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Author: Fanra

Mar 23rd 2011 at 9:55:50 PM

This trope is almost too common to use, as every single novel about the future has a larger population unless there is a major disaster.  Indeed, past predictions about the current population (2011) were even higher then they are today, AIDS has slowed down the growth.  Even with AIDS, the population continues to increase and unless some highly unlikely inventions (food replicators?) happens, massive collapse is inevitable soon.

* RealLife:  This is the greatest problem facing humanity.  Poverty, unemployment, high energy prices, war, etc. are all directly or indirectly caused by this.  In order to give everyone in the world a decent minimal standard of living would require the resources of three Earths.  The rise of the standard of living in China and India is starting to strain the resources of the planet.  Before this, most of the world resources went to the USA and other Western nations.  There isn't enough for everyone.
* IsaacAsimov wrote many essays on the issue of overpopulation.  He felt this is the greatest problem facing humanity.  He was highly annoyed that society has ignored this problem.
* RobertSilverberg's novel ''The World Inside'' is set on Earth in the year 2381, when the population of the planet has reached 75 billion people. Population growth has skyrocketed due to a quasi-religious belief in human reproduction as the highest possible good. Most of the action occurs in a massive three-kilometer high city-tower called Urban Monad (Urbmon) 116.  Most of humanity lives in these mammoth thousand-floor skyscrapers arranged in "constellations", where the shadow of one building does not fall upon another. The population is supported by the conversion of all of the Earth's habitable land area not taken up by Urbmons to agriculture.