7 ms·

I generally get funny looks and the feeling that people are imagining me with a toothbrush mustache and a comb-over when I suggest this: Wouldn't population co

• givan 10y ago
  When debugging performance problems you always search for the biggest bottlenecks not the minor ones, so what are the biggest contributors to CO2? I don't think the problem is the number of people living on earth but how modern society is making people live, for example some big contributors are high meat consumption (cattle methane) inefficient transportation (big suvs with just the driver inside sitting in traffic jams) consumerism that drive all those factories to produce mostly useless products that break easily to be soon replaced etc. We need to change or habits not our numbers, this is the source of the problem.
  • codebolt 10y ago
    Agreed, we should tackle the biggest sources first. And meat production in particular is one of the biggest contributors. Scale back the subsidies for these types of farms and replace them instead with taxes. Consumers will change their habits once they are faced with the "real" cost of meat.
    • webjunkie 10y ago
      Slap extra taxes on meat and forbid any advertising for meat or meat-containing products. Boom.
      • jsmthrowaway 10y ago
        > forbid any advertising for meat or meat-containing products Who needs that pesky First Amendment when there's dietary habits to tackle, right?
        • pizza 10y ago
          On the other hand, who needs nation-states when they're submerged under water and their populations decimated?
          • jsmthrowaway 10y ago
            Keep in mind that it is a perfectly reasonable position to both: a) agree with you and GP (though perhaps not to such a dramatic end), and b) slap on the brakes when discussing constitutionally perilous endeavors that could ultimately harm us more than this discussion can forecast; what else can I forbid or do in the name of existential issues? That I'm in the apparent minority here based on voting is far more alarming than I'd like it to be. Am I being interpreted as pro meat or something and riling the vegetarians? When I see the words "forbid" and "advertising" next to each other in such proximity I'm compelled to point out it's a bad idea. How am I the only one on this side? I'm all for evolving the Constitution, but fiddling with the First is not where I'd start and suppressing meat advertising has the potential to become much worse. That's my only point and I cannot express to you how alarmed I am that it's controversial. If you're coming at me this hard that the First Amendment is malleable enough to save us from perceived world doom by forgetting it when it's convenient, let's turn around and have a conversation about the Second, then, shall we? Two can play that game. Either the Constitution is infallible or it isn't. Tell me which it is and I'll debate accordingly.
            • pjc50 10y ago
              Interesting set of values there. I've got to say that being in a country where certain classes of advertising are forbidden and the rest is subject to (pretty minimal) accuracy regulation feels like it makes me freer and happier rather than the other way round. Cigarettes and prescription drugs may not be advertised in the UK.
              • jsmthrowaway 10y ago
                I'd actually prefer that, too. Especially prescription medications: there have been awful studies about correlations between patients asking their doctor (as the ads say) and getting that specific Rx even when unnecessary. I also don't know how to get there constitutionally without somehow differentiating advertising from speech (the Court has declined every opportunity, which should be obvious from the term of art "commercial speech") or relitigating Central Hudson. I also don't know whether yielding on the Constitution in cases like these compromises my values. See where I'm coming from? All it takes is one case of ignoring the First or Fourteenth in particular and getting away with establishing some bad precedent. That's a future that would concern me greatly. I've seen some folks arguing for jailing fake news authors here on HN. Ignoring parts of our Constitution feels good to think about in order to address a squeaky wheel. The ramifications of where that steers the whole cart over potentially decades must be carefully studied, however, some amendments far more than others (the First being one of those).
    • jsmthrowaway 10y ago
      You just lost the entire vote that put Trump into office and about three quarters of the country. Keep in mind those subsidies generally flow to investors in real estate, too, so you're losing more voters than you think. They had a real reason, once; the real problem is inertia and campaigning, which is what makes them stick. Hard to go to Iowa and tell them that billions of dollars are "being taken from family farms," which is exactly how it would be portrayed and oh by the way your Whopper is going to double in price too, and somehow still achieve office. Solve that problem. Then we get somewhere.
    • rimliu 10y ago
      Ok, meat calories will need to be replaced with something. Or are we going to eat grass?
      • CalRobert 10y ago
        Given that it takes 10,000 calories of feed to make 1,000 calories of beef, you're still talking about a massive reduction in the number of vegetation calories produced.
        • rimliu 10y ago
          Is it calories or mass? I.e. cow eats 10kg of grass to produce 1kg of beef, we eat 10kg of beaf to gain 1kg of weight? And in any case it does not really answer the question.
          • CalRobert 10y ago
            My recollection is of calories but I cannot find a source for that right now. Regardless, my point was that if you grow plants to feed to cattle to feed to humans you are taking more resources than if you grow plants to feed to humans. However, it is complex - it depends a lot on the landscape. http://www.economist.com/blogs/feastandfamine/2013/12/livestock http://www.economist.com/blogs/feastandfamine/2013/12/livest...
            • logfromblammo 10y ago
              You also can't ignore the energy cost of running the farm and transportation. I suspect that it may actually be more efficient to skip pesticide applications and harvesters, and use domesticated insects to harvest grains and fly those food calories directly to a local processing facility. Certain species are already natural grain harvesting machines. Certain species are already natural pest predators. Those could be exploited and bred for a purpose. Humans plant the corn. Domesticated insect-predator insects patrol the fields and protect the corn from unauthorized eating before it is ready to harvest. They return to the hive, breed for the next season, and get eaten. Domesticated harvester insects then mature, fly out to eat the corn, and then fly back to the hive, breed for the next season, and get eaten. Whatever is not eaten directly by humans can be fed to farmed fish or poultry.
    • tomjen3 10y ago
      If meat is taxed extra, then it is not the real cost is it? Anyway consumers would stop purchasing organic meat or meat from places that cared about animal welfare before they stop eating meat.
  • XorNot 10y ago
    Adding more RAM to a server won't fix a memory leak.
  • yaseer 10y ago
    One the one hand, I find it amusing to have programming analogies to complex social and economic issues. On the other hand, this analogy (and others) are pretty useful. Makes me think sociological discourse would benefit from using logical systems as a frame of reference.
  • ZlxVLI1eWNFSDc 10y ago
    >We need to change or habits not our numbers, this is the source of the problem. So you say, doesn't make it true. The source of the problem is every person; increase the number, worsen the problem.
    • tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      No, it's no good blaming the poor for a problem the rich world has created.
  • trumbitta2 10y ago
    You are describing USA
  • flashmob 10y ago
    You're right. Household CO2 emissions are nothing compared to commercial / transport. Just look at airlines. As a random example, Qantas Airlines, in the 2015 financial year, burned $3.9 billion AUD worth fuel! (About $3 billion in USD). Source: page 15 of their annual report: http://www.qantas.com.au/infodetail/about/corporateGovernance/2016AnnualReport.pdf http://www.qantas.com.au/infodetail/about/corporateGovernanc...
    • tgjsrkghruksd 10y ago
      Actually, you are be sorely wrong. Aviation is ~2% of human CO2 emission, and 12% of transport CO2 emission, versus 74% from roads. Judging from the streets and highways, most of that 74% is coming from household vehicles, and most of the rest is pretty much driven by household consumption.
      • ptaipale 10y ago
        The numbers seem to be very unreliable, though. Over here (Finland), reputable sources (such as WWF and State Statistics Center) give drastically different numbers for aviation emissions. A reason could be that in some statistics, only domestic flights are included, and international aviation belongs to no one's statistics.
• acover 10y ago
  No. China's one child policy only slowed growth.[0] Even if you halved the population immediately the co2 levels in the atmosphere would continue to increase despite outputting less. [0] -https://www.theguardian.com/world/datablog/2015/oct/29/impact-china-one-child-policy-four-graphs https://www.theguardian.com/world/datablog/2015/oct/29/impac...
• partycoder 10y ago
  In 1950 global population was 2.5 billion people, now 7.5. That's 3x in 67 years. Technological advances can help us increase the amount of people we can sustain, but eventually there is going to be a limit. The limit will not only be because of CO2. There are other situations that need to be managed. Population is increasing, and the lifestyle of individuals is rising, making each person have a larger cost on the environment. Topsoil, the soil we grow our food in, takes long to regenerate and we are depleting it faster than it regenerates. Overfishing cannot be stopped. Fish will be gone soon, and we largely depend on it. Fish as food, fishmeal for animals and fish oil as fertilizer (fish emulsion).
  • paublyrne 10y ago
    The increase in global population is not necessarily exponential. A lot of it can be explained by increases in life expectancy, and those increases seem to have - for now - a relatively fixed limit. Longer life expectancy does not increase the number of children each person has (for the most part, leaving ageing rock stars to one side). Greater wealth seems to also have discourage people from having children if the birth rates in wester countries are any indication. I think we can do more to tackle the specific problems you mention through regulation and better policy, whereas a falling global population on its own would do little or nothing to combat them.
    • partycoder 10y ago
      I did not say growth was exponential, I only pointed out what growth has been in the last years. It is reasonable to expect growth rate will decline. Right now a billion people is predicted to be added every ~13 years. Even if the growth rate declines, population cannot continue to grow forever.
  • rimliu 10y ago
    We are already past the peak child. Fish will no go anywhere, it will just be farmed more.
    • partycoder 10y ago
• mistermumble 10y ago
  Population control would have to begin with the US, which on a per-capita basis has more than double the emission than any other nation or region (China, European union, etc). More than 8 times the rate of populous nations like India and Indonesia. How likely is that to happen, especially in Trump's America? Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
  • ZlxVLI1eWNFSDc 10y ago
    >Population control would have to begin with the US, [because opinions] I don't think there's a rule for that. Is it in the Scripture (because I know that less well)?
  • marchenko 10y ago
    The US has double the per capita emissions of the EU on a cumulative basis since 1970, but Australia and Canada have similar per capita emissions over this period. Canada, especially is accelerating its CO2 extraction relative to the size of its economy and population. In a globalized system, where these extractive activities are global commodities, it seems to make sense to index emissions/extraction against economy size. Otherwise you get the unhelpful result that Bahrain and Qatar are the source of the problem (in a material sense they are, but not in a useful sense). This [1] list of emissions by GDP is a nice start, and it seems that Canada and Australia, the other two members of the wealthy New World Anglosphere, are neighbors to the US on this metric. Is there a good way of accounting for national economy specialization when assessing contribution to the emissions problem? China looks very inefficient according to this metric, but much of the world is essentially outsourcing its emissions to China. Is it useful to compare China to a country whose GDP is based largely on financial services? Which nations give the best bang for the buck in dirty industry (my suspicion is that Germany does well here)? 1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_...
• anotherturn 10y ago
  I recently read Dan Brown's Inferno - not a great reference work by any stretch, but some compelling arguments are made along the lines you suggest. I suspect there is a lot more to it than just limiting the numbers of babies born. If there are more resources per person (a consequence of fewer people) then we will likely see the resources used per person go up. Anecdotally - American cars are terribly inefficient with respect to fuel consumption. This is I think partly due to the low cost of fuel. In the UK, however, the cost of fuel per litre is almost double that of the US, and consequently people gravitate toward much more efficient vehicles. Additionally - China has been a huge polluter for quite some time despite one child policies though admittedly it's partly because the global economy outsourced their pollution to China to a degree.
  • scrps 10y ago
    Sadly, I agree that an "Oh, more for me!" mentality would probably be the prevailing sentiment. Only a philosophical shift brought on by a serious downturn in circumstances would cause people to reconcile their presuppositions of reality with actual reality and by then who knows if the problem would be reversible.
• Noos 10y ago
  A government with the power to population control probably would control us in other ways too. If you're going to tell people how many kids they can have, you might as well tell them what jobs they can work, what religion they can have, and just about anything that achieves your agenda.
• laughingman2 10y ago
  Then the most practical hack is banning meat and dairy industry.
• EliRivers 10y ago
  I understand peak child has been reached and the only reason the population is still increasing is that people aren't dying young at the same rate they used to. I think there are bigger gains to be made by changing other things, and they can be made much faster than a slow reduction of population.
  • ZlxVLI1eWNFSDc 10y ago
    >I understand peak child has been reached This is certainly not true on a regional basis, and I can hardly say with confidence that stagnating population levels in Europe really warrant African families having upwards of 10 children on average when the land can hardly feed the current population as is. We are talking about huge numbers here if African population really does increase by 3 billion during this century. FWIW, I'm not going to stop driving and start walking so someone else's children can do the pollution instead of me and it levels out.
    • EliRivers 10y ago
      This is certainly not true on a regional basis Fortunately, it's a global problem. As to the rest of your comment, I understand that people have fewer children when they trust that their children aren't going to die young, and that's the direction we're headed in.
    • tgjsrkghruksd 10y ago
      Your numbers are out of date. There's not a single country where the TFR >= 7. Most of Africa is under 5. That's still too high, but the numbers are dropping, and they are especially dropping in countries with increased development and urbanization.
• tinco 10y ago
  Populations already are stagnating in developed countries. It would be much more efficient to block/tax things like beef imports, petrol cars, foreign goods/foods.
• pjc50 10y ago
  Not only is this too totalitarian, it's too late. Most western countries are already at stable or slightly declining population levels. It's worth reducing fertility in poorer countries, but this is best done by carrot rather than stick: education and job opportunities for women, and decent free baseline healthcare with contraception included. One of the main obstacles to the latter is US religious conservatives.
  • fsloth 10y ago
    "decent free baseline healthcare with contraception included...One of the main obstacles to the latter is US religious conservatives." I should imagine Catholic church's condemnation of birth control is the larger political issue in countries that are not US.
    • lazyasciiart 10y ago
      The US global gag rule, which has been in effect under every Republican president for decades, blocks foreign aid funding to any organization that mentions abortion. I think it was estimated to cut aid spending by $9 billion when Trump re-introduced it this year (especially as he expanded it from the old policy of health-related organisations to all organisations).
      • fsloth 10y ago
        I had no idea such a gag rule existed. Does this affect distribution of contraceptives in some twisted way as well?
        • JshWright 10y ago
          Of course it does. Many organization that provide contraception also provide abortion services, and therefore are ineligible for funding.
          • ptaipale 10y ago
• icantdrive55 10y ago
  Plus--once you tell someone they can't have something. They will do whatever they can to get it. (Groucho Marx's was the first to notice this human traight, I believe? It's just so true though. Hell, I can have stuff on CL for months. The minute I tell a customer it's awaiting a pick-up, so many will email me back with more money. I don't take it because I'm not a filthy Looker. I once had a girlfriend who was always yacking about having a family later in life. I didn't even like her that much--sue me. She was beautiful though. The rap about the kids was getting old. We were getting tedious. Most it it was my emotional issues, but she was just irritating me. One night, after hearing about what our life will be after she got her PhD, and finished med school(didn't even have a Bachelor's degree yet). I slowly ended the relationship. I started with, "You're wonderful, but I don't ever want kids." Crickets on the room. "What?" Me, "I just don't want the little rug rats?". The next few weeks, I had a feeling she told all her friends, and she had so many. After a few months of weirdness, I got the talk.)
• chrischen 10y ago
  Or build denser cities where the average inhabitant consumes much less energy. A lot of the waste in America comes from sprawl, causing everyone to build bigger houses and own bigger things, but most importantly, rely on fossil fuels just to get around every day. Of course converting the US to high density is probably too late. The US is also the biggest target market for Chinese made goods, which means a lot of the non-fossil fuel pollution you see in China is really just externalizef American pollution.
• spangry 10y ago
  You're right, it would help. Unfortunately, probably the most effective method [0] of achieving population control (short of actively killing people) is accelerating economic and social development in poorer countries. At the moment, economic development seems to be correlated with increased co2 emissions intensity. The insane optimist in me tends to think that as we develop cost-effective methods of generating electricity without the co2 we will also have greater capacity to aid economic development in third-world countries. So on the upside, there seems to be a 'virtuous cycle' in here somewhere. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
• raaaaraaaa1 10y ago
  Population will be reduced naturally as competition for natural resources causes wars.
  • earthtolazlo 10y ago
    Not to mention famine. At this point, it seems inevitable that billions of people are going to starve to death before the end of the century.
• hobbes78 10y ago
  Most civilised countries already have a < 1 growth rate, which means they'll have populations smaller and smaller as time goes by. So if you want to decrease the global population, you'll have to target essentially Africa. Just check the distribution of growth rates across the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_growth_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populatio...