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Not buying the access to clean water = less burning of hydrocarbon. The poor people by definition are resource strapped and will use any means of energy availa

Not buying the access to clean water = less burning of hydrocarbon. The poor people by definition are resource strapped and will use any means of energy available, just for different purpose. On the cynical side: clean water -> less mortality -> more population -> more carbon use to sustain said population.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
clean water -> less mortality -> less population (as people stop having extra children) -> roughly the same amount of carbon.
- zo1 6y ago
  Yeah, but there is an "initial surge" of lots of additional people before the mortality-rate signal lowers it (maybe 2-3 generations?) And then you're stuck with a lot of people that are now consumers and generating more carbon than if you just told them "No" in the first place and gave them a good quality of life improvement. We're watching that happen right now, we're many generations in and most of the 3rd world is not slowing down their population growth fast enough despite lowered mortality rates. Way I see it, any help or financial aid to 3rd world countries (with high birth rates) needs to be coupled with comprehensive and mandatory contraceptive, health-information and birth control drives that is overseen by independent 1st world entities such as the WHO with the intent on lowering mortality rates and birth rates. And if these countries' birth rates don't start following a downward trajectory after a short period, then stop giving fancy aid and switch to bare-bones humanitarian aid. Seems way better than "lending" them the money they need and then making them dependent on the 1st world in perpetuity.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    > mandatory contraceptive Starts to sound a lot like eugenics. All the evidence suggests that if you raise standards of living and give women control of their own fertility, then birth rates drop naturally (and fairly rapidly). Turns out, when given the choice, most women prefer to have one or two children. This trend has been replicated across (all?) developed countries with very different cultures. There's no reason to believe the kind of coercion you're proposing is necessary, if you could even justify it ethically.
    - zo1 6y ago
      I didn't say mandatory contraceptives, there was a whole sentence you missed the ending of. "comprehensive and mandatory contraceptive, health-information and birth control drives" You make it sound like like I'm saying people need to be forced to use contraceptives. Guess the phrasing is not great. Maybe 'program' would have been better? But the mandatory modifier was on the drive/program, not the usage of contraceptives.
      - ForHackernews 6y ago
        It still seems very ethically dubious to me to have a bunch of rich people (with absolutely massive carbon footprints) telling a bunch of poor people they need to get their birth rate down. If you were serious about a programme like this, you should at least phrase it in terms of carrots, not sticks: if you embrace feminism, educate and empower your female citizens, we'll reward that with increased foreign direct investment.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
It's pretty well established that lower mortality leads to less reproduction and lower overall population. When mortar is high, proof reliability over correct with extra "cushion" children. Wealth is a far larger source of pollution than life.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  > Wealth is a far larger source of pollution than life. It's both. Wealth drives down the birth rate (as does empowerment and higher education of women [1]), but it also drives up the rate of pollution [2]. You need "Clean Wealth" (high quality of life with low or zero CO2 emissions, pollution, etc) if you want lower birth rates (which we do, we're on track to hit 10 billion people by the end of the century) and less pollution. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change-in-the-number-of-children-women-have https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=linear&yScale=linear&stackMode=absolute&endpointsOnly=0&year=latest&time=earliest..latest&country=China~United%20States~India~United%20Kingdom~World&region=World&Gas%20=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting%20=Production-based&Fuel%20=Total&Count%20=Per%20capita&Relative%20to%20world%20total%20= https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=li...

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

clean water -> less mortality -> less population (as people stop having extra children) -> roughly the same amount of carbon.

zo1 6y ago
Yeah, but there is an "initial surge" of lots of additional people before the mortality-rate signal lowers it (maybe 2-3 generations?) And then you're stuck with a lot of people that are now consumers and generating more carbon than if you just told them "No" in the first place and gave them a good quality of life improvement. We're watching that happen right now, we're many generations in and most of the 3rd world is not slowing down their population growth fast enough despite lowered mortality rates. Way I see it, any help or financial aid to 3rd world countries (with high birth rates) needs to be coupled with comprehensive and mandatory contraceptive, health-information and birth control drives that is overseen by independent 1st world entities such as the WHO with the intent on lowering mortality rates and birth rates. And if these countries' birth rates don't start following a downward trajectory after a short period, then stop giving fancy aid and switch to bare-bones humanitarian aid. Seems way better than "lending" them the money they need and then making them dependent on the 1st world in perpetuity.
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  > mandatory contraceptive Starts to sound a lot like eugenics. All the evidence suggests that if you raise standards of living and give women control of their own fertility, then birth rates drop naturally (and fairly rapidly). Turns out, when given the choice, most women prefer to have one or two children. This trend has been replicated across (all?) developed countries with very different cultures. There's no reason to believe the kind of coercion you're proposing is necessary, if you could even justify it ethically.
  - zo1 6y ago
    I didn't say mandatory contraceptives, there was a whole sentence you missed the ending of. "comprehensive and mandatory contraceptive, health-information and birth control drives" You make it sound like like I'm saying people need to be forced to use contraceptives. Guess the phrasing is not great. Maybe 'program' would have been better? But the mandatory modifier was on the drive/program, not the usage of contraceptives.
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      It still seems very ethically dubious to me to have a bunch of rich people (with absolutely massive carbon footprints) telling a bunch of poor people they need to get their birth rate down. If you were serious about a programme like this, you should at least phrase it in terms of carrots, not sticks: if you embrace feminism, educate and empower your female citizens, we'll reward that with increased foreign direct investment.

srtjstjsj 6y ago

It's pretty well established that lower mortality leads to less reproduction and lower overall population. When mortar is high, proof reliability over correct with extra "cushion" children. Wealth is a far larger source of pollution than life.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
> Wealth is a far larger source of pollution than life. It's both. Wealth drives down the birth rate (as does empowerment and higher education of women [1]), but it also drives up the rate of pollution [2]. You need "Clean Wealth" (high quality of life with low or zero CO2 emissions, pollution, etc) if you want lower birth rates (which we do, we're on track to hit 10 billion people by the end of the century) and less pollution. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-change-in-the-number-of-children-women-have https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=linear&yScale=linear&stackMode=absolute&endpointsOnly=0&year=latest&time=earliest..latest&country=China~United%20States~India~United%20Kingdom~World&region=World&Gas%20=CO%E2%82%82&Accounting%20=Production-based&Fuel%20=Total&Count%20=Per%20capita&Relative%20to%20world%20total%20= https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?tab=chart&xScale=li...