4 ms·
None of this works at scale. The problem is that we are past carrying capacity. We need to control population. I am in favour of E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth soluti
by jelliclesfarm 6y ago
None of this works at scale. The problem is that we are past carrying capacity. We need to control population. I am in favour of E.O. Wilson’s Half Earth solution where we set aside half the planet for habitat and inhabit only half of the land and leave the oceans alone.
- davexunit 6y agoThis is so completely wrong I can't believe I'm responding to it. We are not past carrying capacity. Population control is some ecofascist bullshit.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoYes. Since you don’t believe that we are past carrying capacity, you shouldn’t be responding to this.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoI feel like I need to address the ‘ecofascist bullshit’ gem. Fascism promoted eugenics. Population control through responsible procreation is not eugenics. It is an incentive to make sure ones children and future generation has the best possible chance to thrive and flourish along with everyone else of our species without just a few gene pools monopolizing all the resources. The 1/2 surviving child/per person is derived from rational thought and evaluation of our planet’s existing resources. Children are expensive and everyone pays for all the children in one way or another. It’s not always about the money. When we have a planet that doesn’t expand and most of our resources are not renewable, it’s a zero sum game. Someone in the gene pool who spends all their life making a dozen babies benefits proportionally more than someone who has 1-2 children. Also..this need to keep having babies is a scam perpetuated by organized religions of all types because the state was always funded by religion. And more subscribers means more power. That’s the kind of bullshit that needs to be stopped in its tracks. Have a nice day!
- joycian 6y agoI don't know if it's useful to see it as a zero sum game. The sun is beaming practically unlimited energy out towards us (and a whole lot more that doesn't reach Earth but is still available eventually). Even if it is zero sum: if we all stopped eating meat, we could pretty easily sustain ourselves. Putting it on population size instead of how that population behaves is not useful and frankly fatalist.
- armandhammer 6y agoThere's more than just food energy, though. Lots of things that we rely on for modern civilization and survival are finite -- the most obvious being petroleum / gas and various minerals + metals. Additionally, retrieving these resources is extremely environmentally destructive in ways which take centuries or millennia to recover from (we've already extracted the locations where getting at this stuff was easy and less destructive). It's a lose/lose situation.
- FooBarBizBazz 6y agoPopulation voluntarily goes down with increased education and reproductive rights for women. You don't need something heavy-handed. You just need feminism. Get the fertility rate down to something like 0.9 and just wait. You don't need to deny the facts because of some fringe-right boogeyman. There really are too many people. But there are perfectly-good solutions no more extreme than the center-left.
- TomSwirly 6y ago> This is so completely wrong I can't believe I'm responding to it. And yet you provide no logical refutation. > We are not past carrying capacity. Because... you say so? > Population control is some ecofascist bullshit. Because... you say so? "Fascist" doesn't mean "someone told me what to do." Not everything you don't like is "fascist". The environmental movement even at its worse doesn't encourage nationalism, or venerate the military or industry, promote sexism, have an obsession with national security. - it simply has zero connection to fascism. --- Population increases exponentially, and individual consumption increases exponentially. No one wants to stop having kids. No one wants to stop consumption. No one wants people to tell them what to do. So how is society going to survive? The answer: it won't. The exponential growth will never stop until it all collapses. People will scream "fascism" at any attempt to stop any of this exponential growth... and we will devastate the ecosystem for all time to come.
- nemo44x 6y agoWho gets to decide who has children? And how many? This is a really dangerous line of thought you are pursuing here. "We need to control population" is a scary thought and I hope this never becomes a serious solution to the problems we have to solve.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoEveryone gets to decide how many children they have...there has to be an universal child tax. Of course, only those who can afford children should have them. The environment and the commons are for everyone. And there is a cost to bringing new lives and to make sure we have diversity in the gene pool, we ought to have everyone contributing to the gene pool. Otherwise it would just become an inbred mess like we have seen happen with animals and plants. It just makes us weaker as a species. Population: 1600s ..500 million 1975s ..3.5 billion 2020s ..8.0 billion 2050s ..10 billion 1/2 surviving child per person or have them donate their DNA to a gene bank. Stop incentivizing children. Provide quality of life for everyone.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoCurrently, with continuing education and public health, its women who 'get to decide'. So half the population is disenfranchised already. This 'who gets to decide' argument is sophomoric. Its an important issue, and we may have to face it, and we'll do something hopefully equitable.
- jelliclesfarm 6y agoIt’s not so everywhere in the world. I think it’s fair that the ones with the uterus get to decide what they want to do with their body. Maybe if we start making pod babies that can gestate outside the female human body, it would be a free for all decision to make. I hope someone works on it.
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoNot married? What you do with your body is kind of the whole deal there, never mind just having kids. Yet the decision about kids is very, very one-sided.