Statistics Canada confirmed last week that 351,679 babies were born in 2022 — the lowest number of live births since 345,044 births were recorded in 2005.
The disparity is all the more notable given that Canada had just 32 million people in 2005, as compared to the 40 million it counted by the end of 2022. In 2005, it was already at historic lows for Canada to have a fertility rate of 1.57 births per woman. But given the 2022 figures, that fertility rate has now sunk to 1.33.
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Of Canadians in their 20s, Statistics Canada found that 38 per cent of them “did not believe they could afford to have a child in the next three years” — with about that same number (32 per cent) saying they doubted they’d be able to find “suitable housing” in which to care for a baby.
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A January survey by the Angus Reid Group asked women to list the ideal size of their family against its actual size, and concluded that the average Canadian woman reached the end of their childbearing years with 0.5 fewer children than they would have wanted
“In Canada, unlike many other countries, fertility rates and desires rise with income: richer Canadians have more children,” it read.
By just about every measure? Would you rather have a smaller population and the same standard of living, or a larger population and a considerably lower standard of living? The earth's resources and abilities to heal itself are finite. The more people we have, the more restrictive our quality of life needs to be. Instead of having a house on some usable land, a garden, and some chickens, you're forced into a stacked box, with one window, and no yard, surrounded by other stacked boxes. Plus the impact of everything you do is magnified. Oh, you want to drive to the store? Better walk 20 blocks instead, because we're already at our carbon capacity. That last example was hyperbole, but it's not that far fetched. Basically a lower population gives us a lot more leeway to live our lives comfortably.
The fact the nearest store is 20 blocks away is a consequence of bad urban planning
Yes, but that knowledge doesn't change the distance you need to travel to go there.
There are more people on the planet than ever and QOL is up overall. Resources are not the problem, it's resource allocation and wealth inequality.
QOL is not up overall. Well I guess it depends on your standards for QOL. Sure, entertainment options are plentiful and you can get well made products delivered to your door in 12 hours. But housing affordability is at an all-time low, cost of living near all-time highs, and we're hitting record high and low weather events every single freaking day. These are all fallouts from rapid population expansion and using old systems to maintain an ever changing reality. An influx of 1 million people into an area that only builds a few thousand houses per year is going to cause massive spikes in demand, which attracts the attention of investment bankers, who then fund real estate acquisition, further exacerbating the problem. The carbon footprint of 8 billion people is more than double the carbon footprint of 4 billion people. Sure, many issues still remain with a smaller population, but every issue is magnified by a larger one. There are some benefits to large populations, but I think we're beyond sustainable now.
Totally agree. We should have <1B people living like kings, not 10B people living like peasants. A lot of environmentally unsustainable things become perfectly sustainable if there are fewer people on the planet. Like, we shouldn't have to be worried about the impact of beef production or overfishing - the planet should be able to sustain the number of humans that want to eat those things. At 8-10B it obviously can't.
Amputation doesn't cure a systemic disease. Very little has to change about most people's status of living in order for the vast majority of people to live comfortably without being forced into buying plastic, driving everywhere, etc. These are bad planning and poor oversight issues that have nothing to do with numbers of people in a population.
The majority of the remedy that would solve the issue long-term is opportunities and competition in green tech (which is being held back in favour of propping up a few fossil fuel giants), refusing to excuse wasteful and damaging industry practices, fugitive emissions, wastes of resources, etc. The ones who would be most likely to see significant change to their lives are the ones who are also individually wasting the most resources (with private jets, yachts, powering multiple homes, etc.)
But sure, give that small minority of super-wasteful people an excuse to waste even more and kill people off (since we don't have time for natural causes or accidental deaths to make a difference) to prop up their lifestyle.
Yes I agree, those are all good strategies. But to implement all of those things on a global scale takes generations. In the meantime, we're stuck with an old system, designed for a much smaller populace. Our growth outpaced our progress.
Edit: and to be clear I never said a damned thing about killing people. You added that. Choosing to not have kids is not even remotely similar to killing people.