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Address the real problem. We are too many people on the earth for the resources that we are naturally given. That's a fact.

ekianjo 5y ago
> We are too many people on the earth for the resources that we are naturally given. The same old rant that we hear for like 100 years now "when we reach 1 billion people everyone will starve", "peak oil is just around the corner (back in the 70s)", and all this kind of bullshit. Resources are plentiful as long as you are ingenious when it comes to harvesting them.
- pixiemaster 5y ago
  exactly. the Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.
- fnord77 5y ago
  like nuclear fusion, peak oil is perpetually 10-15 years away
  - ben_w 5y ago
    American oil peaked and then declined almost exactly as expected, and only saw a second growth phase when a new category of resources became exploitable. IMO, given the scale of everything in the USA, it’s more luck than anything else that the world is getting sufficiently cheap renewables and batteries on the right schedule to avoid peak oil actually harming civilisation in general and the USA catastrophically — the principle is a valid one, and in a hypothetical alternative world where global reserves had been half what they were, American rural areas would have had a much harder time than European equivalents adapting to electric power and long distance transport in the 70s.
- danielovichdk 5y ago
  Who is polluting the world ? Why are we breeding cattle which has modified genes for not sweating ? You say resources are plentiful but apploud (?) modified cattle so they don't sweat, so they don't pollute and so we all can keep eating meat. You really don't see a flaw in that ? Of course we are too many people. Denying that is really naive.
  - yywwbbn 5y ago
    And yet another the average person living in any developed country (also to a lesser but still significant degree in all of countries) is much better off, in almost every conceivable way, than his ancestors were when the total world population was only a few hundred million people. If you’re primary concern is the welfare of humans (not saying it should be) rather than wildlife and natural ecosystems there almost no evidence which would suggest that an increase in global population results in a lower QoL for an average person.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    The number of humans that can live on this planet simultaneously is a function of technology. If we all lived like hunters and gatherers, the population limit would be a mere few tens of millions. Conversely, if we imagine arbitrary technology, the maximum population that can live simultaneously and sustainably on this world is somewhere in the trillions. Technology such as the stuff you’re trying to use as evidence there’s too many of us, is in fact the technology that allows there to be more of us.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      It's also a function of the finite resources available to us. You also need to factor in that we don't have arbitrary technology and never will. There will always be limits to our technology. I think the gist of the GP argument is something like: Our use of technology is using increasing amounts of our planets resources (e.g. land), and is often questionably ethical (exploiting the other creatures we share our planet with). At which point you have to ask the question: is an expanded human population worth that cost?
      - ben_w 5y ago
        Sure, and if I’m talking to someone who claims e.g. the economy can grow forever I’d make a similar point myself. But we don’t have trillions of people yet, and the difficulty of supporting the current population sustainably is more one of organisation than technological inability — much closer to irrigating and enclosing in greenhouses Nevada, Utah, and Arizona [0] than it is to colonising Mars. (I’m told greenhouses are way more productive than open air farms, just not cost effective in most cases; the example given by proponents is the Netherlands). > is an expanded human population worth that cost? To whom? I’m vegetarian and pushing myself in the direction of veganism, partly because of ethics. Ethics are however are relative, and many humans only care about other humans. Heck, given that the nature of the rich inner world often called “self-awareness” or “consciousness” is not yet sufficiently well defined to even be testable, such people may even be correct. I’m not even sure at what threshold to stop caring myself — lobster brains aren’t very complex, and bivalves (despite being animals) don’t even have brains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivalvia#Nervous_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivalvia#Nervous_system [0] for illustration purposes only; this is almost certainly a suboptimal set of locations.
- imtringued 5y ago
  >In the meantime, approximately 793 million people are starving around the world, according to the U.N. That makes up about 11 percent of the population. https://borgenproject.org/how-many-people-are-starving-around-the-world/ https://borgenproject.org/how-many-people-are-starving-aroun... It's true isn't it?
- pessimizer 5y ago
  > Resources are plentiful as long as you are ingenious when it comes to harvesting them. Resources are also plentiful until they're not. The idea that people have been saying that resources are running out for a long time is not evidence that they are infinite. You'd have to be quite ingenious to maintain the fossil fuel supply indefinitely through your harvesting tactics, unless the tactic you use is to slow to a stop.
betwixthewires 5y ago
No it's not.
histriosum 5y ago
Even if we were to accept that fact as stated (I don't, but let's assume we do..) What are you proposing, exactly? It sounds like "address the real problem" here means you are suggesting killing people off. That definitely doesn't seem like a good answer. China tried the one child policy, and it didn't turn out very well. The second order effects were pretty awful, and will be felt for generations. What would you suggest the path forward to less population is?
- danielovichdk 5y ago
  Based on how we exploit our resources and the amount of people that are wealthy enough to live a good-standard life, we are definitely too many people on earth. Of course I don't suggest killing people, why would you even suggest such a thing ? I suggest people start to educate themselves and eachother. Instead of having kids, adopt. Instead of eating meat 5 days a week, eat it twice. Start using a bike and not a car. But people don't think about the consequences for the next generations, and "we are empowered to have our own kids etc". People really don't give a fuck about the state of the world as long as they can get what they believe they are entitled to through life. And that's a problem. Start accepting that and start accepting the how exploit what we have dear and have been given as being part of the world. We are way too many people for all of us to live decent life's.
  - yywwbbn 5y ago
    Having less/very few children would be an awful if we care about the next generation. You’d end up with much larger proportion of older people in the total population. This would result in a massively increase in per capita healthcare expenditures and a decrease in productivity. And guess who is going to pay for all that?
  - kmlx 5y ago
    > Based on how we exploit our resources and the amount of people that are wealthy enough to live a good-standard life, we are definitely too many people on earth. hi. you would be surprised to find out this is a myth that started in the 70s. it has been disproven time after time, decade after decade. and still people fall for it :)
lonk 5y ago
Resorces are enough for all of us. But money is not. Money is collecting in the rich people's pocket. This is the real problem.
- ben_w 5y ago
  On a national scale, sure. Worldwide (which is more relevant here), the absolute poorest of the poor, the people that would look up enviously to the accumulated wealth of a rough-sleeping westerner with a shopping trolley, are getting richer.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Just money? What about the resources themselves? Putin is wealthy because he has exclusive access to them.
imtringued 5y ago
Too many people to live a modern western standard of living. I'm sure there is a compromise between vegetarianism and being a full on carnivore. e.g. a global middle class that doesn't suck.

ekianjo 5y ago

> We are too many people on the earth for the resources that we are naturally given. The same old rant that we hear for like 100 years now "when we reach 1 billion people everyone will starve", "peak oil is just around the corner (back in the 70s)", and all this kind of bullshit. Resources are plentiful as long as you are ingenious when it comes to harvesting them.

pixiemaster 5y ago
exactly. the Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of stones.
fnord77 5y ago
like nuclear fusion, peak oil is perpetually 10-15 years away
- ben_w 5y ago
  American oil peaked and then declined almost exactly as expected, and only saw a second growth phase when a new category of resources became exploitable. IMO, given the scale of everything in the USA, it’s more luck than anything else that the world is getting sufficiently cheap renewables and batteries on the right schedule to avoid peak oil actually harming civilisation in general and the USA catastrophically — the principle is a valid one, and in a hypothetical alternative world where global reserves had been half what they were, American rural areas would have had a much harder time than European equivalents adapting to electric power and long distance transport in the 70s.
danielovichdk 5y ago
Who is polluting the world ? Why are we breeding cattle which has modified genes for not sweating ? You say resources are plentiful but apploud (?) modified cattle so they don't sweat, so they don't pollute and so we all can keep eating meat. You really don't see a flaw in that ? Of course we are too many people. Denying that is really naive.
- yywwbbn 5y ago
  And yet another the average person living in any developed country (also to a lesser but still significant degree in all of countries) is much better off, in almost every conceivable way, than his ancestors were when the total world population was only a few hundred million people. If you’re primary concern is the welfare of humans (not saying it should be) rather than wildlife and natural ecosystems there almost no evidence which would suggest that an increase in global population results in a lower QoL for an average person.
- ben_w 5y ago
  The number of humans that can live on this planet simultaneously is a function of technology. If we all lived like hunters and gatherers, the population limit would be a mere few tens of millions. Conversely, if we imagine arbitrary technology, the maximum population that can live simultaneously and sustainably on this world is somewhere in the trillions. Technology such as the stuff you’re trying to use as evidence there’s too many of us, is in fact the technology that allows there to be more of us.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    It's also a function of the finite resources available to us. You also need to factor in that we don't have arbitrary technology and never will. There will always be limits to our technology. I think the gist of the GP argument is something like: Our use of technology is using increasing amounts of our planets resources (e.g. land), and is often questionably ethical (exploiting the other creatures we share our planet with). At which point you have to ask the question: is an expanded human population worth that cost?
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Sure, and if I’m talking to someone who claims e.g. the economy can grow forever I’d make a similar point myself. But we don’t have trillions of people yet, and the difficulty of supporting the current population sustainably is more one of organisation than technological inability — much closer to irrigating and enclosing in greenhouses Nevada, Utah, and Arizona [0] than it is to colonising Mars. (I’m told greenhouses are way more productive than open air farms, just not cost effective in most cases; the example given by proponents is the Netherlands). > is an expanded human population worth that cost? To whom? I’m vegetarian and pushing myself in the direction of veganism, partly because of ethics. Ethics are however are relative, and many humans only care about other humans. Heck, given that the nature of the rich inner world often called “self-awareness” or “consciousness” is not yet sufficiently well defined to even be testable, such people may even be correct. I’m not even sure at what threshold to stop caring myself — lobster brains aren’t very complex, and bivalves (despite being animals) don’t even have brains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivalvia#Nervous_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bivalvia#Nervous_system [0] for illustration purposes only; this is almost certainly a suboptimal set of locations.
imtringued 5y ago
>In the meantime, approximately 793 million people are starving around the world, according to the U.N. That makes up about 11 percent of the population. https://borgenproject.org/how-many-people-are-starving-around-the-world/ https://borgenproject.org/how-many-people-are-starving-aroun... It's true isn't it?
pessimizer 5y ago
> Resources are plentiful as long as you are ingenious when it comes to harvesting them. Resources are also plentiful until they're not. The idea that people have been saying that resources are running out for a long time is not evidence that they are infinite. You'd have to be quite ingenious to maintain the fossil fuel supply indefinitely through your harvesting tactics, unless the tactic you use is to slow to a stop.

betwixthewires 5y ago

No it's not.

histriosum 5y ago

Even if we were to accept that fact as stated (I don't, but let's assume we do..) What are you proposing, exactly? It sounds like "address the real problem" here means you are suggesting killing people off. That definitely doesn't seem like a good answer. China tried the one child policy, and it didn't turn out very well. The second order effects were pretty awful, and will be felt for generations. What would you suggest the path forward to less population is?

danielovichdk 5y ago
Based on how we exploit our resources and the amount of people that are wealthy enough to live a good-standard life, we are definitely too many people on earth. Of course I don't suggest killing people, why would you even suggest such a thing ? I suggest people start to educate themselves and eachother. Instead of having kids, adopt. Instead of eating meat 5 days a week, eat it twice. Start using a bike and not a car. But people don't think about the consequences for the next generations, and "we are empowered to have our own kids etc". People really don't give a fuck about the state of the world as long as they can get what they believe they are entitled to through life. And that's a problem. Start accepting that and start accepting the how exploit what we have dear and have been given as being part of the world. We are way too many people for all of us to live decent life's.
- yywwbbn 5y ago
  Having less/very few children would be an awful if we care about the next generation. You’d end up with much larger proportion of older people in the total population. This would result in a massively increase in per capita healthcare expenditures and a decrease in productivity. And guess who is going to pay for all that?
- kmlx 5y ago
  > Based on how we exploit our resources and the amount of people that are wealthy enough to live a good-standard life, we are definitely too many people on earth. hi. you would be surprised to find out this is a myth that started in the 70s. it has been disproven time after time, decade after decade. and still people fall for it :)

lonk 5y ago

Resorces are enough for all of us. But money is not. Money is collecting in the rich people's pocket. This is the real problem.

ben_w 5y ago
On a national scale, sure. Worldwide (which is more relevant here), the absolute poorest of the poor, the people that would look up enviously to the accumulated wealth of a rough-sleeping westerner with a shopping trolley, are getting richer.
imtringued 5y ago
Just money? What about the resources themselves? Putin is wealthy because he has exclusive access to them.

imtringued 5y ago

Too many people to live a modern western standard of living. I'm sure there is a compromise between vegetarianism and being a full on carnivore. e.g. a global middle class that doesn't suck.