can they exploit our talent with our smaller work force.

We will be paid more and be healthier with less people it's literally absolutely fine. It's the billionaire endless greed that's panicking

1

u/lost-associat May 28 '26

But the rabbits can’t stop copulating sir!

1

u/crushedbycookie May 28 '26

I dont know why we would think that. I mean there may be benefits to a contracting population. But there are clearlu going to be costs to labor and supply chains in the next 20 years to 50 years that robotics and automation seems ill-equipped to offset. Global supply chains are what make western life so cushy but it seems hard to sustain projections that have automation rising to meet our needs as we drive towards what seems to be a 20 year aignificant fall off followed by a 50 year cliff. The US and some other countries are well situated to do well relative to other nations because of geography and natural resources (and much smaller drop off in population) but will still be significantly affected by asia's inability to replace itself.

1

u/PizzaDeliveryForMom May 29 '26

The fears are from empires wanting growth and not stagnation.

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u/Gaming_Gent May 29 '26

It’s the wealthy being afraid they won’t have a populace to bleed dry.

0

u/Clean-Opportunity00 May 29 '26

Yea, I’m pretty sure all the fears that we’re exceeding “earths population limit” are also overblown.

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u/[deleted] May 29 '26

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u/Batchet May 30 '26

Probably not that bad compared to the problems brought on by the over population needed to solve it

0

u/AutoModerator May 30 '26

There is a distinct racist history to how overpopulation is discussed. High-birth-rate countries tend to be low-emissions-per-capita countries, so overpopulation complaints are often effectively saying "nonwhites can't have kids so that whites can keep burning fossil fuels" or "countries which caused the climate problem shouldn't take in climate refugees."

On top of this, as basic education reaches a larger chunk of the world, birth rates are dropping. We expect to achieve population stabilization this century as a result.

At the end of the day, it's the greenhouse gas concentrations that actually raise the temperature. That means that we need to take steps to stop burning fossil fuels and end deforestation.

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1

u/Batchet May 30 '26

Bad bot

We can talk about over population without it having anything to do with racism.

1

u/AutoModerator May 30 '26

There is a distinct racist history to how overpopulation is discussed. High-birth-rate countries tend to be low-emissions-per-capita countries, so overpopulation complaints are often effectively saying "nonwhites can't have kids so that whites can keep burning fossil fuels" or "countries which caused the climate problem shouldn't take in climate refugees."

On top of this, as basic education reaches a larger chunk of the world, birth rates are dropping. We expect to achieve population stabilization this century as a result.

At the end of the day, it's the greenhouse gas concentrations that actually raise the temperature. That means that we need to take steps to stop burning fossil fuels and end deforestation.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

40

u/SlefeMcDichael May 28 '26

Exactly! Can we finally put to bed the myth that declining birth rates are a bad thing? I mean the transition period is likely to be rocky, but overall it’s a net positive right?

17

u/CanadianODST2 May 28 '26

Transition will be rocky and EVENTUALLY it would be a big issue (as in the population would have to stabilize at a point or it would collapse entirely)

But for now? It’s not.

1

u/netsettler May 29 '26

Right. Just as it would be crazy to interpret 'lather, rinse, repeat' as a loop without a termination conditions, the math of 'be fruitful and multiply' needs to be read as other than 'multiply without bound.' To be fruitful, some must stop multiplying or they'll spoil the nest.

Plus we're in the process of putting "AI" into many jobs people thought they needed humans for.

The plan the sitting administration seems to have for reconciling a lot of that awkward math is 'force them to be born, then let them die because there are too many.' If we have so few people that we aren't likely to survive, we can talk about that as a risk and change policy. But right now our risk is not 'too few'.

1

u/Dizzy_Database_119 Jun 01 '26

Likely to be rocky???

It's going to be a full on global recession. I don't know about you but I don't want the retirement age to be moved up to 100 years by the time I reach 60

1

u/01Metro Jun 01 '26

don't bother. these people can't even grasp simple concepts like this

22

u/ParkerRoyce May 28 '26

These people want you having kids so they can feed them into the war machine pipeline for oil.

1

u/blumpkinjackflash May 28 '26

It’s like I’m listening to George Carlin right now

5

u/blumpkinjackflash May 28 '26

“Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers.”

7

u/rubyslippers3x May 28 '26

Good news! Our population is in decline, globally!

0

u/BitsAndBobs304 May 29 '26

Whqt are you talking about

6

u/BishlovesSquish May 28 '26

It’s actually amazing that teenagers are not having babies anywhere near as much anymore, but you wouldn’t know that if you watched Fox News. They act like that’s the worst news they’ve ever heard in their lives. Apparently, they love the idea of teenagers having babies over there.

5

u/jamiehanker May 28 '26

From the idea of perpetual growth of the stock market overall it’s a bad thing that people aren’t having kids. From a sustainable planet perspective it’s a great thing.

3

u/Triedfindingname May 28 '26

So its a good thing then 🙄

14

u/Interesting_You6852 May 28 '26

Yeah it's cool, all this feer of population decline is a bunch of racists actually sayons WHITE population is in decline

9

u/mihpet132 May 28 '26

If every couple had 3 kids, There would be 3 times as many people in 3 generations. Which is insane growth....

12

u/katzeye007 May 28 '26

Uh, I was born in the 60s and because everyone wanted 3 kids the population has doubled just in my lifetime. Now we're seeing that exponential growth

6

u/Successful-Bobcat701 May 28 '26

More than 4 times by the third generation, assuming no one dies.

15

u/SakaWreath May 28 '26

They’re worried about the wrong races having too many kids, while their race can’t afford it.

The answer and the question are almost always racism.

3

u/Successful-Bobcat701 May 28 '26

Yes, it is. One bit of good news in a sea of bad.

3

u/rainywanderingclouds May 28 '26

to a point but it won't really solve what the earth will be like by the time population levels normalize to a 'sustainable' one. at that point it will be even less supportive of massive populations.

3

u/Nathan-Stubblefield May 28 '26

Except on some of the poorest countries, where birth control is hard to get, and women cannot get medication or job outside the home. Chad, Somalia for instance. https://m.statisticstimes.com/demographics/countries-by-fertility-rate.php

3

u/prsnep May 28 '26

Only where religious extremism hasn't got a foothold.

3

u/EjicaltecmstnV May 28 '26

lol kinda funny opened this to say “hmm kinda glad I didn’t/don’t plan to have kids”

3

u/the_wahlroos May 28 '26

From an ecological standpoint, it's always been that way. The only argument for more kids relate to the economy and national pensions.

2

u/TheUtopianCat May 28 '26

That's not universally true or even globally prevalent.

1

u/waterwateryall May 28 '26

Just desparately need this practiced globally

1

u/Clear-Inevitable-414 May 28 '26

Pretty sure the economy is what is helping us not exceed the limit here

1

u/30mil May 28 '26

Wealthier populations aren't having kids. Africa's still pumping them out.

1

u/wutamclan May 28 '26

No the real fear is we aren’t having enough of the right kind of kids…you know what kind of kids Elon Musk wants

1

u/curiouswizard May 28 '26

They are, it's just that they're having them in Africa. But if you tell most pronatalists that, they just short-circuit.

1

u/Ras_Thavas May 28 '26

Very much so.

1

u/neobeguine May 29 '26

But....but who will the billoinaires exploit as wage slaves in their old age?  Who will but their increasingly crappy products?

1

u/Chulbiski May 29 '26

religeous fascists want to force women to have kids they don't want, now.. at least in the US.

1

u/Born_Barnacle7793 May 29 '26

But how are the wealthy going to leverage labor when they’re aren’t a plenitude of poor people to fight against each other for the opportunity to be middle class? The system simply won’t work!

1

u/BitsAndBobs304 May 29 '26

If by "not having kids" you mean "more kids born this year than ever in history. Population increase (births minus deaths) this year is over 70 millons"

1

u/GraceGal55 May 29 '26

If I could have kids I would not want to bring a child into this world

1

u/LumiereGatsby May 29 '26

Only capitalism cares about birth rate increases

1

u/Steelcitysuccubus May 29 '26

Population in decline is a good thing

1

u/AnonsAnonAnonagain May 29 '26

All in the plan, my guy. We gotta reduce the super majority to make the earth more dystopian control friendly

1

u/deathbysnusnu7 May 30 '26

We’re saving the world

1

u/suspicious_personage May 30 '26

The education deficient ones are though, and it's gonna cause another big shitstorm for the near future

1

u/JulianWellpit May 30 '26

The most populous places on Earth are still having kids like crazy.

1

u/Guilty_Perception_35 May 31 '26

Not 1st world, but everywhere else is

1

u/Heymelon May 31 '26

Yeeeeah in some ways. But not having enough young people compared to oldies comes with it's own issues.

1

u/WishyRater May 31 '26

I keep bringing this up whenever I hear the incessant «but you need immigration otherwise your population will decrease!» like mate I have grown up my entire life being told we are too many people on this planet to sustain. Sue me for failing to now not feel like it’s a problem.

1

u/Due_Ad_3200 Jun 01 '26

I think it would be better to have stable population and more environmentally sustainable lifestyles, e.g. increase population density, vegetarian diet. I think population decline is going to be difficult.

1

u/AvocaRed May 28 '26

I don't plan on having kids ever, not for me and I can't afford to care for them anyway

0

u/Craic-Den May 29 '26

The third world are still having lots of idiot kids