Name: Countdown
ISBN: 9780316097758

Countdown

A powerful investigation into the chances for humanity's future from the author of the bestseller The World Without Us. In his bestselling book The World Without Us, Alan Weisman considered how the Earth could heal and even refill empty niches if relieved of humanity's constant pressures. Behind that groundbreaking thought experiment was his hope that we would be inspired to find a way to add humans back to this vision of a restored, healthy planet-only in harmony, not mortal combat, with the rest of nature. But with a million more of us every 4 1/2 days on a planet that's not getting any bigger, and with our exhaust overheating the atmosphere and altering the chemistry of the oceans, prospects for a sustainable human future seem ever more in doubt. For this long awaited follow-up book, Weisman traveled to more than 20 countries to ask what experts agreed were probably the most important questions on Earth--and also the hardest: How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing? How robust must the Earth's ecosystem be to assure our continued existence? Can we know which other species are essential to our survival? And, how might we actually arrive at a stable, optimum population, and design an economy to allow genuine prosperity without endless growth?

What Hacker News says

spodekJul 2020

Agreed!

A great resource on the subject is Countdown by Alan Weisman.

I did a few podcast episodes on my Leadership and the Environment podcast on population:

https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo...

http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/alan-weisman

For those who think we can grow forever, Tom Murphy's Do The Math blog covers it in his post Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist: https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist

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toomuchtodoMay 2020

It's tremendous news. The carrying capacity of the Earth is closed to 1 billion people (we're at ~7 billion, and on track to hit ~10 billion by the end of the century due to population momentum). Target total fertility rate should be as close to 1 as possible.

This is a subject near and dear to my heart as a systems observation wonk, and have done a tremendous amount of research on the subject.

I recommend these two books to those interested:

Shrinking-population Economics: Lessons From Japan by Akihiko Matsutani

Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth? by Alan Weisman

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spodekJan 2020

Alan Weisman's book Countdown revealed to me about countries that lowered birth rates without coercion. Before reading it I only know about the one-child policy and some eugenics attempts. I highly recommend the book. I just recorded a conversation with him for my podcast. Fascinating conversation but it's still in the editing queue.

Off the top of my head, his main examples were Thailand, Iran, and Mexico. Here's a piece on Thailand https://www.context.org/iclib/ic31/frazer. Wikipedia covers Iran between 1989 and 2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran. Cultures including Japan and Italy saw dramatic decreases in birthrates without focused efforts.

Here are videos of him: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=alan+weisman&oq.... I haven't watched them, but probably will give you a jump start on the book.

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spodekJan 2020

> the costs of de-carbonising the economy

Global warming is important, but only one environmental problem, so important to consider here, but not the only environmental issue.

Contributing to every environmental issue, including this one, is overpopulation. Humans have altered every continent, reducing biodiversity, introducing species that don't handle local climates as well, or too well and displace existing ones, making extinct species, and so on. I'm no expert, but the situation in Australia looks related to huge cities and lots of farms supporting a much larger human population than had ever lived there reducing biodiversity and resilience to fire, exacerbated by global warming.

People fear discussing overpopulation because they only know of China's policy and eugenics, as did I until I learned of the successful, non-coercive policies of Thailand, Iran, Mexico, etc that increased peace, prosperity, and stability.

I first learned of successful noncoercive birthrate reducing policies through Alan Weisman's excellent Countdown https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Last-Best-Future-Earth/dp/0..., and of the critical importance of population through Limits to Growth https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/19....

Those examples show that we can peacefully and stably lower birth rate to increase peace and prosperity and ease all other environmental problems. Steady-state following de-growth works more successfully on a full finite planet than pushing economic and population growth forever, which exacerbates problems like these and increases their impact on humans and other wildlife.

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spodekDec 2019

Like many classmates getting our PhDs, I considered my field, physics, the most fundamental of all the sciences, joking that we could derive the rest. That was the 90s. In today's world, I consider the most important role of anyone who understands nature to help spread understanding of our environmental situation, though I consider the most important task now to lead.

As far as science books, I'm going to share three titles I read this year I highly recommend, though they're about ten years old

- Countdown, by Alan Weisman, for covering (over)population, especially for sharing examples of nations that lowered birthrates without coercion or legislation, yielding greater happiness and prosperity.

- The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman, for illustrating our effect on the world colorfully and inspirationally.

- The Once and Future World, by J.B. MacKinnon, for illustrating how much more nature there used to be, how much we've lost, and how much more we stand to lose.

- Limits to Growth, the 30-year Update, almost 20 years old, but the most thorough treatment of us and our environment. Critics criticize it, but all the criticism I've seen actually criticizes straw men and other misunderstandings (if you know of meaningful criticism please let me know). Meanwhile, this paper https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/publications/research-pap... from five years ago shows their "business as usual" model continues to be unreasonably accurate nearly 50 years later, suggesting to me LtG's relevance and poignancy.

You can't go wrong reading any of these books, though I'd start with Limits to Growth.

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spodekDec 2019

Once you see environmental problems as, despite each being unique, mostly arising from overpopulation, you can't help substitute for the proximal cause "overpopulation".

> The scramble for sand is destroying the Mekong

Becomes

> Overpopulation is destroying the Mekong

You might add "one way is the scramble for sand" though there are plenty others.

Learning about various nations' successful, noncoercive programs to lower birthrate that are as far from China's policy, forced abortions, or eugenics as day from night, and that increased prosperity and happiness, leads you to embrace such programs. The book Countdown by Alan Weiss https://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Last-Best-Future-Earth/dp/0... describes several such programs, including in Thailand, Iran, Costa Rica, Mexico, and others.

The most effective solution to the Mekong situation, however partial, is contraception and family planning education.

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