4 ms·

I'm going to make some predictions, bold, dystopian predictions yet ones I feel at least rather confident in coming to be. 1) Political action will stay under

I'm going to make some predictions, bold, dystopian predictions yet ones I feel at least rather confident in coming to be. 1) Political action will stay under the threshold necessary for real change on human behaviors to realize limits on human-caused warming. We're gonna heat the planet and politicians will remain anti-aligned and selfishly focused on partisan/regional /short-term gains with the support of their votership. 2) As we heat and resources exhaust, some populations are going to wither, some will adapt, and some will attempt to migrate towards cooler regions (the poles). This will cause political strife. As one particular example, draw a line from China's western extent straight north to the pole, and see how what is present-day Russia defends against "the iron will of 1.4B people" who are struggling to live where they are (China already views itself as an Arctic power). Another: USA pushing north beyond the 49th parallel. 3) Population control is topically political suicide in democracies; no one in power will dare broach it in seriousness at a national or multilateral level. Few such people will even give voice to relating resource levels with population levels. Instead, the mitigation strategy will find its loci in migration control and containment (keeping-their-problems-in-their-own-Stans) like we do today with Bangladesh. I truly hope I'm wrong, but I have a hunch I'm not ..

kiba 4y ago
Population is not really a problem. The challenge is pollution per capita.
- papaver-somnamb 4y ago
  Yes, the footprint per capita. My post was already becoming uncomfortably long.. Ex: A religious person goes to a developing country, promotes birth control, and comes back to be rewarded for preventing excess births to the degree of 100 children. They then proceed to have 2 children of their own. Given that the developing country has a footprint per capita two orders of magnitude less than that of the proselytizer (i.e. 5 versus 800, to use circa 2000 numbers), that person has in effect only slightly mitigated the cascading impact of their own actions. It's more about raising everyone alive not just to our collective higher standards of living but also in reducing footprint.
ncmncm 4y ago
You have unrealistically rosy expectations. When Bangladesh is under water, the residents will not stay and drown. When agriculture collapses over wide areas, people will not stay and starve. When ocean ecosystems collapse as falling pH makes setting calcium impossible, people dependent on ocean protein will not quietly starve.

kiba 4y ago

Population is not really a problem. The challenge is pollution per capita.

papaver-somnamb 4y ago
Yes, the footprint per capita. My post was already becoming uncomfortably long.. Ex: A religious person goes to a developing country, promotes birth control, and comes back to be rewarded for preventing excess births to the degree of 100 children. They then proceed to have 2 children of their own. Given that the developing country has a footprint per capita two orders of magnitude less than that of the proselytizer (i.e. 5 versus 800, to use circa 2000 numbers), that person has in effect only slightly mitigated the cascading impact of their own actions. It's more about raising everyone alive not just to our collective higher standards of living but also in reducing footprint.

ncmncm 4y ago

You have unrealistically rosy expectations. When Bangladesh is under water, the residents will not stay and drown. When agriculture collapses over wide areas, people will not stay and starve. When ocean ecosystems collapse as falling pH makes setting calcium impossible, people dependent on ocean protein will not quietly starve.