3 ms·

I think your top two are somewhere in the top three. We also need to get to a place, culturally, where we can have calm rational conversations about how many p

I think your top two are somewhere in the top three. We also need to get to a place, culturally, where we can have calm rational conversations about how many people we can reasonably ask this planet to support. At middling timescales, fewer people is better than greener tech. Some will see that as opting out of progress but there's really a lot of opportunity to offset it by doing a better job of investing in the people we already have.

proee 3y ago
Why is this being downvoted? What is the argument for unregulated populations?
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  It's hard to get elected on a "tell people they're not allowed to have kids" platform. I think there are less heavy handed ways to get us from a place where it's assumed that you'll have kids to a place where it's respected but not encouraged, but when people hear you talking about population growth as a problem to be solved, they immediately assume that you're about to propose something awful.
  - bamboozled 3y ago
    It’s more likely hard to get get elected by impacting the. Economic growth story? People already having less kids.
Borg3 3y ago
Thats right. Unfortunately, most people have they mindset fixed on never ending growth. We need more people, more cars, more everything. Yet, those people seems to barelly understand basic math and physics. Numbers do NOT lie. All that cool stuff that happened post WWII was because if cheap energy, very cheap. But its going to end. You can either have 10B ppl living in poor conditions or 200M people living in good conditions.
Terr_ 3y ago
> We also need to get to a place, culturally, where we can have calm rational conversations about how many people we can reasonably ask this planet to support. I disagree, that's a dangerous trap. Oh, sure, it seems reasonable and sagacious at first glance, but that's what makes the eventual misdirection/procrastination so insidious! Long-term planning is not automatically wise planning. ________ To illustrate, imagine that: 1. There's a local park with houses around it. 2. Some people periodically dump their trash in it. 3. The trash-piles are getting kind of big and stinky now. 4. A well-meaning neighbor says: "What we really need is to get a place, as a community, where we can have calm rational conversations bout how many people can live near this park." 5. (Bonus) Many of the biggest trash dumpers agree: "Exactly, literally everybody here is to blame, and especially people moving in and/or having too many kids! The only way forward is a very thorough and lengthy symposium with multiple committees to develop recommendations to stop that kind of thing." ________ In that analogy, it's easier to see that your neighbor's proposal is--er--less than practical, because (A) the immediate problem isn't actually total visitor count,(B) we'll never reach full consensus, and (C) any consensus number would still meaninglessly unenforceable. So it can't really help, but it can harm by creating unnecessary discord and will prevent/delay practical changes like "Anything you bring must be taken back out", or "Littering: $X fine."
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  It's punishing the innocent on behalf of the guilty. For some reason people really like to do that, in lots and lots of contexts.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    Who is innocent? I can't think of anybody.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I don't think it's a very good analogy because, at least when it comes to the parks in my neck of the woods, 95 percent of the litter problem is 5 percent of the people. Clearly you can solve it by addressing their behavior. When it comes to our impact on the carrying capacity of this planet, we don't have a small handful of bad actors. We have a small handful of good actors. The vast majority of us (here in the US) are not willing to make the compromises necessary to be carbon neutral. We just don't know how to live that way, and it may take several generations of trying to figure it out. In the meantime, were going to have to find a balance between quality and quantity of life. To leave quantity unconstrained is to expect the have-nots to quietly tolerate the excesses of the haves to a much greater degree than they already do. It seems like a recipe for needless conflict (which will further set back, if not completely prevent, our sustainability goals).

proee 3y ago

Why is this being downvoted? What is the argument for unregulated populations?

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
It's hard to get elected on a "tell people they're not allowed to have kids" platform. I think there are less heavy handed ways to get us from a place where it's assumed that you'll have kids to a place where it's respected but not encouraged, but when people hear you talking about population growth as a problem to be solved, they immediately assume that you're about to propose something awful.
- bamboozled 3y ago
  It’s more likely hard to get get elected by impacting the. Economic growth story? People already having less kids.

Borg3 3y ago

Thats right. Unfortunately, most people have they mindset fixed on never ending growth. We need more people, more cars, more everything. Yet, those people seems to barelly understand basic math and physics. Numbers do NOT lie. All that cool stuff that happened post WWII was because if cheap energy, very cheap. But its going to end. You can either have 10B ppl living in poor conditions or 200M people living in good conditions.

Terr_ 3y ago

> We also need to get to a place, culturally, where we can have calm rational conversations about how many people we can reasonably ask this planet to support. I disagree, that's a dangerous trap. Oh, sure, it seems reasonable and sagacious at first glance, but that's what makes the eventual misdirection/procrastination so insidious! Long-term planning is not automatically wise planning. ________ To illustrate, imagine that: 1. There's a local park with houses around it. 2. Some people periodically dump their trash in it. 3. The trash-piles are getting kind of big and stinky now. 4. A well-meaning neighbor says: "What we really need is to get a place, as a community, where we can have calm rational conversations bout how many people can live near this park." 5. (Bonus) Many of the biggest trash dumpers agree: "Exactly, literally everybody here is to blame, and especially people moving in and/or having too many kids! The only way forward is a very thorough and lengthy symposium with multiple committees to develop recommendations to stop that kind of thing." ________ In that analogy, it's easier to see that your neighbor's proposal is--er--less than practical, because (A) the immediate problem isn't actually total visitor count,(B) we'll never reach full consensus, and (C) any consensus number would still meaninglessly unenforceable. So it can't really help, but it can harm by creating unnecessary discord and will prevent/delay practical changes like "Anything you bring must be taken back out", or "Littering: $X fine."

marcosdumay 3y ago
It's punishing the innocent on behalf of the guilty. For some reason people really like to do that, in lots and lots of contexts.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  Who is innocent? I can't think of anybody.
__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I don't think it's a very good analogy because, at least when it comes to the parks in my neck of the woods, 95 percent of the litter problem is 5 percent of the people. Clearly you can solve it by addressing their behavior. When it comes to our impact on the carrying capacity of this planet, we don't have a small handful of bad actors. We have a small handful of good actors. The vast majority of us (here in the US) are not willing to make the compromises necessary to be carbon neutral. We just don't know how to live that way, and it may take several generations of trying to figure it out. In the meantime, were going to have to find a balance between quality and quantity of life. To leave quantity unconstrained is to expect the have-nots to quietly tolerate the excesses of the haves to a much greater degree than they already do. It seems like a recipe for needless conflict (which will further set back, if not completely prevent, our sustainability goals).