fossilesque
Science Memesi wonder if Fred Hampton would've said this.
total emissions = emissions per capita * capita
Unless we figure out carbon neutrality without cratering HDI in the next year or two maybe lets work on reducing birth rates. 'we could have 20 billion people if we all live like subsistence farmers' is fucking stupid.
Wow, that's a detailled analysis of an issue, if I've ever seen one.
We are producing enough food (and clothes, and appliances, etc., etc.) for 10 billion people, and the planet is burning. It is not sustainable long term. And, by "long term", I don't mean "the next 20 years", I mean "the next 100-200 years".
And the "manufactured crisis" of population decline hits really hard if you're 12 and have no clue how the retirement system works.
They arrive at the right conclusion (capitalism is currently the cause of all suffering), but through completely stupid reasoning.
We are producing enough food (and clothes, and appliances, etc., etc.) for 10 billion people, and the planet is burning. It is not sustainable long term.
That's not necessarily true. How much of our overall greenhouse emissions come from which sector?
From this chart, decarbonizing electricity and transport will go a long, long way, and decarbonizing manufacturing and construction could also give some room to reduce overall emissions by more than the entire agricultural sector produces.
And it's not just some kind of pipe dream. We're doing real work at decarbonizing electricity, heat, transport, shipping, construction, etc., as the prices of low or zero emissions options start to outcompete the higher emission options for many applications.
Plus if the data center boom crashes as a bubble, a lot of the infrastructure investment into increasing energy production and distribution with both high carbon and low carbon sources will at least have financed a lot of low carbon energy and the potential for curtailing the least carbon efficient generation methods.
Too narrow a view. You're looking at it purely through the climate change lens.
Our farming activities have other issues as well though, which won't go away no matter how successful decarbonization is going to be.
Eutrophication of soil and bodies of water through intensive use of fertilizer and the loss of biodiversity which comes with that, as well as with widespread pesticide use and the loss of small scale structures across agricultural land is one huge example. Top-soil erosion is another one.
It's wild how ideas like this continue to exist despite being so contrary to evidence and reason, just because it shifts blame away from systemic issues and the ruling class.
No, its because people don't trust what they are told. Hard to blame them I think. There are so many lies every day that of course people are not going to trust anything in the end.
Even if it is feasible, I still encounter twice as many people as I want to on a daily basis. I want to live on Solaria, from Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun.
fuck these climate change deniers
Our rapidly depleting aquifers being used to produce those resources would suggest there are too many people.
this is one of the issues where I hate constantly seeing supposedly materialist minded leftists overshoot on correcting away from the eco fascists
It's like, eco fascists think the world can only support 10 million people so they gotta kill everyone who isn't white
then there's people on the left who seem to think a physical carrying capacity isn't real and that the Earth can be a hive world of 100 billion without repercussion
While also wanting more ecologically sustainable and less industrially driven agriculture
There are physical limits on like, how much water is available and how much nitrogen you can actually get into the system and every single human alive is going to have needs that are going to require resources from somewhere to meet and I really shouldn't have to explain to people something as simple as "population goes up, more resources get consumed, that is a fact"
And before anybody tells me some shit about bourgeois mismanagement of resources, shut the fuck up before i block you, I know. That doesn't change the inherent reality of there being an actual real finite number of human beings this planet can support period, much less comfortably. Kill all the bourgeoisie and redistribute everything equitably and you've raised the capacity for a comfortable life for a huge number of people, but you haven't changed the fact that if that number increases indefinitely, so too will the requirements to sustain it, and at some point something is going to break unless populations decline on their own (except what's going to happen is climate change- being effectively a reduction in carrying capacity due to numerous factors- is going to make that happen)
This post is an embarrassment to critical thinking.
yikes dude, your critical thinking skills seems to be lacking more...
either that or you somehow took the entirety of packing ppl on 5% of the globe as a centralized single point lol.
right? i sounds great until you realize oh shit… logistics exist… all those perishable goods don’t just magically appear on people’s plates… 2.3billion people’s worth of food waste for 7.7bn people is honestly bloody miraculous tbh… can we do more to reduce food waste in our rich nations? sure… would that help feed people in areas of famine? unlikely
did you know that when there’s an overproduction of food, rather than selling it, it just gets thrown away?
for example, if dairy farmers make more than their quotas allow, they are expected to simply throw their milk down the drain. thousands of liters of perfectly fine milk, completely wasted. and this sort of waste is not exclusive to dairy farms either
under capitalism, so much of food waste is entirely preventable, if not deliberately caused! just by ending this practice, ending the intercontinental shipping of perishable food (which means that, yes, you in europe, north america or australia would have to give up bananas, so sad) and turning supermarkets into food banks rather than stores (so no pretty displays of food outside fridges), i bet that we could save tons of food from getting wasted
But think of the prices! Imagine if supply weren't artificially detached from demand, thus driving down commodities prices and CRASHING THE ECONOMY!?!?! And by economy I obviously mean my own profit margin.
I agree, it's really hard to remember how to use things like cans and preservatives when it comes to shipping food to areas of famine.
Hard /s
World population in 2024 was 8.1 billion.
Doesn't really matter but people please make sure your numbers are right before you use them. easily avoidable way to lose your credibility.
Edit: Oh wait it's a double quote without date attribution. Assuming that original source did some basic numbers checking, that puts it at around 2018.
A clear example was shown when USAID goods to help starving kids in the Middle East were burn. Or the supermarkets destroying food that is "not marketable".
Haven't you read the top comments on this thread? It's impossible to feed people our excess and continue paying for things like USAID because of overpopulation.... Apparently.
The "let them starve" eugenics propaganda is strong in the pseudo-science community.
Okay but what if and hear me out on this we change nothing and just use this as justification to keep doing that and victimizing the most vulnerable
Yeah, the world doesn't run on "if everybody just did x" as much as we'd like it to. People don't do what they need to do in order for resources to be fairly distributed, and people don't do what they need to do to change that. What we can do only matters when we're already organized enough to do it. For now it's just a reminder that all isn't quite lost, but people seem to use it as an indicator that all is well instead.
I think its gonna be pretty easy to convince people to change absolutely nothing but the number of victims I believe in myself
That's what the top comments on this thread say, seems to be the most agreed upon take unforunately.
This is a much less cool post when you realize that the Earth can only sustainably support 10 billion people if we never fly, give up a lot of our modern tech, and have rice make up 50% of our diet. Basically any meat is completely off the table, as with personal cars, and probably standalone houses. If I'm given the choice between not having kids and not flying to see my family for holidays, I'll take the no-kids option.
May ask, which circumstances in your life have lead you to the point where you need to fly to be able to see your family?
Your thesis doesn't match up with this chart:
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
We're working to decarbonize the highest categories on that list, with rapid adoption of solar/wind, some potential for more nuclear and geothermal in the medium term, and maybe even fusion in the long term.
Then, while decarbonizing electricity, we're electrifying heating for homes, water, cooking, and we're electrifying transportation.
US carbon emissions per capita peaked in the 70's, and peaked as a whole in the 2000's. US carbon emissions per capita still greatly exceed those of other rich nations.
It's very much possible to have modern first world living standards, even with significant reductions in our resource use and net emissions. We just need to line up the incentives (aka pricing) with what is good for the Earth. And we're already doing that in many of the heaviest polluting sectors.
So let's build lots of highspeed rail? We went to the moon on less compute than your cell phone and modern tech could be way more sustainable if we properly optimized. Rice is fantastic and works for a significant chunk of the current population just fine. Meat? Just gotta grow that protein in other more sustainable/efficient ways. Cars are useless in a dense urban environments and make everything worse. Fuck cars. Standalone houses are a giant waste of space and when you design your neighborhoods around this idea, everything is too spread out to actually have proper density and utility.
This is a very cool post that does point out that all of these things are in such excess. You should give StrongTowns and NotJustBikes a watch on youtube for much more on the topic of urban design.
So basically it's perfectly fine? But for some reason you made it sound horrible?
"I don't see what's the problem with everyone living like a desperate Indian untouchable!"
These takes are why socialism is a dirty word, all because you can't just admit there needs to be some form of democratically agreed on population control and it doesn't have to be fascist by design.
You're not being oppressed by having to use the train.
Aviation is about 2.5% of global emissions.
In the long run then yes, we need carbon neutral fuels, but it should be possible for people to fly a little and not destroy the planet.
Source: my ass
Or you could just take a train
Overpopulation is not a myth. 36% of the earth's mammalian biomass is Humans, only 5% is wild mammals. 71% of avian life is livestock. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
Half of all "habitable land" (which includes everything except deserts, tundra, salt flats, beaches, or exposed rock) is used for agriculture. Half of all land, for agriculture. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/12/agriculture-habitable-land/
Industrial farming is not sustainable at the current rate and relies on either mined or petrochemical derived ammonia which supplies the nitrogen necessary for protein. Synthetic Ammonia alone feeds half the world population and requires an additional 2% of the world's power to produce.
The global ecoystem is in rapid decline.
I gave up finding appropriate sources halfway when I realized this post will just get removed eventually.
It's not the growth of ethanol (maize) and animal feed (soybeans) producing crops on the last 30 years, highly fucking inefficient and produced in the worst way possible, not even that pasture uses A LOT more land than agriculture while being a lot less energy dense, both using a lot more water than producing direct food, it's the poors.
Edit: And also, beef is the major cause for deforestation too:
Also: animal ag uses 80% of all arable land with most of it destined for grazing land (which a lot of (rain-)-forest had to be razed for) while only producing 17% of global calories and 38% of global proteins. The rest comes from human edible plants. A global switch to a plant based diet would reduce land usage from 4 to 1 billion. It's still possible to re-wild grazing lands.
A global switch to a plant based diet would reduce land usage from 4 to 1 billion.
this is based entirely on poore-nemecek 2018, and is not a reliable claim
-
It doesn't have to be one or the other, we can tackle multiple solutions simultaneously.
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Developing nations have proven to increase their carbon footprints over time, e.g. China, so the fact that they're the fastest growing populations on earth is a serious issue we can address with solutions such as: empower women's rights and advancing access to education and upward mobility in society. That was the same exact solution that the UN came to in their meeting in Cairo, Egypt in 1994.
EDIT: 3. less people consume less beef also
Producing beef is the most inefficient way to produce food, in both use of space and water, and energy. We don't need to impose things on people if humanity reduces its beef consumption.
If we cut beef consumption by half, literally oligarchs would not have an economic reason to deforest the Amazon, because of the price drops. But no one wants to do that.
Developing nations have proven to increase their carbon footprints over time, e.g. China, so the fact that they're the fastest growing populations on earth is a serious issue
You're conflating a lot of words, gives an example for China, while Chinas population is not growing even (or will start to diminish on some years), associating different things into the same sentence is hard to pick what exactly you're talking about, China or Africa (the last place where population growth is happening at large beyond the 2.1 fertility rate).
Producing beef is the most inefficient way to produce food, in both use of space and water, and energy.
I'm sure that I can come up with something less efficient
Beef is heavily subsidised either by giving money directly to the producers, or letting them get away with pollution (or deforestation in places like Brazil) and using terrible food and/or drugs for their product.
Without subsidies I'm pretty sure beef wouldn't be affordable even in rich countries.
This mix of "things that are possible/reasonable" and "things that are wildly speculative" is interesting.
Producing beef is the most inefficient way to produce food, in both use of space and water, and energy.
Reasonable/possible
We don’t need to impose things on people if humanity reduces its beef consumption.
Wild speculation / nonsensical.
This is not at all how large societies have worked, in any time period, ever.
While it might be technically true, it's missing a whole bunch of steps in the middle for it to be a practicality.
If we cut beef consumption by half, literally oligarchs would not have an economic reason to deforest the Amazon, because of the price drops. But no one wants to do that.
- Palm Oil
- Real Estate
- Mineral Speculation
- Wood
And that was just off of the top of my head.
Oligarchs gonna oligarch, removing one revenue source isn't going to suddenly kill interest in the amazon, with it's abundant resources and space.
While it might be technically true, it's missing a whole bunch of steps in the middle for it to be a practicality.
As I said in my comment:
But no one wants to do that.
And about this:
And that was just off of the top of my head.
Beef is the major factor in the amazon, by a large margin, as in my original comment. Palm Oil is not a significant part in Brazil, nor real state. Mineral is mainly in Roraima, but not as big as beef, because it's based on small operations, there are a lot of sources on this for gold mining and the local Yanomami indigenous population that fights agains this (as this is done on their land).
If you’re going to cherry pick at least cherry pick from the text being mentioned.
Your whole comment was :
If we cut beef consumption by half, literally oligarchs would not have an economic reason to deforest the Amazon, because of the price drops. But no one wants to do that.
and wasn’t the comment to which i was responding.
Beef is the major factor in the amazon, by a large margin, as in my original comment. Palm Oil is not a significant part in Brazil, nor real state. Mineral is mainly in Roraima, but not as big as beef, because it’s based on small operations, there are a lot of sources on this for gold mining and the local Yanomami indigenous population that fights agains this (as this is done on their land).
Cool story, still irrelevant to my point which was:
Oligarchs gonna oligarch
Create a revenue vacuum (like removing the biggest value stream in a region) and oligarchs gonna oligarch right in and expand another value stream to make up the difference.
I’m not advocating for this to happen, I’m saying that expecting beef reduction to remove oligarchs from the amazon is unrealistic.
They also sell the rainforest lumber, but lifestyle changes aside we should always pursue a lower total population via lower birthrates until we can restore natural order.
China was a developing nation a long time ago, and since 1700 their population has grown 11x over, and now they produce more emissions and utilize more landmass than any other nation on earth.
Total emissions or per capita?
less capita = less emissions
Chinese leadership are trying to promote population growth, again.
Wrong place, my bad
NP we good.
edit: dammit, real-time updates kicking my ass
What is the ideal amount of biomass for humans? Same question for agricultural land. What’s the ideal amount? I’m torn between thinking this is just how things go or maybe I’m just terribly ignorant. At some point the majority of biomass was dinosaurs or something, so what? That’s the ebb and flow of life. It wasn’t the biomass of dinosaurs that caused their extinction. How do these biomass stats indicate overpopulation?
I can’t disagree with the industrial farming and overall ecosystem points you raise but the biomass bits seem awfully arbitrary.
I’d also say feeding 50% of the world’s population for 2% of the world’s energy seems pretty damn efficient.
The whole human biomass question is difficult to me. Half of humanity doesn't have access to proper toilets. I have cheap products produced by contemporary slaves in asia. Fewer people with better conditions sounds good to me.
There was an article released this year that found 2-2.5 billion humans to be the carrying capacity of the earth. I've only read the abstract though.
https://researchnow.flinders.edu.au/en/publications/global-human-population-has-surpassed-earths-sustainable-carrying/
Open access:
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ae51aa
Berries in swedish forests go ungathered because the work pays so badly swedes refuse it and our new anti abuse laws stops the thai workers who did it for pennies earlier from coming here.
Good riddance, I say, people can gather their own blueberries and make their own jam - if the alternative is working conditions no one should have to suffer.
If the aim is to have no one live in squalor and have everyone live a luxurious, but preferably more eco friendly, western lifestyle then how many humans can the planet support without degrading over time?
How can we make 4-6 hours of daily paid work enough to live on, globally?
How can we change society to stop chasing growth and find a system that allows future generation a planet with wildlife, clean air and water and a temperature that humans can enjoy not just survive?
That was a weird ass study, they calculated the number based solely on historical population numbers and not any actual metrics regarding planetary capability. I have my doubts how useful a calculation that actually is.
They do use some more data than that, see my quote.
2.5. Indices of global change
We compared global human population size in the three main phases of facilitation, transition, and the negative r∼ N phase (see Results) to the global temperature anomaly obtained from the HadCRUT.5.0.2.0 ensemble prediction anomaly [56] relative to the 1960–1991 baseline (data available from 1850 to the present).
We hypothesize that the strongest positive relationship between human population size and climate change occurred during the negative phase because of consumption externalities such as increasing natural resource exploitation and loss of biodiversity. This can result from societies in the period of declining r and resources subsequently driving environmental degradation. In contrast, societies in the facilitation phase might have adequate resources to fuel increasing population growth rates.
We also used two additional indices of global change in the analyses to corroborate the results using global temperature anomaly: global ecological footprint measured as the number of Earths required to meet consumption rates [29], and total annual CO2-e emissions (ourworldindata.org).
But that's still based on random points in history. Their argument is basically 'climate change started at this point, so that's where the max sustainable population is'. Which makes absolutely no sense. Technologies were different, cultural attitudes were different, yadda yadda. It's Malthusian arguments in a new (and less logical) wrapper.
If the benefits of a trade is on the back of the worker then it's not a trade. They should rise the price so they can pay enough.
0%
Personally I'd say 10% each humans and livestock, or some similar ratio such that wildlife remain 80%.
Another option is to return as far as the proven stable number of 2 million humans total, though that would take many many many generations to do and isn't even guaranteed to be better for the environment since sometimes forest management and natural disaster response can actually be helpful.
Definitely lower than 2 billion. It's going to take a lot of figuring out since we clearly have no idea what number will bring global ecostability.
The 36℅ you cited is for Mammalians, that doesn't mean the rest of Biomass can be compared to it.
Animal Biomass is around 0.5℅, so that puts it into relation.
Also the earth consisist of 70% Water, this means Land mass is 30℅ and from that 30℅, around 46% is used by Humans.
Also Land use has been steadily falling with modern agriculture. There was a time when Europa barely had any forests left, because of the extensive agricultural need for Farmland.
I know "numbers scary", but I think a bit of contextualisation can't hurt.
NB: Ecofascism is still Fascism.
You're gonna sit there and tell me it's fine if only 5% of mammals are neither human nor livestock? That's a horrifying thought alone, it means we've consumed or destroyed all of nature that we had the capability of doing such to. We should not be the 95% under any circumstance. We should not be 50%. We need there to be nature, we need there to be a natural order.
For the record, the larger groups are fish and arthropods. That's it. Sauropsida or Reptiles and amphibians are such a small amount of biomass that they're completely negligible.
BTW, it's super cringe when you call the advocacy of women's rights and education as "Fascism". You know who else fights against the idea of allowing or promoting population decline? Christofascists and Technofascists like Elon Musk, they're pushing for population growth instead.
"(..) we need there to be natural order."
The natural order of things, does it involve a concept of degeneracy and normalcy?
Always funny how quick the mask slips.
Also humans are animals and therefore nature. There is no concept of nature versus humans, unless you enforce these boundaries to construct an ideology that needs it.
This idea of nature just means everything "that is good" is nature, which does not make sense. In that view a whale is nature, but the rabies virus is not.
Also to respond to your last sentence with an equal out of place diction.
Why can't you accept that Hubble's constant is universally equal. That is anti science.
does it involve a concept of degeneracy and normalcy?
It involves a natural slow decline in human population via methods like empowering women's rights and widely available education and upwards mobility in society. The solution that the UN came to in Cairo, Egypt, in 1995.
The fuck are you talking about with masks and normalcy?
You mean the "natural decline" that is already happening.
Also what "upwards mobility" - Capitalism is hell bent in killing us all - the upwards mobility is not the solution here.
Humans today are like 300% more biomass than every mammal on earth 100,000 years ago.
id you perhaps mean to make a dinosaur joke but left out three zeroes?
Those numbers mean nothing to refute the overpopulation as a myth. The core premise of overpopulation is that humans can no longer produce enough food to sustain its people. So mammalian biomass doesn't matter, total amount of farmable land doesn't matter, and percent of avian life does not matter.
It's never been a question of our impact on the environment. it's a question of our impact on ourselves and how much past our means we are.
How much of our farmable land is currently being used to produce non-edible crops such as maize used for fuel additive or soy used for cosmetics? How much farmable land are we sabotaging with pollution which could be cleaned up? These are more pertinent questions for this, because if we could be making more food instead of maize or soy, we could still feed our people.
The core premise of overpopulation is that humans can no longer produce enough food to sustain its people.
No, it absolutely isn't that, idk where you even got that from. The core premise is that it is unsustainable for any reason.
Producing food is one reason for evidence of current overpopulation, as I mention 50% of the world's food production is with synthetic ammonia sourced from mining and petrochem which are finite nonrenewable resources.
Another reason is that the world ecosystem sustains all life including humanity, and when it collapses the human population will collapse with it.
Literally from Malthus himself. He argued that due to overpopulation we'd cause mass famines, leading to war and societal collapse. And he solidly pointed blame on developing countries overbreeding and called for population control and oven culling in those nations. All arguments directly derive from his original argument.
Because that is the only solution to overpopulation, is population control and population culling. Population too big, either start killing people or forcing couples to not have children. That's what you're arguing for every time you agree with an overpopulation argument.
The new twists of ecological destruction are also highly misplaced. You'd have to pin the blame on the places which are reproducing the most, which is not the case. The damage we do with deep sea fishing, fish farms, and meat farms is not the fault of the poor nations overbreeding - the only groups we could blame for overpopulation right now.
In reality, we'd not be causing nearly as much damage to our environment if we weren't using fossil fuels, weren't transporting a massive portion of our goods from overseas, weren't getting most of our meat from cows and other methane producers, weren't fishing in such a way that destroys the seafloor, etc. There's literally hundreds of ways I could list that we're doing which if we switched to an alternative would solve large portion of our ecological damage.
We all are carrying out these unsustainable practices, regardless of population. Those practices are the problem, not overpopulation. We could still be producing enough food with sustainable methods that don't destroy the world ecology.
Well I can compare your anti-population-reduction stance to Elon Musk. Do you feel good knowing that Christofascist and Technofascist oligarchs hold the same view as you?
As for your absolutely bonkers claim that sustainability isn't directly proportional to population size, I feel need to argue such a blatantly false statement.
I'm not the same person btw.
Genuine question, wouldn't a directly proportional link require that sustainability efforts go up in a direct mirror to population?
edit: a downvote isn't particularly helpful here, is that a downvote of "yes, but i don't want to admit it" or "no, because reasons" ?
Ask better questions, ig. Do I look like I'm running for governor? Idk what you think should or should not be happening, but the answer has absolutely no impact on what is happening now and what we know will happen as a result: human overpopulation is real, it is the driving force behind ongoing global ecosystem collapse, we know of many safe and friendly methods to reduce birthrates.
I’m....not sure how much better i can phrase that question ?
It was concise, contained all the information needed for an answer, it could even be a single yes or no.
If you have an example of how that could have been asked in a better way, I’d be interested in seeing it.
There was no reference to my thoughts on the overall theme, the question is only loosely related to that theme.
If it helps, i don't care at all about the overpopulation classification or anything to do with it.
Is it easier if i remove all references to the theme? Let's try this :
Doesn't directly proportional mean both metrics being compared need to track each other?
This isn't a fucking meme.
It's just blatant disinformation.
What is a meme?
Much better, thank you
A miserable little pile of in-jokes
But enough commenting! Have at you!!
Somebody who covers their drink when you're around.
A meme is a self replicating idea. I think this is a meme.
Malthusianism definitely a meme ideology
There are memes, and then there are memes. Two different words. What you're describing is not the commonly thought of word when someone goes on the internet looking for memes.
I could say, "Suck my dick, motherfucker", and that'd be a meme.
how do I know if you mean memes or memes tho
Cue "The Stains of Time".
Context. A lot of word have more than one meaning.
Replace "sustainable," and the bit about profit and capitalism, with "efficient" and "corruption and un-free markets," then this is a common right-wing talking point (back when the right wing tried to engage intellectually, at least).
In my unscientific opinion, the current population is unsustainable, and there's no known ways to make it sustainable enough to support the population in the long term (I hope there will be, of course). The most sustainable framing practices are less intensive and result in less output per acre. That's just about survival, ignoring quality of life. I've heard it claimed we'd need 5 Earths for everyone on Earth to live a first-world-like lifestyle. Granted, we should drastically change our lifestyles.
Climate change will also likely lower the human population the Earth can support, and I think we will likely adopt even less sustainable practices to make up for the loss, accelerating our own demise; kicking and scratching and bringing all the ecosystems of the Earth down with us.
First world lifestyles are indeed unsustainable, but not due to food scarcity. We have a global overproduction of food, due in part to logistical inefficiencies but in a larger part due to free market economics with artificial scarcity to drive up prices.
Organic farm practices currently yield about 20-30% less than less sustainable ones. Current US food wastage is 40 % of produced goods. So at least the US could switch over it's food supply to organic farming and still feed everyone on the same acreage.
There's plenty other resource usage that first-worlders need to cut back on, mostly petrochemicals and plastics in everything from travel (make walkable cities) to novelty consumption (buy it for life).
In my unscientific opinion
Well you got at least that bit right, so congrats!
Also, death to fascists, including ecofascists.
Overpopulation is a social issue.
30 billion humble, kind, wise people are barely scratching tbe surface.
Even 100 million assholes is too much.
fash seething in the comments
Getting the top comments too.
Over population is a problem just because we occupy 10% of the land doesn't mean we should double it to 20%? Do you know how much of the earths biosphere that would continue to chew into? Even if we farm more efficiently it doesn't mean there should be more of us shitting around
It's also just wrong, humans use half of all habitable land for agriculture alone. Unless everybody moves to Antarctica doubling it would result in destroying literally all of nature on habitable land.
Yeah exactly I'm not sure if this person has ever looked at a map before but we use alot of land not just for habitation, even if we halved the size of every farm its just not it
My theory is
and I could be wrong, maybe it's just a couple of weirdos,
but my theory is it's another Tankies psyop trying to convince people that "overpopulation is a western conspiracy to reduce the number of non-whites" or some shit. It would make sense given China's sudden promotion of population growth being criticized as well as their immediate allies like Iran backsliding women's rights and education (the core pillars of reducing population growth).
After arguing with them in here for awhile I got 15 notifications of being banned from Lemmy ML communities.
Ok then, use a buttplug and never take it out.
That way, you won't be shitting anymore.
Wrong in almost every way.
The reason for the decline in birth rates amongst the "developed" nations is because there is no more growth potential for profits for the wealthy past a certain point. So they have to turn inward and eat away at the other classes to get that unsustainable growth they demand. Opportunities have dried up for becoming even just well off so when situations are insecure like that you see a sudden drop in birth rates. They can't afford children.
I don't know about your country, but here in Poland (and well, whole Europe), most historical statisticians point to two facts, that remained unchanged at least since medieval times and were proven times and times again:
- people in the cities have fewer children that people in the villages
- people in villages have fewer children the less they need hands to do the work
So yeah, everything you wrote is true, up to and including "people can't afford children because of the new vampires", but it's not THE reason why they don't have children.
(IIRC its best explained here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition)
Live in the USA, it's not the only reason, but it's something to consider as well. Thank you for the additional info.
If you switch to vertical farming then the only limitation on population is based solely on the heat output generated by humans and our technology.
I'm not an ecofascist. But if I were an ecofascist, I'd be applying some social darwinist population analysis to this whole overpopulation problem. I mean, let's look at the facts: white people consume way more resources per capita than black, new world indigenous, asian, and middle eastern people. It's not even close. If you're committing a genocide to save the environment, you have to kill like ten congonese people to get the same benefit as killing one white american. So purely as a matter of efficiency, if we're doing ecofascism I really think we should kill all white people.
But again, I am not an ecofascist, and I think we can solve all of this with no genocide if we simply ban cars and planes outside of emergencies.
Banning cars and planes will help a bit, but it's really everything. Concrete emits carbon dioxide. Raising animals emits carbon dioxide. Moving goods around emits carbon dioxide. And so on...
But in principle you are right that we don't need genocide!
You're right, we do have to get more radical than just banning cars and planes. I think we should also ban animal agriculture. That'll fix the animal problem. We can eliminate 40% of concrete emissions with electric furnaces if we invest hard in renewable energy. Obviously, our efforts to create a renewable grid will be aided by banning cryptocurrency, NFTs, and LLMs. And finally, most transport emissions are already eliminated if we consider trucks as a type of car, and use trains instead.
Now, some people may be concerned about a degradation in the quality of life if cars and meat are banned. And for a bunch of so-called capitalists, that's a startling lack of faith in the invisible hand of the free market! However, I agree that capitalism will not solve all our problems, and I have suggestions for some governmental policies to restore and even exceed our former quality of life!
Bring back trams. Protected bicycle lanes. More trains. 20 hour workweek. It's not 1910 anymore! We have twice as many people working, so they should work half as long! Government programs to domesticate and improve drought-resistant indigenous crops. Government-run Mastodon, PieFed, Friendica, Loops, and PixelFed servers. You've heard of the government cheese caves, now get ready for government vegan cheese. Free dental. Free school lunches. Free fiber internet. Free HRT.
And how are we paying for all of this? Tax the fucking rich!
I think we should also ban animal agriculture.
I'd ban animal agriculture only in places where the land can be used to grow crops, but not in places where only grass grows and you can't really produce enough food without animals. This would also focus on banning factory farming, since now many animals are just fed with feed that's grown elsewhere and transported into places, which allows to sustain massive populations that wouldn't be possible without it. But mountain range with sheep and goats? Northern nomads with their reindeer? Homesteading with couple pigs and cows? I see no problem as long as those are sustained by the land (and kept lovingly).
I also would absolutely not ban stuff like keeping chickens (except the factory farming situations of course) since having them on your backyard is good - it produces cheap animal protein that doesn't really require much killing (eggs) and chickens can eat a lot of food waste that would just be tossed
Most people in "civilized" nations might also have forgot it, but cows for example can be incredibly important in places with bad conditions for growing food. You get two years of bad crop yields and everyone is dying of hunger, unless you have that cow that can eat the grass that still grows, and gives you milk that keeps you and your family alive until you get a better yield
As I said above, I'm not an ecofascist. I don't support mass killing of vulnerable groups on the grounds of ecological efficiency. I don't believe in the superiority of one lineage or genetic population over another. And because I believe in Mister Darwin's good theory on the origin of species, I extend this lack of belief in genetic superiority to our cousins in the animal kingdom. I do not think humans have the right to declare themselves superior to their cousins on the basis of some idea of better genes or superior lineage.
Animal husbandry is not an unique thing to humans only. I think it's incredibly arrogant to think we're so above nature we aren't part of it just like ants, rodents, deer or tigers or whatever are. We should strive for eating as few animal products we can since we're killing the planet with our over-consumption - and factory farming is a grotesque crime against nature. But some random siberian nomad with their reindeer is living way more sustainably than any vegan that's sitting on a computer and writing here is.
Farming always requires killing, even if it's just growing crops. Just controlling the rodent populations alone means either poison or cats. And the bigger the operations, the more you need to kill
Would you eat a human? Would you farm humans? Breed and raise them so you can eat them?
I wouldn't, but I wouldn't farm and eat whales, apes, crows, parrots or elephants for example either. Where's the threshold for what's intelligent enough not to eat? I don't know, but it's not a cuteness factor, I would farm and eat rabbits and I've kept pet rabbits and love them. Or I would eat a beloved horse that had to be put down, that's just the respectful thing to do. Would you require that the random siberian nomad leaves their lifestyle and gives up their culture, just because you'd deem them keeping and eating their reindeer worse than you eating crops that are killing millions of birds, insects and rodents? Considering all animals equal, they're still killing way less than we are
Though I also wouldn't eat humans because it increases the risk for prion diseases. Especially the brains should not be eaten
Hear me out: I think that "overpopulation" exists, but only in developed countries.
We also have an information problem. As long as we debate fundamental problems on centralized platforms through memes nothing ever will be resolved. Stop upvoting this shit please and share better content.
... qnd all other wpecies can F themselves.... Too many people as it is now.
Right we don't need to change anything about how we live nothing we do is wrong or inefficient we just need yo kill all the subhumans who use less resources than wedo the next metro area north of me has ongoing at this moment a nuclear waste fire an oil spill and a toxic waste explosion my civilization and life ways are perfect
I think they're expressing a concern about the natural environment being destroyed to accommodate the needs of more humans. There's nothing in that sentiment that implies wanting to kill people.
Oh how else do you have fewer people because I'd like fewer billionaires and fewer Nazis
