While I’m not refuting that, people have been saying the same thing for like a century - the world population keeps a growing and we keep innovating how to grow more food
Do you know if the models you a referencing (the math) figures in for innovation or agricultural technology improvements? I read somewhere recently that someone in Asia (I think) figured out how to grown rice with minimal amts of water (drought resistant)
Fuck, isn’t this true. Not speaking as a dad, but as a son whose sister just moved back to the country. My father, and employer who I’ve spent the last 5 years building the business with, is dropping everything to give my dumb-sister whatever she wants.
They were simply wrong about the timeline. Over the course of centuries, the global population is a scaling numbers problem. Even if we figure out how to feed them, they still need water and a place to sleep. The jetsons isn’t a viable solution (although it’d be cool as fuck lets be honest).
Water is an issue more so than food imo. Place to sleep? Humans are an amazing bunch … ever see a slum? Go to Dharavi in Mumbai - has a population density of 717,280/sq mi … Not saying it’s a solution - but it’s an occurrence. Place to sleep will emerge. Water won’t. Food could (as demonstrated)
I dunno man … I don’t recall ever seeing what life as like on the ground there.
Without a reduction of the scaling population, it’s not a maybe. It’s just a matter of when.
What happens when a large chunk of the planet has this happening? Do they sit there and take it quietly? Or do we end up with a major war over land?
Jury might be out on how the human race will respond, but short of a negative growth, all of the problems are simply a matter of time. I’m just thankful it won’t be in my lifetime.
You mentioned land. If cars fly we don’t need roads, opening up a ton of space. Buildings can go up instead of wide. Technology enables people to live in rural areas but have amenities and work remotely, reducing the need to be in a city.
You mentioned water, technology related to cleaning, processing, or making fresh water out of sea water can change the game. Right now it’s not always cost effective but 50 yrs from now things will be different.
This doesn’t even get into whacky potential future solutions like cities in the sky, or just greenhouses in the sky for crops. The speed of technology is amazing, and it’s really hard to see how that will change our current assumptions of how things work 50-100 yrs from now
That’s not what I meant. What I meant is that the countries where people aren’t producing kids they can’t feed need to feed those who are producing kids they can’t feed. If they could feed themselves, and accepted civil and human rights like the west, they would end up like countries in Europe which have a zero or negative birthrate.
Agreed. In 1802, at the beginning of Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President’s term, would ANYBODY have thought that within 100 years man would be flying?? Have Gatling guns? Have rail lines, let alone ones that spanned the entire continent? Have discovered the fundamental constituents of atoms?
In 1902, would anybody have foreseen the muscle car? cruise missiles? Automated irrigation? Vaccines on the scale we have them? Nuclear bombs?? THE INTERNET??
Not a chance in hell. We went from barely figuring out flight to hopping on the the moon inside a lifetime.
Technology is likely to outpace the land issue, or provide us with new planets, before we reach critical population density. My money is on other human vices killing us off before then if anything does.