But has their resource consumption per capita leveled off?
Population numbers aren't the scary thing about our CURRENT population.
What's scary is that China and India, which is almost 3 billion people, want US-levels of resource consumption, and they are full steam ahead in doing so.
Oh, so the curve will tail off around 11 or 15 billion? Who cares. Each billion is 3x the population of the US, and they all want our standard of living, or BETTER.
US per capita consumption/energy also higher. Just from energy perspective, US trending towards 150M more population by 2100 is equivalent to 1.8B Indians and 900M Chinese. PRC population is set to decline, and probably India's as well. Canada is like 50% more than US baseline, Norway 300%, Iceland 500% but not much immigration there.
Every individual migrating from developing world to developing world is increasing energy use of that person substantially even considering that (a typically skilled) migrant is likely a higher tier consumer in their origin country. Or that moving to a high consumption economy has greater compounding effects in terms of knockon consumption, i.e. 40% of RMB spent in PRC goes towards consumption vs 70% (?) for US. I joke that the most enviromental way to be a consumer is to buy developing countries with poor consumption or huge savigns rate because they're simply less likely to recycle that profit into more excessive consumption.
India is right below replacement levels and China is well below. I find it interesting that Americans are currently consuming that many resources-- it would seem to me it's unsustainable if everyone can't do it.
Population numbers aren't the scary thing about our CURRENT population.
What's scary is that China and India, which is almost 3 billion people, want US-levels of resource consumption, and they are full steam ahead in doing so.
Oh, so the curve will tail off around 11 or 15 billion? Who cares. Each billion is 3x the population of the US, and they all want our standard of living, or BETTER.