logo
If people stopped having babies, how long would it be before for humans are gone?

If people stopped having babies, how long would it be before for humans are gone?

IOL News11-06-2025
If no one had babies anymore, there would probably be no humans left on Earth within 100 years.
Image: Pexels
Very few people live beyond a century. So, if no one had babies anymore, there would probably be no humans left on Earth within 100 years. But first, the population would shrink as older folks died and no one was being born.
Even if all births were to suddenly cease, this decline would start slowly.
Eventually there would not be enough young people coming of age to do essential work, causing societies throughout the world to quickly fall apart. Some of these breakdowns would be in humanity's ability to produce food, provide health care and do everything else we all rely on.
Food would become scarce even though there would be fewer people to feed.
As an anthropology professor who has spent his career studying human behavior, biology and cultures, I readily admit that this would not be a pretty picture. Eventually, civilization would crumble. It's likely that there would not be many people left within 70 or 80 years, rather than 100, due to shortages of food, clean water, prescription drugs and everything else that you can easily buy today and need to survive.
Sudden change could follow a catastrophe
To be sure, an abrupt halt in births is highly unlikely unless there's a global catastrophe. Here's one potential scenario, which writer Kurt Vonnegut explored in his novel 'Galapagos': A highly contagious disease could render all people of reproductive age infertile – meaning that no one would be capable of having babies anymore.
Another possibility might be a nuclear war that no one survives – a topic that's been explored in many scary movies and books.
A lot of these works are science fiction involving a lot of space travel. Others seek to predict a less fanciful Earth-bound future where people can no longer reproduce easily, causing collective despair and the loss of personal freedom for those who are capable of having babies.
Two of my favorite books along these lines are 'The Handmaid's Tale,' by Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, and 'The Children of Men,' by British writer P.D. James. They are dystopian stories, meaning that they take place in an unpleasant future with a great deal of human suffering and disorder. And both have become the basis of television series and movies.
In the 1960s and 1970s, many people also worried that there would be too many people on Earth, which would cause different kinds of catastrophes. Those scenarios also became the focus of dystopian books and movies.
Michael A Little, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Binghamton University, State University of New York.
Image: The Conversation
Heading toward 10 billion people
To be sure, the number of people in the world is still growing, even though the pace of that growth has slowed down. Experts who study population changes predict that the total will peak at 10 billion in the 2080s, up from 8 billion today and 4 billion in 1974.
The U.S. population currently stands at 342 million. That's about 200 million more people than were here when I was born in the 1930s. This is a lot of people, but both worldwide and in the U.S. these numbers could gradually fall if more people die than are born.
About 3.6 million babies were born in the U.S. in 2024, down from 4.1 million in 2004. Meanwhile, about 3.3 million people died in 2022, up from 2.4 million 20 years earlier.
One thing that will be important as these patterns change is whether there's a manageable balance between young people and older people. That's because the young often are the engine of society. They tend to be the ones to implement new ideas and produce everything we use.
Also, many older people need help from younger people with basic activities, like cooking and getting dressed. And a wide range of jobs are more appropriate for people under 65 rather than those who have reached the typical age for retirement.
Declining birth rates
In many countries, women are having fewer children throughout their reproductive lives than used to be the case. That reduction is the most stark in several countries, including India and South Korea.
The declines in birth rates occurring today are largely caused by people choosing not to have any children or as many as their parents did. That kind of population decline can be kept manageable through immigration from other countries, but cultural and political concerns often stop that from happening.
At the same time, many men are becoming less able to father children due to fertility problems. If that situation gets much worse, it could contribute to a steep decline in population.
Neanderthals went extinct
Our species, Homo sapiens, has been around for at least 200,000 years. That's a long time, but like all animals on Earth we are at risk of becoming extinct.
Consider what happened to the Neanderthals, a close relative of Homo sapiens. They first appeared at least 400,000 years ago. Our modern human ancestors overlapped for a while with the Neanderthals, who gradually declined to become extinct about 40,000 years ago.
Some scientists have found evidence that modern humans were more successful at reproducing our numbers than the Neanderthal people. This occurred when Homo sapiens became more successful at providing food for their families and also having more babies than the Neanderthals.
If humans were to go extinct, it could open up opportunities for other animals to flourish on Earth. On the other hand, it would be sad for humans to go away because we would lose all of the great achievements people have made, including in the arts and science.
In my view, we need to take certain steps to ensure that we have a long future on our own planet. These include controlling climate change and avoiding wars. Also, we need to appreciate the fact that having a wide array of animals and plants makes the planet healthy for all creatures, including our own species.
SUNDAY TRIBUNE
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

'Writing is thinking': Do students who use ChatGPT learn less?
'Writing is thinking': Do students who use ChatGPT learn less?

IOL News

time02-07-2025

  • IOL News

'Writing is thinking': Do students who use ChatGPT learn less?

IOL A new study suggests students using ChatGPT to write essays show reduced critical thinking and brain activity. Educators report AI-generated work lacks insight, raising concerns about overreliance on tools that may hinder learning. Picture: Beyzaa Yurtkuran/Pexels When Jocelyn Leitzinger had her university students write about times in their lives they had witnessed discrimination, she noticed that a woman named Sally was the victim in many of the stories. "It was very clear that ChatGPT had decided this is a common woman's name," said Leitzinger, who teaches an undergraduate class on business and society at the University of Illinois in Chicago. "They weren't even coming up with their own anecdotal stories about their own lives," she told AFP. Leitzinger estimated that around half of her 180 students used ChatGPT inappropriately at some point last semester -- including when writing about the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI), which she called both "ironic" and "mind-boggling". So she was not surprised by recent research, which suggested that students who use ChatGPT to write essays engage in less critical thinking. The preprint study, which has not been peer-reviewed, was shared widely online and clearly struck a chord with some frustrated educators. The team of MIT researchers behind the paper has received more than 3,000 emails from teachers of all stripes since it was published online last month, lead author Nataliya Kosmyna told AFP. 'Soulless' AI essays For the small study, 54 adult students from the greater Boston area were split into three groups. One group used ChatGPT to write 20-minute essays, one used a search engine, and the final group had to make do with only their brains. The researchers used EEG devices to measure the brain activity of the students, and two teachers marked the essays. The ChatGPT users scored significantly worse than the brain-only group on all levels. The EEG showed that different areas of their brains connected to each other less often. And more than 80 percent of the ChatGPT group could not quote anything from the essay they had just written, compared to around 10 percent of the other two groups. By the third session, the ChatGPT group appeared to be mostly focused on copying and pasting. The teachers said they could easily spot the "soulless" ChatGPT essays because they had good grammar and structure but lacked creativity, personality, and insight. However, Kosmyna pushed back against media reports claiming the paper showed that using ChatGPT made people lazier or more stupid. She pointed to the fourth session, when the brain-only group used ChatGPT to write their essay and displayed even higher levels of neural connectivity. Kosmyna emphasised it was too early to draw conclusions from the study's small sample size, but called for more research into how AI tools could be used more carefully to help learning. Ashley Juavinett, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the research, criticised some "off-base" headlines that wrongly extrapolated from the preprint. "This paper does not contain enough evidence or the methodological rigour to make any claims about the neural impact of using LLMs (large language models such as ChatGPT) on our brains," she told AFP. Thinking outside the box Leitzinger said the research reflected how she had seen student essays change since ChatGPT was released in 2022, as both spelling errors and authentic insight became less common. Sometimes students do not even change the font when they copy and paste from ChatGPT, she said. But Leitzinger called for empathy for students, saying they can get confused when the use of AI is being encouraged by universities in some classes but is banned in others. The usefulness of new AI tools is sometimes compared to the introduction of calculators, which required educators to change their ways. But Leitzinger worried that students do not need to know anything about a subject before pasting their essay question into ChatGPT, skipping several important steps in the process of learning. A student at a British university in his early 20s who wanted to remain anonymous told AFP he found ChatGPT was a useful tool for compiling lecture notes, searching the internet, and generating ideas. "I think that using ChatGPT to write your work for you is not right because it's not what you're supposed to be at university for," he said. The problem goes beyond high school and university students. Academic journals are struggling to cope with a massive influx of AI-generated scientific papers. Book publishing is also not immune, with one startup planning to pump out 8,000 AI-written books a year. "Writing is thinking, thinking is writing, and when we eliminate that process, what does that mean for thinking?" Leitzinger asked. AFP

Meet the geologist uncovering Earth's secrets in South Africa
Meet the geologist uncovering Earth's secrets in South Africa

IOL News

time02-07-2025

  • IOL News

Meet the geologist uncovering Earth's secrets in South Africa

Tebogo Makhubela, a South African geologist recipient of one of the prestigious National Geographic 2025 Wayfinder Awards Image: MARCO LONGARI / AFP In the 1997 action film "Dante's Peak", Pierce Brosnan plays the role of a volcanologist sent to investigate seismic activity beneath a long-dormant volcano. Years after its release, the story inspired South African Tebogo Makhubela to become a geologist, the 35-year-old told AFP in an interview. Recipient of one of the prestigious National Geographic 2025 Wayfinder Awards, Makhubela leads a research team working to uncover ancient clues to human evolution. His turf lies below the surface of the Earth in the limestone caves of South Africa's Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 50 kilometres (30 miles) northwest of Johannesburg. Speaking from inside The Rising Star cave, one of the numerous caves in the area, Makhubela said he and his colleagues have only "scratched the surface" of the site, which dates back five million years. In an unassuming savannah field, hidden under a rocky patch of grass, the cave is where scientists in 2013 discovered Homo naledi, an ancient human relative that lived about 300,000 years ago. "With this cave we've only studied 30 percent... To do the remaining 70 percent, we need, I would say, 20 years minimum," said Makhubela, wearing a dark green overall and a helmet fixed with a torchlight. And with many other caves to study, Makhubela's research isn't close to an end. "I will actually retire before we finish. Hence, I need to train a lot of students to, of course, take over from me." Chasing dreams Makhubela, who lectures at the University of Johannesburg and supervises four PhD students, hopes more young scientists will join him on his mission -- one he believes is crucial to understanding the history of humankind and its environment. "Geology helps us understand Earth, our planet, how it works, how it was formed, its composition and its processes," he said, sitting on a rock next to his yellow backpack filled with notebooks, pens, measuring instruments and water. His own speciality is geochemistry and geochronology, or more simply, determining the age of fossils and environmental changes over time. One hurdle, he said, is that geology is not well known and some young people would rather "chase what is popular". "Right now we're living in the age of artificial intelligence. (But) you don't have to run and go study computer science or IT because you want to be relevant to the times," said the geologist. "If you're more passionate about natural science, go for it. Because if you do it well, there will be a place for you." First at university Born and raised in Soweto, the sprawling township once home to Nelson Mandela, Makhubela was the first in his family to go to university. His mother never went to school and worked as a street vendor while his father moved away when he was 10, he said. As a bright young student, he was pressured to study engineering and work in South Africa's lucrative gold mining industry. But he decided on another path.

Denis Villeneuve to direct the next 'James Bond' movie
Denis Villeneuve to direct the next 'James Bond' movie

TimesLIVE

time01-07-2025

  • TimesLIVE

Denis Villeneuve to direct the next 'James Bond' movie

Oscar-nominated Denis Villeneuve will direct the next James Bond film, according to Amazon's MGM Studios, taking charge of one of Hollywood's most enigmatic spies and longest-running movie series. Villeneuve, a Canadian film director and writer, has earned critical acclaim for films such as Sicario, Dune, Dune: Part Two, Blade Runner 2049 and Arrival. He was nominated for Best Director at the 2017 Oscars for sci-fi film Arrival, which starred Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner, and for Best Adapted Screenplay for Dune based on author Frank Herbert's highly acclaimed 1965 novel of the same name, at the 2022 Oscars. "I'm a die-hard Bond fan. To me, he's sacred territory. I intend to the tradition and open the path for many new missions to come. This is a huge responsibility," Villeneuve said. The upcoming Bond movie will be the first under Amazon's MGM Studios, which took creative control of the film franchise under a new joint venture with longtime rights holders Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli earlier this year. The franchise is yet to name a new lead actor after Daniel Craig's departure after No Time to Die in 2021, which earned nearly $800m (R14.09bn) in global box office collections. Inspired by Ian Fleming's novels, the Bond franchise has spanned more than 60 years, grossing more than $7bn (R123.33bn) at the global box office, making it one of the most successful ever. Producers Amy Pascal and David Heyman will produce the next Bond movie.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store