INTENSITY²
Politics, Mature and taboo => Political Pundits => Topic started by: El on May 15, 2018, 05:17:13 AM
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I did an event with environmental journalist (and personal hero) Elizabeth Kolbert in September 2017, in which we discussed various matters related to journalism and climate change. Subsequently, one of the attendees wrote and asked why I hadn’t talked about population. Isn’t overpopulation the real root of our environmental ills?
Anyone who’s ever given a talk on an environmental subject knows that the population question is a near-inevitability (second only to the nuclear question). I used to get asked about it constantly when I wrote for Grist — less now, but still fairly regularly.
I thought I would explain, once and for all, why I hardly ever talk about population, and why I’m unlikely to in the future.
world population
(Worldometers)
Math confirms that population is indeed a factor in environmental impact
Human impact on the natural environment is summed up in a simple formula:
Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology
All are rising. (Bill Gates has a slightly more complicated formula related to carbon dioxide, but P is a variable in his too.)
The current global population has crossed 7.5 billion and is heading upward. The latest UN projections have it hitting 8.6 billion by 2030, 9.8 billion by 2050, and 11.2 billion by 2100. Average fertility rate will decrease, but that effect will be overwhelmed by the absolute numbers. (There are many arguments out there that UN is overestimating population growth, but let’s stick with their numbers for this post.)
The UN expects over half the growth out to 2100 to be concentrated in just nine countries, listed here in order of their expected contribution:
India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, the United Republic of Tanzania, the United States of America, Uganda, and Indonesia.
Most of those people will be fairly poor (by Western standards, though hopefully less so than their forbearers), which means their per-capita consumption of resources will be fairly low. Nonetheless, cumulatively, adding 2.3 billion people by 2050 amounts to enormous additional resource use and pollution (including greenhouse gases).
Mitigating some substantial percentage of that population growth would be one way to better environmental conditions in 2050. It would also have more impact than virtually any other climate policy. (More on that later.)
However. That human numbers are, axiomatically, part of the story of human impact does not mean that human numbers have to take center stage. Talking about population growth is morally and politically fraught, but the best ways of tackling it (like, say, educating girls) don’t necessitate talking about it at all.
Tackling population growth can be done without the enormous, unnecessary risks involved in talking about population growth.
Population’s unsavory associations
When political movements or leaders adopt population control as a central concern ... let’s just say it never goes well. In practice, where you find concern over “population,” you very often find racism, xenophobia, or eugenics lurking in the wings. It’s almost always, ahem, particular populations that need reducing.
Eugenical Sterilization Map of the United States, 1935; from The Harry H. Laughlin Papers, Truman State University
Eugenical Sterilization Map of the US, 1935 (PBS)
History is replete with examples, but perhaps the most germane recent episode was less than 20 years ago, at the Sierra Club, which was riven by divisions over immigration. A group of grassroots members, with some help from powerful funders, attempted to take over the national organization.
These members advocated sharply restricting immigration, saying the US should be reducing rather than increasing its population. Their contention is that the country’s open immigration policies are hurting the environment by bringing in poor immigrants and making them richer, thus increasing their environmental impact. Of course, they swore up and down that xenophobia had nothing to do with it.
The Sierra Club won that fight, and the “green anti-immigrant” movement has mostly been driven to the fringes, but conservative media is still getting ratings out of it. If you can stomach it, watch this entire segment with Tucker Carlson of Fox News — it hits all the usual notes, culminating in an interview with some professor who wrote a book about reducing immigration for environmental reasons.
I don’t doubt that it’s possible to be concerned about the environmental stresses population brings without any racism or xenophobia — I’ve met many people who fit that description, and there were well-meaning (if quite mistaken) population-focused groups in the ’70s and ’80s — but in terms of public discussion and advocacy, anyone explicitly expressing that concern starts out behind the eight ball. The mere mention of “population” raises all sorts of ugly historical associations.
Public health groups have largely cottoned to this. Even the ones that have “population” in the name focus on family planning rather than population as such. They’ve figured out something important — something not all greens have figured out — which is that the best ways to address population don’t necessarily involve talking about it at all.
So what are those ways?
There are two ways of looking at the problem of growing population on a finite planet. Depending on which you think is most important, there are different ways to address it, none of which require discussing population.
Female empowerment is the most effective carbon mitigation strategy
The first way to look at population is as a pure numbers game. More people means more consumers and more emitters, so the thing to do is slow the rise of population. Specifically, since most of the new people are going to come from poor or developing countries, the question is specifically how to slow population growth there.
Luckily, we know the answer. It is family planning that enables women to have only children they want and choose, and education of girls, giving them access to income opportunities outside the home. We know that women, given the resources and the choice, will opt for smaller families.
Those are the two most powerful levers to bend the population curve. They are also, in and of themselves, an enormously powerful climate policy. When Paul Hawken and his team investigated and ranked carbon-reduction solutions for their Drawdown project, they found that the combination of the two (call it the female-empowerment package) carried the most potential to reduce greenhouse gases later this century, out of any solution. (Together they could prevent 120 gigatons of GHGs by 2050 — more than on- and offshore wind combined.)
family planning
Family planning: fewer, better cared for. (Drawdown)
So if you are concerned about the growth in population, make yourself a champion of female empowerment in the developing world. You will be contributing to the most effective solution to the problem without any of the moral baggage.
And next time you’re at an environmental event, maybe instead of asking the population question, ask the female empowerment question. Why aren’t climate hawks talking about it more? They should be!
Some population units consume and emit more than others
If your concern is the creation of new consumers and emitters, your gaze should be drawn to those who will consume and emit the most, i.e., the wealthy.
unequal emissions
(Oxfam)
One way to prevent the creation of new high-consumers would be to persuade the wealthy to have fewer babies and to close off the borders of wealthy countries, preventing low-consumers from immigrating and becoming high-consumers. You could try, in short, to engineer population decline in wealthy countries.
That seems ... fraught.
For one thing, fertility tends to decline with wealth anyway. For another, any targeted attempt to engineer population decline is going to run into an unholy thicket of moral and political resistance.
Another way to approach the problem would be, rather than prevent the birth of extremely wealthy people, prevent the creation of extremely wealthy people. In other words, prevent the accumulation of massive wealth. You could do that by, for instance, taxing the shit out of wealthy people.
If you approached the problem that way, under the banner of reducing global income inequality, you would find many allies. Income inequality is a top-line concern of people and organizations all over the world, even some conservatives these days.
Reducing high-end consumption could have an enormous short-term impact on carbon emissions, as climate scientist Kevin Anderson is always saying. Shifting wealth within populations — reducing the number of very wealthy and the number in poverty — can have as much carbon impact as reducing overall population.
So maybe, at the next environmental event, you could ask the income inequality question rather than the population question.
There’s much downside and not much upside to talking about population
So that, for the record, is why I hardly ever talk or write about population. (I will now send all future askers of the population question to this post.) It is high risk — very, very easy to step on moral landmines in that territory — with little reward.
And where talk of population control is rarely popular (for good reason), female empowerment and greater equality are a) goals shared by powerful preexisting coalitions, b) replete with ancillary benefits beyond the environmental, and c) unquestionably righteous.
So why focus on the former when the latter gets you all the same advantages with none of the blowback? That’s how I figure it anyway.
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Don't wanna read all those words (pole dancing again?), but the title of the thread is important.
Watever fucking of the environment we're doing is pretty much overpopulation.
It's time to start culling.
http://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=iDtVXJ-ex7s (http://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=iDtVXJ-ex7s)
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I agree, go kill yourself. Otherwise my babies are coming to eat you.
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Don't wanna read all those words (pole dancing again?), but the title of the thread is important.
Watever fucking of the environment we're doing is pretty much overpopulation.
It's time to start culling.
http://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=iDtVXJ-ex7s (http://www.youtube.com/edit?o=U&video_id=iDtVXJ-ex7s)
A fraction of the population could still do the same amount of damage. There's plenty of space and resources to support the population, and the majority of environmental harm comes from industrial waste.
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Educate girls and give them choices and opportunities. The only thing that works in controlling population apart from war and genocide and stuff.
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A fraction of the population could still do the same amount of damage. There's plenty of space and resources to support the population, and the majority of environmental harm comes from industrial waste.
I also don't agree. Overfishing, land use, preference for food species causing
an extinction event: it's all environmental harm on a massive scale.
Remember, pre-industrial human activity destroyed much of the med region and the Near East.
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A fraction of the population could still do the same amount of damage. There's plenty of space and resources to support the population, and the majority of environmental harm comes from industrial waste.
I also don't agree. Overfishing, land use, preference for food species causing
an extinction event: it's all environmental harm on a massive scale.
Pretty sure have read before, over two thirds of environmental damage stems from energy production alone. That's not to say the average person shouldn't do their part in being ecologically aware, but the general public have been duped into believing consumers are the problem, and that attitude distracts from the reality and avoids changes in production.
Remember, pre-industrial human activity destroyed much of the med region and the Near East.
Not sure if you're trying to prove my point about a fraction of the population, since the world population is ten time greater now than it was in 1700.
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Remember, pre-industrial human activity destroyed much of the med region and the Near East.
Sources?
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What is the "med region"?
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What is the "med region"?
Mediterranean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Bronze_Age_collapse
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Remember, pre-industrial human activity destroyed much of the med region and the Near East.
Sources?
Meh. You know me better than that. My knowledge is usually from crap I don't have access to.
But, here's an extreme take on it (which I don't agree with the title of - the Sahara is quite old): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4315796/How-humans-created-Sahara-desert-8-000-years-ago.html
If you don't know about the expansion of the Sahara and the deforestation of the Near East, I'm not being paid
to teach you. It's pretty much the establishment view of the evidence.
Turns out that there are some arguments against though: https://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/how-earths-orbital-shift-shaped-the-sahara/
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I believe the number touted most often is ninety per cent.
Earth is over populated by ninety per cent, some say.
I think that is a bit strong. I believe that with the "wisdom" we have established assuming due diligence from all, the earth could easily ignore a human population of thirty per cent of its current load.
Still means that about five billion people will have to cease to exist.
:GA:
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I don't buy it. The current mass extinction event predated industrialization and the intense population that it sustains.
Somewhere around 500 million - while still capable of massive environmental damage (we're looking at {probably way}
less than 200 million during the destruction to the med region) - anywhere above this is when the damage really
started to accelerate. That gets us to pre-industrial numbers. If we can maintain a technological society with that
footprint, I would have high hopes for humanity.
And, it's not like we'd need to do a mass kill off. There's a tipping point (and we may be over it) where Methane stores will render
global warming likely to finish off this iteration of society, but if we could do the politically untenable things like cutting emissions,
reducing industrial meat production, ect, in conjunction with mass sterilization, the overall cost would be lower. But, humanity's
responses aren't designed for such foresight. The species would need to undergo a massive transformation - which is probably
impossible without calamitous (for us) natural goads. Evolutionary 'advancement' is a craps game.
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The current mass extinction event predated industrialization and the intense population that it sustains.
What are you talking about?
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There isn't really any need for mass killing or forced sterilisation.
Look at the EU. The average fertility rate is 1.6 and that is with governments still encouraging people to have more babies. And with large numbers of new immigrants who are having far more children than the indigenous populations.
In most developed countries 2 children is already considered "more than enough". Factor in that some people will opt out of having children altogether, or be unable to have children, or too dysfunctional to find someone to have children with, or stop at one.... your overall fertility rate drops to something like 1.5. Less than that in Japan. 1.24 in South Korea or Singapore. It can be done.
Population growth is largely a function of poverty and lack of opportunity.
Reduce the population by 20% every generation and within a century or thereabouts your population is current-population * 0.8^4 = about 40% of your current population.
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The current mass extinction event predated industrialization and the intense population that it sustains.
What are you talking about?
Meaning that pre-industrial humans wiped out most of the world's megafauna, and the animals that preyed on that megafauna. In Australia that would include giant terrestrial lizards, marsupial lions, rhinoceros-sized wombats, and so on. Similar in Europe and North America.
Post-industrialisation, of course, we are wiping out species on an industrial scale.
(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTQpUuCe0P4avacqaRS7dvXIQ1ET0ov1zvjVBW8lwDr8H4Wqi1B)
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/63/28/c3/6328c3a0340827c8aa9ff1aa36b3e117.jpg)
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Meant specifically what he said; what is the current mass extinction event? Looked it up myself. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction Words either have meaning or they don't. Mass extinctions are defined as global widespread and rapid declines in life greater than 75%. This wiki article says the 'current' extinction event has been occurring since the end of the first ice age. The article seems very one sided, except for the part where it at least mentions every single point is debated, and at least mentions some scientist have the same issue as I do with an extinction event taking so long to happen. Personally have always agreed with the main assertion of the article, humans have always been an invasive and destructive force against the planet. This article basically blames humans for every life form lost from the time migration began out of Africa; and I'm okay with that. It makes me think of a past conversation with zeg, when I asserted humans are so destructive it's easy to believe we aren't a natural evolutionary occurrence to the planet, but rather a foreign body, and he and I seemed to conclude the conversation with the only purpose humans serve to anything in nature is to a couple of parasites which only feed on humans. Though the solution to all of that is not minimizing the population, but instead the acceptance than humans simply don't belong here. The reality is, humans probably aren't going away any time soon and daydreaming or speculating about everyone dying isn't productive towards real change.
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It's a mass extinction occurring over a period of time, with humans as the primary cause. There may not be direct evidence that humans caused the vast majority of the extinctions.... but there's plenty of circumstantial evidence.
Do you call it a mass extinction event or something else? I don't care, that's semantics.
Even if we are a natural occurrence.... asteroids are a natural occurrence too.... as are supervolcanoes. We are probably the least "natural" out of all of the causes for previous mass extinctions.
Direct action to reduce population probably won't work. Improving quality of life in general will work, and has been shown to work in the past. Taking steps to reduce our impact on the environment might give us the time we need to reduce the population to a sustainable level. We don't really know how long we have until the damage caused by climate change really starts to bite and we start seeing large parts of the planet become unlivable. It might be 50 years or it might be 250 years, and how reckless we are now in how we reduce our impact might play a big role in terms of how long our species gets to hang around.
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First thing that needs to stop is the building of houses on credit from farming human babies. Raise interest rates and evict the fuckers from their own country for life.
The planet will heal itself, life will start again but as long as we are consuming our own kind, there will be no peace.
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Remember, pre-industrial human activity destroyed much of the med region and the Near East.
Sources?
Meh. You know me better than that. My knowledge is usually from crap I don't have access to.
But, here's an extreme take on it (which I don't agree with the title of - the Sahara is quite old): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4315796/How-humans-created-Sahara-desert-8-000-years-ago.html
If you don't know about the expansion of the Sahara and the deforestation of the Near East, I'm not being paid
to teach you. It's pretty much the establishment view of the evidence.
Turns out that there are some arguments against though: https://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/how-earths-orbital-shift-shaped-the-sahara/
I do remember having read about this but thought that the humans creating it theory was just a theory, and not a particularly well-supported one either. Can't be bothered to look into it, though.
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It's a mass extinction occurring over a period of time, with humans as the primary cause. There may not be direct evidence that humans caused the vast majority of the extinctions.... but there's plenty of circumstantial evidence.
Do you call it a mass extinction event or something else? I don't care, that's semantics.
Even if we are a natural occurrence.... asteroids are a natural occurrence too.... as are supervolcanoes. We are probably the least "natural" out of all of the causes for previous mass extinctions.
Direct action to reduce population probably won't work. Improving quality of life in general will work, and has been shown to work in the past. Taking steps to reduce our impact on the environment might give us the time we need to reduce the population to a sustainable level. We don't really know how long we have until the damage caused by climate change really starts to bite and we start seeing large parts of the planet become unlivable. It might be 50 years or it might be 250 years, and how reckless we are now in how we reduce our impact might play a big role in terms of how long our species gets to hang around.
It's annoying when people say something is semantics because like said, words either have meaning or they don't. When people assign their own meaning to words then it makes words meaningless, so I do care. There is no current mass extinction event, and the entire history of humans is not a mass extinction event. It's a theory, and a theory which doesn't fit the definition of the words. Improving quality of life is not what will work. Industrial advancements greatly improve quality of life, and also cause the majority of environmental problems faced today. It's only the laws which govern our industries, preventing them from overusing and poisoning the air, waterways, land and ground water, which will work. Environmental protection laws are still very new within the scope of large scale industry and there simply aren't enough of them, so today's generation not only faces current deficiencies in controlling industrial production, but also the effects of about 250 years of unregulated activity. Population rates are not the problem.
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I do remember having read about this but thought that the humans creating it theory was just a theory, and not a particularly well-supported one either. Can't be bothered to look into it, though.
Yep. Me either.
It was more accepted previously, it seems.
But, like all science bs, it swings back and forth.
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The point is that you don’t need policies designed to reduce population growth. In fact that is the last thing you need.
You need policies designed to improve quality of life in several important ways. Improve medical care, bring down the infant mortality rate, improve education for girls and create a diverse range of opportunities for young women (this is one of the reasons feminism is such a force for good in the world – sorry, I just had to throw that one in for the broflakes).
All this is great in theory of course, it could never work in practice. So how about you try googling a few of the following:
South Korea fertility rate
Singapore fertility rate
Germany fertility rate
Italy fertility rate
Thailand fertility rate
India fertility rate
Philippines fertility rate
These are all countries where the above steps have been happening over the past couple of generations and you can see the results for yourself on the graphs returned by Google.
In Germany you can see an uptick in the fertility rate. You can put that down to a temporary effect of mass immigration. It will tick back downwards when those immigrants are more integrated.
Then you can google fertility rate in some countries where the steps I outlined above have not been occurring. Nigeria would be a good place to start.
And so maybe we need to look at exactly how the governments of these countries have achieved this… but if you do that you will see that in most cases governments have been actively trying to reverse the drop in fertility rates, through tax incentives and maternity/paternity leave and even government-backed matchmaking programs such as in Singapore.
How dramatic has the fall in fertility rate been in just a couple of generations? South Korea is a particularly stark example. In 1960 the fertility rate was above 6. In 2017 the fertility rate in South Korea was 1.05!!!! The fertility rate required for a population to remain approximately the same is 2.1. If the whole world had the same fertility rate as South Korea the population would drop to 1/16 of its current level in 4 generations (although of course there would be significantly lag caused by an ageing population, as there is in Japan now).
I am in favour of reducing the population. I am dead against authoritarian policies to reduce the population (such as the one-child-policy in China). I think the data I have pointed you towards shows that you can reduce population while actively trying to not reduce the population if you follow the path of development in the countries I have highlighted.
I’m not much of a one for the “I’m right and you’re wrong” type of argument. I can’t make you think, I can’t force anyone to be more cleverer. I’m just dropping a few seeds of thought here.
The link between economic development (and associated improvements in quality of life such as I have previously mentioned) and fertility rate has been known and documented for quite some time. The surprising thing is that the fall in fertility rate in Asian countries has been far more dramatic than the standard models predict.
So we are stuck with a couple of schools of thought here. One is that human extinction is a worthwhile goal. The other is that sustainability is a worthwhile goal. Within the sustainability school of thought you’ve got “we’ve got to reduce the population” on one hand and “we need to focus on reducing our impact on the environment”. I think we’ve got to do both. The good news is, as I have shown, that we can reduce population without even directly trying. So the focus needs to be on economic development with a particular focus on sustainability.
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It was more accepted previously, it seems.
But, like all science bs, it swings back and forth.
It's still broadly accepted dude!
I have typed up one wall of text already today, I won't overload the bandwidth with another just yet. Maybe I'll get back to it in a few days and provide some facts and sh#t.
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The point is that you don’t need policies designed to reduce population growth. In fact that is the last thing you need.
You need policies designed to improve quality of life in several important ways.
Oh yes. Quality of life is so much higher when we pack people in like sardines.
But, the question isn't about the quality of human life, but the effect on the environment.
You're answering a different question. Still incorrectly, but different.
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The point is that you don’t need policies designed to reduce population growth. In fact that is the last thing you need.
You need policies designed to improve quality of life in several important ways.
Oh yes. Quality of life is so much higher when we pack people in like sardines.
But, the question isn't about the quality of human life, but the effect on the environment.
You're answering a different question. Still incorrectly, but different.
You didn't read my wall of text, did you?
Understandable.
You've taken the opposite meaning to what I intended. :)
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You didn't read my wall of text, did you?
Understandable.
You've taken the opposite meaning to what I intended. :)
lol - of course not. :autism:
It's not MY problem if you write too much.
But...why would you lead with something you didn't mean? The only good excuse
is satire, and I don't see that.
In the end, I do agree with you that (paraphrasing here) we gotta do both human extinction and sustainability though.
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You didn't read my wall of text, did you?
Understandable.
You've taken the opposite meaning to what I intended. :)
lol - of course not. :autism:
It's not MY problem if you write too much.
But...why would you lead with something you didn't mean? The only good excuse
is satire, and I don't see that.
In the end, I do agree with you that (paraphrasing here) we gotta do both human extinction and sustainability though.
:)
It's something I'm really, really interested in and I had no idea how many words I had typed until I hit "Post".
Then I thought "nobody's gonna ready that". And I was correct.
I'm gonna have to work hard to limit the words on the extinctions one.
Basically the TLDR version is that birth rate roughly tracks downward according to certain development milestones such as education for girls, employment opportunity for girls, lowering the infant mortality rate, etc.
There are no countries that could remotely be considered "First World" where the fertility rate is sufficient to even maintain their current population (that being 2.1). Fertility rate being the number of children that an average woman produces in her lifetime.
One example I gave was South Korea. Fertility rate in 1960 was 6+. Currently sitting at 1.05 - or about half the rate required to even maintain the population at its current level.
So yeah, development and improvement in quality of life, particularly for women, is by far the most effective population control measure yet devised.
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It's not enough though. Not on its own.
There has to be a technological breakthrough to greatly reduce the footprint per-capita.
Honestly though, I suspect we need a larger technological advancement than that anyhow -
because I'm convinced we're over the tipping point, with methane releases having begun.
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about five billion people will have to cease to exist.
they will eventually
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without replacement.
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It's not enough though. Not on its own.
There has to be a technological breakthrough to greatly reduce the footprint per-capita.
Honestly though, I suspect we need a larger technological advancement than that anyhow -
because I'm convinced we're over the tipping point, with methane releases having begun.
I am very much inclined to agree with you.
But we can talk all we like about how we need to reduce the global human population by something like 90%. And it won't change a thing. We can talk all we like about reducing the carbon footprint of each person currently on the planet, but even if we reduce each person's carbon footprint by 50% it won't be enough if the population continues to grow. And very few countries are serious enough about tackling climate change to reduce carbon footprints by any appreciable margin anyway - and the big carbon emitters seem to be doing all they can to make more CO2.
So what can we do? Green technology and taking the steps that have been repeatedly shown to be effective at reducing fertility rates (and eventually population once the lag caused by an ageing population is taken into account) - and hope that the world's ability to support us (and other life forms) before that can have any effect.
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So what can we do? Green technology and taking the steps that have been repeatedly shown to be effective at reducing fertility rates (and eventually population once the lag caused by an ageing population is taken into account) - and hope that the world's ability to support us (and other life forms) before that can have any effect.
Genetically engineered disease? Unleash the might of our nuclear arsenal?
Don't be such a pessimist. There are proactive steps a willful actor can take.
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Genetically engineered disease?
You guys already tried that with Ebola and AIDS. How far did that get you?
Yes I'm taking the piss, before anyone gets their back up!
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Practice.