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Nobody is going to be elected telling people the harsh truth: that we consume far too much than the planet can sustain. Farmers and fishers on top of that will
by epolanski 2mo ago
Nobody is going to be elected telling people the harsh truth: that we consume far too much than the planet can sustain.
Farmers and fishers on top of that will always get cross partizan sympathy.
People just don't want to hear that the way they eat impacts and stresses the planet beyond its limits and that the producers of food get in any way penalized.
Truth is that we desperately need carbon taxes asap, to at least slow down the planet destruction. But it will never be popular.
- ASalazarMX 2mo agoThe problem is multifaceted, because we not only aren't told the truth, we are told lies that make things even worse, and people seem to like those. For example, overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected. Either democracy has broken beyond repair, or humanity averages to dumb. I'm inclined to the latter, because I believe that every individual, even if they can do smart things, is very dumb in other things.
- alephnerd 2mo ago> overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement.
- xienze 2mo ago> Most societies have reached a point where fertility rates have declined to below replacement. And governments in those countries are importing as many people as they can to paper over their own population decline.
- inigyou 2mo agoWhat's the international market price of a person?
- cwnyth 2mo agoThis is a dubious use of "society", and it ignores the fact that the world population is growing at an extremely fast rate still.
- irishcoffee 2mo agoThe world population will peak sometime between 2060 and 2100, and then start declining. 2060 is like… 34 years away. https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population
- inigyou 2mo agoNot close enough to avoid total ecosystem collapse.
- irishcoffee 2mo ago[flagged]
- tremon 2mo agoThat's ok, total ecosystem collapse will also reduce the human population.
- somenameforme 2mo agoPopulations can grow, even rapidly, in the short run even with collapsed fertility. This is because in part it's a lagging metric, but more importantly (and less intuitively) because fertility also determines the age ratios within a society. Imagine a society has a common fertility rate of 1 then that means each successive generation is half as large as the one prior. So if there's 1 new born, then there's 2 20-40 year olds, 4 40-60 year olds, and so on. High fertility rates result in societies with far more younger than elderly populations, and vice versa for low fertility societies. In the past most societies had high fertility rates, which means there are relatively few elderly, relative to younger people, today. So the global death rate is relatively low as the the number of people annually exiting the stage is relatively low. But when low fertility generations start to die off, this gets turned upside down. You'll have large numbers of elderly dying off, and they'll make up the majority of the population. But this only happens ~80 years after the birth of the low-fertility generation. This is why Japan looks so catastrophic today even though their fertility rate is much higher than places like South Korea. They've had a mediocre fertility rate since the 60s which then went into collapse in the 70s. By contrast South Korea had a fertility rate of 6 in the 60s, and didn't fall below replacement until the 80s. So Japan has had a solid decade or two head start. The fact we still aren't at the life expectancy of the first below replacement generation in Japan also means today is still going to be seen as 'the good ole days' for them. And this is where most countries are headed.
- jhbadger 2mo agoMost developed societies. When you live by subsistence agriculture, having lots of kids is a benefit as they are free labor. When a culture urbanizes and industrializes, they are less of a benefit.
- somenameforme 2mo agoIt's most societies, period. Of the 237 nations and territories recognized by UN, only 42% had a sustainable fertility rate. [1] It seems reasonable to assume kids having more positive economic power in the past played a significant role, but there's counter-examples abounds in modern times. Nigeria is heavily urbanized yet has one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Or on the other end of the spectrum, Thailand has a very large chunk of people living off farming, yet has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fer...
- tremon 2mo agoWhat's a "sustainable" fertility rate to you? Given that the current human biomass is completely unprecedented in all of history and is only made possible by artificial energy inputs (fossil fuels and ammonia/fertilizer), I posit that the only sustainable fertility rate is well below 2.0
- nickserv 2mo agoWhen discussing fertility rates "sustainable" usually means "ratio of births to deaths in order to have a stable population". In developed economies that's around 2.1 children per woman. Anything under that and the population declines without immigration.
- somenameforme 2mo agoNot only does it decline, but it declines exponentially. This is why fertility changes will have a far bigger impact on societies than most people appreciate. If a country has a fertility rate of 1 (and places like South Korea are now well below that even) then that means each successive generation is 50% smaller. And this change is compounding. So after 5 generations, for instance, your generational size will be 97% smaller (1 - 0.5^5). And all the while this is happening your economy is getting wrecked not only because suddenly you have far fewer people, but because your society turns into a giant retirement home, as fertility also determines the age ratios within a society. You can see this by working backwards. Again taking a fertility rate of 1 as an example, if we have 1 newborn then we have 2 20-40 year olds, 4 40-60 year olds, 8 60-80 year olds, and so on. So you have a shrinking economy paired alongside an even smaller ratio of workers, and much greater social strains on that economy as well. This is also why immigration isn't anything more than a very short-term bandaid. When you're speaking of population declines near 100% over such small windows of time, you end up needing to basically replace the entire population of a region. Doing this with immigration, let alone as this is increasingly a global crisis, just isn't realistic. And this is completely ignoring the social consequences of such actions.
- gruez 2mo ago>For example, overpopulation has been a concern for many decades, yet politicians that ignore the problem, or actually advocate for more population, somehow keep getting elected. Are you from the 1800s? Malthusianism has been discredited for decades, thanks to the green revolution and falling fertility rates. Not to mention all politicians that tried to do something (ie. didn't "ignore the problem") have a sorry track record - eugenics, one child policy, or forced sterilizations.
- amanaplanacanal 2mo agoI don't believe they are talking about malthusianism. That's a straw man. The arguement is that the sheer number of people is causing damage to the natural environment, not that we can't grow enough food to feed people.
- imtringued 2mo agoThe problem is that the problem is not the sheer number of people, it's the ratio between people and resources.
- folkrav 2mo agoCan't the sheer number of people make what would be considered a proper ratio utterly unsustainable?
- ASalazarMX 2mo agoI don't care about doctrines, I'm only in favor that politicians let birth rates naturally decline as people try to give better lives to fewer kids, and themselves. My grandparents had a dozen kids, my parents had three, I had zero. That's good for the planet, and the economy can take it with proper preparation. Infinite growth, in any form, is a fairy tale for economists.
- somenameforme 2mo agoI don't really follow this logic on two accounts. First is that when you remove yourself from the gene pool what you're effectively doing is simply ensuring that a larger percent of the children of the next generation come from families whose values you'd probably find quite distasteful. And their children will also end up holding those values at a high rate. This means that in the future 'your' values will have less influence and 'their' values will have more. This effect is going to be much greater than any sort of resource consumption reduction on what happens to the planet in the future. The second is that the status quo on Earth is never sustainable. For but one example among many on this note, Earth has gone through multiple mass extinctions - long before humans arrived on the scene - and it will continue to do so; in fact we're rather overdue for one. So the idea of living in perpetual harmony with the planet sounds like a nice goal, but is itself also a fairy tale. This certainly isn't an argument to just YOLO away the Earth, but rather that doing things that are relatively self destructive for the sake of trying to achieve a perpetual harmony is unwise, because that goal is impossible to achieve.
- singleshot_ 2mo agoGiven that the politicians are making a billion dollars on crypto scams, being gifted multimillion-dollar airplanes, and recipients of gold crowns, I’ll eat whatever I want regardless of who is elected. The truth is that if we weren’t burdened with multi billionaires, we would have plenty of everything.
- throw8384948 2mo agoIn Germany we tried that, politicians like that got very strong mandate to lower emissions. First we tried diesel gate. Then someone had amazing idea to import Russian gas. Now we are catching and taxing cow farts! Maybe bio methane could generate electricity!!!
- inigyou 2mo agoCow burps and farts are like 20% of global warming. The phraseology is used to make it sound silly but it's not silly.
- cortesoft 2mo agoThe problem is we have no way to pass a global carbon tax, and the way the global economy works now any attempts at a national level will only succeed in moving the carbon generation to other countries.
- bryanlarsen 2mo agoWe actually do have a relatively reasonable way to pass a mostly global carbon tax; Nordhaus won a Nobel Memorial Prize for this plan: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.15000001 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.15000001 AFAICT Germany actually came fairly close to assembling a club but failed because they wanted a club that would include the US but excluded China but couldn't find a reasonable mechanism to include the US. We should try again -- most countries would have no qualms about assembling a club that would exclude the US.
- inigyou 2mo agoYou just have to tax on import and un-tax on export. Or directly tax the things that cause it: Tax all non-biofuel petrol a certain amount instead of trying to calculate how much CO2 was emitted in its production.
- OroPla 2mo agoI find it unlikely that increased taxation should improve the situation.
- nemomarx 2mo agoincrease food prices substantially - people eat less - food production should become less profitable and shrink. Pretty easy taxation effect? Now, keeping the taxes suitably high as citizens go hungry, that's an exercise for the reader.
- mitthrowaway2 2mo agoYou don't think that taxes reduce consumption?
- OroPla 2mo agoEverything already is taxed, isn't it? I cannot think of anything that I pay for regularly that is not taxed, at least. Increasing taxation might price poor people out of things, but then poor people aren't flying jets or helicopters, are they? They still have to drive to work, too. Mandating working from home was pretty effective in reducing CO2, though.
- epolanski 2mo agoIf your burgers and steaks cost considerably more you may consider more poultry or cheese.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]