Blog #21 How long would it take to get below one BILLION humans on the planet? (Blog 7 of 9 on Population)
So, the question becomes, once we reach peak population, how long would it take to reduce our population into a safe zone where we can survive into the distant future?
To answer that let’s work on the assumption that a worldwide steady-state economy will allow a Total Fertility Rate of 1, which I don’t think is unreasonable, given the history so far.
With a TFR of 1, two people having 1 child means the population halves each generation, so mathematically I am dividing the population number by 2 each cohort:
8,500,000,000 humans / 2
= 4,250,000,000 / 2
= 2,125,000,000 / 2
= 1,062,500,000 / 2
= 531,250,000
This demonstrates it would take just over 130 years to reduce the population to well under one billion and, incidentally, this is why I set the population of my time-travel series The Verona Trilogy at 300 million in 2347, just over 200 years out into our present future
All this means that it is our generation’s responsibility to convince our cohort (or my children’s cohort) to accept that there must be a plan to reduce our population, while the next generation will be implementing those plans. The subsequent generations’ task will be to keep educating the population to the importance of the details, history and continually convince people from an early age why they must stay the course. This will not be easy when the imminent threat of ecological problems hopefully reverse and nature begins to bounce back.
Short-term greed might creep back into our culture. And when we finally get near the planned lower world population, wouldn’t it be interesting to be alive when our great, great, great, great, great grandchildren are the ones responsible for firming up plans for people to start having more children again, to level off to the steady-state number? That is, for couples to start having two children instead of one. Perhaps cultural norms will have changed and it becomes a problem to convince women to have more children. The science fiction author in me smiles at the stories that could be written about such a time.
Cold showers are good for us – Do we have time?
A while ago I reminded myself and readers about how we shouldn’t fool ourselves that, just because we’re talking about noble ideas, it doesn’t mean that the noble ideas will be implemented. Powerful business and political interests are long practiced in putting down progressive programs that don’t make THEM profit and keeps THEM in control of the economy. In a similar way, just because it is theoretically possible to lower our population to safe population levels in 130 or even 200 years, it doesn’t mean we have that long before nature painfully knocks us back with plagues and famine, as previously discussed.
After all, the continued population of 7.5 BILLION will continue to eat and consume and, at a minimum, we’re talking about adding at least another BILLION mouths before population and the needed consumption begins to reduce. And added to the question of having time before a collapse, just how much food will we need?
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