I remember when the estimate human population was 6 billion. Now it's 7.3 billion. Let's say mass extinction or huge plagues won't happen for thousands of years. Once we reach 14 billion people and higher, what do you think we'll be forced to do as a civilization? Or do you think we'll decline in population overall? Certainly our growth rate has it's ups and downs.





Here's some of our problems that will be challenged as I see it.

*We place a much higher value of our own species than any other.

*We are an invasive species

*We are aggressive and belligerent which leads to us fighting with each other over moral/ethical decisions.



I'm not sure if it's realistic to believe that we'll just move to outer space, that's likely thousands of years away imo. Do you think the world will ever be forced into controlling how many kids people can have?

 

I think the reason there's an increase in population is that we are living longer than ever. I think it'll slow down over time and those who are getting up there in age will start to die and we'll level out. Either way, I won't be around by time half of us migrate to Mars (HA!).

 

The baby boomers are starting to die off now so we'll probably see a slow down in population growth in the next 5-10 years. Not to mention more and more people are taking precautions for getting preggo these days that they didnt have or want to do 25-30 years ago.

 

Birth rate will slow when it becomes prohibitively expensive to raise children. That won't happen here until public assistance won't pay you more for having more children. The effect is that the least intelligent people will reproduce at rates far higher than those with average or above intelligence. Idiocracy probably isn't a bad prediction of the future.



I know it's different by culture, in many places you'll have 4 generations living under one roof and the practice of becoming an adult and moving out is not the way it works. If things don't change it'll become that way here. I already know plenty of people in their 20's and 30's that either live with their parents or some other form of multi-family arrangement. Hell, I have a roommate a lot of the time because it's difficult to afford to live on your own.



As we're forced to use progressively worse locations for growing food the cost will go up significantly. Unless we sort out inexpensive bulk desalination we just plain won't have enough fresh water to grow traditional crops to feed people. Research into cultivating algae and other microbes shows that it should be possible to feed a lot more people with less resources that way but most third world countries can't afford to get anything like that operational. In all likelihood agriculture will spread further into third world countries and most of the produce will be sent to first world countries as the people in third world countries starve to death somewhat limiting their population.