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> And we are nowhere near reaching it Evidence for that? There's a fair selection of serious planetary scale human impacts right now - food chains, species los

> And we are nowhere near reaching it Evidence for that? There's a fair selection of serious planetary scale human impacts right now - food chains, species loss, plastics, and I haven't even mentioned climate yet. I haven't heard of any of the Club of Rome calling for sterilisation of Asians either - neither have the search engines. So that seems baseless hyperbole.

XorNot 7y ago
There's a substantial difference between the carrying capacity of the planet and specific problems related to resource mismanagement. The idea climate change wouldn't be an issue with "less people" is absurd. "less people" don't suddenly create viable electric cars and fusion power.
- khuey 7y ago
  Why is that absurd? Unless you believe for some reason that there's no safe level of CO2 emissions?
  - XorNot 7y ago
    There literally isn't. Fossil fuels are CO2 which was removed millions of years ago, and took millions of years to sequester. Any rate of active fossil fuel burning above the tiniest of baselines is going to be a net CO2 contributor. But perhaps more importantly: why would fewer people, with the same amount of resources to share, not simply use more of them? Most efficiency improvements have been driven by rising prices due to rising demand, not awareness of climate change. EDIT: Worth noting, this is also materially different to the extraction of fossil fuels for other purposes - like plastic.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  I didn't say that. Yet fewer people would undoubtedly emit less and need fewer resources. At some point - I have no idea where - there is a number who could have gone on living a fossil fuelled lifestyle indefinitely without it impacting on global climate. Increasing population is tied with increasing emissions. Fewer people would unarguably have lower impact. Fewer people wouldn't magically fix overnight what we've already wrought - that's silly. Humans have always mismanaged resources. More humans means more mismanaged resources. Not all of the planet's issues are resource management though - a selection are simply down to sheer space used - forest clearcut, development such as roads and cities built and land farmed, etc.
- aaron_m04 7y ago
  What makes you think the humans of this planet can manage resources substantially better?
- imtringued 7y ago
  It is very weird that your solution to political problems is to brute force them by adding more people of which most will simply defend the status quo. Electric cars are 19th century invention. It is just a matter of deciding to no longer subsidize damage caused by CO2 emissions. Fusion is also known to be limited by the lack of funding. I've read stories about 13 year old teenagers building their own fusion reactors. The bigger challenge was getting the financial support from parents. Climate change mitigation has never been about feasibility, it has always been about finding a solution that is immune to politics.
  - magduf 7y ago
    >Fusion is also known to be limited by the lack of funding. I've read stories about 13 year old teenagers building their own fusion reactors. Wrong. Fusion reactors you can build at home are just novelties, and don't produce more power than they consume. No one has yet figured out how to actually do that, and until you can do that, fusion isn't useful as a power source. The only place we've ever seen fusion produce usable power is in a star. There's lots of research into building complex reactors to try to replicate this without needing something the size of a star, but no one's actually done it yet. It might be doable with enough funding, or it may never actually work; there's no way to say for sure. The real problem is that too many people on this planet consume too many resources, and Americans are the worst. If most people lived in cities as dense as Tokyo and got around on trains and bicycles instead of cars, we wouldn't be having most of these problems. The amount of energy consumed per capita in America is simply unsustainable, and too many other people want to emulate this, but there's simply no way for that to possibly work on this planet: there isn't enough land or enough energy.
    - antepodius 7y ago
      There's an amount of energy being shot at the planet by the sun every day. Human civilisation uses a lot less than a percent of that.
      - magduf 7y ago
        Solar energy isn't currently usable for personal vehicles, and it's going to be a little while still before that changes. Even if we could magically make cars and trucks all battery-EVs tomorrow, most of our power is still generated from fossil fuels, not solar power, and that's not likely to change soon, though it is of course slowly getting better. The more fossil fuels we burn, the more CO2 we put in the atmosphere, and accelerate climate change. Sure, if we could overnight make all cars and trucks into battery EVs, replace all fossil fuel power plants with solar PV arrays (and wind farms too, since those are basically driven by solar energy too, though indirectly), and come up with some kind of storage technology to handle nighttime, high latitudes, clouds, still air, etc., then the energy aspect wouldn't be such a big deal. (Even better if we can make battery-EV airplanes.) But we're not there yet, and it's not likely we'll be there for quite a while unfortunately. And even if we did accomplish that, that still doesn't solve the space problem. There just isn't enough room for everyone to have a big suburban house in a nice place with mild weather, and drive a personal vehicle everywhere. But if we tore down our car-based cities and rebuilt some just like Tokyo with that kind of density (and honestly, it really isn't as dense even as Manhattan; there's a lot more tall skyscrapers in NYC), then we actually could, while simultaneously having far, far fewer car-related deaths, and also having a much healthier population.

XorNot 7y ago

There's a substantial difference between the carrying capacity of the planet and specific problems related to resource mismanagement. The idea climate change wouldn't be an issue with "less people" is absurd. "less people" don't suddenly create viable electric cars and fusion power.

khuey 7y ago
Why is that absurd? Unless you believe for some reason that there's no safe level of CO2 emissions?
- XorNot 7y ago
  There literally isn't. Fossil fuels are CO2 which was removed millions of years ago, and took millions of years to sequester. Any rate of active fossil fuel burning above the tiniest of baselines is going to be a net CO2 contributor. But perhaps more importantly: why would fewer people, with the same amount of resources to share, not simply use more of them? Most efficiency improvements have been driven by rising prices due to rising demand, not awareness of climate change. EDIT: Worth noting, this is also materially different to the extraction of fossil fuels for other purposes - like plastic.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
I didn't say that. Yet fewer people would undoubtedly emit less and need fewer resources. At some point - I have no idea where - there is a number who could have gone on living a fossil fuelled lifestyle indefinitely without it impacting on global climate. Increasing population is tied with increasing emissions. Fewer people would unarguably have lower impact. Fewer people wouldn't magically fix overnight what we've already wrought - that's silly. Humans have always mismanaged resources. More humans means more mismanaged resources. Not all of the planet's issues are resource management though - a selection are simply down to sheer space used - forest clearcut, development such as roads and cities built and land farmed, etc.
aaron_m04 7y ago
What makes you think the humans of this planet can manage resources substantially better?
imtringued 7y ago
It is very weird that your solution to political problems is to brute force them by adding more people of which most will simply defend the status quo. Electric cars are 19th century invention. It is just a matter of deciding to no longer subsidize damage caused by CO2 emissions. Fusion is also known to be limited by the lack of funding. I've read stories about 13 year old teenagers building their own fusion reactors. The bigger challenge was getting the financial support from parents. Climate change mitigation has never been about feasibility, it has always been about finding a solution that is immune to politics.
- magduf 7y ago
  >Fusion is also known to be limited by the lack of funding. I've read stories about 13 year old teenagers building their own fusion reactors. Wrong. Fusion reactors you can build at home are just novelties, and don't produce more power than they consume. No one has yet figured out how to actually do that, and until you can do that, fusion isn't useful as a power source. The only place we've ever seen fusion produce usable power is in a star. There's lots of research into building complex reactors to try to replicate this without needing something the size of a star, but no one's actually done it yet. It might be doable with enough funding, or it may never actually work; there's no way to say for sure. The real problem is that too many people on this planet consume too many resources, and Americans are the worst. If most people lived in cities as dense as Tokyo and got around on trains and bicycles instead of cars, we wouldn't be having most of these problems. The amount of energy consumed per capita in America is simply unsustainable, and too many other people want to emulate this, but there's simply no way for that to possibly work on this planet: there isn't enough land or enough energy.
  - antepodius 7y ago
    There's an amount of energy being shot at the planet by the sun every day. Human civilisation uses a lot less than a percent of that.
    - magduf 7y ago
      Solar energy isn't currently usable for personal vehicles, and it's going to be a little while still before that changes. Even if we could magically make cars and trucks all battery-EVs tomorrow, most of our power is still generated from fossil fuels, not solar power, and that's not likely to change soon, though it is of course slowly getting better. The more fossil fuels we burn, the more CO2 we put in the atmosphere, and accelerate climate change. Sure, if we could overnight make all cars and trucks into battery EVs, replace all fossil fuel power plants with solar PV arrays (and wind farms too, since those are basically driven by solar energy too, though indirectly), and come up with some kind of storage technology to handle nighttime, high latitudes, clouds, still air, etc., then the energy aspect wouldn't be such a big deal. (Even better if we can make battery-EV airplanes.) But we're not there yet, and it's not likely we'll be there for quite a while unfortunately. And even if we did accomplish that, that still doesn't solve the space problem. There just isn't enough room for everyone to have a big suburban house in a nice place with mild weather, and drive a personal vehicle everywhere. But if we tore down our car-based cities and rebuilt some just like Tokyo with that kind of density (and honestly, it really isn't as dense even as Manhattan; there's a lot more tall skyscrapers in NYC), then we actually could, while simultaneously having far, far fewer car-related deaths, and also having a much healthier population.