Is Africa The Biggest Threat to the World, and What should be Done about it?

[kafkod]

We are sleep walking into a huge problem, that will cost billions of live and could well mean the end of the world.

That problem is Africa.

It's population is exploding and the strain it will put on the worlds resources will be too much.

40 years ago, Africa's population was 400 million, today is is 1.2 billion, by 2050 it will be 2.5 billion and responsible for over 60% of the world's population growth. By 2100 it could be 5 billion, that is despite the high mortality rate and mass migration to Europe and other parts of the world.

Their pollution, CO2 output will pollute the oceans and air, increase global warming.

Europe, North America and other first world countries populations have leveled off and are in decline in some places, even countries in South America, India and China's population is leveling off. As countries get educated birth rates do tend to drop off but so far it is not happening in Africa.


The world cannot cope, the migration crisis in Europe will come to a head, War, Famine, disease, as well as the effects from global warming and pollution of the oceans.


But for some reason, nobody wants to talk about this. The births rate stats and the populations predictions are all there.

Can anybody really see this ended well?

If Africa becomes like Europe, Asia, North America, and the rest of the developed world - like us, in other words - then yes, we have one hell of a problem on our hands.

The answer to the problem is for us to focus our brains and resources on developing ways and means to sustain our own huge populations without fcking up the environment, then clue the Africans up on what we are doing and - hey presto, problem solved!

[////]

It is the single biggest problem facing mankind & nothing comes remotely close. The sheer numbers blow everything else out of the water. Chinese colonialism is the world's only hope for taming sub-Saharan Africa's birth rate.

The average uneducated person is more worried about a global warming-induced tsunami wiping out San Francisco or Russia invading the US... Because the average person is a dopamine junkie raised on terrible movies.

[////]

If Africa becomes like Europe, Asia, North America, and the rest of the developed world - like us, in other words - then yes, we have one hell of a problem on our hands.

The answer to the problem is for us to focus our brains and resources on developing ways and means to sustain our own huge populations without fcking up the environment, then clue the Africans up on what we are doing and - hey presto, problem solved!

Developed countries are not a problem. They have low, sustainable birth rates & while environmental degradation will require the (very) long term relocation of some coastal cities, it isn't an existential threat. If Africa became like Europe & Asia then the world would be saved, but it won't. It consistently blows apart every optimistic projection and regresses back into a baby factory.

Europe is dead. It will be totally Africanized & subsequently collapse. Even the so-called "far-right" parties are prescribing too little, too late. At this point the best we can hope for is preserving East Asia from a similar fate.

[kafkod]

Developed countries are not a problem. They have low, sustainable birth rates & while environmental degradation will require the (very) long term relocation of some coastal cities, it isn't an existential threat. If Africa became like Europe & Asia then the world would be saved, but it won't. It consistently blows apart every optimistic projection and regresses back into a baby factory.

Europe is dead. It will be totally Africanized & subsequently collapse. Even the so-called "far-right" parties are prescribing too little, too late. At this point the best we can hope for is preserving East Asia from a similar fate.

Global warming is real, and it wasn't caused by African factories and road traffic.

Only a small percentage of the estimated 150 million metric tons of plastic waste floating around the world's oceans were dumped there by Africans.

The air pollution slowly killing hundreds of thousands of children in Indian and Chinese cities, and getting picked up and blown around the world by global winds, isn't coming from cars and trucks in Africa.

If Africa becomes like the developed countries the problems we have caused by our own greed and short sightedness are going to get worse faster, but they are going to get worse anyway, unless we change our own dirty habits.

[////]

Global warming is real, and it wasn't caused by African factories and road traffic.

Only a small percentage of the estimated 150 million metric tons of plastic waste floating around the world's oceans were dumped there by Africans.

The air pollution slowly killing hundreds of thousands of children in Indian and Chinese cities, and getting picked up and blown around the world by global winds, isn't coming from cars and trucks in Africa.

If Africa becomes like the developed countries the problems we have caused by our own greed and short sightedness are going to get worse faster, but they are going to get worse anyway, unless we change our own dirty habits.

Global warming is definitely real & is definitely caused by humans, it's just not an existential threat. African overpopulation is an existential threat.

I'm pretty sure arguing about whether or not it's real is a deliberate way to prevent people from looking up the rather underwhelming data. Have you reviewed the specific estimates for temperature change & sea level rise over the next 2-3 centuries? It isn't nearly enough to keep up with the avg speed of human migration.

In fact the sole reason we should be at all concerned about global warming's relatively minor implications for agriculture is... African overpopulation (a region already on the edge of a mass starvation epidemic & rapidly spreading to encompass Europe). Every other population in the world is already stable or shrinking.

[D4thincarnation]

If Africa becomes like Europe, Asia, North America, and the rest of the developed world - like us, in other words - then yes, we have one hell of a problem on our hands.

The answer to the problem is for us to focus our brains and resources on developing ways and means to sustain our own huge populations without fcking up the environment, then clue the Africans up on what we are doing and - hey presto, problem solved!

You do see the problem with the birth rate right?

[D4thincarnation]

It is the single biggest problem facing mankind & nothing comes remotely close. The sheer numbers blow everything else out of the water. Chinese colonialism is the world's only hope for taming sub-Saharan Africa's birth rate.

The average uneducated person is more worried about a global warming-induced tsunami wiping out San Francisco or Russia invading the US... Because the average person is a dopamine junkie raised on terrible movies.

Exactly, I don't know how some people can't see that.
Or why the issue is being ignored.

Always find it amazing when someone says they won't have a child because it is being selfish and they are too much people in the world, but will say nothing about the African birth rate and donate aid to Africa.

[kafkod]

Global warming is definitely real & is definitely caused by humans, it's just not an existential threat. African overpopulation is an existential threat.

I'm pretty sure arguing about whether or not it's real is a deliberate way to prevent people from looking up the rather underwhelming data. Have you reviewed the specific estimates for temperature change & sea level rise over the next 2-3 centuries? It isn't nearly enough to keep up with the avg speed of human migration.

In fact the sole reason we should be at all concerned about global warming's relatively minor implications for agriculture is... African overpopulation (a region already on the edge of a mass starvation epidemic & rapidly spreading to encompass Europe). Every other population in the world is already stable or shrinking.

You do see the problem with the birth rate right?

It isn't a higher birth rate in Africa which is causing the rapid population increase. What's happening is that better medical care, especially for newborn babies, is gradually increasing the average lifespan in many African countries.

This is exactly what happened in developed countries during the early part of the last century, which caused their populations to sky rocket in numbers.

Check out these graphs and maps: https://ourworldindata.org/world-pop...last-centuries

Populations are still increasing everywhere in the world except Russia/Eastern Europe, Italy, and Portugal, where they are more or less stable.

The rate of increase has slowed everywhere except Africa, because thay are only now starting to get the same benefits from better medical care - especially for young infants - that the developed countries have had for decades.

[////]

It isn't a higher birth rate in Africa which is causing the rapid population increase. What's happening is that better medical care, especially for newborn babies, is gradually increasing the average lifespan in many African countries.

This is exactly what happened in developed countries during the early part of the last century, which caused their populations to sky rocket in numbers.

Check out these graphs and maps: https://ourworldindata.org/world-pop...last-centuries

Populations are still increasing everywhere in the world except Russia/Eastern Europe, Italy, and Portugal, where they are more or less stable.

The rate of increase has slowed everywhere except Africa, because thay are only now starting to get the same benefits from better medical care - especially for young infants - that the developed countries have had for decades.

Colonialism brought dramatic improvements in quality of life to Africa (which is quite ironic given that it's considered the downfall of UFO "kangz" Africa by the American mainstream) which combined with Africa's extremely high birth rate resulted in a population explosion. Correct. You need both ingredients.

The thing is in all other examples on all other continents the birth rate rapidly declined following exposure to modernity because one aspect of modernity is family planning. They saw a decrease in infant mortality, explosion in net growth followed by a rapid drop in raw birth rate. Africa has proven almost totally unresponsive. The scale and duration completely dwarfs anything seen in any other region. While other regions have seen their UN projections downgraded (esp Latin America) from doomsday estimates, Africa tends to consistently beat even the worst-case-scenario pojections and necessitate upward revision.

"Populations are still increasing everywhere in the world except Russia/Eastern Europe, Italy, and Portugal, where they are more or less stable."

The lowest birth rates are actually in East Asia (Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan). All of Europe is shrinking when you subtract immigrants, which are not European for demographic purposes, and are alas just relocated components of the African crisis.

Latin America, despite the stereotypes, has achieved population stability — the exception being groups like Afro-Brazilians who continue to rapidly increase their population share (at current rates & with anything resembling the current political atmosphere extending into the next few decades, Latin America is likely to also be Africanized like Europe).

It's really just sub-Saharan Africa and war-torn Afghanistan. Other than that the world has either achieved relative stability.



By 2050 even at modest UN estimates, sub-Saharan Africa will be adding a number of humans roughly equivalent to the entire populations or Spain or France annually (and many of them will be immediately destined for those western countries, to increasingly drive the natives out of their cities).

"The rate of increase has slowed everywhere except Africa, because thay are only now starting to get the same benefits from better medical care"

Africa experienced initial exposure in the same period as the rest of the world — its problem is that it's an extreme outlier in terms of adoption and the ability for a non-foreign governed civilization to survive without implosion or civil war. The failure of birth control has traditionally been a problem of access or affordability. In Africa it's widely available but primarily an issue of refusal. This could be due to being an extreme genetic outlier in terms of r/K selection compared to the populations that migrated out of Africa & were subject to more selective environmental pressures as individuals, or it could be a cultural vicious cycle (more palatable for western taboos...).

Either way it is far more of a global crisis than having to rearrange coastal developments or make minute changes to grape varietals, which is what all of the (yes very real and accelerated by mankind) global warming crisis amounts to when you subtract the issue of overpopulation. Re-add Africa into the equation and it becomes an issue of mass starvation and societal collapse.

[D4thincarnation]

It isn't a higher birth rate in Africa which is causing the rapid population increase. What's happening is that better medical care, especially for newborn babies, is gradually increasing the average lifespan in many African countries.

This is exactly what happened in developed countries during the early part of the last century, which caused their populations to sky rocket in numbers.

Check out these graphs and maps: https://ourworldindata.org/world-pop...last-centuries

Populations are still increasing everywhere in the world except Russia/Eastern Europe, Italy, and Portugal, where they are more or less stable.

The rate of increase has slowed everywhere except Africa, because thay are only now starting to get the same benefits from better medical care - especially for young infants - that the developed countries have had for decades.

Yes, before modern medicine, vaccinations, war, illness and famine were killing us we would have a lot of children too, because many wouldn't survive.

But then with education and contraception, we saw it was better to focus our efforts on fewer children and spend more time in contributing to society and our own lives.


Africa has been given modern medicine and aid and maybe that is the problem. They have not grown up and the culture is still to have as many children as possible, education and contraception is not promoted and they are still have children at high rates, and as a result their population is exploding so much that it is the biggest threat to the world.


What do you suggest, stop funding them and let millions die? Close of borders and shoot the migrants, because if the birth rate that does not drop, that might the the action taken.

How do you solve the problem?