this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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I mean, it would have to. Exponential growth isn’t sustainable.
I think they're talking about what happens after it peaks, which, as you've pointed out, isn't debatable. The question is, will it plateau or decline afterwards?
Ah, that’s a fair question then.
Though it really seems like it’ll end up declining. Many countries birthrates are already on the way down, some even already being lower than needed to maintain the population.
Yes, but there is a big difference between leveling out at 10 billion, 100 billion, 1 trillion, or 10 trillion, and since we can probably sustain any of the four numbers listed above with current tech, social factors will decide where more so than an inability to meet demand.
If population jumped into the hundreds of billions we would die off for a bunch of different reasons. Current tech doesn’t really exist to sustain a population that large.
I mean obviously if a hundred billion just appeared tomorrow then we would have trouble scaling production, but i don’t think we really lack any of the hard inputs. Switching from open field to greenhouse food production alone increase food production ten times over while reducing water usage, just require a lot more farmers. We are not about to run out of land for housing anytime soon, and have plenty of spicy rocks for fission power.