DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population

Gapminder Foundation8 HN recommenders · 2017–2021
3.3M views · lecture · evergreen · Uploaded 2014-12-15

Hans Rosling uses data and animated statistics to show how world population is changing, why birth rates fall as child survival and wealth rise, and why population is expected to peak around 11 billion. It also tackles common misconceptions about Africa and family planning.

HN repeatedly recommends it to counter overpopulation alarm with data on falling birth rates.

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16 comments from Hacker News

@tomjen32017 · in “Who are you calling Malthusian?”

In that case don't worry: [VIDEO] Also consider that the carrying capacity of the world isn't fixed, but depends on how good our technology is (with a potential theoretical upper limit). Well tech is improved by people working on and inventing better technology, right? So you get better technology with more people - and with that you can have more people working on better technology. The biggest mistake, and the one all Malthusians made, is to forget that humans are, on average, net produces not net consumers.

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@lentil_soup2017 · in “The Old Are Eating the Young”

This video seems relevant: [VIDEO] According to Hans Rosling we've reached "peak child", meaning we're almost at 2 children per woman globally. This means population will continue to grow for a few years as globally there are more children than adults but will stabilize after that around the ~11 billion mark. And as long as we stay at that "peak child" number we won't go any further. I really recommend his videos if you haven't seen them.

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@jdietrich2017 · in “India's Indira canteen: The best meal you can buy for 13 cents”

Until the modern era, the global birth rate was fairly constant at about six per woman. The population growth we've experienced over the last century is mostly to do with child survival. Before 1900, the child mortality rate in India was over 50%. If you need children to care for you in old age and expect most of your children to die, you're likely to have a lot of them. When child survival improved, attitudes changed. Parents no longer want three or four children to work on the family farm, they want one or two children to become doctors or engineers. Economic development and the availability of reliable contraception have made that aspiration practical. If you're interested in the topic, I can highly recommend this lecture by the late Hans Rosling: [VIDEO]

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@jdietrich2017 · in “Recycling Chaos in U.S. As China Bans 'Foreign Waste'”

The UN forecast that the global population will reach an absolute maximum of about 11 billion by 2100. Some forecasts are even more conservative, suggesting a peak of 9 billion by 2050. The global birth rate has peaked and is now in overall decline, with most of the developed world being well below the replacement rate. Most of the population growth we'll see over the next century is simply due to more people living longer lives. The fertility rate in China is massively below replacement at 1.57 births per woman. India is barely above replacement at 2.4. The fertility rate in India today is lower than the fertility rate was in the US in 1970. The global fertility rate has halved in 50 years. Even in the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa, the fertility rate is declining. The fertility rate in Rwanda has more than halved from 8.4 in 1980 to 3.8 today. As far as I can ascertain, Niger is the country on earth with a persistently high fertility rate. Population growth is a solved problem. [VIDEO]

@lugg2018 · in “When will the world reach 'peak child'?”

He has a lot of good videos out there but this is the one specifically covering Africa / population predictions and the misconceptions / dated knowledge. [VIDEO]

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@throw0101a2019 · in “The global population pyramid”

There's a good presentation by Hans Rosling about why population will peak at 11B (stick with until 26m): * [VIDEO] Further on he explains why we may not have to worry about resource use given growing prosperity: * [VIDEO]

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@Carlee2019 · in “CO2 in the atmosphere just exceeded 415ppm for the first time in human history”

You should check out Hans Rosling's lectures [1]. Statistics points towards the fact that as people become more wealthy, they have less children. It should stagnate around 11 million people by most models. [1] [VIDEO]

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@Isinlor2019 · in “Greta Thunberg: 'How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood'”

Because there is no world overpopulation. People talk about overpopulation since ancient times. [LINK] Currently standard of living are growing almost all over the world and human population is predicted to pick and stabilize at around 11 billion. I really recommend "DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population" [VIDEO] What's also interesting in his video is the fact that people tend to be very misinformed about state of the world affairs. E.g. when asked questions about certain statistics, they do worse than random. And the better educated you are the more misinformed you may be.

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@Isinlor2019 · in “World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency”

The issue here is mostly with the countries in extreme poverty. Countries with average fertility rate of 3 and higher. Women in countries with the highest fertility index often do not control when they get pregnant. Having 6 and more children is rarely effect of conscious family planning. It's effect of lack of education, lack of access to contraception, forced sex in marriage etc. Sometimes having many children is an insurance policy in case some children will die before they reach productive age. We really should be addressing this type of issues underlying uncontrolled population growth. People should be able to choose when they want to have children, how many children they want, they should be educated on how to provide for their children, and certainly people should not be afraid that some part of their offspring will die. It has nothing to do with penalizing having children like they did in China. I really recommend, "DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population". He shows how family planning looks like in practice in countries like Bangladesh, so that westerners can imagine what are we talking about: [VIDEO] Dealing with global warming is going bad and we should panic about that, but humanity is making great progress on controlling population growth. There is really no issue with you having 3 children. Western population will be declining anyway as fertility rate in western countries is mostly below 2. Just please, support political, systematical chang

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@lkramer2019 · in “US births decline for fourth year in a row, CDC says”

This is not really true. Except for some parts of Africa, the birthrate across the world is declining. The worldwide average is 2.4. Likely the world's population will start decline in actual terms some time in the 2nd half of the 21st century: [LINK] [VIDEO]

@brigandish2020 · in “Ask HN: Who Is Firing?”

Since economic growth tends to go hand in hand with better access to health services and greater social freedom, it does. I always enjoy Hans Rosling going through the stats, if you’ve time it’s well worth it [VIDEO]

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@throw0101a2020 · in “The Lancet: World population projections by 2100”

There's a good (though hour-long) presentation by the late Hans Rosling call "DON'T PANIC — Hans Rosling showing the facts about population": * [VIDEO] "Don’t Panic – The Facts About Population": * [LINK]

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@drichel2020 · in “Overpopulation one of the ten greatest threats to humanity”

Result of a roundtable discussion wuth concerned citizens? Not convinced, I'm with Hans Rosling on this topic [VIDEO]

@guerrilla2021 · in “Ghost cities and abandoned areas with a declining population”

> and the plateau is calculated at 20 billion. According to who? Hans Rosling famously[1] didn't think so. 1. [VIDEO]

@rocknor2021 · in “Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing”

> 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. [LINK] [VIDEO] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]

@throw0101a2021 · in “This Can’t Go On”

Hans Rosling's presentation "Don't Panic" (produced by the BBC) is pretty good: * [VIDEO] It's an hour long; really interesting.

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