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Malthusians exist. They think we're running out of oil, soil and arable land, fresh water, and... just about everything. The logic is that since population gr

Malthusians exist. They think we're running out of oil, soil and arable land, fresh water, and... just about everything. The logic is that since population growth is exponential, we really could run out of resources. And... that's both totally correct and totally wrong. Totally correct: because yeah, duh, if we had 1 trillion people... Totally wrong: because in fact the arc of evolution of fertility rates, population pyramids, and total population is bent and bending more and we will in fact be facing a shrinking world population soon. Meanwhile we have more oil and gas reserves now than ever. We're not running out of anything, not really. But the malthusians want to reduce population by 16x. They really do. It's crazy. Now, to answer your question... Substitute any topic into "how is it that so many educated, intelligent people seem to think that we...". The answer is pretty simple: we each don't know everything, in fact we know very little (and about many many things nothing really), and we are very (extremely!) susceptible to peer pressure, and we like to go with the flow, and we accept authority blindly where we know little, and so on. It's a real problem. We just don't teach people how to think about what they know little about. Epistemology is hard enough, but we need people to do more than reason about what they know and how they know it and what they might not know and all that. We need people to have an idea of how to think about the stuff they know little about that they don't even want to know about -- stuff that -no matter how little they care for the details of- is super topical and where getting the answers collectively wrong could be disastrous.

KronisLV 5y ago
> But the malthusians want to reduce population by 16x This seems pretty extreme, but thank you for bringing the concept of Malthusianism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism ) to my attention. While i'm not convinced that it's likely to be the end of humanity (but rather the results of thousands of compounding factors), the irresponsibility in regards to unrestrained consumerism is something that i see every day, and there is certainly some merit to those arguments in my eyes because of this. > The answer is pretty simple: we each don't know everything, in fact we know very little (and about many many things nothing really), and we are very (extremely!) susceptible to peer pressure, and we like to go with the flow, and we accept authority blindly where we know little, and so on. This, however, i'm not entirely sure about. Short of militant disregard for climate change or even the idea that human actions are capable of changing it in the first place, the viewpoints that i've personally seen expressed are more in the direction of feeling powerless and somewhat depressed about the state of things. Instead of outright ignorance, most of the people that i've talked with believe that the governments have largely failed them and the mechanisms of representation that should be in place are only so as far as looks are concerned. For example, lobbying and corporate interests are prioritized, as well as industry development is prioritized over sustainability. In the end, it feels like maximizing profit margins takes precedence over sustainable progress and long term advancement. Edit: Climate change and all that is just one example, but the fact that many feel powerless even if they aware of what's going on stands for other things as well. And most of those people that i've talked with have felt like there's little to nothing that they can individually do, seeing as a significant portion of the society is more than happy to live a hedonistic lifestyle that's rooted in consumption. That doesn't mean that we need to live in some dystopian nightmare either, but i'd argue that it's definitely a worthy goal to make the environment thrive first and to focus on a more utilitarian way of life - meat dishes as something to enjoy rather than to have with every meal, a new phone every 5 years instead of every single year, energy efficient hardware (like Athlon 200GEs) for homelabs instead of the latest Threadripper CPUs (unless absolutely necessary), a used but dependable car instead of a new one and so on. And, of course, supporting local and small businesses, as well as trying your own hand at some of that stuff - going out to hunt game, drag it back home, skin it and cook it (if nothing else, that really makes you appreciate the meat you're eating), or even just simpler things like growing your own tomatoes and cucumbers (which are absolutely delicious), where possible. If everyone lived at least a bit more like that, we'd have even more breathing room in regards to the environment, in regards to resource usage etc., which feels like a good thing no matter how you look at it. Of course, that's probably also unrealistic as far as expectations go.
- soonnow 5y ago
  I strongly believe the consuming less is not the way to solve the climate crisis. The reason is that it's thought from a perspective of the global north, that assumes we just need to restrict a little to achieve a lot. That is not going to solve the global climate crisis. The simple reason is that there are 7 billion people who are not living in the rich countries. These people have the right to access resources as much as the people born in rich countries. Consuming 20% less carbon in the west will not offset the increased consumption in the rest of the world. Every gallon of oil that can be produced at a reasonable price will be consumed. If Europe and the US switched to all electric cars tomorrow, the rest of the world would still consume the oil, especially at a lower price than now (because the US and Europe are no longer conusming it). There are things we could do right now, without significant impact to our lifestyle. I just learned, that over 3% of climate emissions are crop burning. 2% is deforestation. We could literally stop this with the signing of a bill. The US and the EU agree to tax imports from crop burning countries at a high rate. It will drive up prices of Brazilian beef and Indonesian palm oil a little, but of little impact to the consumer. Cement is another 3%, which could be solved with CO2 neutral cement. Electric trucks will be a game changer once they are cheaper to run than Gas trucks. And yes nuclear is something we can't stop developing. When I argue for a tech forward approach than not because I'm a tech bro that believes science solves all problems, but because I strongly believe reductions are not gonna work. If we rely on consumption reductions we are truly screwed.
  - timeon 5y ago
    Reductions are not gonna work nor tech. Technology is just going to increase demand.
    - soonnow 5y ago
      So the only way is to accept it?
    - cryptonector 5y ago
      Negative population growth for a while is baked into the world's population pyramid now. We're going to have to learn to deal with that.
amelius 5y ago
Even if we had 16x less people, some rich bastard would claim ownership of the now excess resources.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Whatever for? If there's no one to sell products to...
  - amelius 5y ago
    I don't know. People use resources for the craziest purposes. Personally, building an immense compute wall comes to mind.
pharmakom 5y ago
Not a Malthusian, but I’m very worried about the amount of resources we are using. We already lack the carbon budget and farming capacity for the world’s population to live to the standard of an average US citizen. There might be enough space and enough atoms, but we don’t yet have the capability to direct it into sustainable quality of life for all.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  As a cow eating, hot showing, car jamming American, I wouldn’t correlate resource usage with quality of life.
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    OK it’s not a perfect correlation, but manual labourers on under 1800 calories/day and with no AC would definitely benefit from more resources! Even a European level of resource usage (roughly half that of US, last I checked) would be hard to achieve for the entire world pop.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Did you know that total land under agriculture has been trending down for several decades? Would that put you at ease?
  - pharmakom 5y ago
    But environmental destruction is way up. A good example is river health. We can provide more meat with high density grazing. But the waste products have to go somewhere, so the farmers spread them across their fields. Now when it rains, these run into the rivers and we get algae bloom. Majority of rivers in UK are now dying, for example. Have we discovered a sustainable way of producing more meat in less space? I hope so. But perhaps we are destroying natural systems whose benefit to us has not been properly quantified, in a way that will be extremely difficult to reverse. Modern agriculture has enabled us to support a larger world population with less labour and less space, but can we continue as we are for another 50 years?
gautamcgoel 5y ago
If there were fewer people on Earth, then presumably there would be less deforestation, overfishing, greenhouse emissions, etc. I strongly reject the idea that the Earth can support the current human population at the current levels of consumption and pollution.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  There already is less deforestation. The planet has greened enormously in the past several decades, as shown by satellite imaging. Total land under cultivation has shrunk for the past several decades. In other words, we've increased consumption using less of the resources you seem to value.
vardump 5y ago
> Malthusians exist. As long as the population increases, Malthus is right. There is going to be some ultimate carrying capacity at some point. Ultimate amount of energy we can harness. It's just a question when. Certainly before our energy consumption is enough to literally boil the oceans. Plug in different growth rates and the answer could range from tens of years to hundreds of millions of years!
- nickik 5y ago
  Yes and in billion years the sun will expand, but we don't bring that up in every discussion. Its not actually practically relevant and every-time people used it as an argument it has been proven in terms of practical impact.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  > As long as the population increases, Malthus is right. Wrong. As long as population growth remains positive without end in sight, Malthus right. However, THE END OF POSITIVE POPULATION GROWTH IS IN SIGHT. I mean, I said so in the comment you responded to, and you conveniently ignored it. Instead you went right for the Malthusian fearmongering talking points. "It's just a question of when" -- no, no it's not, not if population plateaus and then shrinks (negative population growth for a while is practically baked in now into the world's demographics). > Plug in different growth rates and the answer could range from tens of years to hundreds of millions of years! Why thank you. Hundreds of millions of years is more than there is time for life on this planet. Without our help, each successive glacial period was ending with CO2 lower than the end of the previous glacial period, and plants starve below certain levels (I think it's 150ppm for one kind of photosynthesis, lower for another) and was going to end up below those levels soon enough. Now, thanks to HUMANS life on Earth has millions more years in it because we've put a little bit of the Earth's sequestered carbon back into the carbon cycle.
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Well, quite. Climate change also exists. So do resource limits. Something that doesn't exist is the science of living outside of an existing planetary ecosystem. Do some research on how much is understood about creating a stable ecosystem out of sand, metal ore, and water. You'll find it's a good approximation to zero. Flag wavers think it's all about building giant rockets, planting a flag - and boom. Colony! Asteroid mining! Etc! The reality couldn't be more different. Giant rockets are barely the loading screen. Feeding humans, dealing with waste products without choking on them, growing or synthesising essential nutrients, building systems that do all of this in a stable self-sustaining way - these are all beyond hard. And that's not even getting into psychology and politics. So until that changes, running your own planet - the one you got for free, and which was working fine already - as if you're trying to test it to destruction to find out just how stable it really is, is an unbelievably dumb thing to do.
- nickik 5y ago
  > Flag wavers think it's all about building giant rockets, planting a flag - and boom. Colony! Asteroid mining! Etc! Nobody actually interested in space believes this. > So until that changes It wont change unless you try to change it.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Hello. Negative population growth for a while is now baked in to the world's population pyramid. You may now have a good night's sleep. You're welcome.
- throwaway316943 5y ago
  > these are all beyond hard I seem to remember some guy saying something about that. We’ve never let the fact that something doesn’t exist yet stop us. We are a species of inventors. We didn’t stay huddled naked in caves because they work and we got them for free. We aren’t meant to be like the rest of the ecosystem that mutely accepts its fate. We know we can die but we also reject the natural order of succumbing to predation, famine, disease and exposure. This planet is a cradle that we cannot lie in forever. Some day it will be dust and we will have to learn to walk amongst the stars.
mucholove 5y ago
On the environment and fauna, animals are going extinct (like the white rhino) so yes, we are running out of stuff. Trees—like Dominican mahogany grow really slowly and now there are so few of them we have basically run out. I can name several other examples—most notably Guayacan. There is a bunch of scarcity and destruction. I’m pretty sure we can fix them—but for the trees and the animals it’s unlikely that I get to experience them as was so in previous lifetimes. It’s a shame we couldn’t manage them sustainably previously.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Sustainability requires wealth. You mention Dominican mahogany. Have you ever seen pictures of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic? They're really shocking! No trees in sight on the Haitian side; forest as far as the eye can see on the Dominican side. Why is that? Because Haiti is so much poorer than the Dominican Republic that trees are burned for firewood. The environment is cleanest and best in richer countries because rich people can afford to care about it. That's right, poor people who worry about where their next meal is going to come from could not care less about the environment. So if you want the 8bn people of this planet to care for it, we have to make them richer than they are.
  - mucholove 5y ago
    Play with me for a second...What if sustainability creates wealth? After all—once you are born into a wealthy family—the joke is on you if "you lose it".

KronisLV 5y ago

> But the malthusians want to reduce population by 16x This seems pretty extreme, but thank you for bringing the concept of Malthusianism ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism ) to my attention. While i'm not convinced that it's likely to be the end of humanity (but rather the results of thousands of compounding factors), the irresponsibility in regards to unrestrained consumerism is something that i see every day, and there is certainly some merit to those arguments in my eyes because of this. > The answer is pretty simple: we each don't know everything, in fact we know very little (and about many many things nothing really), and we are very (extremely!) susceptible to peer pressure, and we like to go with the flow, and we accept authority blindly where we know little, and so on. This, however, i'm not entirely sure about. Short of militant disregard for climate change or even the idea that human actions are capable of changing it in the first place, the viewpoints that i've personally seen expressed are more in the direction of feeling powerless and somewhat depressed about the state of things. Instead of outright ignorance, most of the people that i've talked with believe that the governments have largely failed them and the mechanisms of representation that should be in place are only so as far as looks are concerned. For example, lobbying and corporate interests are prioritized, as well as industry development is prioritized over sustainability. In the end, it feels like maximizing profit margins takes precedence over sustainable progress and long term advancement. Edit: Climate change and all that is just one example, but the fact that many feel powerless even if they aware of what's going on stands for other things as well. And most of those people that i've talked with have felt like there's little to nothing that they can individually do, seeing as a significant portion of the society is more than happy to live a hedonistic lifestyle that's rooted in consumption. That doesn't mean that we need to live in some dystopian nightmare either, but i'd argue that it's definitely a worthy goal to make the environment thrive first and to focus on a more utilitarian way of life - meat dishes as something to enjoy rather than to have with every meal, a new phone every 5 years instead of every single year, energy efficient hardware (like Athlon 200GEs) for homelabs instead of the latest Threadripper CPUs (unless absolutely necessary), a used but dependable car instead of a new one and so on. And, of course, supporting local and small businesses, as well as trying your own hand at some of that stuff - going out to hunt game, drag it back home, skin it and cook it (if nothing else, that really makes you appreciate the meat you're eating), or even just simpler things like growing your own tomatoes and cucumbers (which are absolutely delicious), where possible. If everyone lived at least a bit more like that, we'd have even more breathing room in regards to the environment, in regards to resource usage etc., which feels like a good thing no matter how you look at it. Of course, that's probably also unrealistic as far as expectations go.

soonnow 5y ago
I strongly believe the consuming less is not the way to solve the climate crisis. The reason is that it's thought from a perspective of the global north, that assumes we just need to restrict a little to achieve a lot. That is not going to solve the global climate crisis. The simple reason is that there are 7 billion people who are not living in the rich countries. These people have the right to access resources as much as the people born in rich countries. Consuming 20% less carbon in the west will not offset the increased consumption in the rest of the world. Every gallon of oil that can be produced at a reasonable price will be consumed. If Europe and the US switched to all electric cars tomorrow, the rest of the world would still consume the oil, especially at a lower price than now (because the US and Europe are no longer conusming it). There are things we could do right now, without significant impact to our lifestyle. I just learned, that over 3% of climate emissions are crop burning. 2% is deforestation. We could literally stop this with the signing of a bill. The US and the EU agree to tax imports from crop burning countries at a high rate. It will drive up prices of Brazilian beef and Indonesian palm oil a little, but of little impact to the consumer. Cement is another 3%, which could be solved with CO2 neutral cement. Electric trucks will be a game changer once they are cheaper to run than Gas trucks. And yes nuclear is something we can't stop developing. When I argue for a tech forward approach than not because I'm a tech bro that believes science solves all problems, but because I strongly believe reductions are not gonna work. If we rely on consumption reductions we are truly screwed.
- timeon 5y ago
  Reductions are not gonna work nor tech. Technology is just going to increase demand.
  - soonnow 5y ago
    So the only way is to accept it?
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    Negative population growth for a while is baked into the world's population pyramid now. We're going to have to learn to deal with that.

amelius 5y ago

Even if we had 16x less people, some rich bastard would claim ownership of the now excess resources.

cryptonector 5y ago
Whatever for? If there's no one to sell products to...
- amelius 5y ago
  I don't know. People use resources for the craziest purposes. Personally, building an immense compute wall comes to mind.

pharmakom 5y ago

Not a Malthusian, but I’m very worried about the amount of resources we are using. We already lack the carbon budget and farming capacity for the world’s population to live to the standard of an average US citizen. There might be enough space and enough atoms, but we don’t yet have the capability to direct it into sustainable quality of life for all.

jazzyjackson 5y ago
As a cow eating, hot showing, car jamming American, I wouldn’t correlate resource usage with quality of life.
- pharmakom 5y ago
  OK it’s not a perfect correlation, but manual labourers on under 1800 calories/day and with no AC would definitely benefit from more resources! Even a European level of resource usage (roughly half that of US, last I checked) would be hard to achieve for the entire world pop.
cryptonector 5y ago
Did you know that total land under agriculture has been trending down for several decades? Would that put you at ease?
- pharmakom 5y ago
  But environmental destruction is way up. A good example is river health. We can provide more meat with high density grazing. But the waste products have to go somewhere, so the farmers spread them across their fields. Now when it rains, these run into the rivers and we get algae bloom. Majority of rivers in UK are now dying, for example. Have we discovered a sustainable way of producing more meat in less space? I hope so. But perhaps we are destroying natural systems whose benefit to us has not been properly quantified, in a way that will be extremely difficult to reverse. Modern agriculture has enabled us to support a larger world population with less labour and less space, but can we continue as we are for another 50 years?

gautamcgoel 5y ago

If there were fewer people on Earth, then presumably there would be less deforestation, overfishing, greenhouse emissions, etc. I strongly reject the idea that the Earth can support the current human population at the current levels of consumption and pollution.

cryptonector 5y ago
There already is less deforestation. The planet has greened enormously in the past several decades, as shown by satellite imaging. Total land under cultivation has shrunk for the past several decades. In other words, we've increased consumption using less of the resources you seem to value.

vardump 5y ago

> Malthusians exist. As long as the population increases, Malthus is right. There is going to be some ultimate carrying capacity at some point. Ultimate amount of energy we can harness. It's just a question when. Certainly before our energy consumption is enough to literally boil the oceans. Plug in different growth rates and the answer could range from tens of years to hundreds of millions of years!

nickik 5y ago
Yes and in billion years the sun will expand, but we don't bring that up in every discussion. Its not actually practically relevant and every-time people used it as an argument it has been proven in terms of practical impact.
cryptonector 5y ago
> As long as the population increases, Malthus is right. Wrong. As long as population growth remains positive without end in sight, Malthus right. However, THE END OF POSITIVE POPULATION GROWTH IS IN SIGHT. I mean, I said so in the comment you responded to, and you conveniently ignored it. Instead you went right for the Malthusian fearmongering talking points. "It's just a question of when" -- no, no it's not, not if population plateaus and then shrinks (negative population growth for a while is practically baked in now into the world's demographics). > Plug in different growth rates and the answer could range from tens of years to hundreds of millions of years! Why thank you. Hundreds of millions of years is more than there is time for life on this planet. Without our help, each successive glacial period was ending with CO2 lower than the end of the previous glacial period, and plants starve below certain levels (I think it's 150ppm for one kind of photosynthesis, lower for another) and was going to end up below those levels soon enough. Now, thanks to HUMANS life on Earth has millions more years in it because we've put a little bit of the Earth's sequestered carbon back into the carbon cycle.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Well, quite. Climate change also exists. So do resource limits. Something that doesn't exist is the science of living outside of an existing planetary ecosystem. Do some research on how much is understood about creating a stable ecosystem out of sand, metal ore, and water. You'll find it's a good approximation to zero. Flag wavers think it's all about building giant rockets, planting a flag - and boom. Colony! Asteroid mining! Etc! The reality couldn't be more different. Giant rockets are barely the loading screen. Feeding humans, dealing with waste products without choking on them, growing or synthesising essential nutrients, building systems that do all of this in a stable self-sustaining way - these are all beyond hard. And that's not even getting into psychology and politics. So until that changes, running your own planet - the one you got for free, and which was working fine already - as if you're trying to test it to destruction to find out just how stable it really is, is an unbelievably dumb thing to do.

nickik 5y ago
> Flag wavers think it's all about building giant rockets, planting a flag - and boom. Colony! Asteroid mining! Etc! Nobody actually interested in space believes this. > So until that changes It wont change unless you try to change it.
cryptonector 5y ago
Hello. Negative population growth for a while is now baked in to the world's population pyramid. You may now have a good night's sleep. You're welcome.
throwaway316943 5y ago
> these are all beyond hard I seem to remember some guy saying something about that. We’ve never let the fact that something doesn’t exist yet stop us. We are a species of inventors. We didn’t stay huddled naked in caves because they work and we got them for free. We aren’t meant to be like the rest of the ecosystem that mutely accepts its fate. We know we can die but we also reject the natural order of succumbing to predation, famine, disease and exposure. This planet is a cradle that we cannot lie in forever. Some day it will be dust and we will have to learn to walk amongst the stars.

mucholove 5y ago

On the environment and fauna, animals are going extinct (like the white rhino) so yes, we are running out of stuff. Trees—like Dominican mahogany grow really slowly and now there are so few of them we have basically run out. I can name several other examples—most notably Guayacan. There is a bunch of scarcity and destruction. I’m pretty sure we can fix them—but for the trees and the animals it’s unlikely that I get to experience them as was so in previous lifetimes. It’s a shame we couldn’t manage them sustainably previously.

cryptonector 5y ago
Sustainability requires wealth. You mention Dominican mahogany. Have you ever seen pictures of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic? They're really shocking! No trees in sight on the Haitian side; forest as far as the eye can see on the Dominican side. Why is that? Because Haiti is so much poorer than the Dominican Republic that trees are burned for firewood. The environment is cleanest and best in richer countries because rich people can afford to care about it. That's right, poor people who worry about where their next meal is going to come from could not care less about the environment. So if you want the 8bn people of this planet to care for it, we have to make them richer than they are.
- mucholove 5y ago
  Play with me for a second...What if sustainability creates wealth? After all—once you are born into a wealthy family—the joke is on you if "you lose it".