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Yes. Consumerism and conspicuous consumption include travel and other services. You can instead stay home and read a book. Perhaps on a slow, eco-friendly jou
by eeZah7Ux 7y ago
Yes.
Consumerism and conspicuous consumption include travel and other services.
You can instead stay home and read a book. Perhaps on a slow, eco-friendly journey every few years.
- fastball 7y agoWho is it I'm saving the world for if not myself or my children?
- bubblewrap 7y agoHe didn't say you shouldn't have kids. My kids read books, too.
- beat 7y agoSadly, a lot of people say we shouldn't have kids because it's bad for the Earth. Which ties to poor arguments about "overpopulation".
- bubblewrap 7y agoWhat are poor arguments about overpopulation? Clearly overpopulation is part of the problem.
- beat 7y agoIs it? When countries modernize their economies, the birth rate plummets to near-replacement rates over the course of about two generations. Take Iran, for example. In 1980, their birthrate was around 6. Today, it's lower than Europe. What population growth we're seeing today is mostly due to increased lifespan, not high birth rates.
- bubblewrap 7y agoFirst, I think most population growth is in "3rd world countries", so your theory of increased lifespan being the culprit doesn't really hold. The theory that growth slows with economic improvements is nice, but it is not a law of nature. Besides even with no more growth, we still have billions of people who want to raise their lifestyle to Western levels, increasing their CO2 footprint by orders of magnitude. And another way to look at it: if there were only 10000 humans on earth, they would probably have a difficult time trying to move CO2 levels by a significant amount, or producing significant amounts of plastic, and so on. So clearly population size is a part of the problem.
- beat 7y agoLook at the numbers. Look at the numbers. Look at the numbers. Do not make assumptions. You're right, most high birth rate is in "third world countries"... but only some of them. Others see their birth rates drop dramatically over the course of a couple of generations, until they're at the same level as "developed" countries. And this maps almost directly to economic development. So what happens? The drop in birth rates happens concurrently with an increase in lifespans, due to eliminating disease, increasing food security, etc. This leads to an overhang of a couple of generations on old-world birthrates but new-world life expectancy - hence, population growth, even while the birth rate plummets. But give those countries a couple more generations for this hump to age out, and their population growth will level off, just like it has in older developed countries that saw their birth rates drop in the first half of the 20th century. That's just math.
- bubblewrap 7y agoAs I said, even without growth, there are already Billions of people hungry for a more CO2 intense lifestyle. And for example birth rates dropping off could still mean more births than, say, 50 years ago, because overall there are more people. (I'm too lazy to look up the numbers, because as I said, there already are a lot of people). So if it all evens out eventually - what population size will we have reached by then? And once again - birth rates dropping off is not actually a law of nature. For how long has that effect been noticed, anyway? Industrial revolution, and good contraceptives, have not been available for very long. There may well be other phenomena emerging that counteract it. Edit: here is a chart showing that while birth rates are falling in most places, absolute number of births has been steadily increasing in the last 65 years: https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#births-globally https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#births-globally Absolute number of births increased 40% since 1950, from 100 Million to 140 Million per year.
- eeZah7Ux 7y agoHumanity's grand-grand-grand-grand-children.