Stephen Hawking: We Might Have 1,000 Years Left on Earth (usatoday.com)

Stephen Hawking says the only way humankind can escape mass extinction is to find another planet. And the clock is ticking. From a report on USA Today:During a speech at Britain's Oxford University Union, Hawking detailed the history of man's understanding of the universe and reiterated that the future of humankind lies in space. "We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity," he said. "I don't think we will survive another 1000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet."

Comments

Re: Article is pretty light on details

[MitchDev]

I voted for "Extinction-Event Asteroid" rather than Clinton or Trump....

Re:I completely agree.

[swillden]

Call me when the overall curve is heading downhill.

<ring>

The developed world is calling you, and the second derivative is already negative globally. The world population growth rate should hit zero around 2050 and then begin declining.

To put it another way, the number of children born per year is already declining and has been for some time. The only reason the population isn't already declining is that the global population is still skewed young. Today's population growth is entirely due to the "filling out" of the age distribution. If you divide the population into five generations, each of 20 years -- so you have the 0-19, 20-39, 40-59, 60-79 and 80-99 groups -- There are about 2B in each of the first two groups, then it drops off rapidly. As the upper groups fill out over the next 35 years or so, you'll end up with roughly 2B per generation times five generations, for a total of about 10B people. Barring significant life extension, that will be the peak. Because the supply flowing into the first generation is slowly declining, the overall population will then begin to decline.

That's if current demographic trends continue, but it's likely that they'll accelerate. The biggest factors in reducing birthrates are (1) female education (2) infant survival rate and (3) wealth. Educated women who have confidence their children will survive and the resources to invest in them tend to have few children and invest heavily in the education and development of those fewer children. Since the trends in the developing world (the areas still producing lots of babies) are toward more education, better availability of medical services and increasing wealth in the developing world, it's likely that the current birth rate numbers will be further reduced.

No, the population crisis that is coming is one of not *enough* people, rather than too many. Some northern European countries are already facing this issue, especially since their systems for supporting the elderly require that there be plenty of young people working. Denmark, for example, has been running ads for several years now, encouraging couples to do the patriotic thing for their country by having babies.

The one thing that might change this is if medical technology progresses to allow the average person to live many decades longer. Add another 2B to the peak population for every 20 years of (universally-available) life extension.