3 ms·

Lower birthrates are our best hope for lowering our population from above what the Earth can sustain without suffering and early deaths due to famine, war, dise

by spodek 7y ago

Lower birthrates are our best hope for lowering our population from above what the Earth can sustain without suffering and early deaths due to famine, war, disease, and so on. There are large uncertainties over the planet's carrying capacity, but the numbers I find most believable say we're over it, which can work until we exhaust non-renewables and perhaps destroy some renewables. I find the most compelling understanding still comes from the book Limits to Growth and this 2014 research showing us tracking their business-as-usual model pretty well, 40 years later https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/2763500/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf https://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/00.... Steady state economics has worked. "Population growth is vital for the world economy" is a statement about a system approaching collapse. Reading the book Affluence Without Abundance I found of human societies enduring hundreds of thousands of years without growth. I've since learned of more. We don't know their level of happiness, but recent versions showed happiness and health greater than ours. In any case, they didn't collapse the entire planet's systems in a few hundreds years, so our systems don't stack very well -- a few generations of wealthy few and destitute many followed by collapse. Thailand lowered its birth rate voluntarily and successfully https://www.context.org/iclib/ic31/frazer https://www.context.org/iclib/ic31/frazer. Lower birth rate is our best hope.

rmah 7y ago
We don't know their level of happiness, but recent versions showed happiness and health greater than ours. In any case, they didn't collapse the entire planet's systems in a few hundreds years, so our systems don't stack very well Prehistoric man may well have been happier than people today... while things were good. When food was plentiful, the weather nice and the living' was easy, it was all roses. Until your mate busted a leg ... and died. Until your kid gets a toothache ... and then dies. Until the rains don't fall, the herds go away... and your entire clan dies. They probably weren't so happy then. This rose colored glasses view of the deep past ignores the extreme misery people endured to get to the good times. It is, IMO, just absurd. Finally, the idea that prehistoric folk lived in harmony with nature is just silly. They routinely set huge wildfires to drive prey, they would chase entire herds off cliffs and then harvest a handful of animals. Yes they laughed, loved and wept tears of joy. But they also murdered, raped and wept tears of sorrow. And experienced the latter far more often than anyone today. (For example, almost everyone who survived to adulthood wee half or more of their children die. And I would be very very surprised if each child's death was not felt as keenly as people do today).
- droithomme 7y ago
  > They routinely ... Did all prehistoric folk do all the bad things you enumerate? Or did you cherry pick things from a multitude of regions and time periods which you personally believe to have been engaged in unethical and outrageous behavior based on your acceptance of the veracity of treatises written by western academics who have no reliable source of data about what prehistoric people were really doing or thinking? Honestly I'm surprised and give you credit for not bringing up the old straws of cannibalism and human sacrifice by the alleged primitive savages. So, thanks. But... on the topic of outrageous behavior, how do you feel about Mai Lai? Treblinka? The Donner Party? Obama's Predator Drone policy in Yemen?
  - UnFleshedOne 7y ago
    I thought the point was that everybody was primitive savages. Academics do have a good deal of reliable data on how people lived and died. Bones can tell a lot.

by spodek 7y ago

rmah 7y ago

We don't know their level of happiness, but recent versions showed happiness and health greater than ours. In any case, they didn't collapse the entire planet's systems in a few hundreds years, so our systems don't stack very well Prehistoric man may well have been happier than people today... while things were good. When food was plentiful, the weather nice and the living' was easy, it was all roses. Until your mate busted a leg ... and died. Until your kid gets a toothache ... and then dies. Until the rains don't fall, the herds go away... and your entire clan dies. They probably weren't so happy then. This rose colored glasses view of the deep past ignores the extreme misery people endured to get to the good times. It is, IMO, just absurd. Finally, the idea that prehistoric folk lived in harmony with nature is just silly. They routinely set huge wildfires to drive prey, they would chase entire herds off cliffs and then harvest a handful of animals. Yes they laughed, loved and wept tears of joy. But they also murdered, raped and wept tears of sorrow. And experienced the latter far more often than anyone today. (For example, almost everyone who survived to adulthood wee half or more of their children die. And I would be very very surprised if each child's death was not felt as keenly as people do today).

droithomme 7y ago
> They routinely ... Did all prehistoric folk do all the bad things you enumerate? Or did you cherry pick things from a multitude of regions and time periods which you personally believe to have been engaged in unethical and outrageous behavior based on your acceptance of the veracity of treatises written by western academics who have no reliable source of data about what prehistoric people were really doing or thinking? Honestly I'm surprised and give you credit for not bringing up the old straws of cannibalism and human sacrifice by the alleged primitive savages. So, thanks. But... on the topic of outrageous behavior, how do you feel about Mai Lai? Treblinka? The Donner Party? Obama's Predator Drone policy in Yemen?
- UnFleshedOne 7y ago
  I thought the point was that everybody was primitive savages. Academics do have a good deal of reliable data on how people lived and died. Bones can tell a lot.