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Trust me, a growing elderly population with a shrinking working-age workforce to sustain them is very much not a good thing.
Can you define what sustainability looks like? One farmer has never been able to produce more. Maybe a country makes less widgets, but I don't all the doom and gloom when taking care of the basics has never been more attainable for all.
But AI told me AI can solve that.
In the short run maybe not, but for the long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s a necessity. Capitalism is built on a myth of infinite growth, we produce more than enough for everyone to live a good life.
not good for a countries, culture, and people, and this also devestate the economy eventually
Population decline isn’t a forever thing. A group of animals is overpopulated they decline until reaching equilibrium with their environment. 4B humans would be plenty for all the cultural richness you could ever hope for. As for the economy, I view that as a good thing. Either capitalism dies or we do, the economic system is incompatible with a universe of finite resources
No. This has been brought up and debunked by experts. Despite the rapidly falling birth rate, it will take centuries to overcome population inertia. Changes will not happen anywhere close to fast enough to save us from the environmental crisis we are facing. If anything, it may make things worse as an aging elderly population means the young generation is preoccupied trying to take care of them instead of dealing with the shit they left behind.
Our ideal birth rate would be between neutral to very gradual decline, not the cliff jump we're currently facing.
Not sure if 'brought up and debunked by experts' is the best argument out there. For example, 'population inertia' would cover only one lifespan, not centuries. That is to say, whatever the population is now, it could be 10 people to 100 billion people within 100 years. This is not discounting cultural and psychological factors, but if we're talking human behaviour, that's literally everything.
Secondly, the population decline is hardly a cliff. It is decreasing in some countries like Japan, but when added into the global picture, we're not even at neutral. We're still growing.
You are absolutely right that a larger aging population is something that must be addressed. However, if increased population pressure leads to a tipping point, like a shift in the AMOC or immigration pressure from hotter areas to cooler areas, our current treatment of old people doesn't fill me with confidence. I think in a crisis, we would sacrifice them anyway. We would write some sympathetic think pieces about it though.
Population decline in Japan and similar countries is absolutely a cliff right now, hence the article.
That's largely due to said population inertia. The current best estimates of actual worldwide fertility rate has us anywhere from 2.0 to 2.2. There's a possibility we've already dropped below replacement rate worldwide.
Unless actual scientific data showing otherwise is brought to a discussion, 'appeal to authority' is NOT a fallacy.
Appeal to authority is neither a fallacy nor proof. It is rhetoric. It proves nothing, and disproves nothing.
For example, your authorities debunk "long term health of the earth and her inhabitants it’s (sic) a necessity." My authorities, like William Catton or Meadows, et. al. would say otherwise. Invoking them doesn't prove my perspective. It does prove there is much debate about the subject.
In such instances, defining metrics and showing your work, as the math teachers say, is the best way forward.
The article in question, for example, relies on hype like '670,000, a level never previously recorded since national statistics began in 1899.' Level of what? Percentage of population? Actual number of people? Compared to how many? With the priviso, for example that ‘The expected figure, … excludes children born to foreign residents”. How many of those? I suspect not many, but it’s necessary to know.
What the article could have stated are actual metrics such as replacement rate, which in Japan is 1.20. South Korean is considerably lower, at 0.72-0.74. We could use words like ‘cliff’ I guess, but I prefer numbers, and I would encourage their use in articles such as this.
A smaller population is necessary but not sufficient to combat climate change in the far far term. You’re right it won’t happen fast enough to save us from climate change but in the long run if we want a decent standard of living for human beings especially with a far lessened climate impact, we’re likely far beyond the carrying capacity of the earth.
Population growth is obviously next to impossible to project but the low end of figures I’ve seen show a decline to below 8B by 2100 which is a start.
It's hard to say what the actual carrying capacity of earth is, if we were trying to optimise for sustainability and not profit or special interests. Would we be sustainable today, if we were full on renewables and batteries, vat grown meat, no plastic waste, etc? There's so many things that could be done for major impact but aren't, for all we know we aren't even anywhere close to earth's carrying capacity with current or near future tech.
That's only if they keep their current system though. Why would they do that if they can see it won't work out going forward? Their economic system will need to evolve and that's ok.
Why should people change their behaviors to suit the economy instead of just changing the economy?