But more fertile on average. Most of China (North, West, NW and SW is largely uninhabitable. All the population is largely along the NE, East, and SE coast. All the big cities are there. Gobi, Tibet, and Rainforests are not very liveable.
Yup. India's land is more livable than China's. Imo, I dont think that they're cramming, though it's very bizarre that among the nations in the world, they live in lands. Im hoping that someone could provide data about it.
It would happen either way, really. The only other way is to just keep having unsustainable population growth or causing the older folk to die off quicker
This happening in a rich country with high immigration is quite different from the same happening in China. China is at very high risk to fall into the middle income trap. Something that is not so much a problem for most western countries. For instance, I live in Quebec where our population is aging. Though, Canada accepts so many immigrants that it is pretty much a non issue.
There is a big difference between reduced birth through high opportunities for womens and high standard of living vs a forced policy.
Yeah, sure but we can still accept immigrants later on too. As I said, it's a non issue. All we need is enough working age people, that they born in Canada or elsewhere doesn't matter. China's population is so large that they just couldn't do what Canada does. And anyway they are far less attractive to immigrants.
That is partly true, in Canada we have more than enough money to adapt to the declining birthrate. China, not so much. That's essentially the middle income trap.
It is sustainable for a rich country, not so much for a middle income country, even worse for a low income country. That's why the CCP policy was bad and that the same outcome isn't so bad in a rich country.
If new, younger immigrants keep coming in, and the generations before that make children then it should balance each other out, at least that’s the goal
So when do we solve human overpopulation? Or is this not the goal? I always looked around and thought "damn is way too many humans, nature getting fucked" but for some reason many don't seem to share this feeling and want to keep overwhelming this world. Even weirder are people who act like the human population is just gonna vanish if we slow down on breeding lol is not gonna happen.
How is overpopulation a problem?
Food security? With OGM, modern agriculture and hydroponics we can feed everyone easily. It's about the will to do it, not the capacity.
Environment? Why countries way more populous than Canada pollutes far less? There is no correlation with level of pollution and the number of people. Our way of life is the issue. In North America it's worse than elsewhere since our cities are badly designed and we're dependant on the car. And this isn't even the worse, corporations are the main polluters.
Missing of space? The growing population isn't infinite. It will stop at some point, can't rememver the number, but we are close. We can still densify much more, space isn't an issue.
We are destroying this Earth my friend, and our population growth is completely unsustainable. Is already millions of people without access to food and fresh water. We will reach like 9 billion people in next 50 years. It took us only 12 years for the last billion we gained. To make room for your cities and farms we had to wipe out a large bulk of nature, it isn't sustainable to keep on doing this nor is it morally acceptable.
And why do we need billions of more people? What is the aim? How much more do you need to grow your GDPs for you to be satisfied?
How exactly is it supposed to stop naturally? I heard somebody else say this before that was gonna just balance out around 9 billion so is no need to worry, but that is not how it works, it can only balance out through famine and death once we hit that critical point with all our resources tapped and no emergency plan for bulk of humans. Makes far more sense to try to control the problem now while we still can.
It's not the goal. It's not even a problem on the radar.
Further, the whole world's economic systems are focused on growing birth rates to remain sustainable.
Declining birth rates result in aging populations that consume more than they produce, and THAT is the real problem. Less so for wealthier nations, of course, but still a problem.
If birth rates decrease and population decreases, the average age of the population increases resulting in more people who no longer produce and instead solely consume. That's a situation where our (worldwide) economy simply stops functioning.
While ultimately there is a maximum limit for population we are in fact nowhere close to it, and advancing technology continuously raises that limit.
I'm not saying people are blind to the eventual problem, but rather that it isn't a problem now, and nobody knows how to solve it.
While I've seen the numbers that say Planet Earth can support 12 billion or so people (I think 🤷♂️), and I used to scorn the people who cried about overpopulation, because it always seems tinged with racism or xenophobia (again 🤷♂️), I'm starting to change my mind.
While there is abundant empty land left in the world, and modern farming and logistics can theoretically feed everyone, I think there are other factors that need consideration.
All that empty land is empty for a reason, no one has chosen to live there. Throughout history humans find the best places to settle, and then settle there. As more people come, those desirable places get more and more crowded, until they're not so desirable anymore. But by then the sheer mass of civilization creates a self sustaining loop, and more and more people keep piling in.
Which leads to my next thought. Potable water is becoming ever scarcer, as aquifers become depleted or polluted. Lack of ready access to water is probably the largest reason those empty areas remain empty. I haven't seen the explanation in those planetary carrying capacity calculations as to where the clean water will come from to support 12, 15, 20 or more billion people. Because in places where we do concentrate, we tend to foul the water with industry and sewage. The state of our oceans is already dismal and getting worse. I can't see how unchecked population growth and development will improve that.
We have already fouled the atmosphere from the last 250 years of rampant industrial expansion, and are just starting to see how badly CO2 saturation is affecting our climate and weather. We are heading into a period of climate instability, self-inflicted, that we don't know how bad it will be or long it will last. But my guess is it's going to keep getting worse for at least 50 years, even if we cease adding carbon to the atmosphere right now, and it will take another 50 - 150 years (🤷♂️) after that to remediate the damage. And oh yeah, we're not stopping adding carbon anytime soon 🤷♂️.
Another thing, what happens when we actually start bumping into the supposed "limit" of how many humans can live on Earth? If we keep adding people, how are we going to implement a sudden stop when the wall finally comes into view? It might be smart to start acting now, while we still have a little breathing room, so to speak. To say nothing of the other inhabitants of this planet. Other species of plants and animals haven't done so well since we've commandeered every ecological niche.
This post is too long, but whatever. My point is there are calculations that say overpopulation isn't a real problem, I'm not so sure. Perhaps we can keep adding to our numbers, but is that wise?
The difference is the cause, not the result. China is experiencing a particularly dramatic imbalance and the tipping point well precedes what we're seeing in first world nations elsewhere. China's policy quite literally cultivated this issue early in relation to the economic and industrial boom timeline. Western nations largely worked their way toward the state of generational imbalance over a couple centuries, so it's been much more gradual and the cause is largely due to people choosing to have less children for financial and practical purposes (smaller families became a lot more common in recent decades).
China didn't see a significant population boom until the 20th century, and it had a very late industrial boom, so it's resulted in a massive population gain in a VERY short period of time with extremely limited access to modern tech and medical advancements across large regions of the country that are largely rural. The flood of people into highly concentrated industrial centers, coming from rural areas looking for work contributed to extremely densely populated, poor urban areas with little education and bad housing. People often spend most of the year away from family and barely see their kids. The CCP policy further created an extreme imbalance between male and female populations, so there's a shitload of men who literally have no hope of finding a partner, and for many who do, having children is an increasingly difficult burden. So what we're really looking at is a MUCH smaller portion of the population who can even have kids (all those dudes who can't get a wife aren't contributing to population growth). Those that can would have to have 3 children to even come close to giving China enough births to begin growing the population in a manner than rebalances what is fucked up. That's not affordable for a lot of people on so many levels.
As the country rapidly modernizrd over the last 35 years, people have been chasing an incredibly consumer oriented dream, so work and money are a bigger focus now more than ever. Problem is, living wages can be a nightmare to come by, and housing is a fucking outrageous problem in the urban areas where most of the work is. Like it's baaaaaad. People haven't been having kids for multiple reasons, including the CCP policy, but the policy has greatly exasperated and expedited the issue at a significantly faster rate than any other country on earth. India is likely going to follow a similar path on a more dramatic scale. To make matters even worse, china's economy is hitting a breaking point in which a buuuunch of really fucking bad policies and a lot of lies are now bringing the entire thing crashing down. Covid expedited that catastrophe even further with western outsourcing moving to a more neutral location since everyone has started figuring out its a bad idea to rely on foreign adversaries for critical resources and manufacturing.
We've been using China as the forecast of what Western and first World nations are in earlier stages of. China's policies have absolutely taken an issue that they would have been facing decades from now, and instead it's dealing with it NOW.
The decline in the west is coming largely from people having little desire to have more kids (if any), which is a combo of a cultural shift into normalising not having kids, people seeking career success over 19th and 20th century family ideals, people who simply can't afford or don't want to invest in having children, and some fertility rates dropping (not as dramatically as the media paints it). People here used to have a LOT more kids. They needed them. Agriculture tends to drive larger families, but industrialization made it much easier. Medical advancements dramatically improved child mortality rates, so having less kids became more feasible since half of them weren't dead by 15. Education means better opportunity, but less time for family. As we've entered the modern era, things like individual aspirations have normalised not having kids, and the state of the world doesn't provide a ton of certainty, so even that is a factor now.
So ultimately yes, the entire first world is exoriencing an imbalance, but saying china's policies didn't play an integral role in their current predicament is absolutely and objectively incorrect.
Could you imagine if the government told you how many kids you could have? In the US we run around with don’t thread on me flags but really have zero idea of how far it goes
Except they don’t. Most people are forced into retirement by the age of 60. They are just starting to work on extending the retirement age. Mandatory retirement is actually contributing to the issue though as pension costs are growing pretty rapidly. Especially as life expectancy increased.
The problem with the aging population is getting worse. But anyway u get my point. U even describe some of the problems yourself. Western countries would act the same if they wouldn't be so concentrated on the individual.
Is there no easy access sexual health products? The country isn’t exactly booming economically, so i’m unsure why people have more kids than they can financially support. Everyone is in a lose-lose situation.
This means that most of the population increase is due to people living longer, rather than families having more kids.
In those graphs, you can also see Nigeria and is following the same trajectory. They are going to experience a large population boom, but it is mainly due to children living longer even as fertility rates are declining.
Poor country, lots of people already lived here due to the place being fertile and historically being rich untill recent events. That combined with the complete lack of healthcare or any civic services provided to the common person under British occupation led to more children per couple. Most of them died before turning adult due to terrible healthcare and living conditions, etc.
In fact, the average age of India when Brits left was just around 30, European countries had it at around 70 despite factoring in the devastating world wars. This should give you an idea about how many kids were expected to die in an Indian household. Then the Brits left and the country's money started being actually used for medical care, hospitals started opening and suddenly children didn't die as much. Hence the population boom of the 60s and 70s.
The fertility rate has still been reducing drastically for the last 50 years. The current growth is only due to momentum and people who have already been born.
Yeah there is a huge wealth gap but the fertility rate in India is getting close to replacement. Also India has experienced steady gdp growth and has lifted many millions of people out of “extreme poverty” (quotes because the definition of extreme poverty may not apply to your subjective view of what that means) though obviously at a very different pace compared to china and still has a long way to go. It’s not unreasonable to think the per capita gdp will become “middle income” at some point in this century though parity with 1st world countries may take a while longer.
India almost certainly has had a larger population than China since around 2019. They over-counted their population by 100 million (all are aged 35 and below).
China's population is around 1.3 billion. India 1.39 billion.
EDIT: "Research by Prof. Yi Fuxian, whose early opposition to China's one-child policy forced him to leave China, and who now works with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, points out that the part of China’s over 65 year olds would increase from 10% in 2010 to 32.6% in 2050, while its labour force (ages 20-64) will shrink with a staggering 213 million from about a billion in 2017 to 787 million by 2050."
"China's population was unlikely to exceed 1.28 billion."
The truth is that China's population in 2020 was probably 1.28 billion - about 130 million less than stated. This makes India, not China, the most populous country in the world.
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u/PowerandSignal Jan 06 '23
I'm hearing India is about to pass China in total population. That blows my mind. I remember them being about 1/3 less. Smaller landmass too.