I love the doublethink some people have of “capitalism can’t grow infinitely” and “population can grow infinitely”. It’s one or the other. The earth has a carrying capacity for whatever standard of living you want to choose and we’re probably well over it for what anyone posting here would consider acceptable. Either population has to decline or standards of living have to decline for people in the imperial core for us to achieve a sustainable and equitably distributed standard of living globally.
I do not understand why some people would prefer having 10 billion subsistence farmers instead of 500 million people living comfortably.
I recognize I’m talking past the tweet somewhat because in my experience it is largely just a strawman. There is a flavor of leftists that cannot see the phrase ‘global overpopulation’ without immediately strawmanning eugenicist genocide as the envisioned solution. As if ‘the earth cannot sustain infinite people’ is an inherently racist idea. The actual ethno-fascists are almost all natalist now, get with the program.
I think the problem is more that yes, the earth can only sustain so many people, but we have not nearly hit that limit yet. And in my opinion a better worldview is ‘lets take care of the planet better and have more efficient organization of labor and food and such, so that the earth can take care of us in return and support more people.’
The population won’t grow infinitely. People have in average two surviving children when mortality rate is high. If mortality decreases thanks to higher living standards, there is a population boom because more than two children survive. Birth rate then decrease to about two children per woman and population stabilizes. You can argue on why this happens, but this is just observation from Europe to Africa, from the Americas to Asia.
Yeah it should be a self solving problem eventually and that would be fine if we had a few hundred years to let it play out. But rising living standards and rising population are both contributing to the climate crisis. The earth cannot sustain uplifting 8 billion people to a European standard of living. We have to put a thumb on the scale somewhere and I would prefer that thumb be ‘have as few children as possible’ instead of standard of living backsliding or slowing the industrialization of the developing world.
This only really requires being proactive about making contraception available to make demographic transition happen faster.
If you had a magic wand that could get rid of 7 billion people without any practical or ethical concerns, it still wouldn’t be a good solution to the climate crisis because the remaining people would still be doing industrialism and capitalism. It would just keep happening.
But perhaps more importantly, I don’t see any way to quickly lower the population without resorting to mass murder. Population degrowth can only be a long-term strategy based in a societal value of coexisting without excessive consumption, or else it’s just an elite class deciding who’s allowed to live and breed.
I think there’s a mathematical issue here: There’s no limit on living standards.
If we decrease the population, they’ll simply want more.
Billionaires buy the second yacht because it’s easier than transporting the first yacht to the other coast.
On a smaller scales, I also buy 3 t-shirts so I can still have a choice of what to wear when the first one is in the washer. The choice is an unnecessary increase in my living standards.
If we go with your suggested figure of 500 million people, and these people should all have EU standards of living, we’d still be consuming more resources than the Earth can provide.
It’s not the 8 billion poor people who are taking the toll on the resources. Removing them wouldn’t fix the issue.
I’d like to think that we can maintain a high living standard by technological advancement, but we do have to be realistic about it. Our living standards in the west are simply unsustainable, even if it was just us on entire globe.
A lot of climate adaptations would increase health and quality of life. Living near major carways is really fucking bad for you. Red meat is bad for you. Suburbs are bad for you. Going into the office every single fucking day in your car and eating trash because you’re strapped for time then going home to your shitty suburban house is bad for you. It wouldn’t all be steps down.
I love the doublethink some people have of “capitalism can’t grow infinitely” and “population can grow infinitely”. It’s one or the other. The earth has a carrying capacity for whatever standard of living you want to choose and we’re probably well over it for what anyone posting here would consider acceptable. Either population has to decline or standards of living have to decline for people in the imperial core for us to achieve a sustainable and equitably distributed standard of living globally.
I do not understand why some people would prefer having 10 billion subsistence farmers instead of 500 million people living comfortably.
I recognize I’m talking past the tweet somewhat because in my experience it is largely just a strawman. There is a flavor of leftists that cannot see the phrase ‘global overpopulation’ without immediately strawmanning eugenicist genocide as the envisioned solution. As if ‘the earth cannot sustain infinite people’ is an inherently racist idea. The actual ethno-fascists are almost all natalist now, get with the program.
I think the problem is more that yes, the earth can only sustain so many people, but we have not nearly hit that limit yet. And in my opinion a better worldview is ‘lets take care of the planet better and have more efficient organization of labor and food and such, so that the earth can take care of us in return and support more people.’
The population won’t grow infinitely. People have in average two surviving children when mortality rate is high. If mortality decreases thanks to higher living standards, there is a population boom because more than two children survive. Birth rate then decrease to about two children per woman and population stabilizes. You can argue on why this happens, but this is just observation from Europe to Africa, from the Americas to Asia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition?wprov=sfla1
Yeah it should be a self solving problem eventually and that would be fine if we had a few hundred years to let it play out. But rising living standards and rising population are both contributing to the climate crisis. The earth cannot sustain uplifting 8 billion people to a European standard of living. We have to put a thumb on the scale somewhere and I would prefer that thumb be ‘have as few children as possible’ instead of standard of living backsliding or slowing the industrialization of the developing world.
This only really requires being proactive about making contraception available to make demographic transition happen faster.
If you had a magic wand that could get rid of 7 billion people without any practical or ethical concerns, it still wouldn’t be a good solution to the climate crisis because the remaining people would still be doing industrialism and capitalism. It would just keep happening.
But perhaps more importantly, I don’t see any way to quickly lower the population without resorting to mass murder. Population degrowth can only be a long-term strategy based in a societal value of coexisting without excessive consumption, or else it’s just an elite class deciding who’s allowed to live and breed.
I think there’s a mathematical issue here: There’s no limit on living standards.
If we decrease the population, they’ll simply want more.
Billionaires buy the second yacht because it’s easier than transporting the first yacht to the other coast. On a smaller scales, I also buy 3 t-shirts so I can still have a choice of what to wear when the first one is in the washer. The choice is an unnecessary increase in my living standards.
If we go with your suggested figure of 500 million people, and these people should all have EU standards of living, we’d still be consuming more resources than the Earth can provide. It’s not the 8 billion poor people who are taking the toll on the resources. Removing them wouldn’t fix the issue.
I’d like to think that we can maintain a high living standard by technological advancement, but we do have to be realistic about it. Our living standards in the west are simply unsustainable, even if it was just us on entire globe.
A lot of climate adaptations would increase health and quality of life. Living near major carways is really fucking bad for you. Red meat is bad for you. Suburbs are bad for you. Going into the office every single fucking day in your car and eating trash because you’re strapped for time then going home to your shitty suburban house is bad for you. It wouldn’t all be steps down.