Countries which could have much bigger populations

[Otto Kretschmer]

Which ones do you think are underpopulated?

In my opinion -US and Brazil. Both could have 1 bln+ people.

Also Ukraine could easily have as much as 100 mln people.

[lordroel]

Sept 26, 2023 15:11:31 GMT Otto Kretschmer said:

Which ones do you think are underpopulated?

Question, how are these countries going to feed 1 Billion people each.

Would like to hear a answer from you.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Sept 26, 2023 16:25:07 GMT lordroel said:

Sept 26, 2023 15:11:31 GMT Otto Kretschmer said:

Which ones do you think are underpopulated?

Question, how are these countries going to feed 1 Billion people each.

Would like to hear a answer from you.

Both have very large areas of forests which could be ccleared for agriculture.

[lordroel]

Sept 26, 2023 17:48:09 GMT Otto Kretschmer said:

Both have very large areas of forests which could be ccleared for agriculture.[/quote]

And with that destroy the planet, especially if you do that in Brazil, home of the Amazon.

From a Reddit post:

USA currently has 5% of world population and accounts for 30% of resources consumed, many of them being non-renewables. When the population more than quadraples the share of resources consumed will be 30% * 4 = 120% ! The whole of planet won't be sufficient for USA alone!

[stevep]

Sept 26, 2023 18:06:42 GMT lordroel said:

Sept 26, 2023 17:48:09 GMT Otto Kretschmer said:

Both have very large areas of forests which could be ccleared for agriculture.

And with that destroy the planet, especially if you do that in Brazil, home of the Amazon.

From a Reddit post:

USA currently has 5% of world population and accounts for 30% of resources consumed, many of them being non-renewables. When the population more than quadraples the share of resources consumed will be 30% * 4 = 120% ! The whole of planet won't be sufficient for USA alone!

[/quote][/div]

  Small quibble as the US population, at least according to wiki is "over 333 million" so its more like a tripling but that would still be far too much as it would mean ~90% of world resources going to the US alone.  [Remembering also that I suspect this resource consumption probably excludes indirect consumption via imports of goods made elsewhere].

  Furthermore the US was once very heavily forested but the vast majority of this has already been cleared, largely in the regions east of the Mississippi.

  With Brazil also rain forest soils are notoriously poor.  The bulk of the nutrients are held in the plant cover and once the relatively thin soil is exposed to sunlight it will quickly erode away.  You can delay the problem for a bit if you can burn much of the forest cover as the resultant ashes give a brief period of considerable fertility.  That's why slash and burn methods in such territory works for small migrant tribes moving from area to area and leaving the vast bulk of the forest untouched to close up the wounds but it doesn't work for large scale clearance.  Which is doubly stupid when done for something as inefficient as cattle ranching.

  Ukraine could possibly support ~100M people, although it would have a much smaller [peacetime] grain surplus.  It might have reached something like those figures even without migration in from Russia if it had avoided the Russian civil war, the deliberate famine under Stalin and then the horrors of the Nazi conquest and the bitter fighting over the region.

[Max Sinister]

If North America had seen bigger European settlement earlier in history, its population might be somewhat higher, esp. Canada's.

[stevep]

Sept 27, 2023 19:41:59 GMT Max Sinister said:

If North America had seen bigger European settlement earlier in history, its population might be somewhat higher, esp. Canada's.

  Possibly but, unless you assume different development or higher tech then the climate, plus the more attractive economic position of the US to the south makes it difficult to get mass settlement in Canada and have them stay there.  Even if you have global warming get very bad you still have the problems of the higher latitudes having shorter and weaker daylight for both crops and simple human and economic efficiency.

[TheRomanSlayer]

A surviving Russia that never experienced the Bolshevik Revolution could have easily maintained a large population, as well as a China that avoids the worst of the Wuchang Uprising and the Chinese Civil Wars that led to the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Communist revolution that resulted in the PRC being a thing.

A Mexico that turns out different from a Cristero victory in their uprising could have also become bigger in population size, if it opens its doors to refugees from a Spain where the Nationalists lost the Spanish Civil War, although Peru or even Chile may also be suitable homes for exiled Spanish reactionaries.