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Because the damage will be done in 30 years. It's not possible to reduce population enough to matter in that time frame without mass genocide.

vba616 5y ago
It's possible to reduce population by about 40% in 30 years without killing anyone, isn't it? Why is that obviously insignificant?
- adrianN 5y ago
  No that is not possible without killing anyone because people will fight for the right to reproduce. You can't stop babymaking completely without violence.
  - vba616 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution (An alien invasion story where there's no fighting back like in Independence Day)
  - tinasabri 5y ago
    [flagged]
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  How do you simultaneously convince a whole generation of people to not have children? To a significant percentage of people, wearing a mask during a pandemic is too much of an imposition on civil liberties.
- ben_w 5y ago
  First, 40% is nowhere near enough of a CO2 reduction, we need ~99.9% over slightly more than that timeframe; second, that’s a zero child worldwide policy, and doing that would require violence; and third, you have to ask who you’re doing this for if you’re not doing it for the next generation. I am now curious what graph of age vs. CO2 emissions looks like for various populations…
  - vba616 5y ago
    I didn't mean it as a serious suggestion, just that it's technically possible to reduce the population that much without killing anyone. Are you serious that to reduce CO2 "enough" world population would have to be under 8 million people? When the Industrial Revolution started, mid 1700s, world population was something like 800 million, wasn't it? Why would it be necessary to return to the world of 4000 BC, which is what I believe 8 million corresponds to?
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Quality of life. We don’t want to live like we did in the 1700s — 95% of “rich” nations back then were subsistence farmers, and even the richest kings were in many ways worse off than minimum wage G7 citizens today. This is also why I think the solution is to focus on the CO2 itself and not on the people. Green power, green sources for chemical feedstocks, are much faster and less violent than population limits; and also lower population doesn’t itself guarantee lower greenhouse gases because everyone might just use more.
      - vba616 5y ago
        I don't understand. How would two more orders of magnitude reduction make things better? We don't want to go back to the 1700s, so going back to the dawn of history is better? What would North Korea be able to produce without 2/3rds of its population and without China?
        ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        He means, CO2 as a problem requires us to reduce our additions to the atmosphere by roughly 100%. This is entirely possible, mostly by no longer burning fossil fuels, which is the prime contributer to the problem. It is not practical or possible via population growth reduction, which has basically already happened (people live longer so there's a delay in the result being seen, but we've basically peaked already). Unfortunately, it's politically tricky to stop burning fossil fuels, because people with financial interests in fossil fuels would prefer to destroy human civilization instead. And one of the many ways they do that is by encouraging people to believe that modern life is impossible without burning fossil fuels and so we should kill billions of poor people instead of just using cheap renewable power.
- iamgopal 5y ago
  System will find balance. Price will increase. Fertility will decrease. Surely it won’t be easy way, but system doesn’t care about easy way.
- adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
  no it isn't. that would require no one having children for the next 30 years which you know, can't happen. realistically, the maximum amount of population reduction possible without genocide is somewhere around 2% per decade. otherwise you are going to run into insurmountable problems due to effects is population agree distribution.

vba616 5y ago

It's possible to reduce population by about 40% in 30 years without killing anyone, isn't it? Why is that obviously insignificant?

adrianN 5y ago
No that is not possible without killing anyone because people will fight for the right to reproduce. You can't stop babymaking completely without violence.
- vba616 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Screwfly_Solution (An alien invasion story where there's no fighting back like in Independence Day)
- tinasabri 5y ago
  [flagged]
VBprogrammer 5y ago
How do you simultaneously convince a whole generation of people to not have children? To a significant percentage of people, wearing a mask during a pandemic is too much of an imposition on civil liberties.
ben_w 5y ago
First, 40% is nowhere near enough of a CO2 reduction, we need ~99.9% over slightly more than that timeframe; second, that’s a zero child worldwide policy, and doing that would require violence; and third, you have to ask who you’re doing this for if you’re not doing it for the next generation. I am now curious what graph of age vs. CO2 emissions looks like for various populations…
- vba616 5y ago
  I didn't mean it as a serious suggestion, just that it's technically possible to reduce the population that much without killing anyone. Are you serious that to reduce CO2 "enough" world population would have to be under 8 million people? When the Industrial Revolution started, mid 1700s, world population was something like 800 million, wasn't it? Why would it be necessary to return to the world of 4000 BC, which is what I believe 8 million corresponds to?
  - ben_w 5y ago
    Quality of life. We don’t want to live like we did in the 1700s — 95% of “rich” nations back then were subsistence farmers, and even the richest kings were in many ways worse off than minimum wage G7 citizens today. This is also why I think the solution is to focus on the CO2 itself and not on the people. Green power, green sources for chemical feedstocks, are much faster and less violent than population limits; and also lower population doesn’t itself guarantee lower greenhouse gases because everyone might just use more.
    - vba616 5y ago
      I don't understand. How would two more orders of magnitude reduction make things better? We don't want to go back to the 1700s, so going back to the dawn of history is better? What would North Korea be able to produce without 2/3rds of its population and without China?
      - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        He means, CO2 as a problem requires us to reduce our additions to the atmosphere by roughly 100%. This is entirely possible, mostly by no longer burning fossil fuels, which is the prime contributer to the problem. It is not practical or possible via population growth reduction, which has basically already happened (people live longer so there's a delay in the result being seen, but we've basically peaked already). Unfortunately, it's politically tricky to stop burning fossil fuels, because people with financial interests in fossil fuels would prefer to destroy human civilization instead. And one of the many ways they do that is by encouraging people to believe that modern life is impossible without burning fossil fuels and so we should kill billions of poor people instead of just using cheap renewable power.
iamgopal 5y ago
System will find balance. Price will increase. Fertility will decrease. Surely it won’t be easy way, but system doesn’t care about easy way.
adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
no it isn't. that would require no one having children for the next 30 years which you know, can't happen. realistically, the maximum amount of population reduction possible without genocide is somewhere around 2% per decade. otherwise you are going to run into insurmountable problems due to effects is population agree distribution.