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Also, news tell us that in Syria climate change has resulted in food shortage in recent years. But having to feed twice as many people from the same land compared to 1985 sure cannot be the reason, right?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bangladesh has some struggles. It is the most densely populated (large) country on earth. They have major floods often which cause big problems. But they manage to survive. Thus there isn't really a threat to anyone else. There's enough food to feed everyone, and the only problem remaining is political and with distribution. It would not be difficult or expensive to end world hunger, cents a person.
> Bangladesh has some struggles. It is the most densely populated (large) country on earth. They have major floods often which cause big problems. But they manage to survive Countries like Denmark and Norway are a lot more detrimental to the planet's ecosystem because they consume a lot, lot more per capita compared to what Bangladesh does (and they consume lots of bad things that Bangladeshi people do not consume).
Cambodia (for example) has a terrible rubbish problem. They burn their trash, and vast amounts of it get thrown in the Mekong river and washed out to sea. There's also a big problem with unlicensed forest logging, and all sorts of environmental concerns. This is, primarily, because poor people are too busy with immediate survival concerns to worry about their environment.
Norway (for example) has a higher per-person consumption of resources, but also looks after its countryside and environment.
What's the relative damage being done to the global environment? Is there an argument that raising people out of poverty will actually reduce their impact on the environment even though it increases their resource consumption?
As bloodthirsty capitalism pulls more and more people out of poverty we discover that putting a steak on everyone's table and a fresh car in everyone's garage is too taxing on the atmosphere, wildlife, forests and what not.
We seem to have to choose between a smaller luxurious population and billions and billions of people living in pods eating synthetic food.
The sheer ignorance of this statement: "The myth, as is commonly told, tells the story of a mid-twentieth century world headed for disaster. There were too many people being born and not enough food being produced. This combination of forces would lead inexorably to famine, unchecked migration, conflict and other calamities. However, thanks to the inventiveness of Western scientists more food was produced, Armageddon…
I disagree. IMO it exploded because improvements in medical care resulted in a dramatic reduction in child deaths, but people kept having the same number of children.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bangladesh has some struggles. It is the most densely populated (large) country on earth. They have major floods often which cause big problems. But they manage to survive Countries like Denmark and Norway are a lot more detrimental to the planet's ecosystem because they consume a lot, lot more per capita compared to what Bangladesh does (and they consume lots of bad things that Bangladeshi people do not consume).
I'm always curious about this. Cambodia (for example) has a terrible rubbish problem. They burn their trash, and vast amounts of it get thrown in the Mekong river and washed out to sea. There's also a big problem with unlicensed forest logging, and all sorts of environmental concerns. This is, primarily, because poor people are too busy with immediate survival concerns to worry about their environment. Norway (for ex…
There are way more people on Earth than Earth can sustain in what we consider a life worth living. As bloodthirsty capitalism pulls more and more people out of poverty we discover that putting a steak on everyone's table and a fresh car in everyone's garage is too taxing on the atmosphere, wildlife, forests and what not. We seem to have to choose between a smaller luxurious population and billions and billions of peo…
This point of view comes up a lot in connection with climate change, and I always find it incredibly offensive. My dad was reminiscing the other day about his happy childhood growing up in a village in Bangladesh in the 1950s. This was back when 1 in 3 kids didn’t live to the age of 5.
Even an RCP 8.5 scenario isn’t going to turn the developed world into Bangladesh circus 1950. Hell it won’t turn Bangladesh into Bangladesh in 1950. People will still have a standard of living that makes life incredibly worthwhile, because we as human beings were designed to need little to find life worthwhile.
That’s not an argument against investing in renewables or whatever. But the Malthusian arguments about climate change are quite misanthropic. Trump got in trouble for calling places “shithole countries.” But nobody blinks and eye when someone casually implies that people in those countries would have been better off never having been born.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bangladesh has some struggles. It is the most densely populated (large) country on earth. They have major floods often which cause big problems. But they manage to survive Countries like Denmark and Norway are a lot more detrimental to the planet's ecosystem because they consume a lot, lot more per capita compared to what Bangladesh does (and they consume lots of bad things that Bangladeshi people do not consume).
I'm always curious about this. Cambodia (for example) has a terrible rubbish problem. They burn their trash, and vast amounts of it get thrown in the Mekong river and washed out to sea. There's also a big problem with unlicensed forest logging, and all sorts of environmental concerns. This is, primarily, because poor people are too busy with immediate survival concerns to worry about their environment. Norway (for ex…
Though it has been shown that some countries are beginning to reduce emissions while increasing GDP. Much of that shift could be explained by a global shift to renewables as they become the cheapest form of power, but this is a tide that lifts all boats, and the correlation remains.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emis...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bangladesh has some struggles. It is the most densely populated (large) country on earth. They have major floods often which cause big problems. But they manage to survive Countries like Denmark and Norway are a lot more detrimental to the planet's ecosystem because they consume a lot, lot more per capita compared to what Bangladesh does (and they consume lots of bad things that Bangladeshi people do not consume).
But if you look at this from country abstraction level, what does it matter how much they consume per capita? All that matters is absolute number
So then, would 1 billion Norweigans be better or worse than our current situation?
What was wrong with Malthus or the food scare talked about in the article is simply that they made their argument about the wrong thing and at the wrong time, the rebuttal is based on contingent facts.
There may very well come the point, and as others have pointed out climate is already maybe one such issue, where we run into a situation where the right technical solution or political fix does not exist. Locally of course there have been countless of Malthusian examples, put a city under siege, or a country (see Yemen's blockade) and you will see how Malthusian the world is pretty quickly.
Of course some of the conclusions Malthus drew (the mentioned culling of the sick) in the article are inhumane and reprehensible, but nobody today really argues for any of that stuff. But what Malthus today is still useful for is provide an antidote to the 'perpetual growth' mindset that has no other answer to anything than to grow yourself out of every problem.