HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Hans Rosling's presentation "Don't Panic" (produced by the BBC) is pretty good:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

It's an hour long; really interesting.

> if the 1 billion "rich people" drop their emissions down to below average then the majority of the problem will still be here.

True. But the "majority" is not as big as you think.

> there will be 1 billion less wealthy people

Just wrong. There are lots of ways to reduce emissions without any effect in wealth. Eating less meat is one example.

> for no particular net gain.

Very wrong, there are huge gains: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...

> I advocate the radical approach of encouraging people to have less children.

I knew you would say this, I was just waiting for it. Global birth rates have been in freefall for decades now, it's tragic that people don't know about it. You'd assume that supposedly "better" education in western countries would make people more aware, but western governments are only concerned with maintaining global western hegemony which requires falsely accusing the rest of the world and keeping their citizens ignorant. Also, you can't force people to have less children, that's inhumane. I suggest you go through the following links.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness

⬐ roenxi

> True. But the "majority" is not as big as you think.

Are you suggesting the majority of a problem is smaller than half?

Eating less meat is pretty stupid as strategies go, it doesn't tackle the root cause (which is too many people).

I'm not clear on what your point is about birth rates trend down in wealthy countries, but that is actually a well known fact. Quite an encouraging one.

⬐ pmastela

Good related discussion about Hans when he passed. RIP. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13590123

> and the plateau is calculated at 20 billion.

According to who? Hans Rosling famously[1] didn't think so.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

⬐ smnrchrds

Neither does the UN:

> The UN projects that the global population increases from a population of 7.7 billion in 2019 to 11.2 billion by the end of the century. By that time, the UN projects, fast global population growth will come to an end.

https://ourworldindata.org/future-population-growth

Result of a roundtable discussion wuth concerned citizens? Not convinced, I'm with Hans Rosling on this topic https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E

⬐ mac01021

All of the content of Dr. Rosling's talk is correct (and that is a very nice talk - thank you for the link).

But the title "Don't Panic" is the thing I'm most likely to disagree with. I don't panic about the exponential trajectory of population growth going into the future. I panic about the number of people already on the planet right now!

There's a good (though hour-long) presentation by the late Hans Rosling call "DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population":

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

"Don’t Panic – The Facts About Population":

* https://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-the-facts-about-...

Since economic growth tends to go hand in hand with better access to health services and greater social freedom, it does.

I always enjoy Hans Rosling going through the stats, if you’ve time it’s well worth it https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E

This is not really true.

Except for some parts of Africa, the birthrate across the world is declining. The worldwide average is 2.4.

Likely the world's population will start decline in actual terms some time in the 2nd half of the 21st century: http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/total-fertility-r... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

The issue here is mostly with the countries in extreme poverty. Countries with average fertility rate of 3 and higher. Women in countries with the highest fertility index often do not control when they get pregnant. Having 6 and more children is rarely effect of conscious family planning. It's effect of lack of education, lack of access to contraception, forced sex in marriage etc. Sometimes having many children is an insurance policy in case some children will die before they reach productive age. We really should be addressing this type of issues underlying uncontrolled population growth. People should be able to choose when they want to have children, how many children they want, they should be educated on how to provide for their children, and certainly people should not be afraid that some part of their offspring will die. It has nothing to do with penalizing having children like they did in China.

I really recommend, "DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population". He shows how family planning looks like in practice in countries like Bangladesh, so that westerners can imagine what are we talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

Dealing with global warming is going bad and we should panic about that, but humanity is making great progress on controlling population growth.

There is really no issue with you having 3 children. Western population will be declining anyway as fertility rate in western countries is mostly below 2.

Just please, support political, systematical change in your country emission policy.

Because there is no world overpopulation. People talk about overpopulation since ancient times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation#History_o...

Currently standard of living are growing almost all over the world and human population is predicted to pick and stabilize at around 11 billion.

I really recommend "DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

What's also interesting in his video is the fact that people tend to be very misinformed about state of the world affairs. E.g. when asked questions about certain statistics, they do worse than random. And the better educated you are the more misinformed you may be.

⬐ viklove

If the global population was still 2 billion as in the early 1900s, I'm certain we wouldn't have a climate crisis anywhere near the scale we're seeing today. We should be panicking, and I don't understand why our population should be allowed to grow until the Earth literally cannot sustain it. We're an intelligent and evolved species, and we'd all be better off exercising some self-control and keeping our population in check.

And yes, I would gladly give up my right to procreate. I have no interest in having children, primarily because I believe it's a terrible thing to do in today's world.

⬐ papermachete

If we're going the totalitarian route, why not designate kids and force them to grow up to be scientists. Make them work for minimal wage on what are today billion dollar R&D, all for finding a solution to the so-called crisis? After all, human procreation is a naturally occuring event and it is the failure of science to produce a solution for the consequences and politicians - to adopt it.

⬐ viklove

> After all, human procreation is a naturally occuring event and it is the failure of science to produce a solution for the consequences and politicians - to adopt it.

Yes, the solution is to stop thinking of procreation as a naturally occurring event and to instead limit each person to 1 living offspring (so each couple can produce 2 children). By the way, science doesn't provide solutions (that's engineering). Science only provides explanations.

⬐ papermachete

>the solution is

I'm sorry are you a politician or an authority figure?

>1

How did you measure the optimal number to be 1? And how would you value an ethnic minority to be just as valuable as the majority? Don't you support greater minority birth rates at the expense of the majority?

>explanations

No, that's philosophy. Granted, I haven't encountered a reproducible study on climate change, the scientific method proves or disproves hypotheses to provide a baseline of knowledge. The scientific method is how scientists develop early-stage solutions to climate change, not building contraptions.

⬐ viklove

> Don't you support greater minority birth rates at the expense of the majority?

Frankly, I don't care what the relative birth rates are between "minorities" and "majorities." By the way, which metric are you using to define minority? Is it height? Nose size? Personality type? I'm guessing it's just race, which is a very narrow criteria, but that's the only the criteria respected by the modern definition of "diversity."

> No, that's philosophy.

Erm... no. Science can give us an explanation for what is causing climate change, and even how quickly climate change is occurring, but designing a solution to it is firmly in the domain of engineering.

Anyway, that's all semantics. As to how I came up with the "1" number is really pretty straightforward though. That number will prevent the population from growing or shrinking -- it will maintain the current number. Isn't that obvious?

⬐ AnimalMuppet

First: I question that you have the authority to "limit" people in this way.

Second: How do you propose to enforce your limitation?

⬐ Isinlor

Predicted population growth will have little to do with emission growth, because most of population growth will be happening in places where people don't have even access to electricity.

We, you and I, the top 10% richest people in the world are responsible for 50% of global emissions. Population of my home country is declining rapidly, I bet yours home country is as well.

Also let me ask you a nasty question, why should your right to exists trump someone else right to have children? Why don't you leave and make space for 10 children that will be born somewhere in Africa, that will probably emit less CO2 during their whole life than you already did?

⬐ viklove

> why should your right to exists

I'm not claiming I have a right to exist. In fact, that was the thesis of my comment, so you may want to work on your reading comprehension. You're the only one claiming anyone has a right to exist (or a right to be born). In my opinion your rights only exist after you are born, meaning no person should have the right to procreate.

⬐ Isinlor

You missed the second part of my question, but let's put that aside. As I said it's a nasty question.

So, I think more productive question would be: How would you take away people right to procreate?

How do you imagine doing that if you can't get USA to stick to Paris Climate accord?

If you want to invest in health care and education in Africa - awesome! You have my full support. For example educating woman has excellent side effect of reducing fertility rate without taking any of their rights.

⬐ viklove

I'm not claiming I have a good way to implement my proposition, I'm just trying to convince people that my proposition would be in the best interest of the human species. Maybe if we can convince enough people we can find a politician/leader who can make it happen :)

⬐ DuskStar

What would be "overpopulation" by your definition? No way to grow enough food, resulting in mass famines? No physical space for people, even after tiling the planet with skyscrapers?

Or would "unsustainable carbon emissions and ecological damage" be enough? And if that's enough, aren't we already there today?

⬐ Isinlor

I would accept decline in more than 1% of world population over 10 year time span caused by ecological collapse as overpopulation.

But the important question is what would you do about possibility of overpopulation however it is defined?

If you want to invest in health care and education in Africa - awesome! You have my full support. For example educating woman has excellent side effect of reducing fertility rate.

If you think about enforcing population restrictions, then you should think harder. How do you imagine that would look like on a global scale if you can't get USA to stick to Paris Climate accord? Some country with nuclear weapons threatening mutual assured destruction if some other country doesn't stick to 1 kid policy? Ridiculous.

You should check out Hans Rosling's lectures [1]. Statistics points towards the fact that as people become more wealthy, they have less children. It should stagnate around 11 million people by most models.

[1] https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E

There's a good presentation by Hans Rosling about why population will peak at 11B (stick with until 26m):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E&t=19m12s

Further on he explains why we may not have to worry about resource use given growing prosperity:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E&t=35m36s

He also has done a lecture about the same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

He has a lot of good videos out there but this is the one specifically covering Africa / population predictions and the misconceptions / dated knowledge.

https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E

The UN forecast that the global population will reach an absolute maximum of about 11 billion by 2100. Some forecasts are even more conservative, suggesting a peak of 9 billion by 2050. The global birth rate has peaked and is now in overall decline, with most of the developed world being well below the replacement rate. Most of the population growth we'll see over the next century is simply due to more people living longer lives.

The fertility rate in China is massively below replacement at 1.57 births per woman. India is barely above replacement at 2.4. The fertility rate in India today is lower than the fertility rate was in the US in 1970. The global fertility rate has halved in 50 years. Even in the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the fertility rate is declining. The fertility rate in Rwanda has more than halved from 8.4 in 1980 to 3.8 today. As far as I can ascertain, Niger is the country on earth with a persistently high fertility rate.

Population growth is a solved problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

Until the modern era, the global birth rate was fairly constant at about six per woman. The population growth we've experienced over the last century is mostly to do with child survival.

Before 1900, the child mortality rate in India was over 50%. If you need children to care for you in old age and expect most of your children to die, you're likely to have a lot of them. When child survival improved, attitudes changed. Parents no longer want three or four children to work on the family farm, they want one or two children to become doctors or engineers. Economic development and the availability of reliable contraception have made that aspiration practical.

If you're interested in the topic, I can highly recommend this lecture by the late Hans Rosling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

⬐ praneshp

Yeah, I agree, especially about the mortality rate. Anecdotally, every grandfather-aged person I know has 4+ children, but almost all father-aged ones have 2 or less (only 2 exceptions, of which 1 had twins).

Thanks for the other information in your comment!

This isn't actually a problem. https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E

This video seems relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

According to Hans Rosling we've reached "peak child", meaning we're almost at 2 children per woman globally. This means population will continue to grow for a few years as globally there are more children than adults but will stabilize after that around the ~11 billion mark. And as long as we stay at that "peak child" number we won't go any further. I really recommend his videos if you haven't seen them.

In that case don't worry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

Also consider that the carrying capacity of the world isn't fixed, but depends on how good our technology is (with a potential theoretical upper limit). Well tech is improved by people working on and inventing better technology, right? So you get better technology with more people - and with that you can have more people working on better technology. The biggest mistake, and the one all Malthusians made, is to forget that humans are, on average, net produces not net consumers.

Relevant: "DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

⬐ deepnet

In the parent video Hans Rosling objects to the use of the adjective 'explosion' when referring to other peoples children.

This comes from the 1950's 'red-scare' idea that foreign communists would have lots of babies who would grow and then invade America.

He goes on to show that such a description of the statistics is inaccurate and scare-mongering.

⬐ vlehto

From the article:

>The declining birth rate elsewhere has brought the world to the verge of what Hans Rosling, a Swedish demographer, calls “peak child”

But then:

>The revision of population predictions for Africa partly reflects the fact that HIV/AIDS has not proved quite as catastrophic for the continent as seemed likely ten years ago.