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My main thesis is that this is almost purely a population problem. The developed world can give up all their creature comforts and it would still not nearly be

My main thesis is that this is almost purely a population problem. The developed world can give up all their creature comforts and it would still not nearly be enough to even put a dent in anything. We are already dealing with famine and disease in many places of the world. Independent of whether or not this is climate caused, we can't solve it without expending large resources and using the industrial might that we've built. The conundrum is that the place with massive population growth aren't really the places with the resources to implement green energy solutions. Coal is easier, coal is cheaper. Yes, the developed world's love of meat is a major source of deforestation, but so is the need to grow the food to feed 10 billion people. Retarding population growth is _the_ single biggest thing we can do as a species to reduce climate damage. This is one of the reasons I am not planning to have kids, when I die the relative population to my existence drops by one. Even if my kid rode their bike their whole life, lived in a climate friendly passive heating/cooling house and ate locally sourced food, their existence would produce more climate gasses than my ICE could ever dream of producing.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Retarding population growth is _the_ single biggest thing we can do as a species to reduce climate damage Retarding economic growth is, a better candidate, if you limit it to “retarding growth”; you’d need substantial and rapid population reduction (not just “retarding growth”) to offset the expected effects of near term economic development outside of the West. Obviously, the biggest thing we could do to end anthropogenic clomate change is species-scale mass suicide. No anthropos, no anthropogenic climate change. OTOH, most people who want to address that problem don’t actually think that doing the most we can on that unconditionally overrides all other concerns.
- PraetorianGourd 5y ago
  That is sort-of the subtext of my thinking on this whole thing. Want to limit famine? You will warm the globe. Want to cool the planet? Production and industrialization needs to halt which will increase famine. It is all a balancing act and I am not convinced any balance we find won't result in massive suffering and loss of life somewhere.

dragonwriter 5y ago

> Retarding population growth is _the_ single biggest thing we can do as a species to reduce climate damage Retarding economic growth is, a better candidate, if you limit it to “retarding growth”; you’d need substantial and rapid population reduction (not just “retarding growth”) to offset the expected effects of near term economic development outside of the West. Obviously, the biggest thing we could do to end anthropogenic clomate change is species-scale mass suicide. No anthropos, no anthropogenic climate change. OTOH, most people who want to address that problem don’t actually think that doing the most we can on that unconditionally overrides all other concerns.

PraetorianGourd 5y ago
That is sort-of the subtext of my thinking on this whole thing. Want to limit famine? You will warm the globe. Want to cool the planet? Production and industrialization needs to halt which will increase famine. It is all a balancing act and I am not convinced any balance we find won't result in massive suffering and loss of life somewhere.