21–30 of 280 posts
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…
"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 was avoided, and the world did not exp…
A million people in poverty is not the same as a million living a traditional middle class lifestyle.
"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 was avoided, and the world did not exp…
... and.. it does ? https://www.worldvision.org/refugees-news-stories
"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 was avoided, and the world did not exp…
In the context of the environment and more specifically climate change, it's not overpopulation per se but a growing middle class. The middle class, drives cars, have larger homes (to heat, cool and furnish) and so on. A million people in poverty is not the same as a million living a traditional middle class lifestyle.
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…
> There are way to many people on Earth than Earth can sustain in what we consider a life worth living 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…
Recent history shows that there's no holding previously backwards countries from advancing their consumption. As Russians joke, the global famine will come when the Chinese start using forks.
China, India and SE Asia are quickly upping their per-capita production and consumption of carbon-heavy goods. Brazil doesn't destroy Amazon out of spite.
We have no moral right to say "Nonono, you can't do what we did in the 20th century and live like us!".
Now take in account the ecosystems destroyed and the picture is very different. We must leave behind the humans-only perspective.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
If every country had the population of Norway, the globe would host just over 1 billion people. So then, would 1 billion Norweigans be better or worse than our current situation?
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).
Why do single out exactly these two countries and not the dozens with higher footprint per capita? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ecologica...
the dismissal of Malthus seems itself ideological. It's not due to any necessary reason that Malthusianism itself is wrong, quite obviously putting population pressure on restrained resources is an actual disaster. 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. The…
ahem
https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/themes/population-pol...
https://iiasa.ac.at/web/home/about/news/20140918-PDR-pop.htm...
https://blog.iiasa.ac.at/2014/02/27/what-is-the-optimal-fert...
https://www.ined.fr/en/glossary/population-policy/
Malthus should be targeted by the time-travellers for culling as soon as convenient ..