Curious, by what metrics was this supported? I think it's really hard to say what number of people the Earth can support, and there is evidence that we may be approaching that limit already. The rapid growth of the human species occurred in a very short time window. It took 2 million years to get a global population of 1 billion humans, and only 200 years for that to go from 1 billion to 8 billion. Another way to look at it is, there are estimated to have been 100 billion humans to have ever existed, and nearly 10% of all the humans that have ever lived are alive today. I'm a millennial and roughly 3-4% of all humans that have ever lived, over the 2 million year history of humans, were born after me.

It was so long ago, so I don't remember really..It was from an environmental book and highlighted by our instructor. I mean, it could only be a hypothesis that she quoted, but it was genuine and taken from a hardcover science book.

I agree with this whole heartily.. I can only imagine a utopian world supporting many more people to draw talent from, and where we cleaned up our act on every level and got rid of our borders and agreed on a global system that worked to benefit everyone..You are correct though..We, by nature, operate tribally and not en masse, so my vision would never work. We aren't bees.

The Western world has progressed massively technologically, achieved economies of scale, and it has under 1 billion. The argument is that an additional 6 billion people starting to consume more outweighs the benefit the world might accrue from that additional 6 billion people. At some point, the negatives outweigh the positives and we're well beyond that point. The world is better off with 1 billion wealthy, educated, technologically advanced people instead of what we have now: those 1 billion living in affluent nations + another 6 billion attempting to get there.

Any way, back to population data. The New York/Michigan populations are for July 1, 2019 and the Ontario/Quebec figures is from July 1st, 2020. The population change over the previous year is in brackets. Will New York ever get to 20 million and will Michigan ever get to 10 million? Maybe not. If trendiness continue, Ontario will have more people than New York by 2034. Quebec would pass Michigan by 2035. As with all extrapolations, it's more a statistical analysis rather than a prediction.

One thing is clear, there's a re-balancing occurring between central Canada and Great Lakes states. There's also a re-balancing occurring between the US Northeast Corridor and the adjacent Quebec City - Windsor Corridor on the Canadian side. Not too long ago there were roughly 3 times more people in the US corridor but we're moving towards a 2:1 population ratio.


New York: 19,453,561 (-76,790)
Michigan: 9,986,857 (+2,785)
Ontario: 14,745,040 (+260,798)
Quebec: 8,552,362 (+104,753)

New York: -76,790 X 15 = -1,151,850
Ontario: +260,798 X 14 = +3,651,172
New York population in 2034: 19,453,561 - 1,151,850 = 18,301,711
Ontario population in 2034: 14,745,040 + 3,651,172 = 18,396,212

Michigan. +2,785 X 16 = +44,560
Quebec: +104,753 X 15 = +1,571,295
Michigan population in 2035 = 9,986,857 + 44,560 = 10,031,417
Quebec population in 2035 = 8,552,362 + 1,571,295 = 10,123,657


https://www.census.gov/newsroom/pres...st-nation.html
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1...pid=1710000901

Michigan's population peaked at 10,055,315 in 2004

I see. Thx.

Go watch Lord of the Flies. Some people are always more equal than others. The strong will always dominate the weak and garner more resources to themselves, even to the point of killing the weak.

It happens under every economic system. It certainly happened under Marxist Communism just as under western Capitalism . . . and also on desert islands among shipwrecked survivors.

A billion Earth only with the wealthiest you're saying? They remain intact and the poorer are wiped out?

I understand 1 billion Earth with all parts losing population proportionally. Everybody sees 80% of population vanishing and that's certainly not a good thing. You, for one, are nationalist person and in several occasions manifested a desire twice as much as people in your country.

I'd guess it would be the opposite: those 30 billion should be packed together in few high densities clusters leaving vast sections of Earth unscathed.

As we're waiting the first results of 2020 Census:

U.S. Population Growth In 2019 Is Slowest In A Century

I don't think the US will ever again see natural growth above 1 million/year. In 2018 it droped below 1 million for the first time since 1937 (when the country had only 128 million inh.) and in 2019 another drop, to 890k. Needless to say 2020 will be a disaster. 1Q/2020 numbers are already available dropping to 113k compared to 149k in the previous year.

From now on, the US will become Europe: population growth will depend almost exclusively from immigration.

I have watched that movie, and sadly you are right. Also yes to Marxist Communism..That concept sure looked good on paper! Even if we could sustain 30 billion people, we are still tribal anyways..Even a small remote jungle village is dog eat dog on a smaller level..Our strength as sapiens is cooperation, but It's too bad that we couldn't cooperate on such a large scale..I was just thinking of the amazing talent pool of creativity a world of 30 billion under 1 common system would be.

I don't think you're quite getting the intent of the statement. No one is calling for 6 billion people to be wiped out. They're saying that 1 billion advanced humans is better for the planet than what we have now. It's also better than 7 billion advanced humans.

Agree with all of that. The problem for the US (like most of Europe) is the sheer numbers of immigrants they'd need to even maintain 0.5% annual population growth over the medium term. There's the question of whether Americans want to significantly boost immigration levels and whether foreigners want to move to the US like they did in the past. The appeal of the US globally has declined so the US would have to lower its entrance requirements.

I don't think so, there's still an endless amount of people who are willing to move to the US or desperately want to, not even considering the huge amount of refugees we could take in.

I mean this country is definitely the biggest developed shit-hole on earth and would be the last place I'd ever migrate to, don't get me wrong. But we have pretty much a monopoly on the world economy and that will always bring tons and tons of people here if we allow it.

But that's just it. The developed world, for the most part, doesn't want desperate people. The number of young, well educated/skilled people looking to emigrate is finite and those people are increasingly looking elsewhere. In order to plug the oncoming demographic hole, the US will likely need to bring in those 'desperate' people. Other smaller countries (Australia, NZ, Canada, Sweden, etc) facing the same demographic challenges will have an easier time mitigating low TFR with the type of migrants they want.

I guess that's the main challenge bigger block of countries face. If we see Europe and US & Canada as single entities, it will be very difficult to keep population growing or even stable without resorting to poor people in poor countries.

Cherry picking immigrants like Canada does is not conceivable for 300 million, 500 million people countries/continents. Needless to mention, those polls of immigrants will be producing smaller surpluses of people as they will be also facing their own demographic issues.

Moreover, many middle-income regions are not prone to migration. While Mexico & Central America is a reliable source for immigration to the US, South America with its 420 million inh., for example, send very few and they're shared between the US and W. Europe.

As the developing world develops, it’s only going to get worse for the US and Europe. Africa is rapidly industrializing, China and much of East Asia outside of Japan are increasing their quality of life. Latin America will eventually see a turn-around.

It’s an interesting topic too, considering that a lot of people in the Western World don’t want people from the developing world to come here and compete with them for resources. Yet, the West may need these people to maintain growth.

It’s gonna be interesting how things will progress this century. As for the future domestic growth of the US, I am now solid in my belief that the non-Hispanic White population will be a minority while Latinos will take their place. I’ve seen many babies and kids during my time doing a rotation at a pediatric clinic and most of my patients are probably of Mexican descent. Yeah, this is just in Southern California, but I can see the trend projected across the country. Even as the US declines a bit, it will not be the same country that the older generation knew.

Why do you say that?

1,500,000 gain over 10 years seems rather healthy.

It's not 1.5 million. They were at 22.26 million (Census 2010) and 22.59 million (Estimate 2019). Many people are speculating Census 2020 will be even more disappointing than the current estimate.

As far as fertility, a lot of poorer countries have high rates, but also high rates of infant and maternal mortality. The replacement rate of 2.1 is for developed nations. Some nations in Africa need upwards of a 2.7 rate to replace their populations. Nonetheless, as fertility goes down, so does mortality.

It is true we are a very territorial and resource scouring race, that’s what capitalism is built upon. A lot of your development since 1800 was due to rapid population growth, that’s how we needed to do it. It’s now our decision on whether to be brave enough to continue our advancement, built upon a new framework and vision. My worry is that the very large population we’re talking about will make that transition monumentally difficult or even impossible.

The countries with low fertility need to show the world how to thrive with low/slow population growth. The thing is we’re greedy and the developing world don’t really trust our intentions any longer. This is their time now. And clearly immigrants have even less patience for their piece of the pie.

This earth would probably do fine with about 3-4 billion semi-responsible beings. That’s probably our best hope.

There is still plenty of educated/skilled people who are desperate to move to the US though.