[chris_mc]

Everyone is talking about needing to control population, but according to current figures, the population will level our around 11b people around 2100. Check out www.gapminder.org for more info, but a lot of what people think about the world is wrong.

[brighteyes]

True that many people are misled about this, but

1. 11 billion may be too much.

2. This isn't uniform across the globe. Japan's population is shrinking due to a very low birth rate, and that may be a bad thing (loss of cultural and genetic diversity, for example). And this is the more relevant aspect given the context.

[wdwhwq9484]

> 11b people around 2100

Color me skeptical. If previous prognostications are and indicator, humanity in general cannot predict the future more than 5-10 years out with reasonable accuracy.

Another way of saying this is that the confidence interval on global population estimates 80 years into the future is most likely large enough to render the estimate meaningless.

[zimablue]

And you think 11 billion is a good number? We couldn't support the 6 billion at western standards of living.

[albertgoeswoof]

Why? All evidence so far suggests we can, standard of living globally has only increased with population growth.