Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 10 months, 2017–2023
6:40 · 14M views · Dec 22, 2016
A Kurzgesagt explainer on why the human population exploded and why growth is slowing, drawing on Our World in Data. It argues that birth rates fall as countries develop, easing overpopulation fears.
HN points to it in population, climate, and birth-rate threads as a clear, light-hearted overview of the demographic transition.
12 comments from Hacker News
If you're worried about overpopulation on Earth, check out Kurzgesagt's video on the topic. It's absolutely essential. this video
> the likes of China and India are by far the biggest culprits while Africa is projected to quadruple it's population while rapidly industrializing. The growing number of people is the main problem. Bullshit. The western ignorance and entitlement is unreal. Americans and Europeans are responsible for the vast majority of historical CO2 emissions, while having a small fraction of the world's population. If someone is to be blamed for climate change, it's them. [LINK] What gives you the right to stop the rest of the world from industrializing? Look at the obscene CO2 emissions caused due to over-consumption in western countries: [LINK] Poor countries are going through the standard demographic transition model: [LINK] . You cannot blame them for having high birth rates, even Europe and America had high birth rates when they were poor. Birth rates in India and China are already below replacement, Africa's will also be later in the century. Do you think people in America are more entitled to have babies than in the rest of the world? The problem is not growing population, correlation is not causation. The root problem is lack of renewable tech that can sustain the modern quality of life for all humanity. I suggest watching this: this video It's high time people stopped the tiresome and senseless bitching about India/China/Africa having too many babies, and focused on renewable energy research instead.
> if the 1 billion "rich people" drop their emissions down to below average then the majority of the problem will still be here. True. But the "majority" is not as big as you think. > there will be 1 billion less wealthy people Just wrong. There are lots of ways to reduce emissions without any effect in wealth. Eating less meat is one example. > for no particular net gain. Very wrong, there are huge gains: [LINK] > I advocate the radical approach of encouraging people to have less children. I knew you would say this, I was just waiting for it. Global birth rates have been in freefall for decades now, it's tragic that people don't know about it. You'd assume that supposedly "better" education in western countries would make people more aware, but western governments are only concerned with maintaining global western hegemony which requires falsely accusing the rest of the world and keeping their citizens ignorant. Also, you can't force people to have less children, that's inhumane. I suggest you go through the following links. this video [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
It's survivorship bias—where bias means skewed from the full distribution of choices people and societies made, not bias as in discrimination. Most of the families and societies that didn't prioritize population growth (by reproduction or immigration) aren't around to advocate for that approach's merits, whereas those that did are. Fun fact: for each human alive today there've been 15 deceased humans ever. As zombie apocalypses go, 15:1 doesn't sound too bad. Kurzgesagt has some interesting videos on human population if that's your style: [LINK] this video
The trend is universal, although some developing countries have not reached that stage yet. Kurzgesagt has a good video on this: this video