Yet another warning
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/30/stephen-emmott-ten-billion
"If we discovered tomorrow that there was an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and – because physics is a fairly simple science – we were able to calculate that it was going to hit Earth on 3 June 2072, and we knew that its impact was going to wipe out 70% of all life on Earth, governments worldwide would marshal the entire planet into unprecedented action. Every scientist, engineer, university and business would be enlisted: half to find a way of stopping it, the other half to find a way for our species to survive and rebuild if the first option proved unsuccessful. We are in almost precisely that situation now, except that there isn't a specific date and there isn't an asteroid."
Then there would be a large number of people who didn't expect to be around in 2072 and didn't want to give up what they currently have in the mean time. There'd be the people who denied the asteroid existed. And then there would be the 5 Bn people who didn't even know about the asteroid and were mostly focussed on getting enough to eat and drink to survive another day.
Of course a world of 4B or 2B or 1B people in 100 years might well be a more pleasant place. But nobody will talk about the process of getting from the current 7B to the peak of 10B to a sustainable 1B. Because it ain't pretty.
Humans: the real threat to life on Earth
By the way, do you know if there are meet-ups or book clubs for SF/F fans in Herts? Thanks!
This article really resonated for me with https://medium.com/message/a-desirable-future-haiku-ff01d63c93c6 Kevin Kelly talking about creating hopeful narratives to counter all the dystopian narratives. Try and imagine a future 100 years hence that you would like to live in. I think this is a good exercise, I just don't like the (Californian, WEIRD, 1st world) reactions. Quite a lot of the commentary pointed out the difficulties of coping with a population of 10B and imagined a big drop back to 4B or 1B. But they didn't seem to want to think about how that happens in just 100 years.
That’s an interesting post, thank you! The future I try to imagine is neither dystopian nor utopian; it is realistic. I am particularly interested in technologically-induced alternate states of consciousness (ASCs). Ecology, poverty and corporate power will also be huge issues in the future, whether we like it or not…
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mindplayers-Pat-Cadigan/dp/8886926006/ref=sr_1_1
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/dark-age-america-population-implosion.html
A 2% rise in the death rate pa with the same birth rate is enough to reduce a population to 5% of it's original size in 100 years. That's not Armageddon. Although it's likely to be helped along by short term disasters like war, famine and pestilence.
The base scenario in 1972’s The Limits to Growth, still the most accurate (and thus inevitably the most vilified) model of the future into which we’re stumbling blindly just now, put the peak of global population somewhere around 2030: that is, sixteen years from now.