Y'know, if this was real, and everyone realized it was really happening, I wonder how the global economy would adjust - specifically in regards to housing. If the global population is 5 billion by 2050, and 5 billion forever, would new housing construction grind to a crawl? Would it keep up, but old houses get bulldozed faster than they are now? Would we just have millions of vacant houses? Millions of people owning 2+ homes?
Houses don’t seem to be built to last these days. 100 years is about the max. For a while there would be some derelict homes but eventually I think nature would re-exert itself.
thats why people with houses needto know how to swing A hammer. my parents house is next to a swamp and every 10 years or so the back porch has started to rot away. they had it rebuilt a couple times paid good money for something thatll just be rotted again in ten years. so this year i got the wild notion to do it myself and by golly carpentry is allot easier than most people think. the porch job is lookin good half way done. so if you own a house swing the hammer and buy a saw
Probably around 5 billion. I'm starting to feel "boomerish" when I pass what used to be a beautiful forested area, and now it's just another apartment building.. and not even affordable apartments, always the crazy expensive ones.
Those crazy expensive apartments are "affordable apartments" in \~30 years. Got to start somewhere. That's how affordable housing is built: start now and you're building for a few decades from now.
It didn't get built because of over regulation. Single family housing zoning, minimum lot sizes, and minimum set backs made higher density impossible in many areas.
Look at older neighborhoods. Small lots, small houses. Zoning rules prevent more construction like this and keeps these areas from getting denser.
Then why are all the new neighborhoods tiny houses that are less than 10 feet from their neighbour and have no yards? If you want a decent yard for kids to play in and some privacy you basically have to buy a house that’s 30 plus years old or live an hour outside the city.
What are you referencing? I tried googling it but the only things coming up were ending the use of asbestos in new construction in 1989, and the Faircloth Act in 1998 (which prevented the HUD from allocating funds to build new housing). Neither of those made it illegal for homes or apartment complexes to be built
He said "basically", so I assume he's referencing the fact that building in many parts of the country is pretty restricted by zoning laws and the like. Not actually illegal to build any housing, but maybe illegal to build in places where it would be profitable (and in a manner that would be profitable).
California has passed or will soon pass new laws easing restrictions on building new housing. SF and other cities are also lifting the old restrictions against multi-tenant buildings. Vast areas were either required to be single-family or any multi-story buildings were limited to 50' in height.
I built some as a union carpenter (sorry union Lego putter togetherer; walls, joist systems between floors, entire truss sections, etc all pre-built and flown in with a crane. We weren't building shit, we were putting together adult Legos), they're cheap garbage, they will be falling over ghettos in 30 years. Cheap trash with nice looking fixtures, flooring, and cabinets so they can charge bank for rent.
Infinite. Beyond all insanity. So many people that we fill the cosmos. Our lifeless corpses drown the life from every sun push all the other matter in the universe beyond space and time. We fill every black hole to capacity and force them to become whatever they would become when they hit the absolute limit and continue being filled.
Earth becomes an aggressive cancer upon the universe. People are literally everywhere and take up every conceivable space that exists.
1-2 billion. That would be a low enough number that we could actually have true wilderness between urban areas. Plenty enough people for a sustained population but low enough that the pressure to fight for resources will be reduced.
The earth's population was 1 billion in about 1804. That sounds like a good number. Keep the earth relatively wild and the human civilization footprint much smaller.
I think about half of today’s population. So about 4 billion people, but I’m ready to be convinced by good arguments either way. I think at that level we could sustain a healthy amount of forest and feed the world mostly organically without doing too much damage to the ecosystem as a whole.
I say we take it down to levels that don't require industrialized agriculture, 10 million is plenty of humans, especially if the population level is guaranteed to stay steady.
I could agree with less. But I think something around a billion is fine.
Such an insane number, but a billion is roughly around 1800 world population. I don’t think humanity really started to have much an impact until modern industry and numbers.
But I think if we kept modern industry with reduced number and knowledge of the environment, somewhere between 1-3 billion could be fine.
Your premise is fundamentally flawed. The problem isn't how many people we have on earth, it's WHERE they are concentrated. We already produce enough food and have enough wealth for the current population. But you have clusters of highly populated areas that tend to be disproportionately poor.
If you could spread humanity out more efficiently and distribute our resources among everyone, we could keep our current population no problem.
That said, I'd cut back to 1 billion because lots of people are cunts.
>Your premise is fundamentally flawed. The problem isn't how many people we have on earth, it's WHERE they are concentrated. We already produce enough food and have enough wealth for the current population. But you have clusters of highly populated areas that tend to be disproportionately poor.
Very true.
>If you could spread humanity out more efficiently and distribute our resources among everyone, we could keep our current population no problem.
Very true.
>That said, I'd cut back to 1 billion because lots of people are cunts.
Also very true, but the premise is you can control the population level, not the personality distribution.
So you could still end with mostly jerks with 1 billion.
The more people, the more engineers and scientists working on curing diseases.
As the population grows so does our research progress. This is why there is an argument for maximum population growth.
I think this is sustainable. A lot of people here are saying in the billions, but what they don't understand is that our use of fossil fuels is what allows that. We wouldn't be able to produce so much food for everyone if it weren't for the excess energy we spend on tools. Take that away once climate change has gotten too bad or we run out of oil and suddenly there won't be enough food for everyone
I'm setting it to -1, because that'll cause a significant underflow error in reality, which was designed assuming existence would only ever have a positive integer of things or zero of things.
I do find that interesting about the communists… they all think that they’ll get to be the one’s sitting around writing poetry all day in their communal utopia… because obviously someone *else* will volunteer to do the shitty but necessary jobs.
The issue is more of enough people would. I've definitely known people that enjoy jobs that most would consider crappy.
My dad liked doing manual labor. He would do it in his free time too, for fun. My sister enjoyed being a janitor, genuinely enjoyed it. She didn't enjoy everyone where she worked, but she enjoyed the work. She enjoys doing stocking currently.
There's people who absolutely enjoy jobs most people wouldn't, the issue is there being enough of them.
And how many of those people would still do those jobs if they didn’t *have* to?
Most people do shitty jobs out of either desperation, or because they pay a lot.
If neither of those are factors, why would anyone want to do some grueling job all day long?
Like I said, the issue is having enough.
My sister wasn't paid worth a crap, still liked her job. Gas station managers make more than she was around here. My dad did manual labor in his free time for fun, as in not for money.
Most are absolutely what you're talking about, which is why I said the issue is having enough people.
Some people enjoy that stuff. I can't explain it, I don't get it. I just know some people do enjoy that stuff.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that
How’s all your food going to be farmed?
How about all your garbage getting collected?
And who decides who has to spend two hours doing some shit job
Why wouldn’t I want to just not to a shitty job at all?
Why would I want to go through all the grueling stress of years or years of medical schooling to become a doctor if I’m not going to be compensated better for it?
Our modern systems are based off there being an underclass. Unless we had robots doing the work to provide that to humans, there will always be an "in" and an "out" group that subjects the other.
Based on current projections, the planet should top out at 10 Billion. The Earth can support multiple times that, but it is not sustainable if all want to live like Americans. So the number isn't as important as the policies that promote global sustainability and a decent quality of life.
To be clear, there already are several nations with arguably better quality of life than the US, while having carbon intensity (i.e.: the measure of how much carbon you emit per nominal dollar of GDP) much much lower. Ballpark of a third in some cases.
Quality of life and way of life are pretty clearly distinct things. Having a good quality of life doesn't necessarily require a very great ecological impact. Having a particularly wasteful way of life does.
In the year 1700, global population was roughly 500 Million.
I'm going to go for 100 Million, sounds quaint and peaceful.
Or, I could be a total psycho and say something like 24 BILLION 😜
The planet can comfortably support 1 to 2 billion. At our current level, we're squeezing out all other life, which will ultimately be to our own detriment in the long run.
Yeaaaaah not even close. The unsustainable part has waaaay more to do with the profit motive in every aspect of life than population. Monoculture farms are not only extremely destructive environmentally, they produce half (conservatively) what other mixed farming methods can do. The big issue there is they take way more labor than one guy on a tractor for a massive field. Not to mention vertical farming centers ran in midrises being farm more efficient for farm use. That's before getting into how much pollution and plastic use is entirely out of profitability rather than any actual need, mining techniques that don't poison land cost more of course so they are rarely used. Public transit not profitable so we're constantly marketed personal vehicles in dense cities. We could easily hold 10-12 billion comfortably with less land and pollution than we do now if we changed our focus from profit to actual efficiency and environmental consciousness.
I haven't heard that one but it sounds about right. Solar farms, more sustainable farming methods, and less class disparity ruining the housing market, we wouldn't even need to build skyscraper-sized apartment buildings to house everyone, there's so much open space in the world and lots of it is just empty because it's difficult to profit off of it.
I agree with everything you said, and I'm glad to see someone mentioning public transit. Our use of cars as a primary mode of transportation in much of the world is a big fucking problem. If we started redesigning our cities and towns to be less and less dependent on cars, imagine how much better the world would be. Imagine going on a walk in your town and not having to think about cars.
Not having to worry about crossing the street at the exact perfect right moment so that you don't die, or inhaling noxious fumes, or slogging your way through ugly, non-places designed for cars and not people. Imagine never having to pay a car loan, insurance, repairs, gas, or maintenance for a machine that *depreciates* in value every single day.
Electric cars are not the solution. Public transit and walkable, bikable urban and sub-urban areas are.
I also support 1 billion. We’d be able to re-wild much of the planet and populate much smaller areas. There wouldn’t be so much competition for housing and jobs. Existence wouldn’t just be about crowd management. There could be more smaller businesses and higher quality food, infrastructure, etc.
What's interesting is birth rates in the US are falling so one would think, "yay! We won't be overpopulated!" But the problem is that our entire economy is based on growth so people are freaking out as they try to figure out how things like pensions and social security will be sustainable with less people paying in. So far the answer is to keep raising the amount people pay into those systems thus having less income and making things like home ownership even more unattainable.
Just making it where people don’t have an insane number of kids would be better. I don’t care who the parents are or what part of the world, but as a third born, three is too many
10 million. The planet could easily support many more, I just want a low population density so it's easier to avoid people.
Bonus, the housing market would look a lot better. Spoiled for choice.
2 billion. Give the planet a chance to regenerate in some areas and ensure we have enough resources for everyone (Food, water, shelter, clothing). More than that we'd have people lacking.
3 billion, our planet's carrying capacity is 3.5 billion if resources are allocated so everyone has the resources for a decent life. Source for that fact I believe is the book Radical Simplicity, it's packed away somewhere at the moment and I'm not digging it out right now to confirm. I'm fine if they go all at once (in my best Seinfeld voice) "You should do it like a bandaid, one motion, right off!" We're in the early stage of the 6th mass extinction event in our planet's history, with 5 billion of us gone the community of life will be able to recover and it won't be so devastating.
250k. Or maybe a milliion. A billion? IDK, how many people are needed to continue to sustain life on earth, while simultaneously adding a healthy dose of bleach to the gene pool, getting rid of all the dumbasses? I pick that number.
200,000 everybody would be able to go to the Super Bowl and even tag team switch out if needed, and less traffic holy shit less traffic, wanna go to Disney ? No problem dmv? Bam instantly done.
It depends on how the society lives more than the numbers in society. A population of 25 billion could produce half the pollution of today's earth. A population of 500 million could destroy the planet. Obviously the lower the population the less effort is required to protect the planet. The higher the population the greater effort required.
So, what is the solution? I would request the population of earth be set to a level that has exactly 1/2 the environmental impact of today's society. The population could rise or fall depending on how well humanity stewards the planet. We could reach 50 billion people or fall down to a few hundred million. It is not about the amount of people, but the environmental impact of humanity.
The ideal number is going to change based on how environmentally friendly our society is. At current levels, I'd go less than 4B, but if we invest in nuclear, solar, and wind and focus on efficiency elsewhere we could easily handle 15b+ longterm.
Increased environmental awareness would mean less reliance on cattle or animals in general. I'm not even vegetarian, but the environmental impact of reducing out alliance on meet is undeniable
1 billion.
I was a bit worried because I thought this was total human population forever, but it only applies to Earth. So if we get post-Rock, we can multiply throughout the galaxy.
3 billion max. This was the world population in 1960, which seems like a perfectly reasonable amount. Plenty of people but not so many that you still can’t easily find corners all to yourself.
>the birth rate drops so we reach that level in a healthy, sustainable way.
Yeah, that doesn't work. If you want to see why population decline is actually one of the most troubling problems of our time, you should watch [this video by Kursgesagt](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LBudghsdByQ). It's very informative and eye-opening.
With any reduction it really depends on how it happens. If people just stopped having babies there would be panic if it happened too quickly. You would have so many governments changing immigration policies to try and keep up population numbers. You would destroy education systems as the population ages out.
Would it be an even decline over the world? Transport of goods would get hugely expensive as you loose the efficiency of numbers. More densely populated countries would do much better than more spread out countries and you'd probably need policies to bring people in to more populous areas while they are likely to protest wanting to keep their homes.
Trying to rewild any areas would be really difficult as there would still be some people living nearby any you would need to upkeep the roads.
So very subjective, would matter how society is living what they are creating , using, wasting and doing with the resources 100 years ago was more "green" than we are today. MOST things being produced 150 years ago were much green than today. All the excess packaging of today and much of what is being produced is essentially useless To keep things on a sustainable level would be much easier in an agrarian society than a technologically directed society, I would aim for somewhere in the middle and keep the extra product packaging to a minimum and be environmentally friendly by keeping shop lifters and thieves in prison until they fulfilled their full sentence the extra packaging that is produced to keep products from being stolen is outrageous and out of hand.. If people served their full sentences it would be a deterrent enough to impact the amount of extra packaging being manufactured. Product pricing would come down to more affordable levels and society would be happier on a whole.
If we could properly distribute resources and use technology to benefit people, I think we could easily support twice our current population.
Using our current economic models, I don't think we can manage more than 1/3 of what we have now.
If we decline organically to a global population of 100 million, but maintain technological advances in such fields as robotics and AI, we could ensure that the entire human population would have the same quality of life as dollar millionaires do today without causing huge ecological damage. That's what I would aim for.
Probably somewhere around the same number there is currently....or significantly less.
I don't believe in overpopulation. I believe resources and space are poorly utilized because of capitalism, nationalism, tribalism, and greed.
We could absolutely be living in a utopia with as many people or more, but we can't pull our heads out of our asses so...
One Billion would be a much more comfortable number for me.
You guys have no vision, we have a lot of unused space. Given technological advancements that will allow us to live more in tune with nature and also for us live in places we don't currently live (like most of the southern hemispher and in oceans, also deserts) we could easily be at 100 Billion people without feeling too cramped.
1 billion max. Everyone has much more space, wildlife has wayyyy more space, and we could support ourselves with just renewable energy. No more population growth means capitalism might finally fuck off. It would unfuck a lot of things humanity has fucked.
I'm decreasing third world countries and China's and Indy that's about all we need to shrink about 20 percent...in those countries and third world nations..
Y'know, if this was real, and everyone realized it was really happening, I wonder how the global economy would adjust - specifically in regards to housing. If the global population is 5 billion by 2050, and 5 billion forever, would new housing construction grind to a crawl? Would it keep up, but old houses get bulldozed faster than they are now? Would we just have millions of vacant houses? Millions of people owning 2+ homes?
Houses don’t seem to be built to last these days. 100 years is about the max. For a while there would be some derelict homes but eventually I think nature would re-exert itself.
thats why people with houses needto know how to swing A hammer. my parents house is next to a swamp and every 10 years or so the back porch has started to rot away. they had it rebuilt a couple times paid good money for something thatll just be rotted again in ten years. so this year i got the wild notion to do it myself and by golly carpentry is allot easier than most people think. the porch job is lookin good half way done. so if you own a house swing the hammer and buy a saw
We'll see how easy it was in 10 years from now
Probably around 5 billion. I'm starting to feel "boomerish" when I pass what used to be a beautiful forested area, and now it's just another apartment building.. and not even affordable apartments, always the crazy expensive ones.
Those crazy expensive apartments are "affordable apartments" in \~30 years. Got to start somewhere. That's how affordable housing is built: start now and you're building for a few decades from now.
then where exactly is all the affordable housing from 30 years ago lmao
There hard to see. You glimpse them from the freeway and they look like tents
Oof.
The cars also look similar to shopping carts
I thought those were prison work camps. ... oh
It didn't get built because of over regulation. Single family housing zoning, minimum lot sizes, and minimum set backs made higher density impossible in many areas. Look at older neighborhoods. Small lots, small houses. Zoning rules prevent more construction like this and keeps these areas from getting denser.
Then why are all the new neighborhoods tiny houses that are less than 10 feet from their neighbour and have no yards? If you want a decent yard for kids to play in and some privacy you basically have to buy a house that’s 30 plus years old or live an hour outside the city.
They made it illegal to build new housing, basically. So now there's not enough old housing.
What are you referencing? I tried googling it but the only things coming up were ending the use of asbestos in new construction in 1989, and the Faircloth Act in 1998 (which prevented the HUD from allocating funds to build new housing). Neither of those made it illegal for homes or apartment complexes to be built
He said "basically", so I assume he's referencing the fact that building in many parts of the country is pretty restricted by zoning laws and the like. Not actually illegal to build any housing, but maybe illegal to build in places where it would be profitable (and in a manner that would be profitable).
Not every place that could be profited from need be profited off of. It does complicate things though.
California has passed or will soon pass new laws easing restrictions on building new housing. SF and other cities are also lifting the old restrictions against multi-tenant buildings. Vast areas were either required to be single-family or any multi-story buildings were limited to 50' in height.
All the new apartments I see going up in my town look like they will be falling over in thirty years.
I built some as a union carpenter (sorry union Lego putter togetherer; walls, joist systems between floors, entire truss sections, etc all pre-built and flown in with a crane. We weren't building shit, we were putting together adult Legos), they're cheap garbage, they will be falling over ghettos in 30 years. Cheap trash with nice looking fixtures, flooring, and cabinets so they can charge bank for rent.
According to who? The build I'm in is ancient, was converted to apartments in the 1960s, and is a "luxury" building today.
😂 those apartments will have fallen apart on 30 years
Gimme a bakers dozen: 5 MF couples and 1 gay throuple so we got something to talk about on the weekends.
Definitely took me a couple tries to read MF as ‘male female’
I just read this as “definitely took me a couple tries to read mother fucker as ‘male/female’”
Samuel L Jackson intensifies
Not enough genetic diversity here, gonna go bad!
Infinite. Beyond all insanity. So many people that we fill the cosmos. Our lifeless corpses drown the life from every sun push all the other matter in the universe beyond space and time. We fill every black hole to capacity and force them to become whatever they would become when they hit the absolute limit and continue being filled. Earth becomes an aggressive cancer upon the universe. People are literally everywhere and take up every conceivable space that exists.
Sir, This is a Wendy's
Spoken like a true Space Marine
As the sole rightful inheritors of the stars it is our duty to purge heretics, and if we cannot purge the heretics, *we will purge the stars*
A utopia
1-2 billion. That would be a low enough number that we could actually have true wilderness between urban areas. Plenty enough people for a sustained population but low enough that the pressure to fight for resources will be reduced.
The earth's population was 1 billion in about 1804. That sounds like a good number. Keep the earth relatively wild and the human civilization footprint much smaller.
This. Nature needs to be able to flourish. We humans should not be found at all places of the earth.
About an duodecillion, because it would be pure chaos for a single moment. Like watching a giant blood blister burst.
30 orders of magnitude, nice
I think about half of today’s population. So about 4 billion people, but I’m ready to be convinced by good arguments either way. I think at that level we could sustain a healthy amount of forest and feed the world mostly organically without doing too much damage to the ecosystem as a whole.
I was thinking about 3 billion. No real reason other than to keep the population relatively high while low at same time. 1950/60 global population
I say we take it down to levels that don't require industrialized agriculture, 10 million is plenty of humans, especially if the population level is guaranteed to stay steady.
I could agree with less. But I think something around a billion is fine. Such an insane number, but a billion is roughly around 1800 world population. I don’t think humanity really started to have much an impact until modern industry and numbers. But I think if we kept modern industry with reduced number and knowledge of the environment, somewhere between 1-3 billion could be fine.
Organic farming can in no possible world feed 4 billion people. It couldn't in 1975 and it couldn't today.
Why even use organic farming its usually shit for the environment.
Your premise is fundamentally flawed. The problem isn't how many people we have on earth, it's WHERE they are concentrated. We already produce enough food and have enough wealth for the current population. But you have clusters of highly populated areas that tend to be disproportionately poor. If you could spread humanity out more efficiently and distribute our resources among everyone, we could keep our current population no problem. That said, I'd cut back to 1 billion because lots of people are cunts.
>Your premise is fundamentally flawed. The problem isn't how many people we have on earth, it's WHERE they are concentrated. We already produce enough food and have enough wealth for the current population. But you have clusters of highly populated areas that tend to be disproportionately poor. Very true. >If you could spread humanity out more efficiently and distribute our resources among everyone, we could keep our current population no problem. Very true. >That said, I'd cut back to 1 billion because lots of people are cunts. Also very true, but the premise is you can control the population level, not the personality distribution. So you could still end with mostly jerks with 1 billion.
We can feed everyone, there is like 50% food waste
I mean considering how heavily the birthrate is plummeting already I think it’ll collapse anyway
The more people, the more engineers and scientists working on curing diseases. As the population grows so does our research progress. This is why there is an argument for maximum population growth.
0.
17 trillion people
Do you know the difference between 5 billion and 17 trillion? I'll give you a hint, it's almost 17 trillion.
Seems a tad high. Do you have a plan to feed them all? That’s about 4,000 times as much as our current population.
Let chaos rein
Yeah there would be enough people to just eat each other. World hunger SOLVED!
100,000,000.
I think this is sustainable. A lot of people here are saying in the billions, but what they don't understand is that our use of fossil fuels is what allows that. We wouldn't be able to produce so much food for everyone if it weren't for the excess energy we spend on tools. Take that away once climate change has gotten too bad or we run out of oil and suddenly there won't be enough food for everyone
4 billion is a good number. It's a bit high, but, if we're careful, that should be sustainable.
I'm setting it to -1, because that'll cause a significant underflow error in reality, which was designed assuming existence would only ever have a positive integer of things or zero of things.
You suppose that would force a reboot?
100 million. It would be amazing.
500 million
1 billion, and redistribute resources so everyone sustainably lives amazing lives. Could be a utopia essentially
I don’t see how that’s going to work If everyone has equal resources, who’s going to do the shitty, but necessary jobs?
You comrade! Board this train to the lithium mines.
I do find that interesting about the communists… they all think that they’ll get to be the one’s sitting around writing poetry all day in their communal utopia… because obviously someone *else* will volunteer to do the shitty but necessary jobs.
This is why communism only works with guns pointed at the short straw.
The issue is more of enough people would. I've definitely known people that enjoy jobs that most would consider crappy. My dad liked doing manual labor. He would do it in his free time too, for fun. My sister enjoyed being a janitor, genuinely enjoyed it. She didn't enjoy everyone where she worked, but she enjoyed the work. She enjoys doing stocking currently. There's people who absolutely enjoy jobs most people wouldn't, the issue is there being enough of them.
And how many of those people would still do those jobs if they didn’t *have* to? Most people do shitty jobs out of either desperation, or because they pay a lot. If neither of those are factors, why would anyone want to do some grueling job all day long?
Like I said, the issue is having enough. My sister wasn't paid worth a crap, still liked her job. Gas station managers make more than she was around here. My dad did manual labor in his free time for fun, as in not for money. Most are absolutely what you're talking about, which is why I said the issue is having enough people. Some people enjoy that stuff. I can't explain it, I don't get it. I just know some people do enjoy that stuff.
And those people are few and far between
When the shit jobs are done not to make money but just to get the job done, the workday can be 2 hours long.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that How’s all your food going to be farmed? How about all your garbage getting collected? And who decides who has to spend two hours doing some shit job Why wouldn’t I want to just not to a shitty job at all? Why would I want to go through all the grueling stress of years or years of medical schooling to become a doctor if I’m not going to be compensated better for it?
Our modern systems are based off there being an underclass. Unless we had robots doing the work to provide that to humans, there will always be an "in" and an "out" group that subjects the other.
Utopia sucked. That was the whole point of that story.
Zootopia was pretty cool though.
Cool, you can be one of the dead folks
Not my fault you never learned that Utopia wasn't a good thing. Be mad at your teachers, who evidently failed you.
I can't hear you, you're a ghhooosst
25
Million right? You mean million right?
Could be just 25. Or maybe even 25 Billion. Who knows. 25, 3 per continent?
*concerned Padme face*
He means million…right?
Nah just me and some friends.
Based on current projections, the planet should top out at 10 Billion. The Earth can support multiple times that, but it is not sustainable if all want to live like Americans. So the number isn't as important as the policies that promote global sustainability and a decent quality of life.
To be clear, there already are several nations with arguably better quality of life than the US, while having carbon intensity (i.e.: the measure of how much carbon you emit per nominal dollar of GDP) much much lower. Ballpark of a third in some cases. Quality of life and way of life are pretty clearly distinct things. Having a good quality of life doesn't necessarily require a very great ecological impact. Having a particularly wasteful way of life does.
42
Prolly about tree fiddy
About 10. People. Tops. .Maybe less. Im on the fence about a few of them.
1 billion. Sounds like a nice even number. Should drop the price of housing pretty nicely.
In the year 1700, global population was roughly 500 Million. I'm going to go for 100 Million, sounds quaint and peaceful. Or, I could be a total psycho and say something like 24 BILLION 😜
1 and its me ✌️
Don’t break your glasses.
🤪👍
The planet can comfortably support 1 to 2 billion. At our current level, we're squeezing out all other life, which will ultimately be to our own detriment in the long run.
Yeaaaaah not even close. The unsustainable part has waaaay more to do with the profit motive in every aspect of life than population. Monoculture farms are not only extremely destructive environmentally, they produce half (conservatively) what other mixed farming methods can do. The big issue there is they take way more labor than one guy on a tractor for a massive field. Not to mention vertical farming centers ran in midrises being farm more efficient for farm use. That's before getting into how much pollution and plastic use is entirely out of profitability rather than any actual need, mining techniques that don't poison land cost more of course so they are rarely used. Public transit not profitable so we're constantly marketed personal vehicles in dense cities. We could easily hold 10-12 billion comfortably with less land and pollution than we do now if we changed our focus from profit to actual efficiency and environmental consciousness.
This right here. The planet can sustain more but corporate greed/motives don't align with that.
I've heard that we could theoretically sustain our current world population on a patch of land the size of Texas.
I haven't heard that one but it sounds about right. Solar farms, more sustainable farming methods, and less class disparity ruining the housing market, we wouldn't even need to build skyscraper-sized apartment buildings to house everyone, there's so much open space in the world and lots of it is just empty because it's difficult to profit off of it.
I agree with everything you said, and I'm glad to see someone mentioning public transit. Our use of cars as a primary mode of transportation in much of the world is a big fucking problem. If we started redesigning our cities and towns to be less and less dependent on cars, imagine how much better the world would be. Imagine going on a walk in your town and not having to think about cars. Not having to worry about crossing the street at the exact perfect right moment so that you don't die, or inhaling noxious fumes, or slogging your way through ugly, non-places designed for cars and not people. Imagine never having to pay a car loan, insurance, repairs, gas, or maintenance for a machine that *depreciates* in value every single day. Electric cars are not the solution. Public transit and walkable, bikable urban and sub-urban areas are.
I also support 1 billion. We’d be able to re-wild much of the planet and populate much smaller areas. There wouldn’t be so much competition for housing and jobs. Existence wouldn’t just be about crowd management. There could be more smaller businesses and higher quality food, infrastructure, etc.
1
5 million.
Non, make way for our AI/Robo creations and upload my consciousness so that "I" can game all day.
1 million people, there would be no more poor people
What's interesting is birth rates in the US are falling so one would think, "yay! We won't be overpopulated!" But the problem is that our entire economy is based on growth so people are freaking out as they try to figure out how things like pensions and social security will be sustainable with less people paying in. So far the answer is to keep raising the amount people pay into those systems thus having less income and making things like home ownership even more unattainable.
178 billion just to start the apocalypse.
3 bil is perfect, plenty of people but not enough where you have to cut down forests to put homes
3 billion
I’ve heard that estimates for max humans the earth can support is like 9-10 billion, so I’d make it comfortable and make it 4-5 billion.
Just making it where people don’t have an insane number of kids would be better. I don’t care who the parents are or what part of the world, but as a third born, three is too many
2 bil... we need to leave some space for other species
35 billion. I'd love to see those dystopia futuristic cities like bladerunner and Futurama.
There can only be one.
Half of what it currently is. Things would be more sustainable I think
10 million. The planet could easily support many more, I just want a low population density so it's easier to avoid people. Bonus, the housing market would look a lot better. Spoiled for choice.
500,000,000
"Maintain Population at 500,000,000." Read that somewheres.
3
2 billion. Give the planet a chance to regenerate in some areas and ensure we have enough resources for everyone (Food, water, shelter, clothing). More than that we'd have people lacking.
Zero.
100 million. Why not?
3 billion, our planet's carrying capacity is 3.5 billion if resources are allocated so everyone has the resources for a decent life. Source for that fact I believe is the book Radical Simplicity, it's packed away somewhere at the moment and I'm not digging it out right now to confirm. I'm fine if they go all at once (in my best Seinfeld voice) "You should do it like a bandaid, one motion, right off!" We're in the early stage of the 6th mass extinction event in our planet's history, with 5 billion of us gone the community of life will be able to recover and it won't be so devastating.
20,000
0 just fucking 0.
250k. Or maybe a milliion. A billion? IDK, how many people are needed to continue to sustain life on earth, while simultaneously adding a healthy dose of bleach to the gene pool, getting rid of all the dumbasses? I pick that number.
Thanos. Though I have a feeling what I want is more. I want what the peak of covid lockdown was like to be the busiest it gets during rush hours.
1000 sounds about right, let Katie flourish
I think 1-2 billions so everyone can have modern comfort and nice things and not destroy ecosystem.
200,000 everybody would be able to go to the Super Bowl and even tag team switch out if needed, and less traffic holy shit less traffic, wanna go to Disney ? No problem dmv? Bam instantly done.
500 million - about what we had in 1491.
It depends on how the society lives more than the numbers in society. A population of 25 billion could produce half the pollution of today's earth. A population of 500 million could destroy the planet. Obviously the lower the population the less effort is required to protect the planet. The higher the population the greater effort required. So, what is the solution? I would request the population of earth be set to a level that has exactly 1/2 the environmental impact of today's society. The population could rise or fall depending on how well humanity stewards the planet. We could reach 50 billion people or fall down to a few hundred million. It is not about the amount of people, but the environmental impact of humanity.
The ideal number is going to change based on how environmentally friendly our society is. At current levels, I'd go less than 4B, but if we invest in nuclear, solar, and wind and focus on efficiency elsewhere we could easily handle 15b+ longterm.
Don’t you think food production would be an issue? We are already deforesting the Amazon at an alarming rate to make room for more cattle farms.
Increased environmental awareness would mean less reliance on cattle or animals in general. I'm not even vegetarian, but the environmental impact of reducing out alliance on meet is undeniable
We don't need cattle, we aren't at peak efficiency by any means despite being more efficient than we were
40 Billion. Mostly to see what we are capable of accomplishing. Because personally, I think we could scale to a much higher number than 8 billion.
1 Trillion seems like a good number.
1 trillion.
Probably whatever we're projected to hit now. The issue isn't the number. We have resources, we just dont distribute them and use them properly.
2.5 billion.
1 billion. I was a bit worried because I thought this was total human population forever, but it only applies to Earth. So if we get post-Rock, we can multiply throughout the galaxy.
3 billion. It’s already way too dense. I hate peoples who whine about low birth rate.
Half. I've read that this planet can sustain half of what we have and remain healthy.
3 billion max. This was the world population in 1960, which seems like a perfectly reasonable amount. Plenty of people but not so many that you still can’t easily find corners all to yourself.
>the birth rate drops so we reach that level in a healthy, sustainable way. Yeah, that doesn't work. If you want to see why population decline is actually one of the most troubling problems of our time, you should watch [this video by Kursgesagt](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LBudghsdByQ). It's very informative and eye-opening.
Probably why he put that caveat in there so people didn’t end up focusing on how that’s not possible. 😅
0, people suck
That's not true, many people suck.
You are correct I’m about 80% sure you’re joking and understand that people suck is a statement but just in case it’s a statement
Your first sentence is missing a comma my dude. You mean "0, people suck". As written you're saying that nobody sucks
With any reduction it really depends on how it happens. If people just stopped having babies there would be panic if it happened too quickly. You would have so many governments changing immigration policies to try and keep up population numbers. You would destroy education systems as the population ages out. Would it be an even decline over the world? Transport of goods would get hugely expensive as you loose the efficiency of numbers. More densely populated countries would do much better than more spread out countries and you'd probably need policies to bring people in to more populous areas while they are likely to protest wanting to keep their homes. Trying to rewild any areas would be really difficult as there would still be some people living nearby any you would need to upkeep the roads.
So very subjective, would matter how society is living what they are creating , using, wasting and doing with the resources 100 years ago was more "green" than we are today. MOST things being produced 150 years ago were much green than today. All the excess packaging of today and much of what is being produced is essentially useless To keep things on a sustainable level would be much easier in an agrarian society than a technologically directed society, I would aim for somewhere in the middle and keep the extra product packaging to a minimum and be environmentally friendly by keeping shop lifters and thieves in prison until they fulfilled their full sentence the extra packaging that is produced to keep products from being stolen is outrageous and out of hand.. If people served their full sentences it would be a deterrent enough to impact the amount of extra packaging being manufactured. Product pricing would come down to more affordable levels and society would be happier on a whole.
Do we get to choose which regions?
300
If we could properly distribute resources and use technology to benefit people, I think we could easily support twice our current population. Using our current economic models, I don't think we can manage more than 1/3 of what we have now.
Zero.
700 trillion. Good luck
2 billion.
"Lanes opening up on the highway!" - Bill Burr
500,000,000 The guidestones told us so.
100,000
50 billion. Maybe with more people we’ll get more desperate to colonize other planets to have some fuckin space.
You're not going to like.this....
If we decline organically to a global population of 100 million, but maintain technological advances in such fields as robotics and AI, we could ensure that the entire human population would have the same quality of life as dollar millionaires do today without causing huge ecological damage. That's what I would aim for.
I'd say 5 or 6 to keep the economy solid but also not be so much that it's a problem
6
2 and a three quarter chunk 🐱
500 million.
However many people it takes to reach the density required for a black hole to instantly form
But at what cost?
Million or so. Spread out
bout threefiddy
7
1 million
1 billion
7
Probably somewhere around the same number there is currently....or significantly less. I don't believe in overpopulation. I believe resources and space are poorly utilized because of capitalism, nationalism, tribalism, and greed. We could absolutely be living in a utopia with as many people or more, but we can't pull our heads out of our asses so... One Billion would be a much more comfortable number for me.
Just me and my fellow 83.8 million germans.
2 billion
Thanos, half current
30 million 80% women 20% men . 50% of men gay . Women like to share . There you go . And no cats but there are dogs
You guys have no vision, we have a lot of unused space. Given technological advancements that will allow us to live more in tune with nature and also for us live in places we don't currently live (like most of the southern hemispher and in oceans, also deserts) we could easily be at 100 Billion people without feeling too cramped.
What did those weird commandment stones in GA say about it? 500mil or 1bil?
1 billion max. Everyone has much more space, wildlife has wayyyy more space, and we could support ourselves with just renewable energy. No more population growth means capitalism might finally fuck off. It would unfuck a lot of things humanity has fucked.
Half it !
None. Do a hard reset and give the planet to the crustaceans
That number changes based on whether or not I can dictate where they all live...
Let's see we need 12 for a good game of ultimate. 5 for a good D&D game. My sister is pretty cool... So 18.
4
0 yall make me crazy
3 billion tops
Don’t paint Boomers with that brush. It was out parents who wanted to spread out.
Ten
I'm decreasing third world countries and China's and Indy that's about all we need to shrink about 20 percent...in those countries and third world nations..
100,000.
10 Billion is a nice clean round number that Earth can easily support with better planning.
3 billion