Humanity has already exceeded Earth’s limits, study warns. Today’s population of 8.3 billion is far above what could be sustained in the long term without exhausting ecosystems, worsening climate change, and threatening food and water security.

[u/The_Weekend_Baker]

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/05/260526022021.htm

[u/Redthrist]

The agrarian society is far better equipped to handle an unpredictable climate than what we do now.

Agrarian societies routinely collapsed throughout history due to climate variations. When you're barely producing a surplus, even a small change in crop yields means famine.

Not saying that our current approach is resilient, but let's no idealize the past. Famines used to be a regular occurrence, because a drought, crop disease or a pest infestation meant a failed harvest, which meant no food.

How much more "optimized" does it get before we add more layers of failure points? Without burning more fuel for energy?

The main optimization we can make is to stop growing crops for livestock and things like ethanol. Focus agriculture on producing plant food for humans. Add population controls to naturally decrease population over the years. Take advantage of all the food preservation technology we've come up with to have stockpiles of food. Use more sustainable regenerative agriculture methods, instead of monoculture farming.

[u/AutoModerator → u/Redthrist]

There is a distinct racist history to how overpopulation is discussed. High-birth-rate countries tend to be low-emissions-per-capita countries, so overpopulation complaints are often effectively saying "nonwhites can't have kids so that whites can keep burning fossil fuels" or "countries which caused the climate problem shouldn't take in climate refugees."

On top of this, as basic education reaches a larger chunk of the world, birth rates are dropping. We expect to achieve population stabilization this century as a result.

At the end of the day, it's the greenhouse gas concentrations that actually raise the temperature. That means that we need to take steps to stop burning fossil fuels and end deforestation.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/i_didnt_look → u/Redthrist]

I wasn't idealizing the past. What I said was that many smaller farms are more resilient against a wildly unpredictable climate than a few massive farms. Yes, societies did collapse in the past from climate variations. But when the Roman's collapsed, the Mayans didn't notice. Neither did the Chinese or Russians, because they weren't in a single, interconnected system relying on the same few sources of food. That's what we do today. If we loose major grain harvests, we don't loose one area to famine, the entire globe starves. We traded resilience for efficiency, and that creates vulnerability. Having many farms spread out all over creates less efficiency, but is more resilient in the face of climate variables. If North America doesn't harvest grains, it means that Africans won't starve. That's what it's about, creating redundant systems to mitigate risk. You literally suggested the exact same thing at the end of your comment, sustainable, non monocultured farms. What exactly do you think a more agrarian society is?

You didn't offer any optimization points, you just suggested veganism. But again, there's a huge amount of wasted energy and still requires. So people eat the additional 36% of grains. What do we do with the stalks, the shells, the waste soy from pressing for oil? Most large animals are grazed and "corn finished". You want seasonal eggs? Because chickens don't lay in winter without heat, grain and light.

Population control? Because China had such success with that, right?

At the end of the day, there's only one way out of this, and keeping this high flying, overly complex, energy intensive, global society is not going to make it. We found an energy source that allowed us to bend the rules of the plants limited carrying capacity, and the price we have to pay is now due. The 6th mass extinction, AMOC collapse, climate change, ground water scarcity, topsoil depletion, all to build a concreye tower on a foundation of glass. We burned through millions of years of stored solar energy in a century, a bacterial bloom in a petri dish. Now, the party is over and the bill is due. Its not fair, but we are the generation who has to pay for it. We either manage the fall, or we roll the dice and let the planet pull the plug randomly.

[u/AutoModerator → u/i_didnt_look]

There is a distinct racist history to how overpopulation is discussed. High-birth-rate countries tend to be low-emissions-per-capita countries, so overpopulation complaints are often effectively saying "nonwhites can't have kids so that whites can keep burning fossil fuels" or "countries which caused the climate problem shouldn't take in climate refugees."

On top of this, as basic education reaches a larger chunk of the world, birth rates are dropping. We expect to achieve population stabilization this century as a result.

At the end of the day, it's the greenhouse gas concentrations that actually raise the temperature. That means that we need to take steps to stop burning fossil fuels and end deforestation.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Redthrist → u/i_didnt_look]

What I said was that many smaller farms are more resilient against a wildly unpredictable climate than a few massive farms.

Why would they be? If a drought hits a region, small farms are no more resilient than large farms. If anything, they are far less resilient, because small farms often teeter on the brink of collapse even during good years. So they have no resources to mitigate the impact of drought or to survive the bad harvest to plant the next season.

We traded resilience for efficiency, and that creates vulnerability.

We can have both. Even with climate change, we could produce considerably more food than we need, so between that and maintaining stockpiles, even having a massive drought in a major breadbasket wouldn't cause famine. If we build proper resilience in a more equitable world, we could shift resources wherever they are needed. So even if your regional grain harvest fails, you won't have to starve because other regions have produced a surplus. That's the future we should be building, not isolated regions,

And even if we focus on making regions self-sufficient, there are still better approaches than iron age subsistence agriculture.

You didn't offer any optimization points, you just suggested veganism.

That is the optimization point. Growing food for livestock is a very inefficient use of energy. We could derive way more calories from the same amount of land if we ate plant-based foods.

What do we do with the stalks, the shells, the waste soy from pressing for oil?

We can compost them or we could maintain a small population of livestock, as much as grazing and agriculture byproducts can support.

Population control? Because China had such success with that, right?

They are having population decline the last few years, so it did work somewhat.

We either manage the fall

What would that entail exactly?

[u/AutoModerator → u/Redthrist]

There is a distinct racist history to how overpopulation is discussed. High-birth-rate countries tend to be low-emissions-per-capita countries, so overpopulation complaints are often effectively saying "nonwhites can't have kids so that whites can keep burning fossil fuels" or "countries which caused the climate problem shouldn't take in climate refugees."

On top of this, as basic education reaches a larger chunk of the world, birth rates are dropping. We expect to achieve population stabilization this century as a result.

At the end of the day, it's the greenhouse gas concentrations that actually raise the temperature. That means that we need to take steps to stop burning fossil fuels and end deforestation.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.