5 ms·

to advocate for the death of 8 billion people is a hell of a stance. there's pro genocide and then there's... I guess this is just hating the whole species.

lIl-IIIl 1y ago
I think she advocating for fewer births. The 8 billion deaths would eventually happen by themselves, most of them of old age.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  In order to achieve this, though, we desperately need to get every country well below replacement-level fertility rate, and sustain that for a long, long time. Not sure it's possible, particularly when some political factions still consider "below replacement" to be a bad thing.
  - lIl-IIIl 1y ago
    It's happening though. Birthrate in many countries are below replacement rate, and birthrates in all countries have declined: https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2025/09/11/humanity-will-shrink-far-sooner-than-you-think https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2025/09/11/hu....
- jacksnipe 1y ago
  She’s not doing either. In that same conversation, she goes on to talk about how we don’t live in that world and can’t return there, and what the implications should be for policy.
- NoboruWataya 1y ago
  The thing is that if you depopulate by reducing the birth rate, you end up in a situation where you have a whole lot of old people and very few young people, which cannot be sustained.
  - saghm 1y ago
    It doesn't need to be sustained, the whole point is that eventually when the next generation ages up, the number of old people won't be as high.
    - swiftcoder 1y ago
      However, in the intermediate stage, you are desperately short of working-age people to help support the massive aging population. This isn't a theoretical - most of Western Europe has been in this boat for a long time, and relies heavily on immigration to fill the labour gap (despite however much political posturing about wanting to restrict immigration) If we do this on a global scale, there is nowhere to draw immigrants from, and a bunch of old folks are going to be abandoned to die...
      - juttern 1y ago
        [flagged]
        swiftcoder 1y ago
        Humans are humans, at the end of the day. Especially as someone who grew up at the height of EU open borders, I'm not real bothered which side of an imaginary line on a map someone happened to be born on
        juttern 1y ago
        [flagged]
        GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
        europe to here with the ethnicism!
        saghm 1y ago
        If the only argument behind why Europe should exist is that you don't like people who look like the people from Sudan or India, then maybe it shouldn't. (If you instead want to claim that you're not trying to talk about ethnicity and are instead talking about economies or whatever, consider whether the ancestors you mention drawing those imaginary lines over places like Sudan and India were motivated by their desire to colonize and extract wealth from them at the expense of the local populations, and whether that's more responsible for the economic differences between them and Europe than the lines themselves)
michaelhoney 1y ago
to straw-man what someone says and then get indignant is a waste of your emotional budget
- jibal 1y ago
  And that's a charitable evaluation.
shoo 1y ago
here's an AP news fact check article from 2022 if anyone is curious about what Goodall actually said: https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-jane-goodall-population-299442560681 https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-jane-goodall-populatio...

lIl-IIIl 1y ago

I think she advocating for fewer births. The 8 billion deaths would eventually happen by themselves, most of them of old age.

ryandrake 1y ago
In order to achieve this, though, we desperately need to get every country well below replacement-level fertility rate, and sustain that for a long, long time. Not sure it's possible, particularly when some political factions still consider "below replacement" to be a bad thing.
- lIl-IIIl 1y ago
  It's happening though. Birthrate in many countries are below replacement rate, and birthrates in all countries have declined: https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2025/09/11/humanity-will-shrink-far-sooner-than-you-think https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2025/09/11/hu....
jacksnipe 1y ago
She’s not doing either. In that same conversation, she goes on to talk about how we don’t live in that world and can’t return there, and what the implications should be for policy.
NoboruWataya 1y ago
The thing is that if you depopulate by reducing the birth rate, you end up in a situation where you have a whole lot of old people and very few young people, which cannot be sustained.
- saghm 1y ago
  It doesn't need to be sustained, the whole point is that eventually when the next generation ages up, the number of old people won't be as high.
  - swiftcoder 1y ago
    However, in the intermediate stage, you are desperately short of working-age people to help support the massive aging population. This isn't a theoretical - most of Western Europe has been in this boat for a long time, and relies heavily on immigration to fill the labour gap (despite however much political posturing about wanting to restrict immigration) If we do this on a global scale, there is nowhere to draw immigrants from, and a bunch of old folks are going to be abandoned to die...
    - juttern 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - swiftcoder 1y ago
        Humans are humans, at the end of the day. Especially as someone who grew up at the height of EU open borders, I'm not real bothered which side of an imaginary line on a map someone happened to be born on
        juttern 1y ago
        [flagged]
        GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
        europe to here with the ethnicism!
        saghm 1y ago
        If the only argument behind why Europe should exist is that you don't like people who look like the people from Sudan or India, then maybe it shouldn't. (If you instead want to claim that you're not trying to talk about ethnicity and are instead talking about economies or whatever, consider whether the ancestors you mention drawing those imaginary lines over places like Sudan and India were motivated by their desire to colonize and extract wealth from them at the expense of the local populations, and whether that's more responsible for the economic differences between them and Europe than the lines themselves)

michaelhoney 1y ago

to straw-man what someone says and then get indignant is a waste of your emotional budget

jibal 1y ago
And that's a charitable evaluation.

shoo 1y ago

here's an AP news fact check article from 2022 if anyone is curious about what Goodall actually said: https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-jane-goodall-population-299442560681 https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-jane-goodall-populatio...