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I'm not necessarily worried about climate change per se. It will result in hardship for many, for sure. Temperature changes will render some areas uninhabitable

by rland 5y ago

I'm not necessarily worried about climate change per se. It will result in hardship for many, for sure. Temperature changes will render some areas uninhabitable, it will cause mass migration, and probably destabilize the world politically. What am more worried about is the direct wholesale destruction of the biosphere. There are absolutely bonkers numbers about extinction, ocean acidification, runaway permafrost melt that actually could choke out a majority of people. Worse still, these effects aren't easily solvable by stopping emissions, or blocking out the sun with mylar sheets, or any of the "low hanging" technological fruit -- the stuff that could be solved with today's space technology or electric car tech. In order to actually solve these "deeper" problems, we will need an absolutely massive bio-engineering effort that is probably only possible with some kind of entropic breakthrough. Evolution is basically hyper-organization, a point of locally super low entropy that only happens by hundreds of millions of years of energy expenditure. When a species dies, it's not those individuals, it's every one of those individuals that ever lived that dies. All that concentration of local entropy, destroyed forever. It's like using every GPU on planet earth to train a hyper-smart GPT-4, for many human lifetimes -- and then hitting rm -rf on the weights.

koheripbal 5y ago
We don't talk about birth control enough. Some parts of the world have exploding populations, and while they don't consume much CO2 at the moment, they will - either as a result of the migrations they do, or through development. We need to reduce the number of humans on Earth.
- randomopining 5y ago
  Agreed. Yet the term should be foster a sustainable birth rate. A country like Japan is doing this right. Importing migrants from overcrowded countries will only increase the overall number of people reproducing. There's definitely a sweet spot the world should hit.
- cool_dude85 5y ago
  So we need to "limit population growth" among "some parts of the world" - is it fair to guess that you mean here subsaharan Africa and south Asia? - because they don't consume much CO2 but will? No mention of the parts of the world that, uh, do consume much CO2, and will continue to do so?
  - culopatin 5y ago
    Why don’t we just limit it all around? Why does someone need to have 4 kids which then, in rich countries, forces them to get a bigger car, use more energy, cool a bigger home, etc.
    - julienb_sea 5y ago
      You don't need to limit it, as quality of life increases people have less children. Population growth rate is on a steady decline worldwide, and has or will plateau in developed countries in the near future.
    - ArkanExplorer 5y ago
      Just implement carbon taxes based on the cost of removing CO2 from the atmosphere (probably $200-$500/tonne). This is going to mean about a 5-10% cost of living increase for the typical Westerner - affordable, and beneficial because it will also mean much less air pollution. It would also mean that the 2nd/3rd world would build up with renewable energy and electric transport from the ground up, instead of with fossil fuel infrastructure which will be difficult to replace.
      - twobitshifter 5y ago
        It’s a nice idea, but all consumption taxes are unpopular and federal tax revenues are just thrown into one big pile. Can we just spend a trillion a year to remove the CO2 instead?
        ArkanExplorer 5y ago
- ArkanExplorer 5y ago
  Its not just a matter of birth control. In many of these countries, there are ingrained patriarchal practices which lead to men pushing for their family unit (which sometimes includes multiple wives) to simply have as many children as possible. In other cases, its a ponzi scheme, where people have an excessive number of children in order to ensure their own livelihood in old age. The solution is probably to stop sending all forms of food aid, to stop interfering in local and regional conflicts, and to replace all aid with education, abortion and contraception for women. For example, in countries like Somalia, about half of the population rely on food aid for survival [1], but the fertility rate is 6.07 children per woman. The population is forecast to double in the next 25 years [2]. It would seem reasonable to me that if we are offering food aid, that we also require all recipients to undertake long-term contraception. [1] https://www.dw.com/en/somalia-people-depend-on-food-aid-to-prevent-deaths/a-37855420 https://www.dw.com/en/somalia-people-depend-on-food-aid-to-p... [2] https://www.populationpyramid.net/somalia/2021/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/somalia/2021/
  - jandrese 5y ago
    Telling people to have fewer children in an area where few children make it to adulthood due to factors like poor healthcare, war, crime, etc... is kind of cruel and likely to be ineffective. There's a lot of evidence that simply improving the standards of living will reduce birthrates naturally. It's better to attack the cause than the effect.
    - koheripbal 5y ago
      Humans ARE the cause.
      - willmadden 5y ago
        I'm leaning more towards solar activity and H2O myself.
        imtringued 5y ago
- aww_dang 5y ago
  I think you'll find that most of the organizations promoting climate apocalypse agree with your ideas about population control. Interestingly, they proposed population control before promoting the climate agenda. Many view fear of a climate apocalypse as a vehicle to advance the preexisting agenda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Biodemography_and_Social_Biology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Biodemography_and_... https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-forgotten-lessons-of-the-american-eugenics-movement https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-forgotten-le... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Foundation#Eugenics_and_Nazi_racial_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Foundation#Eugenic...
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I also see climate change being adopted by people to advance their unrelated causes. For example, AOC's "Green New Deal" proposal was full of social justice programs. Socialism is often put forward as the solution to climate change, although socialist countries have a very poor track record of environmental stewardship. Free markets, on the other hand, produce the necessary surplus needed to address environmentalism, i.e. free market countries can afford to address it. Marginal economies cannot.
    - cure 5y ago
      > For example, AOC's "Green New Deal" proposal was full of social justice programs. Socialism is often put forward as the solution to climate change, although socialist countries have a very poor track record of environmental stewardship. Which "socialist" countries are those? Do you mean (ex-)communist countries instead? Socialism != communism.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        A better argument you could make is name a socialist country (use whatever definition of socialism works for you) that has a better environmental track record.
- wolfretcrap 5y ago
  I live in India, even after working hard and making good money it's not possible to live a comfortable live here. There's no space for you, everything is packed up in tiny spaces. Yet some people keep reproducing here, it's true birth rate has fallen in educated people but there are simply too many people at the bottom here in India so our population isn't going to come done anytime soon
  - tomerico 5y ago
    India's women fertility rate is already below replacement level if you consider the gender imbalance.
    - wolfretcrap 5y ago
      Yes but even at current population level with 1.5 kid per women, it's still very difficult to achieve quality life for everyone
- coldtea 5y ago
  >Some parts of the world have exploding populations, and while they don't consume much CO2 at the moment, they will A, the "kicking the ladder" argument. We had a good run in the West over-consuming and producting Co2, and we continue to be at the top (including the Co2 we outsource to our global outsourced factories for our consumption), but others shouldn't. Before we talk about over-population in e.g. Africa and India, why not talk about cutting down on consumption in the US (#2 co2 global producer with just 5% of the global population - and that's even not including the co2 produced in China for products the US companies ordered/will consume/sell). Giving a good example how more people can live with less? Else it's "let us keep our mega-polluting way of life and you better stop having kids so we are not inconvenienced". (It's also often accompanied with quotes from westerners not having children "for the planet", when they just do it for their career, or to avoid any obstacles like kids on their personal "journey" to consumption and fun).
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > A, the "kicking the ladder" argument. We had a good run in the West over-consuming and producing Co2, and we continue to be at the top (including the Co2 we outsource to our global outsourced factories for our consumption), but others shouldn't. Developing economies don't have to imitate everything the west did. Solar technology and cheap battery storage can be built from scratch instead of retrofitted.
    - esarbe 5y ago
      Indeed. And there's a good argument to be made that industrialized countries have an obligation to help building that infrastructure.
      - teachingassist 5y ago
        Isn't this the canonical historical justification for colonialism? That colonialist barons are helping the local population by improving infrastructure for them? (While massively enriching themselves) I don't think that really worked out well. The exploited wealth (both from resources and labour) arguably contributed to our current position, where unlimited greed at others' expense and total exploitation and destruction of the planet's resources is seen as noble. Continuing this theme with modern-day Western corporations seeking further profit extraction is a tragedy.
- thorwasdfasdf 5y ago
  i don't why this is being downvoted. He's abosultely right, if you want to reduce CO2, you need to reduce the number things that cause it: Humans. The alternative: Asking each human to reduce their C02 output won't get you very, especially since most of our individual output is more influence by govt policy rather than our own actions, for instance: commute distances, etc.
  - codebje 5y ago
    Perhaps we could alter government policy then?
- justaman 5y ago
  Microplastics and other chemicals infiltrating our food and water supply has had a negative effect on male sperm efficacy. We also see population replacement weening in highly developed nations such as the US and Japan. Perhaps there are systems at play beyond our ken. We are merely part of the ecosystem, not its master.
- esarbe 5y ago
  Good news everyone! > We need to reduce the number of humans on Earth. I'm happy to point out that this is not the case. We're already peak child and the next two billion will not come from population growth but from population replacement[0] (Thanks, Hans. RIP, I loved you), where children replace the people in previous cohorts that never made it to reproductive age. The number of humans will reduce rather drastically in the next fifty years. Many countries on earth already and most countries on earth in about twenty years will have problems maintaining their population as it is. Fertility has been dropping all over the globe, with a few exceptions in sub-Saharan Africa. No, really. There's nothing we can do about the people we already have and there are barely any new babies arriving. What we do need to worry about is population migrations. We need to make it easier for people to migrate. We need to set up political and social infrastructure to welcome people from places that climate change has made inhospitable. Since most of the world will be suffering from over aging and from a lack of births, these migrants will be dearly needed. So, no need to talk about birth control, let's talk about immigration reform instead! [0] https://www.gapminder.org/ https://www.gapminder.org/
  - greeneggs 5y ago
    > The number of humans will reduce rather drastically in the next fifty years. It doesn't look like it. The UN predicts the population will be ~10.5 billion in 2070. Of course, there is a large range of uncertainty. [1] Given sustainability limits, the cost to the environment (and to humans) of going from 10 to 11 billion is a lot worse than the cost of going from 5 to 6 billion, say. (For example, there's only so many fish in the sea.) [1] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/9...
    - esarbe 5y ago
      > The number of humans will reduce rather drastically in the next fifty years. Sorry, I should have been more exact in my choice of words with this regard, mea culpa. Yes, total human population is expected to grow. But this growth is limited to very few places, especially found in sub-Saharan Africa (and strangely: the USA). If you look at places like West Asia, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, the more-developed-group of countries or the middle-income group of countries you will see that all across the board population is expected to fall within 50 years. This groups of countries will have a desperate worker shortage in the given time frame and we should start thinking how we can accommodate the needs of both immigrants and residents alike. Fertility is already falling, rapidly. There's not much that we can do in that regard (some countries are even trying to raise total fertility). We will not get rid of the people we already have. (Well, not in any way, shape or form that is ethically and worth further discussion). I agree that we need to have a good and hard think about our resource management. We need to reduce waste. We need to reduce our footprint. We need to stop the predatory ecosystem exploitation we're currently practicing. We're moving very fast towards a cliff. >> The number of humans will reduce rather drastically in the next fifty years. I really should be more careful how to phrase my argument. Thanks for pointing it out.
- yongjik 5y ago
  We don't talk about birth control much because: (1) the majority of CO2 emission is happening in North America, China, Europe, and industrial part of Asia, none of which exhibits high birth rate. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re... (2) Birth control is already being tackled with in developing countries. It's just not being talked much in the context of global warming, because (1). (3) Talking about population when the majority of CO2 is emitted by a small number of wealthy countries (with low birthrate) seems like focusing on the wrong thing. Especially since almost all arguing about it online are living in one of those wealthy countries. Yes, it would be really convenient for me if climate problem could be solved by telling Africans to get their shit together, but it's not happening that way.
  - megablast 5y ago
    How is birth rate being tackled?? Yes, it’s dropping, but not because of any active effort to drop it.
    - andrewljohnson 5y ago
      China?
    - yongjik 5y ago
      Like this? https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-development/family-planning https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-dev... I mean, if you're saying "We should do more," then I wholeheartedly agree. I just don't think it will make a meaningful dent on CO2 emission in the short to mid term.
- sam345 5y ago
  About That Overpopulation https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/world-population-may-actually-start-declining-not-exploding.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/world-population-may-ac... The Bomb That Didn't Explode: Why Our Fears About Population Growth Didn't Come True https://www.npr.org/2020/03/09/813801640/the-bomb-that-didnt-explode-why-our-fears-about-population-growth-didn-t-come-tr https://www.npr.org/2020/03/09/813801640/the-bomb-that-didnt... And a debate : https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/ECSP7-forum.pdf https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/docum...
- swader999 5y ago
  You go first then?
boringg 5y ago
You mean the Holocene extinction event which is directly tied to climate change? It's one big connected system. Also the low hanging tech you talk about is a compete cluster bomb of terrible ripple effects. They don't solve the issue only kick the can down the road while causing massive other problems.
lettergram 5y ago
Indeed “global warning” is not much of a concern. CO2 levels aren’t even that concerning, both levels have been significantly higher in the past (and supported life), and pose minimal risk. We can adapt to it, but would cause some hardship. We are also exiting an ice age, who knows what’s really earths “norm” over hundreds of thousands of years. My real concern are things like man made chemicals, pesticides. Which have made it into every component of our food and water supply. To put it in perspective, I have a very rural farm - no row crops for tens of miles. There are so few bugs it’s spooky. There are significantly fewer birds. My Bees die most years, even in warmer weather. There’s also estrogen in our water ways, micro plastics, etc The reason that’s the “real concern” is it can take out all humans very very quickly. Like a generation, where as global warming is survivable.
- Bishizel 5y ago
  While the co2 levels and temps have been higher in the past, rate of change is the most important factor here. You incorrectly assess the risk by ignoring the fact that it took tens of thousands of years to move those numbers. The problem is that most of our food chain is going to have major issues adapting at a speed that matches the rate of change. Pesticides and chemicals are certainly problematic as well, but moving the global needle so much over a 100-250 year timeline is a huge issue.
  - lettergram 5y ago
    > You incorrectly assess the risk by ignoring the fact that it took tens of thousands of years to move those numbers. We have no evidence of prior exiting of ice ages. Also, The sun and magnetosphere play a much larger role in earth temps than anything we do. Higher CO2 and slight (<4C) should increase overall yields, local production will be the primary issue.
    - not_kurt_godel 5y ago
      > The sun and magnetosphere play a much larger role in earth temps than anything we do If by "earth temps" you mean contributors to global warming, no, that is not correct: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wo...
jacquesm 5y ago
The 'good' news is that nature is mostly self-regulating. It will be more than happy to cull our numbers until we reach something approaching sustainability (or much lower than that). Climate change per se won't kill you, but other humans competing for the same space or resource most certainly will and that's how it has been since forever. The last couple of hundred years are an anomaly but this exponential increase simply can not go on without running headlong into some kind of wall, be it our effect on the environment, resource starvation, lack of space (in a way also a resource) and so on.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  the question is : will it cull all species proportionally or will it cull a few species completely (including us)...
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    That's a difficult to answer question but you can take - small - comfort in the fact that humans as a species are incredibly adaptable and have managed to eke out a living where many other species failed. To balance that out: our 'modern' way of living is pretty fragile and unless our numbers go down most likely completely unsustainable over millennia at numbers > a few billion unless we manage to move off-planet.
- mrtksn 5y ago
  >nature is mostly self-regulating The problem with this is that the nature can stay hostile for much longer than humans can stay alive. We literally built a civilisation on top of the corpses of creatures that survived much longer than we ever walked on the earth upright. I am sure that in some very distant feature the archaeologist and biologist of some species will have a boon on our remains, I don't really doubt that, but the problem is that we are facing huge opportunity for de dinosaur experience.
  - CompMan411 5y ago
    > The problem with this is that the nature can stay hostile for much longer than humans can stay alive. Seems to me, as a species we are smart enough to recognize we are all playing guided by game theory, we should be smart enough to step outside of game theory's limitations for mass negotiations. We should able to work within natures limits by group bargaining toward more environmental approaches. Yet we can't. Not even a little. We aren't even close. This has been a well known issue for decades, and nothing, nothing even close to what is needed has been done. Capitalism failed us, democracy failed us, the US failed us, our parents and our children failed us. Not even close to a passing grade. I imagine I'm not going to make many friends for saying this, but... This was a test. We failed. Why should humans get to survive to the next round? Why are we so sure we are good? All I see is distractions, destruction, pollution and consumption... maybe that's on me cause I had a bad day... We destroyed the planet, killed the majority of insects, and the majority of vertebrates, toxified all the lakes and streams, over fished the oceans then dumped DDT, PCBs, VX nerve agent, and radioactive waste. We aren't done. We keep going. More more more. Now other countries are just coming on the scene and they want some polluting rights too.
coldtea 5y ago
>I'm not necessarily worried about climate change per se. It will result in hardship for many, for sure. Temperature changes will render some areas uninhabitable, it will cause mass migration, and probably destabilize the world politically. What am more worried about is the direct wholesale destruction of the biosphere. How is the latter not just a byproduct of the former?
- monktastic1 5y ago
  Because we are ravaging the biosphere in countless other ways than just altering the temperature and climate. "Just" would imply that those are the only causes of biosphere destruction.
- rland 5y ago
  If the world was just warming, it wouldn't be nearly so much of an issue, I don't think. We could just put a big mylar sheet and block part of the sun. We could do that, I think, in about 20 years, if we really wanted to just get rid of this 1.5degC rise. But we can't, we have the ocean acidification, the desertification, the pollution, the acid rain, the plastic pollution. My point is that it's not really the temperature I'm worried about, it's the everything else.
utxaa 5y ago
isn't this a bit like saying i'm not afraid of being homeless, what i am afraid of is having no where to sleep and keeping warm in cold weather.
dotcommand 5y ago
> When a species dies, it's not those individuals, it's every one of those individuals that ever lived that dies. It is tragic that species go extinct. I believe 99.99% of all species in earth's 4 billion years has gone extinct. I forget who said it but like individual creatures live and die, species also have to live and die. But it also opens the door for new species. Without mass die offs, we don't have dinosaurs. Without mass die offs, we don't have mammals and humans. > All that concentration of local entropy, destroyed forever And look at what the previous destructions created. The beauty of today's nature stands on the graveyards of the natural world that came before it. Those species you mourn today only existed because previous species went extinct and open up the space for other species. Not saying we should welcome species extinction, especially the ones human cause. But we should be mindful of the fact that past species extinctions is why the current species exist. It's not all one sided. There is "life after death".
- xnx 5y ago
  Nature is an amazing library of knowledge (pharmaceutical, materials sciences, etc.) for problems we face. Driving species to extinction is the equivalent of burning the reference books.
ThomPete 5y ago
99.9% of all species that ever existed went extinct before humans even came around. Nature is the biggest killer of them alle.
fogihujy 5y ago
while true; do find / -type f | shuf | xargs rm; sleep 86400; done But yes, biosphere collapse is a far more frightening scenario than humans having to rebuild for a few centuries...
noduerme 5y ago
Great comment. If layered and localized counter-entropy is, philosohically, the highest attainment of a mainly entropic universe, hitting rm -fr on a species is pretty much the only universal example of evil. The destruction of complexity is the undermining of the universe's attempt to observe itself through forms of processing that arise after billions of years. But of course, their destruction is probably an expected outcome. That doesn't make it any less evil from our puny perspective.

by rland 5y ago

koheripbal 5y ago

We don't talk about birth control enough. Some parts of the world have exploding populations, and while they don't consume much CO2 at the moment, they will - either as a result of the migrations they do, or through development. We need to reduce the number of humans on Earth.

randomopining 5y ago
Agreed. Yet the term should be foster a sustainable birth rate. A country like Japan is doing this right. Importing migrants from overcrowded countries will only increase the overall number of people reproducing. There's definitely a sweet spot the world should hit.
cool_dude85 5y ago
So we need to "limit population growth" among "some parts of the world" - is it fair to guess that you mean here subsaharan Africa and south Asia? - because they don't consume much CO2 but will? No mention of the parts of the world that, uh, do consume much CO2, and will continue to do so?
- culopatin 5y ago
  Why don’t we just limit it all around? Why does someone need to have 4 kids which then, in rich countries, forces them to get a bigger car, use more energy, cool a bigger home, etc.
  - julienb_sea 5y ago
    You don't need to limit it, as quality of life increases people have less children. Population growth rate is on a steady decline worldwide, and has or will plateau in developed countries in the near future.
  - ArkanExplorer 5y ago
    Just implement carbon taxes based on the cost of removing CO2 from the atmosphere (probably $200-$500/tonne). This is going to mean about a 5-10% cost of living increase for the typical Westerner - affordable, and beneficial because it will also mean much less air pollution. It would also mean that the 2nd/3rd world would build up with renewable energy and electric transport from the ground up, instead of with fossil fuel infrastructure which will be difficult to replace.
    - twobitshifter 5y ago
      It’s a nice idea, but all consumption taxes are unpopular and federal tax revenues are just thrown into one big pile. Can we just spend a trillion a year to remove the CO2 instead?
      - ArkanExplorer 5y ago
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
Its not just a matter of birth control. In many of these countries, there are ingrained patriarchal practices which lead to men pushing for their family unit (which sometimes includes multiple wives) to simply have as many children as possible. In other cases, its a ponzi scheme, where people have an excessive number of children in order to ensure their own livelihood in old age. The solution is probably to stop sending all forms of food aid, to stop interfering in local and regional conflicts, and to replace all aid with education, abortion and contraception for women. For example, in countries like Somalia, about half of the population rely on food aid for survival [1], but the fertility rate is 6.07 children per woman. The population is forecast to double in the next 25 years [2]. It would seem reasonable to me that if we are offering food aid, that we also require all recipients to undertake long-term contraception. [1] https://www.dw.com/en/somalia-people-depend-on-food-aid-to-prevent-deaths/a-37855420 https://www.dw.com/en/somalia-people-depend-on-food-aid-to-p... [2] https://www.populationpyramid.net/somalia/2021/ https://www.populationpyramid.net/somalia/2021/
- jandrese 5y ago
  Telling people to have fewer children in an area where few children make it to adulthood due to factors like poor healthcare, war, crime, etc... is kind of cruel and likely to be ineffective. There's a lot of evidence that simply improving the standards of living will reduce birthrates naturally. It's better to attack the cause than the effect.
  - koheripbal 5y ago
    Humans ARE the cause.
    - willmadden 5y ago
      I'm leaning more towards solar activity and H2O myself.
      - imtringued 5y ago
aww_dang 5y ago
I think you'll find that most of the organizations promoting climate apocalypse agree with your ideas about population control. Interestingly, they proposed population control before promoting the climate agenda. Many view fear of a climate apocalypse as a vehicle to advance the preexisting agenda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Biodemography_and_Social_Biology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Biodemography_and_... https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-forgotten-lessons-of-the-american-eugenics-movement https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-forgotten-le... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Foundation#Eugenics_and_Nazi_racial_studies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockefeller_Foundation#Eugenic...
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I also see climate change being adopted by people to advance their unrelated causes. For example, AOC's "Green New Deal" proposal was full of social justice programs. Socialism is often put forward as the solution to climate change, although socialist countries have a very poor track record of environmental stewardship. Free markets, on the other hand, produce the necessary surplus needed to address environmentalism, i.e. free market countries can afford to address it. Marginal economies cannot.
  - cure 5y ago
    > For example, AOC's "Green New Deal" proposal was full of social justice programs. Socialism is often put forward as the solution to climate change, although socialist countries have a very poor track record of environmental stewardship. Which "socialist" countries are those? Do you mean (ex-)communist countries instead? Socialism != communism.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      A better argument you could make is name a socialist country (use whatever definition of socialism works for you) that has a better environmental track record.
wolfretcrap 5y ago
I live in India, even after working hard and making good money it's not possible to live a comfortable live here. There's no space for you, everything is packed up in tiny spaces. Yet some people keep reproducing here, it's true birth rate has fallen in educated people but there are simply too many people at the bottom here in India so our population isn't going to come done anytime soon
- tomerico 5y ago
  India's women fertility rate is already below replacement level if you consider the gender imbalance.
  - wolfretcrap 5y ago
    Yes but even at current population level with 1.5 kid per women, it's still very difficult to achieve quality life for everyone
coldtea 5y ago
>Some parts of the world have exploding populations, and while they don't consume much CO2 at the moment, they will A, the "kicking the ladder" argument. We had a good run in the West over-consuming and producting Co2, and we continue to be at the top (including the Co2 we outsource to our global outsourced factories for our consumption), but others shouldn't. Before we talk about over-population in e.g. Africa and India, why not talk about cutting down on consumption in the US (#2 co2 global producer with just 5% of the global population - and that's even not including the co2 produced in China for products the US companies ordered/will consume/sell). Giving a good example how more people can live with less? Else it's "let us keep our mega-polluting way of life and you better stop having kids so we are not inconvenienced". (It's also often accompanied with quotes from westerners not having children "for the planet", when they just do it for their career, or to avoid any obstacles like kids on their personal "journey" to consumption and fun).
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  > A, the "kicking the ladder" argument. We had a good run in the West over-consuming and producing Co2, and we continue to be at the top (including the Co2 we outsource to our global outsourced factories for our consumption), but others shouldn't. Developing economies don't have to imitate everything the west did. Solar technology and cheap battery storage can be built from scratch instead of retrofitted.
  - esarbe 5y ago
    Indeed. And there's a good argument to be made that industrialized countries have an obligation to help building that infrastructure.
    - teachingassist 5y ago
      Isn't this the canonical historical justification for colonialism? That colonialist barons are helping the local population by improving infrastructure for them? (While massively enriching themselves) I don't think that really worked out well. The exploited wealth (both from resources and labour) arguably contributed to our current position, where unlimited greed at others' expense and total exploitation and destruction of the planet's resources is seen as noble. Continuing this theme with modern-day Western corporations seeking further profit extraction is a tragedy.
thorwasdfasdf 5y ago
i don't why this is being downvoted. He's abosultely right, if you want to reduce CO2, you need to reduce the number things that cause it: Humans. The alternative: Asking each human to reduce their C02 output won't get you very, especially since most of our individual output is more influence by govt policy rather than our own actions, for instance: commute distances, etc.
- codebje 5y ago
  Perhaps we could alter government policy then?
justaman 5y ago
Microplastics and other chemicals infiltrating our food and water supply has had a negative effect on male sperm efficacy. We also see population replacement weening in highly developed nations such as the US and Japan. Perhaps there are systems at play beyond our ken. We are merely part of the ecosystem, not its master.
esarbe 5y ago
Good news everyone! > We need to reduce the number of humans on Earth. I'm happy to point out that this is not the case. We're already peak child and the next two billion will not come from population growth but from population replacement[0] (Thanks, Hans. RIP, I loved you), where children replace the people in previous cohorts that never made it to reproductive age. The number of humans will reduce rather drastically in the next fifty years. Many countries on earth already and most countries on earth in about twenty years will have problems maintaining their population as it is. Fertility has been dropping all over the globe, with a few exceptions in sub-Saharan Africa. No, really. There's nothing we can do about the people we already have and there are barely any new babies arriving. What we do need to worry about is population migrations. We need to make it easier for people to migrate. We need to set up political and social infrastructure to welcome people from places that climate change has made inhospitable. Since most of the world will be suffering from over aging and from a lack of births, these migrants will be dearly needed. So, no need to talk about birth control, let's talk about immigration reform instead! [0] https://www.gapminder.org/ https://www.gapminder.org/
- greeneggs 5y ago
  > The number of humans will reduce rather drastically in the next fifty years. It doesn't look like it. The UN predicts the population will be ~10.5 billion in 2070. Of course, there is a large range of uncertainty. [1] Given sustainability limits, the cost to the environment (and to humans) of going from 10 to 11 billion is a lot worse than the cost of going from 5 to 6 billion, say. (For example, there's only so many fish in the sea.) [1] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900 https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/9...
  - esarbe 5y ago
    > The number of humans will reduce rather drastically in the next fifty years. Sorry, I should have been more exact in my choice of words with this regard, mea culpa. Yes, total human population is expected to grow. But this growth is limited to very few places, especially found in sub-Saharan Africa (and strangely: the USA). If you look at places like West Asia, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, the more-developed-group of countries or the middle-income group of countries you will see that all across the board population is expected to fall within 50 years. This groups of countries will have a desperate worker shortage in the given time frame and we should start thinking how we can accommodate the needs of both immigrants and residents alike. Fertility is already falling, rapidly. There's not much that we can do in that regard (some countries are even trying to raise total fertility). We will not get rid of the people we already have. (Well, not in any way, shape or form that is ethically and worth further discussion). I agree that we need to have a good and hard think about our resource management. We need to reduce waste. We need to reduce our footprint. We need to stop the predatory ecosystem exploitation we're currently practicing. We're moving very fast towards a cliff. >> The number of humans will reduce rather drastically in the next fifty years. I really should be more careful how to phrase my argument. Thanks for pointing it out.
yongjik 5y ago
We don't talk about birth control much because: (1) the majority of CO2 emission is happening in North America, China, Europe, and industrial part of Asia, none of which exhibits high birth rate. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-re... (2) Birth control is already being tackled with in developing countries. It's just not being talked much in the context of global warming, because (1). (3) Talking about population when the majority of CO2 is emitted by a small number of wealthy countries (with low birthrate) seems like focusing on the wrong thing. Especially since almost all arguing about it online are living in one of those wealthy countries. Yes, it would be really convenient for me if climate problem could be solved by telling Africans to get their shit together, but it's not happening that way.
- megablast 5y ago
  How is birth rate being tackled?? Yes, it’s dropping, but not because of any active effort to drop it.
  - andrewljohnson 5y ago
    China?
  - yongjik 5y ago
    Like this? https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-development/family-planning https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-dev... I mean, if you're saying "We should do more," then I wholeheartedly agree. I just don't think it will make a meaningful dent on CO2 emission in the short to mid term.
sam345 5y ago
About That Overpopulation https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/world-population-may-actually-start-declining-not-exploding.html https://slate.com/technology/2013/01/world-population-may-ac... The Bomb That Didn't Explode: Why Our Fears About Population Growth Didn't Come True https://www.npr.org/2020/03/09/813801640/the-bomb-that-didnt-explode-why-our-fears-about-population-growth-didn-t-come-tr https://www.npr.org/2020/03/09/813801640/the-bomb-that-didnt... And a debate : https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/ECSP7-forum.pdf https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/docum...
swader999 5y ago
You go first then?

boringg 5y ago

You mean the Holocene extinction event which is directly tied to climate change? It's one big connected system. Also the low hanging tech you talk about is a compete cluster bomb of terrible ripple effects. They don't solve the issue only kick the can down the road while causing massive other problems.

lettergram 5y ago

Indeed “global warning” is not much of a concern. CO2 levels aren’t even that concerning, both levels have been significantly higher in the past (and supported life), and pose minimal risk. We can adapt to it, but would cause some hardship. We are also exiting an ice age, who knows what’s really earths “norm” over hundreds of thousands of years. My real concern are things like man made chemicals, pesticides. Which have made it into every component of our food and water supply. To put it in perspective, I have a very rural farm - no row crops for tens of miles. There are so few bugs it’s spooky. There are significantly fewer birds. My Bees die most years, even in warmer weather. There’s also estrogen in our water ways, micro plastics, etc The reason that’s the “real concern” is it can take out all humans very very quickly. Like a generation, where as global warming is survivable.

Bishizel 5y ago
While the co2 levels and temps have been higher in the past, rate of change is the most important factor here. You incorrectly assess the risk by ignoring the fact that it took tens of thousands of years to move those numbers. The problem is that most of our food chain is going to have major issues adapting at a speed that matches the rate of change. Pesticides and chemicals are certainly problematic as well, but moving the global needle so much over a 100-250 year timeline is a huge issue.
- lettergram 5y ago
  > You incorrectly assess the risk by ignoring the fact that it took tens of thousands of years to move those numbers. We have no evidence of prior exiting of ice ages. Also, The sun and magnetosphere play a much larger role in earth temps than anything we do. Higher CO2 and slight (<4C) should increase overall yields, local production will be the primary issue.
  - not_kurt_godel 5y ago
    > The sun and magnetosphere play a much larger role in earth temps than anything we do If by "earth temps" you mean contributors to global warming, no, that is not correct: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wo...

jacquesm 5y ago

The 'good' news is that nature is mostly self-regulating. It will be more than happy to cull our numbers until we reach something approaching sustainability (or much lower than that). Climate change per se won't kill you, but other humans competing for the same space or resource most certainly will and that's how it has been since forever. The last couple of hundred years are an anomaly but this exponential increase simply can not go on without running headlong into some kind of wall, be it our effect on the environment, resource starvation, lack of space (in a way also a resource) and so on.

wiz21c 5y ago
the question is : will it cull all species proportionally or will it cull a few species completely (including us)...
- jacquesm 5y ago
  That's a difficult to answer question but you can take - small - comfort in the fact that humans as a species are incredibly adaptable and have managed to eke out a living where many other species failed. To balance that out: our 'modern' way of living is pretty fragile and unless our numbers go down most likely completely unsustainable over millennia at numbers > a few billion unless we manage to move off-planet.
mrtksn 5y ago
>nature is mostly self-regulating The problem with this is that the nature can stay hostile for much longer than humans can stay alive. We literally built a civilisation on top of the corpses of creatures that survived much longer than we ever walked on the earth upright. I am sure that in some very distant feature the archaeologist and biologist of some species will have a boon on our remains, I don't really doubt that, but the problem is that we are facing huge opportunity for de dinosaur experience.
- CompMan411 5y ago
  > The problem with this is that the nature can stay hostile for much longer than humans can stay alive. Seems to me, as a species we are smart enough to recognize we are all playing guided by game theory, we should be smart enough to step outside of game theory's limitations for mass negotiations. We should able to work within natures limits by group bargaining toward more environmental approaches. Yet we can't. Not even a little. We aren't even close. This has been a well known issue for decades, and nothing, nothing even close to what is needed has been done. Capitalism failed us, democracy failed us, the US failed us, our parents and our children failed us. Not even close to a passing grade. I imagine I'm not going to make many friends for saying this, but... This was a test. We failed. Why should humans get to survive to the next round? Why are we so sure we are good? All I see is distractions, destruction, pollution and consumption... maybe that's on me cause I had a bad day... We destroyed the planet, killed the majority of insects, and the majority of vertebrates, toxified all the lakes and streams, over fished the oceans then dumped DDT, PCBs, VX nerve agent, and radioactive waste. We aren't done. We keep going. More more more. Now other countries are just coming on the scene and they want some polluting rights too.

coldtea 5y ago

>I'm not necessarily worried about climate change per se. It will result in hardship for many, for sure. Temperature changes will render some areas uninhabitable, it will cause mass migration, and probably destabilize the world politically. What am more worried about is the direct wholesale destruction of the biosphere. How is the latter not just a byproduct of the former?

monktastic1 5y ago
Because we are ravaging the biosphere in countless other ways than just altering the temperature and climate. "Just" would imply that those are the only causes of biosphere destruction.
rland 5y ago
If the world was just warming, it wouldn't be nearly so much of an issue, I don't think. We could just put a big mylar sheet and block part of the sun. We could do that, I think, in about 20 years, if we really wanted to just get rid of this 1.5degC rise. But we can't, we have the ocean acidification, the desertification, the pollution, the acid rain, the plastic pollution. My point is that it's not really the temperature I'm worried about, it's the everything else.

utxaa 5y ago

isn't this a bit like saying i'm not afraid of being homeless, what i am afraid of is having no where to sleep and keeping warm in cold weather.

dotcommand 5y ago

> When a species dies, it's not those individuals, it's every one of those individuals that ever lived that dies. It is tragic that species go extinct. I believe 99.99% of all species in earth's 4 billion years has gone extinct. I forget who said it but like individual creatures live and die, species also have to live and die. But it also opens the door for new species. Without mass die offs, we don't have dinosaurs. Without mass die offs, we don't have mammals and humans. > All that concentration of local entropy, destroyed forever And look at what the previous destructions created. The beauty of today's nature stands on the graveyards of the natural world that came before it. Those species you mourn today only existed because previous species went extinct and open up the space for other species. Not saying we should welcome species extinction, especially the ones human cause. But we should be mindful of the fact that past species extinctions is why the current species exist. It's not all one sided. There is "life after death".

xnx 5y ago
Nature is an amazing library of knowledge (pharmaceutical, materials sciences, etc.) for problems we face. Driving species to extinction is the equivalent of burning the reference books.

ThomPete 5y ago

99.9% of all species that ever existed went extinct before humans even came around. Nature is the biggest killer of them alle.

fogihujy 5y ago

while true; do find / -type f | shuf | xargs rm; sleep 86400; done But yes, biosphere collapse is a far more frightening scenario than humans having to rebuild for a few centuries...

noduerme 5y ago

Great comment. If layered and localized counter-entropy is, philosohically, the highest attainment of a mainly entropic universe, hitting rm -fr on a species is pretty much the only universal example of evil. The destruction of complexity is the undermining of the universe's attempt to observe itself through forms of processing that arise after billions of years. But of course, their destruction is probably an expected outcome. That doesn't make it any less evil from our puny perspective.