[LMB] [OT] May I do this?

[Alex Y. Kwan]

Hello,

On 19/12/06, James Nicoll <jdnicoll at panix.com> wrote:
> OK, here's the question. No offense to anyone intended.
> Suppose you are told the Earth of AD 2300 has the following
> characteristics:
> > No space exploitation beyond information retrieval.
> >         36 billion people (Africa ~ 22%, Asia ~ 57%, Latin
> > America and Caribbean ~ 9%, North America 6%, Europe ~ 6%,
> > Oceania ~ ha!). Age distribution is fairly flat, distributed
> > mainly between 0 and 100 years (although a minority of the
> > population is older than 100 years of age).
> >
> >         What would you expect such a world to be like?

I'd assume that either some disaster had happened in Europe to drive
everyone to Africa, or that the birth rate in Europe had simply just
continued to fall (which I guess is happening now).

Actually, now that I do have the current numbers for comparison, the
2300 percentages don't seem that impossible, but that's assuming that
none of the European or African governments would do anything to
change the current situation (e.g. relax immigration laws, give more
social benefits to people who have children, etc.).

But the actual population numbers were downright scary. I don't know,
I don't think Earth can actually sustain 36 billion people, unless
there was some amazing breakthrough in farming technology. We've all
switched to very green and highly efficient energy sources, I think.
As to other resources, no, I have no idea how we're going to manage.

But I don't think we would reach that point. Something would have
exploded (or imploded) first.

little Alex