Humans
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Sure, but I'd like to hear ideas about how we can significantly reduce our footprint on the world while increasing our population and maintaining/bettering our standard of living. Any suggestions?
And no, I'm generally of the opinion that we should be aiming for something in the region of 2-3 Billion. Why did you think 500,000,000?
Not sure what you mean by that, care to expand?
The last comment was of course sarcasm. We need to deal with the cause, but as you say we need to be doing both. The cause in this case is humanity - over consumption and over population. The symptoms are Climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution etc.
All very well, but you have to make the assumption that the product replacing it is actually better, rather than something that just moves the issue down the road.
Wood as a fuel was replaced by gas and oil. Great at the time - less pollution and less deforestation so we though, except it's now enemy number 1 due to the stored CO2 it releases.
Diesel was seen as a solution to the CO2 from Petrol, up until we realised the extent of the issues relating to particulates.
Plastic was another thing that was seen as a great option in reducing emissions. It's lighter to transport and easier to handle, but again we find ourselves in a situation we hadn't considered in the beginning.
Moving to cardboard may be beneficial, until we realise it's increasing deforestation rates because demand for pulp goes up. Biodegradable materials may end up demanding too much agricultural and water use (see ethanol for the issues in replacing an oil based product with a grown product).
Reduce the population and subsequently reduce the waste. Obviously we should change the waste to the least harming as well, but that's not a complete solution. We're just jumping from one problem to another.
Soldato
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We have 1 billion years before the sun boils our oceans dry also it's probably already been discussed but there's been 5 mass extinction events that we know of so far in Earths history
Look where population is out of control and come back.
All western civilisations are based on infinite growth, and one of the easiest ways is to grow your population.
Everyone knows it's not sustainable but nobody gives a crap.
Additionally, when you stagnate or ("worse" still) go into decline, your economy is *****d; you have lots of retired people and no means to keep them in the manner in which they have become accustomed. Plus they all vote, all the time. So you have to do what the retirees want.
Western countries with great education do much more to damage the environment than any developing country. Our usage of resources is off the charts in comparison. Regardless of education, if all countries consumed resources like developed nations do... well, they just couldn't. There aren't enough resources for them to live like we do.
So much for education being a magic bullet here.
We emit less than China per capita...
We've had threads on here where people were calling for population growth to fuel GDP. I've always been against that view, in terms of quality of life, environment, resources etc.
Over 25% of the world's population are under 15 years old. So we've got a huge increase in adult population to look forward to.
My hope is that virtual reality will in future reduce the human footprint on the world. Technologies like cultured meat, better water purification, renewable energy, are desperately needed. But even then I think humans are too selfish to not destroy everything. There will always be that minority who want elephant tusks for medicine, whales for 'research purposes' and so on.
Over 25% of the world's population are under 15 years old. So we've got a huge increase in adult population to look forward to.
My hope is that virtual reality will in future reduce the human footprint on the world. Technologies like cultured meat, better water purification, renewable energy, are desperately needed. But even then I think humans are too selfish to not destroy everything. There will always be that minority who want elephant tusks for medicine, whales for 'research purposes' and so on.
That's just one metric among many.
And a lot of their emissions are created making goods (and shipping them) to/for us.
Part of that is because of offshoring carbon emissions.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/4/18/15331040/emissions-outsourcing-carbon-leakage
They're also doing a lot more about it than most other countries.
They have particularly strict EV laws which means the are (and will continue to be) by far the biggest market for EV's for a while to come.
https://www.electrive.com/2018/07/12/china-and-norway-continue-to-lead-ev-sales-globally/
Renewable's dont somehow remove CO2, Nitrogen dioxide and what not from the air, China is still by far the biggest coal burner, full stop. In fact they've just begun putting more online, potentially as much as the USA uses itself.
That's ignoring that Africa is highly unlikely to care about pointless things like the environment when their elite start pampering for industry.
We should just admit defeat and build defenses instead.
Sure, but the point I'm making is that they are trying to do something about it. The recent banning of recycling materials from being imported into China is another example. Now the west are having to find somewhere else to "recycle" their recyclables.
The whole 'but they're not pulling their weight" as an argument not to do it gets boring fast, especially when many of those countries are arguably doing more than us, it's just not reported as much.
And as for your comment about emitting less per capita. It actually appears pretty neck and neck.
China: 6.59
UK: 5.99
The worst offenders are Canada*, USA, Australia and Saudi at around 15 metric tonnes per capita.
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warmi.../each-countrys-share-of-co2.html#.W9jM-NVKiUk
*The federal government and some provinces are trying hard, but being thwarted by other more conservative provinces that are worried about Oil Sands.
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Some of the resource points that have been brought up in this thread are a bit simplistic.
Complaints over cotton, palm oil and just today with the BBC article on soybeans.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world...-soybeans-destroying-brazil-s-cerrado-savanna
But even if you stopped demand for these products, the people that rely on the income they generate won't disappear. They will still need to make a living. And in most cases it will involve the same resources being used to make a different product.
Take Palm oil, for the amount of oil it produces it's 3 times more productive than the best alternatives. So anything else will use at least 3 times more land and a lot more pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
The problem is who and where it's being produced. And even if you stopped buying from markets that use land clearing they would move on to another product.
The same with the Uzbek cotton industry and the Aral Sea. If cotton became non-viable they will just move on to another plant based production. The people that rely on that cotton production for a living won't just disappear, they will still need to do something to live. And almost certainly agriculture is the only industry available to them, so inevitably the same resources will be exploited.
Too many people is the problem.
Complaints over cotton, palm oil and just today with the BBC article on soybeans.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world...-soybeans-destroying-brazil-s-cerrado-savanna
But even if you stopped demand for these products, the people that rely on the income they generate won't disappear. They will still need to make a living. And in most cases it will involve the same resources being used to make a different product.
Take Palm oil, for the amount of oil it produces it's 3 times more productive than the best alternatives. So anything else will use at least 3 times more land and a lot more pesticides and chemical fertilizers.
The problem is who and where it's being produced. And even if you stopped buying from markets that use land clearing they would move on to another product.
The same with the Uzbek cotton industry and the Aral Sea. If cotton became non-viable they will just move on to another plant based production. The people that rely on that cotton production for a living won't just disappear, they will still need to do something to live. And almost certainly agriculture is the only industry available to them, so inevitably the same resources will be exploited.
Too many people is the problem.
They damage in different ways. Tribes of poor people in Java killed all the tigers. Tribes of poor people across Persia (broadly speaking) wiped out the Caspian tiger. Poor people were wiping out the Siberian Tiger until education set in and numbers are starting to increase. Poor people were wiping out tigers in India at alarming rates until education and a slight increase in wealth are seeing numbers increase.
Indonesian tribes were wiping out alarming numbers of birds. We overfish, but fish populations are capable of some pretty dramatic recovery. Nature itself is a machine that can recover from near anything short of total cataclysm.
What we are perhaps talking about is the processes and by products of industrialization. Thinking leads the way. It was taught to me in Geography that the trans-Alaskan pipeline would have made Caribou migration impossible. Education solved that. And we mustn't ignore what interventions in invention we can produce.
3 types of people in this thread:
Nihilists: Kill humans by plague/disease/stop having children (as long as it's someone else dying and not me types)
Optimists: People who know education can solve almost anything (it was impossible to cross the Atlantic just a hundred years ago other than by a long slow process)
Meh: I'll carry on as usual
1 and 3 are wrong. Education and by extension ingenuity can overcome. 1 may need some sensible thought but we could reduce world population down to 14,000 in less than 600years by all having one child.
The problem with your argument is always going to be the means: Who pays, at what price, why them and how it will be achieved, and what about everyone else especially those doing the imposing?
Plenty of educated people turn their talents to amassing wealth, and protecting said wealth. Plenty of those people don't give two craps about anything else, including the environment.
Education is a useful tool but can't overcome human nature.
That's not nihilism, that's realism.
The fact is there are too many of us, and we are still increasing our numbers.
Education is a useful tool but can't overcome human nature.
That's not nihilism, that's realism.
The fact is there are too many of us, and we are still increasing our numbers.
Soldato
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Unfortunately, we will all have to pay at some point. This isn't a question of one country suffering while another sits back, the point will be reached where everyone will have to implement measures to prevent their population from experiencing famine. The only other alternative to that will be war, and - I would hope at least - it won't come to that, as the nature of the weapons available will scorch the very resources that we would be fighting over.
Technology will help us sustain some growth for a while longer, but we are prolonging the inevitable. I honestly don't see whats so bad about limiting the offspring we produce, and I don't believe this point of view is nihilistic. It doesn't need to be drastic at this point either. A 2 child per couple policy will likely suffice.
Technology will help us sustain some growth for a while longer, but we are prolonging the inevitable. I honestly don't see whats so bad about limiting the offspring we produce, and I don't believe this point of view is nihilistic. It doesn't need to be drastic at this point either. A 2 child per couple policy will likely suffice.
Soldato
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All this goes to prove is that you didn't understand the article. 60% of life on the planet hasn't been wiped out.
There's something not quite right about rueing the loss of all these animals, and in the next breath calling for a cull on humans.
One species thrives at the cost of another, it's evolution 101.
We either need to all lower our standard of living, invent some tech that saves us or lower number of us
No one wants to lower their standard of living. And our economic model requires more at the bottom to pay for pensions etc. The tech is probably the most likely tbh. I don't think anything else will help in time.
No one wants to lower their standard of living. And our economic model requires more at the bottom to pay for pensions etc. The tech is probably the most likely tbh. I don't think anything else will help in time.
It's all about dat economic growth, innit.
We must grow our economies at any cost. Any cost.
That's actually the problem. Humanity is winning so hard we don't know how to manage the victory. If we don't learn quickly, we'll lose badly.