You don't say anything about the fact that earth is not just for humans - - or do you only value our resources from an anthropocentric point of view. Even considering 100 billion humans is an idea I find utterly abhorrent. I suggest you read 'The World Without Us' by Alan Weisman.
• This is why I said we could fit 100B humans in Algeria, and leave 98% of land without humans. That's substantially more than today, where we use for example 15% of usable land just for farming
• I also mentioned that a world with more CO2 is a world with more life
One thing I'll say about you, Tomas, is that you are indeed an original thinker. Your outside the box essays are always fascinating. I do appreciate the total debunking of Malthusian thinking. That's important, because a lot of climate dogma has a lot of people saying we need to reduce the population, which is an evil, anti-life, anti-God attitude.
And yeah this post gives me similar vibes. The wold can support tens of billions of chickens, just not very comfortably. Maybe it can support tens of billions of people, but also not very comfortably.
Nobody is forgoing kids out of concern that the world can't carry enough people. It is more that advanced economies systematically stop being able to support people having kids. People are no longer able to bear the costs. Or we become unable to fit the things we need to raise children into cities (playgrounds or schools take up space, but produce less dollars than a office tower). Some fare worse than others — South Korea springs to mind. But even the Netherlands, famously good at building kid friendly suburbs, has a fertility rate well below 2.
So ~20x more energy use we will reach the level of current global warming(*). So yes, reaching 120x is possible by pumping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and injecting sulfur in the stratosphere.
I would like to point out that a huge chunk of future energy use will be compute power. And datacenters can actually be installed in space where solar energy is virtually unlimited (and heat can be radiate away easily). And this is already happening: each generation of starlink satellites have more compute power than the previous.
(*) All energy we use eventually end up in heat. Solar energy whether we use or not will heat Earth the same, but nuclear, fusion or fission, do produce heat that has to be evacuated to space to avoid global warming.
Using population density averaged over a whole country actually *underestimates* the density people live in. I prefer the median population weighted density instead. It's the local housing density that the typical *person* experiences instead of the density that the typical piece of land experiences. In the Netherlands it's 1637 people/km2, over 3 times the normal estimate!
One problem: there are vanishingly few signs that we can evade the demographic transition (fewer kids, more long-lived elders). Only a few small groups of religiously intense people have combined embracing modernity while their women still have children at scale.
Guess what happens with these unusual groups given their fertility. They become proportionally larger and larger until they are the majority of humanity.
Overpopulation and the destruction of the environment are only some of the reasons for declining birthrates. There are many reasons including women choosing their careers over over having children, cost of living increases, rise of secularism, education, changing culture, lack of economic security etc. While this is an interesting theoretical exercise, if these trends persist I don't expect the global population will exceed 10B humans unless there is a dramatic societal change in the future. I think it would be interesting to consider how human civilization could progress without population growth and it probably includes robitics, AI or establishing colonies on Mars or the Moon.
Once this world is done fighting itself and self imposing unimaginable suffering I will write god's new name on their hearts one last time & we will all understand.
God doesn't need resources, he creates them when we rely on him to do so.
Someone I follow, Simon Michaux who I want to say is an australian geometallurgist just published a big review on minerals required to make the energy transition supported by the Finnish govt (interesting to see that Finland is #1 on happiness)
Starting the reading, I was struck by the statement that “many people aren’t having kids because they fear overpopulation and the destruction of the environment.” Well, when talking about the global population, it’s difficult to be precise about what “many people” actually means. Personally, I don’t know a single person who genuinely refrains from having children due to concerns about environmental destruction or overpopulation. Perhaps some might say such things in public discourse, but I’d wager that if I had the chance to know them more intimately, I would certainly uncover more fundamental and predominant motivations behind their stated reasons.
I understand that this issue is important because it’s only by presupposing such motivations that the article can develop its line of reasoning: if people are concerned about the environment and overpopulation, then simply presenting them with technical solutions to these problems (like providing water, food, energy, etc.) would lead them to have many children again. Evidently, this is not the case.
I believe this topic requires more exploration than a comment allows—it would demand a separate article. But the point is that before venturing into large imaginative experiments about how to technically solve the needs of a population of 100 billion, I think we first need to better understand the reasons why people are not having more children in the first place.
Here are just a few observations: in communities with deeply rooted religious traditions, fertility rates remain high; in poor countries or even among the poorest classes in emerging countries, where there is less access to mainstream education, fertility rates are also higher. And where are birth rates the lowest? In Europe, in the United States, especially among ideologically engaged communities, whether those ideologies are from the right or the left (liberals, libertarians, communists, atheists, feminists, wokes, etc.).
In other words, it’s impossible to address the problem of population decline without delving into its spiritual and cultural reasons. I would even argue that the technological aspect is almost peripheral. Without addressing issues like protecting the family, combating abortion, divorce, materialism, and other related matters, we risk falling into speculation about a future 300 years from now—a future that will likely never come, simply because we are accelerating ever more quickly in the exact opposite direction.
Arguably we have unlocked that achievement and can continue on as we please, rather than by divine decree. I'd prefer that we take better care of the people already here.
You don't say anything about the fact that earth is not just for humans - - or do you only value our resources from an anthropocentric point of view. Even considering 100 billion humans is an idea I find utterly abhorrent. I suggest you read 'The World Without Us' by Alan Weisman.
I do!
• This is why I said we could fit 100B humans in Algeria, and leave 98% of land without humans. That's substantially more than today, where we use for example 15% of usable land just for farming
• I also mentioned that a world with more CO2 is a world with more life
but less diversity
One thing I'll say about you, Tomas, is that you are indeed an original thinker. Your outside the box essays are always fascinating. I do appreciate the total debunking of Malthusian thinking. That's important, because a lot of climate dogma has a lot of people saying we need to reduce the population, which is an evil, anti-life, anti-God attitude.
Thank you!
Great info and optimism for the world 🌎🌍🌏
Keep up the great work Tomas 🍀
I just happened to stumble upon "The domestication of people and animals" on Matthew Yglesias' substack.
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-domestication-of-people-and-animals
And yeah this post gives me similar vibes. The wold can support tens of billions of chickens, just not very comfortably. Maybe it can support tens of billions of people, but also not very comfortably.
Nobody is forgoing kids out of concern that the world can't carry enough people. It is more that advanced economies systematically stop being able to support people having kids. People are no longer able to bear the costs. Or we become unable to fit the things we need to raise children into cities (playgrounds or schools take up space, but produce less dollars than a office tower). Some fare worse than others — South Korea springs to mind. But even the Netherlands, famously good at building kid friendly suburbs, has a fertility rate well below 2.
Tomás, podrías escribir sobre la posibilidad de ser inmortales. LLegaremos a serlo? Cuando?
https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/the-4-ways-you-might-live-forever
I don't know Anders Sandberg did his but I was trying to come up with a estimate of how much energy we can use. Today we use ~20TW and the Earth energy imbalance (ie global warming) is 460TW (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_energy_budget#Earth's_energy_imbalance_(EEI) )
So ~20x more energy use we will reach the level of current global warming(*). So yes, reaching 120x is possible by pumping greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and injecting sulfur in the stratosphere.
I would like to point out that a huge chunk of future energy use will be compute power. And datacenters can actually be installed in space where solar energy is virtually unlimited (and heat can be radiate away easily). And this is already happening: each generation of starlink satellites have more compute power than the previous.
(*) All energy we use eventually end up in heat. Solar energy whether we use or not will heat Earth the same, but nuclear, fusion or fission, do produce heat that has to be evacuated to space to avoid global warming.
Yes!
Caveat: for example solar panels can decrease albedo
Your creative imagination, backed by in-depth research and a can-do spirit, is truly inspiring. I deeply admire your work!
Thanks!
Using population density averaged over a whole country actually *underestimates* the density people live in. I prefer the median population weighted density instead. It's the local housing density that the typical *person* experiences instead of the density that the typical piece of land experiences. In the Netherlands it's 1637 people/km2, over 3 times the normal estimate!
https://www.worldpop.org/methods/pwd/
I talk about this more here:
https://splittinginfinity.substack.com/p/theres-room-for-more-people
Thanks, good point indeed, followed.
Interesting!
Thank you for this clear, data-backed scenario.
One problem: there are vanishingly few signs that we can evade the demographic transition (fewer kids, more long-lived elders). Only a few small groups of religiously intense people have combined embracing modernity while their women still have children at scale.
Key for another article!
Guess what happens with these unusual groups given their fertility. They become proportionally larger and larger until they are the majority of humanity.
Overpopulation and the destruction of the environment are only some of the reasons for declining birthrates. There are many reasons including women choosing their careers over over having children, cost of living increases, rise of secularism, education, changing culture, lack of economic security etc. While this is an interesting theoretical exercise, if these trends persist I don't expect the global population will exceed 10B humans unless there is a dramatic societal change in the future. I think it would be interesting to consider how human civilization could progress without population growth and it probably includes robitics, AI or establishing colonies on Mars or the Moon.
FINALLY, SANITY!
Once this world is done fighting itself and self imposing unimaginable suffering I will write god's new name on their hearts one last time & we will all understand.
God doesn't need resources, he creates them when we rely on him to do so.
Guess who's back in town?
I AM
AΩ
The only real problem is giving in to despair. Humanity forward!
The only thing is it'd be a bit of a bummer if most of the world looked like the Netherlands.
Someone I follow, Simon Michaux who I want to say is an australian geometallurgist just published a big review on minerals required to make the energy transition supported by the Finnish govt (interesting to see that Finland is #1 on happiness)
Thought you might be interested in his work
https://tupa.gtk.fi/julkaisu/bulletin/bt_416.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3yo51QU33H_EkDXJMocM7pKBbEb1ZK1SpT70O_UGyUCCBI-e5MLtBmEac_aem_S7smFiRKgAsvfiFdc-yGkg
Thanks Tomas for these estimates! It’s always nice to put some order-of-magnitude numbers on such future scenarios.
Starting the reading, I was struck by the statement that “many people aren’t having kids because they fear overpopulation and the destruction of the environment.” Well, when talking about the global population, it’s difficult to be precise about what “many people” actually means. Personally, I don’t know a single person who genuinely refrains from having children due to concerns about environmental destruction or overpopulation. Perhaps some might say such things in public discourse, but I’d wager that if I had the chance to know them more intimately, I would certainly uncover more fundamental and predominant motivations behind their stated reasons.
I understand that this issue is important because it’s only by presupposing such motivations that the article can develop its line of reasoning: if people are concerned about the environment and overpopulation, then simply presenting them with technical solutions to these problems (like providing water, food, energy, etc.) would lead them to have many children again. Evidently, this is not the case.
I believe this topic requires more exploration than a comment allows—it would demand a separate article. But the point is that before venturing into large imaginative experiments about how to technically solve the needs of a population of 100 billion, I think we first need to better understand the reasons why people are not having more children in the first place.
Here are just a few observations: in communities with deeply rooted religious traditions, fertility rates remain high; in poor countries or even among the poorest classes in emerging countries, where there is less access to mainstream education, fertility rates are also higher. And where are birth rates the lowest? In Europe, in the United States, especially among ideologically engaged communities, whether those ideologies are from the right or the left (liberals, libertarians, communists, atheists, feminists, wokes, etc.).
In other words, it’s impossible to address the problem of population decline without delving into its spiritual and cultural reasons. I would even argue that the technological aspect is almost peripheral. Without addressing issues like protecting the family, combating abortion, divorce, materialism, and other related matters, we risk falling into speculation about a future 300 years from now—a future that will likely never come, simply because we are accelerating ever more quickly in the exact opposite direction.
Yes, you are talking about a different article, very legitimate indeed!
I do have data on how prevalent this belief is, but I have it for another article
It's not just the west; China's population is also slowing.
But when God created male and female, he said "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth..."
Arguably we have unlocked that achievement and can continue on as we please, rather than by divine decree. I'd prefer that we take better care of the people already here.