Longevity and coping with an ever increasing population
Replace the defence budget with a space colonisation budget and everyone board can be shipped off planet
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A common concern about life extension is that we would rapidly overrun the planet, and without management, this could happen. However, there a few factors in our favour.
In many countries, fertility rates are already dropping below that required to maintain a population, and without immigration the number of people living there would be falling.
Even with biological immortality, if people were limited to one child each, then there would be a finite maximum population to deal with. And biological immortality does not mean fictional immortality - people will still die in accidents, conflict or by choice, meaning the global population would eventually start falling again.
We will have a lot of time to come up with a solution - the population won't double overnight, it might take a 100 years or so, and it's impossible to imagine what technologies may have been developed by then to help.
According to David Wood of London Futurists if death stopped tomorrow it
would take a hundred years to double the planet's
See also: Space Colonization
The Guardian - 28-Feb-2024
This is despite spending billions to encourage families to have more children
Read more...The Conversation (UK) - 18-Jan-2024
Experts say China's population could shrink by half to 525 million by 2100
Read more...Independent - 19-Oct-2023
The trend of a shrinking population is beginning to have drastic consequences
Read more...Eurostat - 12-May-2023
Eurostat report explores the impact of ageing, migration, and birth rates on the EU's population landscape
Read more...Click on resource name for more details.
A comprehensive analysis of today's environmental threats and a guide on how we can heal our planet written by Isaac Asimov
Replace the defence budget with a space colonisation budget and everyone board can be shipped off planet