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That's rather pessimistic. The old slogan of "reduce, re-use, recycle" (in that order) still applies. There is no magic bullet.
by mgbmtl 8y ago
That's rather pessimistic. The old slogan of "reduce, re-use, recycle" (in that order) still applies. There is no magic bullet.
- lisper 8y ago> That's rather pessimistic. Indeed. But it's also realistic. > The old slogan of "reduce, re-use, recycle" (in that order) still applies. Applies to what? R-R-R will buy some time. It will not solve the problem in the long run. > There is no magic bullet. Yes, there is: birth control. The solution to the problem is to stop the underlying unsustainable process, which is the exponential growth in human population. That is the ONLY solution.
- olyjohn 8y agoSeriously. It's scary how accurate the movie Idiocracy is becoming.
- mgbmtl 8y agoJust curious: what's the ideal population Earth, if all humans consumed as much as the average person in the US/Canada? Random googling suggests that for the US alone, ideal population would be 150 M, with EU-levels of consumption. That's pretty drastic.
- lisper 8y ago"Ideal" is a matter of taste. If you like to hang out in big cities your ideal number might be bigger than someone who doesn't. Personally, I think we are well past the point of diminishing returns for any reasonable quality metric. But just getting people to acknowledge that this is something worth thinking about would be significant progress. > That's pretty drastic. Yep. We've dug ourselves into a pretty deep hole. Getting out will not be easy.
- A2017U1 8y agoHow did you get that very low figure? Everyone living like the US is put at using 4x the planets resources, which would suggest 1.5 billion people. That's the extremes too, the EU consumes much less. http://personal.psu.edu/afr3/blogs/siowfa12/2012/10/if-everyone-lived-liked-americans-how-many-earths-would-we-need.html http://personal.psu.edu/afr3/blogs/siowfa12/2012/10/if-every...