Let's face it; Gaia offered us an opportunity to thin the population a couple of years back, and we blew it...
Fewer people if the only real solution
Population is falling in developed nations, and it's been widely forecast for a long time that population will top out then start falling. The problem with making it fall too fast is that it causes big economic problems, and solving those would be very hard indeed.
Yes, we could completely reorganise society so that we didn't have to, but that's even harder still. The real question is where best to focus our efforts and how to achieve our aims. I suspect trying to change western society into a collectivist one rather than individualistic to enable the required climate change mitigation is probably not the best place to focus our efforts right now as whilst it would be effective, it's probably futile and not liable to work long-term.
Let’s face it; Gaia offered us an opportunity to thin the population a couple of years back, and we blew it…
Bit of a daft post. The 1918 Flu pandemic killed around 50M people. Assuming we didn't have vaccines etc during covid it still would've been a drop in the ocean compared to the 8 billion people on the planet.
Fewer people if the only real solution and the summer we start the better
Are you volunteering yourself? The population argument is a red herring. It distracts from the real changes that are necessary and provides an excuse for inaction. Much easier to cull a few billion people than change our lifestyles. 🤷♂️
How do you plan to get people to accept not being allowed to have kids?
I never suggested people shouldn't be allowed to have kids, that's entirely their choice. How you individually choose to support the climate is up to you.
How you individually choose to support the climate is up to you.
In that case, how do you ever expect any meaningful progress to be made to address climate change?
In that case, how do you ever expect any meaningful progress to be made to address climate change?
Education as to the options available and the effectiveness/impact of each, showing people from a young age what they can do and allowing them to decide what options fit their life the best. And teaching personal responsibility.
Telling people what they must do and forcing them just turns people against a cause. It hasn't worked for the last four or so decades so what makes you think that would suddenly change?
Education as to the options available and the effectiveness/impact of each, showing people from a young age what they can do and allowing them to decide what options fit their life the best. And teaching personal responsibility.
Pretty sure we were all taught the importance of not littering and more recently recycling but still I see bins full of mixed waste despite people being provided with the tools to make it simple, verges covered in litter and fly tipping all over the place. Education and personal responsibility don't go very far when pitted against self interest.
Pretty sure we were all taught the importance of not littering and more recently recycling but still I see bins full of mixed waste despite people being provided with the tools to make it simple, verges covered in litter and fly tipping all over the place. Education and personal responsibility don’t go very far when pitted against self interest.
And alcohol prohibition was so successful wasn't it, and the war on drugs.
Yes, we could completely reorganise society so that we didn’t have to, but that’s even harder still.
Unless we do then billions will die. Unless we in the west reduce our energy consumption massively - guess what - billions will die.
Those are the choices. Radically change society or billions will die.
how do you ever expect any meaningful progress to be made to address climate change?
That's kind of the position some of us are taking.
I'm one of six people living in a stretch of six terraced houses down a walkway. The only ones putting out recycling are me (56) and Pat (83). The others (20s-40ish), perfectly decent people, don't bother. Maybe they're taking a stance against sending our plastic waste to be burnt in Turkey or dumped on an Indonesian beach...but I really doubt that much thought has actually gone into it.
flying people into Rhodes on a package tour then evacuating them from a beach via a boat 24 hours later. Argue about your bins all you like, the world has changed.
Look at the population distribution for most developed countries. The population will significantly reduce over the next 20_30 years. China it's going to crash. India is a problem as is most of Africa. I know people from developing nations use less carbon but the population explosion in some of these countries is still an issue.
Short story don't worry about the west's of China's population that is sorting it's self out
Those are the choices. Radically change society or billions will die.
But those are not the choices "we" have to make yet because billions are not dying. When the billions start to die I am sure people will start to see it as a priority. 40 years too late to do anything about it but a priority nonetheless.
People generally don't deal well with thinking about negative future scenarios and see themselves in those positions.
10 000 people a day dying of hunger at present at a conservative estimate, so at least 3 650 000 a year. 345 000 000 suffering from acute hunger which has doubled since 2019 according to charities. Hunger is one "breaking point" indicator to say that the breaking point is right now. Others would be:
Sea temperatures
The multication of forest fires in areas where they were previously rare
The rate of ice melt (16m for the Mer de Glace last year and a spate of "last chance tourism" this year.
CO2 at Hawaii, we know that at current levels a major climatic change is underway.
Rate of sea level rise increasing
Multiplication of extreme weather events
Migration of Humbolt's climatic zones vertically and horizontally
We're in the thick of it and the vast majority of people on this forum are increasing rather than decreasing their carbon footprint - like the rest of the world.
UK news & population: Aggghhhh we're all going to melt and / or drown. Let’s stop breathing and having babies or glue our selves to the road with oil based product to save the world. Can’t run a pivot table, based on opinion with little underlying data. Little to No R&D, innovation, machining ability.
Average sci-fi from the 60-90’s. Let’s invest in R&D to be able to teleport, travel the Galaxy and have an infinite supply of green energy.
Likely one of countries still sending the kids to uni to study engineering instead of social studies will bail out the rest.
IMO best way to contribute is to have kids and educate them so they can work on R&D to solve the problem. Outside that we can just copy what Switzerland have been doing for the last 30yrs or so rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and green wash and pretend we’re making any meaningful impact by drinking from a plastic lined paper straw.
The cause of hunger is not climate change. It is war, corruption, and violence.
Food production has increased ahead of population. Helped by fossil fuel powered machinery and fossil fuel derieved fertilisers.
For example.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/index-of-cereal-production-yield-and-land-use
I'm a little bit confused about how reducing the population leads to economic problems. The environment is my speciality, not economics.
Can someone tell me why if the population reduces, this leads to economic problems? The amount of money in the world doesn't change, and labour will be in greater demand so able to command higher wages so tax revenue won't change much - so what's the problem? And where does the supposed additional cost sit in relation to the enormous additional costs of addressing the climate change worsened by a larger population?
Reduced population does seem like an easy way to reduce climate impact and, while I can't say I care about the economic impact, it doesn't seem to be an argument that stacks up to me.
And alcohol prohibition was so successful wasn’t it, and the war on drugs
We banned leaded petrol and CFC's, hasn't lead to shady characters offering me them behind closed doors
We already completely transformed our heating systems several times last century from coal to town gas to natural gas, each time households were forced to retrofit and managed it
@muntobiker Aging population with not enough people to look after them or cover their pension obligations and health care costs. That’s not taking into account having enough working age people in key worker / critical infrastructure roles.
Hard mode for governments is incentivising families, educating and training from scratch - takes say 21 years annd £££ over multiple governments. Easy mode is to plug gaps with immigration.
And the causes of war, corruption and violence, irc? Syria and the Arab Spring can be attributed to shortages and movements of population due to climatic change. It's a chicken and egg thing. If its cerael resources hadn't become so important economically Ukraine wouldn't have been worth invading. There's a geographical/geological/resource basis to many if not most wars and desertification/food shortages are a driver.
In a place like Mali climatic change is at the very heart of hunger and conflict. The hunger and conflict displaces people who become refugees. Flee or starve to death. The 80% reduction in food production in some areas of the Sahel is due to bush fires and drought, that displaces people and fuels conflict.
I’m a little bit confused about how reducing the population leads to economic problems.
It doesn't as long as old people keep working instead of retiring, and keep working at the same level of productivity as the young people who would replace them. If you reduce the population, then the amount of available work decreases, which leads to a drop in economic output, and then recession, deflation etc. If you reduce the population by reducing the amount of young people then it's even worse because you're removing the most productive demographic in the economy whilst keeping the economically inactive group in the form of retired pensioners who mostly take out of the system rather than put in.
Reduced population does seem like an easy way to reduce climate impact
Fine as long as we reduce the number of old people rather than the young by refusing to have kids. All the people saying they're not having kids to help the planet are achieving the opposite of their stated objective. If you really want to help the planet by contributing to population reduction, then have one or two kids (but not more), bring them up to adulthood, then kill yourself. Simple!
I’m a little bit confused about how reducing the population leads to economic problems
because its been setup as a giant ponzi scheme.
If you really want to help the planet by contributing to population reduction, then have one or two kids (but not more), bring them up to adulthood, then kill yourself. Simple!
Sorry I can't take any points you put forward seriously after that, I think you're just looking to get a rise out of someone rather than debate the points.
I think you’re just looking to get a rise out of someone rather than debate the points.
Nope, I'm arguing against your view that not having kids is a positive action towards preventing climate change. It's not, quite the opposite IMO. I'm also arguing that if population reduction is required to prevent climate change (I don't think it is BTW), then we need to reduce the number of old people, not the young.
Aging population with not enough people to look after them or cover their pension obligations and health care costs. That’s not taking into account having enough working age people in key worker / critical infrastructure roles.
It doesn’t as long as old people keep working instead of retiring, and keep working at the same level of productivity as the young people who would replace them. If you reduce the population, then the amount of available work decreases, which leads to a drop in economic output, and then recession, deflation etc.
So the key problem here is an economic system dependent upon constant economic growth for stability. Which is, in turn, I think, a result of private owership of capital, because the economic gains resulting from increased productivity are captured by a minority, rather than used to decrease working time.
That's what leads to the requirement for population growth, or at least a fixed ratio of workers to dependents.
Theoretically, we could easily use the increases in productivity that technology brings to support an aging population with a smaller pool of workers, but that doesn't work unless the economic benefits of more productive technologies are distrubuted equally.
So the key problem here is an economic system dependent upon constant economic growth for stability.
Yup - hence the dark green "no growth society" philiosophy
Theoretically, the solution is actually very simple
If we can have enough automation of healthcare (AI doctors, radiologists, etc.), food production, distribution of goods in general via self-driving cars, and whatever other things are actually needed for good living standards, then that would free up more than enough people for the care-centric economy an aging population would require
We'd need some sort of universal basic services and income, made possible by these largely automated technologies being collectively owned and democratically managed
If we also had global resource caps of extraction, carbon emissions, and other key pollutants, than researchers like me would be out of a job and could join in helping actual people and their needs, rather than researching problems caused by an economic system no longer fit for purpose
Basically I'm all for AI and robots taking over the world economy and doing things properly
In theory...
Disclaimer -- I have read a lot of Ian M. Banks
Just look at most national size businesses. Annual growth of the company can often be mainly or partly put down to the tactic of continuing the status quo, with a slightly expanded customer base year on year.
Arab Spring - climate change? I don't think so. Lack of democracy, poverty, human rights, corruption.Before 2011 Syria for example was self sufficient in food. After years of war it isn't.
We need more young people to move the focus to issues which they’re concerned about.
We also need to move politics towards the young, starting with a drop in the voting age here in the UK. Crazy that dead people have helped set the current political mandate the government has, but 21 year olds have had no say. With an ageing population paired to a regional voting system that means the votes of old people in the shires and post industrial small towns are weighed far more heavily than those of young people living in cities, the future becomes far less politically relevant than the immediate present for those seeking to win UK wide elections. The young people know what needs to change, the older folk don’t have as much skin in the game but have the bigger say.
We need to move politics towards the young, starting with a drop in the voting age here in the UK.
Well we need both more young people and more power and representation for them. If it was up to me I'd remove the vote from everyone above retirement age and bring in pro-euthanasia policies but some would probably think that a bit extreme. 🤷♂️
Well we need both more young people and more power and representation for them. If it was up to me I’d remove the vote from everyone above retirement age and bring in pro-euthanasia policies but some would probably think that a bit extreme.
May be not remove their votes, but have people's vote weighted by their remaining life expectancy
Totally down with the right to euthanasia, though (and not just for the old)
You don't think so, irc but many do:
https://www.dw.com/en/how-climate-change-paved-the-way-to-war-in-syria/a-56711650
I'd be well up for a Logan's Run-style elimination run-off, reckon I'd be more than a match for the overweight, over-consuming youth I see round here.
Totally down with the right to euthanasia, though (and not just for the old)
I'd go way beyond that and start actively promoting it. Tax breaks for people whose parents take up the opportunity? 😳
over-consuming youth
On the surface the youth may look like they're consuming more than older people, but I very much doubt that's the case due to the simple fact that they have a lot less money. I don't see lots of 18-25s driving round in fancy cars and going on multiple holidays abroad every year.
(Another movie reference for the kids).
I don’t see lots of 18-25s driving round in fancy cars and going on multiple holidays abroad every year.
I guarantee you they're consuming a ****-sight more than the likes of me and Edukator were when we were 18-25. And are now.
Youth are consuming a lot more in certain ways -- see fast fashion
The economic system would brake if they didn't, of course
Legometerology
Be careful what you wish for with AIs. some of those "minds" in the Banks novels are not terribly benign 🙂
Youth are consuming a lot more in certain ways — see fast fashion
My 18 year old daughter and all her mates buy all their clothes of 2nd hand vintage websites.
My 18 year old daughter and all her mates buy all their clothes of 2nd hand vintage websites.
Good, I'm not saying everyone fast-fashions but UK clothing consumption nowadays is astronomical
I calulated a while back that, every year, all the *new* clothes bought in the UK are roughly the same weight as a traffic jam of Range Rovers extending all the way from Lands End to John O'Groats
Edit: actually I think it's Lands End to John O'Groats and back...
1 Mt of clothing, divide by 2.5 t, times by 5 metres, divide by 1000 to give 2,000 km
Youth are consuming a lot more in certain ways — see fast fashion
Also remember that its hard to be starting out.
Since last autumn, I think I've bought one T-shirt because I wanted it, a pair of work shoes as I'd ripped the heel of the old ones, a pair of bike shoes as I killed the old ones, a pair of hebtroco jeans bringing my total of usable jeans back up to two pairs, and two pairs of socks.
And yet I have a wardrobe of outfits for work, casual, sports, formal wear etc. acquired over the years.
As there's a good 30+ years between university and retirement where I can wear pretty much the same style, as long as I dont let myself go and get fat, all my clothes will be used until worn out. Perhaps the 20 yearold purchasing clothes now will take the same approach, so dont necessarily vilify them for buying more this year.
