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Excellent. Now let’s shrink it and reduce the consumption of those left.

blubbity 3y ago
Agreed! You can start by getting rid of whatever device you used to post that response and not buying any more electronics. Bet you won’t!
- xmprt 3y ago
  I hate these unproductive and snarky replies to calls for change (although I don't agree with the parent commenter that the best solution is to reduce the population). You have no idea what that person is doing to offset their consumption. Maybe they're posting from a library computer. Maybe they bought their device second hand. Maybe (and this is actually the case for a lot of people), they received their device from their company and use it to do work as well as for personal use, thereby reducing the total number of devices in the world. It's like if southerners in the civil war called northerners hypocrites for eating food harvested by slaves while also advocating for abolishing slavery. Perhaps northerners were hypocrites but what does that make the southerners in that case?
  - throwaway5959 3y ago
    Thanks. I’m not having any kids so I think I’m doing my part.
  - blubbity 3y ago
    You’re right. Sorry.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Racing0461 3y ago
bill gates first.
hankman86 3y ago
And to what end? I fundamentally disagree with the premise that a downsized human population creates a better future, simply because fewer people will require less land, pollute less etc. This not to argue that land use, pollution, climate change etc. are not serious problems. Population collapse is way worse though from an individual perspective. We may not be able to maintain the level of human progress or even regress sharply in our living standards when there are drastically fewer people. To get an impression of what this looks like, look at what happened after major catastrophes in human history: the collapse of the Roman Empire, the plague that eradicated large swaths of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages, etc. It regularly took centuries for humanity to recover from these events.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  If there is a collapse (and I suspect it will be due to climate change rather than fertility issues and much sooner than people seem to think), humanity will never recover to what it is today, not only because of the severe bottlenecks they will go through, but because all the easily exploitable resources will have already been used in the 20th and 21st centuries. I don’t understand why no one seems bothered by this, but I am also trying to adopt the attitude of “getting my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames” to quote Jim Morrison. Of course, that means no children for me.

Agreed! You can start by getting rid of whatever device you used to post that response and not buying any more electronics. Bet you won’t!

xmprt 3y ago
I hate these unproductive and snarky replies to calls for change (although I don't agree with the parent commenter that the best solution is to reduce the population). You have no idea what that person is doing to offset their consumption. Maybe they're posting from a library computer. Maybe they bought their device second hand. Maybe (and this is actually the case for a lot of people), they received their device from their company and use it to do work as well as for personal use, thereby reducing the total number of devices in the world. It's like if southerners in the civil war called northerners hypocrites for eating food harvested by slaves while also advocating for abolishing slavery. Perhaps northerners were hypocrites but what does that make the southerners in that case?
- throwaway5959 3y ago
  Thanks. I’m not having any kids so I think I’m doing my part.
- blubbity 3y ago
  You’re right. Sorry.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Racing0461 3y ago

bill gates first.

hankman86 3y ago

And to what end? I fundamentally disagree with the premise that a downsized human population creates a better future, simply because fewer people will require less land, pollute less etc. This not to argue that land use, pollution, climate change etc. are not serious problems. Population collapse is way worse though from an individual perspective. We may not be able to maintain the level of human progress or even regress sharply in our living standards when there are drastically fewer people. To get an impression of what this looks like, look at what happened after major catastrophes in human history: the collapse of the Roman Empire, the plague that eradicated large swaths of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages, etc. It regularly took centuries for humanity to recover from these events.

hotpotamus 3y ago
If there is a collapse (and I suspect it will be due to climate change rather than fertility issues and much sooner than people seem to think), humanity will never recover to what it is today, not only because of the severe bottlenecks they will go through, but because all the easily exploitable resources will have already been used in the 20th and 21st centuries. I don’t understand why no one seems bothered by this, but I am also trying to adopt the attitude of “getting my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames” to quote Jim Morrison. Of course, that means no children for me.