Greta Thunberg
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She does not have a mental illness at all. You can tell this is GD when people come out with such ignorant comments.
I still can't get over this whole "shoot the messenger" thing. What she is saying is just so flipping TRUE.
We are on a path to rendering vast swathes of the world uninhabitable. The worlds governments are just ignoring the issues. The cost of doing nothing is already so much more than the cost of doing something.
The problem is that doing something is politically unpopular and all they think about is re-election.
Greta may be a bit "quirkly", but that doesn't stop her being an amazing power for environmental good.
We are on a path to rendering vast swathes of the world uninhabitable. The worlds governments are just ignoring the issues. The cost of doing nothing is already so much more than the cost of doing something.
The problem is that doing something is politically unpopular and all they think about is re-election.
Greta may be a bit "quirkly", but that doesn't stop her being an amazing power for environmental good.
what is the pc categorisation of autism ? - this becomes like the person of colour terminology -
overcoming prejudice is down to educating people, not misrepresentation.
(a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms)
overcoming prejudice is down to educating people, not misrepresentation.
(a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms)
It's nothing to do with being politically correct, it's about not being ignorant. It's simply not a mental "illness", it's Autism. I am autistic, my son is autistic, we're not mentally ill!
Pc is just anpther form of suppression so people are not allowed to be straight to the point. Im on the autistic spectrum also.
But if what theyre saying is true then we need to treat it like a forrest fire and cut trees down to create a barrier to try and stop it spreading more. We are going to need the oceans to do this as it is most of the worlds surface
But if what theyre saying is true then we need to treat it like a forrest fire and cut trees down to create a barrier to try and stop it spreading more. We are going to need the oceans to do this as it is most of the worlds surface
Yes, because we shouldn’t start somewhere.
Woe betide starting with the most polluting people.
So China and India then ?
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Lol yea, weird statement.
If she can't convince China and India she is wasting her time right now.
Attacking countries that are easy targets and thus seriously changing the balance of world power in favour of China isn't the same thing as attacking the most serious part of the problem. Which is, in fact, China. Not that it matters, since Greta Thurnberg does nothing to solve the problems. She's the central figure in a cult of personality. She offers a fake panacea in the form of action that's useless but makes her followers feel righteous. Making people feel righteous is an excellent route to power.
There won't be the will to slaughter people on a scale that would utterly dwarf Hitler, Stalin and Mao combined. You'd have to slaughter literally billions of people to quckly reduce the world population enough for it to be supported by traditional methods of farming. You'd also have to radically change economies, since the mass transportation of anything would be impossible. You'd have to scale back to pre-industrial scale in a society that had been taken back to pre-industrial technology, obviously. Pre-industrial trade was sometimes on a much larger scale than many people today might think, but it was still a miniscule proportion of modern trade. You'd have to fragment the world, which would have course increase the number of wars.
Of course, it depends on the extent to which you want to remove technology. You were clear about your opposition to technology when you stated that technology was "what got us into this mess in the first place" and when you proposed only allowing heritage farming, but you weren't clear about how far you'd go. Renaissance? Medieval? Roman? Iron Age? Bronze Age? Neolithic? Presumably not further back than that, since you would allow farming. Would you allow writing? That's technology, of course.
We can't go back. Knowledge and the resulting technology (which is essentially the application of knowledge) exists. The toothpaste is out of the tube and it's not going back in without massive or total collapse of civilisation and the extinction or near-extinction of humanity. Even if you could implement a planned mass slaughter to kill at least several billion people in at most a couple of decades, it wouldn't work. Either knowledge would be retained or civilisation would collapse and humanity would become extinct or very close to extinct.
We'd better hope technology is going to solve this issue, because it's the only potential solution that doesn't result in mass killing on an apocalyptic scale at best and extinction at worst. Higher standards of living are also a strong candidate for a less catastrophic and more sustainable way of having a lower global population because they generally result in a much lower birthrate. Which causes other problems, of course.
Soldato
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Or meat gets heavily taxed, leaving loads of land for biodiverse organic farming methods which will easily feed the world as is right now. It's so bloody simple.
Along with agroforestry there is also aquaponics which creates an AMAZING amount of fish and salad on a really small footprint of land.
Along with agroforestry there is also aquaponics which creates an AMAZING amount of fish and salad on a really small footprint of land.
No technology, remember. Technology is the problem, it's "what got us into this mess in the first place".
I'm curious...if there is a method "which creates an AMAZING amount of fish and salad on a really small footprint of land." why isn't it used now? Why isn't it the only method used on any significant scale? If it's so superior to other methods, it would be the norm because it would be the most efficient and thus most profitable. There is a huge market for fish and salad.
I'm suspicious of simple wonder-solutions to problems. They sometimes exist, but they're sometimes snake oil.
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Nope.
US mainly. China has a fairly low CO2 emissions rate per person. The US has an extremely high rate per person. Overall rate is broadly irrelevant because it relies on population as much as emissions rate, hence why most environmental reports base their discussion on a Per Capita rate.
People just interested in complaining on the other hand like to take headline figures and blame highly populated countries, claiming they’re the problem - largely because it gets their lifestyle out of the equation. “I shouldn’t have to do anything, everyone else should” basically.
China is also doing far more than countries like the US in cleaning up their act, with far stricter emissions regulations. From an absolute emissions point of view, they are the main problem, but they are making big strides in reducing their emissions rate even though they have to deal with all that off shored carbon emissions for the countries they manufacture products for.
That’s not to say China is an example to follow, but arguing that they are the main problem is using them as a scapegoat.
Edit: And to top that off, she’s spent most of her time talking at and to international conferences (like the UN summit today). That coincidently includes countries like China...
Let’s stop blaming others and start realizing this starts at home. Otherwise the Chinese will just claim they shouldn’t be the ones doing everything when “we” (western countries) don’t care.
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Would climate change be averted if the population increased and emissions remained the same or increased by a smaller percentage than population? That would result in a lower emissions per person, so if it's emissions per person that matters and the actual amount of emissions is broadly irrelevant then increasing population would solve or at least reduce the problem without having to reduce emissions or even maintain them at current levels.
I see you didn't mention India there, a country where ****ing on the streets is common pratice and chucking the rest in rivers is their form of recycling.
Rubbish. Most of her speeches have not been directed at any one country and have been at international events - including China.
As already mentioned below you're repeating the old fallacy of national CO2 emissions, rather than looking at it on a per capita basis - useful for those wanting to cloud the issue and claim the problems are caused by others, and not their society and way of life.
That said, I don't necessarily disagree with some of your comments about her. Her personality is not what I was discussing however. What I do disagree with you however is the idea that inc reading efficiency and decreasing pollution some how has to "change the balance of power". It doesn't. On the other hand letting China push ahead with BEV and renewable/efficiency tech will change the balance of power - there's a fair few people that believe Chinese companies will put European and North American Car manufacturers out of business because of the "lead" in electrical vehicle for example (mandated by the far stricter Chinese EV regulations).
Hi, I live in the real world, not the MCU. In the real world sane people discussing overpopulation are not advocating genocide or reducing human populations overnight. Seriously, either you've been watching too many films* and haven't really thought it through, or you're just dredging up another straw man so you don't have to actually discuss the issues properly.
The "solution" to overpopulation, much like climate change and all the other environmental issues associated with overpopulation and overconsumption will not be solved overnight. It can be solved however - without resorting to genocide or authoritarian one person policies (the other argument people like to dredge up. There are two main factors that need to be attacked:
1. The overpopulation and human population growth rate itself - this is largely being fixed already in the developed world - in most developed countries the birth rates are at or falling below replacement rate, leading to a gradual decline in population over time (assuming nations don't start pushing immigration, which is what most of them are doing - including the UK). In the developing world it's also heading that way, but we can push faster by education, empowerment and medication. Educate the population (especially women), empower women and get them to realize they can choose what they do with their body and that they are more than baby making facilities. Help them enter the workforce and birth rates decline. Similarly health - reduce child mortality and people reduce the size of their families. All are positive things, not the negative genocide or authoritarian one child policies so many nay sayers like to discuss. Have a look at the NGO called Population Matters (patroness by Attenborough BTW) for more on the subject of what organizations are trying to actually do.
2. Reconfigure the economy and change the way we judge the economy. GDP is currently the defacto way of doing so, but it relies on population growth to drive a lot of it's overall growth. Unfortunately countries are obsessed with GDP and economic growth over all else - hence the problem Japan has right now and it's ridiculous push to try and (almost) force people to have more children (as opposed to increase immigration like Europe and North America).
Yeah, a bit harder than genocide, but a more realistic solution that is being carried out as we speak.
Another situation being taken to the n th degree and another straw man,.
Arguing tech got us into this mess in the first place does not mean tech is a bad thing. It means we're too reliant on it and using it to try and smother over the cracks, rather than use it to complement our society.
Pesticides aren't bad in themselves, but their overuse is helping to cause the collapse of insect populations (which may have the knockoff effect of causing pollination and food problems in the future), fertilizers aren't bad in themselves, but their use is causing major runoff and deoxygenation of the oceans and rivers. Medicine isn't bad, but it's use, in conjunction with old fashioned views of birth control (hello Catholic Church) has caused a major boom in population.
Going back to a more "traditional" way of farming does not mean we don't use technology (pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics/vaccines etc), but it does mean we use less of it, allowing natural processes to do most of the work. Moving away from large scale sterile intensive monocultural farming practices means the environment can start to revive. The issue is that these methods require more space, hence the requirement to reduce our population in tandem with these efforts. If we want to maintain our standard of living then we are going to HAVE to reduce our population, unless we start restricting living standards in developing countries. 8 Billion people cannot live like we do in the west. The current set of living standards is unsustainable as we see from the mass extinction being caused by us right now.
*There's a lot of films recently that have had the evil protagonist being someone advocating genocide to "fix" the environment. Avengers is just the tip of the iceberg. A shame as it's just spreading the fallacy that people discussing overpopulation are advocating that.
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