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> The only way to end climate change is to have a serious debate about population control. It’s always disturbing how quickly this stuff goes from here to “we

> The only way to end climate change is to have a serious debate about population control. It’s always disturbing how quickly this stuff goes from here to “we have to prevent other people from having kids rather than having Americans stop consuming”. Get your neighbor out of their F150 before trying to sterilize the global south. > Nuclear fission once pulled off will make things much much worse. Fusion. Fission has been done for your entire lifetime. > I foresee a population explosion into areas once uninhabitable. Apparently your foresight doesn’t involve actually bothering to check the fertility rate in any nation. If you’d done that, you’d realize that birth rates drop as nations get richer. Most of the world is below replacement rate, and world populations are expected to peak in the year 2100 and begin falling. The thing that actually limits reproduction isn’t resources, but child mortality and interest. Once you can expect your children to survive infancy, most people want fewer of them.

ransom1538 5y ago
"F150 before trying to sterilize the global south" Right. So people not buying a f150 will help combat the climate destruction of a doubling population in the next 40 years. Is this a joke? I don't understand how a smart group can say such stupid things.
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- throwaway894345 5y ago
  The parent was clearly exaggerating. The point was pretty obviously that Americans should curb their appetite for carbon before proposing extreme population control policies for others. Which is an eminently reasonable point, and sad that it has to be articulated explicitly. More seriously, "getting your neighbor out of their F150" or any other "personal responsibility" approach is doomed to fail because citizens don't have appropriate information to make informed environmental choices (we can't accurately estimate how much carbon goes into the manufacture of the products and services they consume) which is why carbon pricing is necessary.

ransom1538 5y ago

"F150 before trying to sterilize the global south" Right. So people not buying a f150 will help combat the climate destruction of a doubling population in the next 40 years. Is this a joke? I don't understand how a smart group can say such stupid things.

deleted 5y ago
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throwaway894345 5y ago
The parent was clearly exaggerating. The point was pretty obviously that Americans should curb their appetite for carbon before proposing extreme population control policies for others. Which is an eminently reasonable point, and sad that it has to be articulated explicitly. More seriously, "getting your neighbor out of their F150" or any other "personal responsibility" approach is doomed to fail because citizens don't have appropriate information to make informed environmental choices (we can't accurately estimate how much carbon goes into the manufacture of the products and services they consume) which is why carbon pricing is necessary.