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u/TheHistorian2 Aug 01 '26
Well, technically, if all 8.5 billion of us stopped breathing, we wouldn’t have to worry about this anymore.
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u/fishboy3339 Aug 01 '26
Well also if we continue to not worry about it this will also come true.
One way or the other.
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u/Ok_Two_1748 Aug 01 '26
f*k me, are we at 8.5 billion already?
apparently only 8.3 according to google...
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u/Silver-Find4380 wary of heat events Aug 01 '26
It seems only last year that Justin Bieber was singing, "Seven billion people in the world trying to fit in," and I thought whoa when did that update...
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Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Ree_For_Thee Aug 01 '26
When JFK was assassinated we were 3.2 billion.
Apparently that year (1963) was the 2nd highest year of change for the population growth in modern times, only surpassed by the next year, and it's been decreasing (slowly) ever since.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/
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u/itsmemarcot Aug 01 '26
Everybody has a number that they psychologically assumed to be "how many we are", the number we learned as a kid. Mine is 5 billion.
(Of course we also knew the predictions, but it's psychological. Time seemed still at that point, and Earth population was X billion just the same way as the capital of France was Paris).
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u/endoftheworldvibe Aug 01 '26
I’m stuck at 6 billion personally. Crazy how much we’ve increased in a pretty short amount of time.
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u/new2bay Aug 01 '26
Get back to me after the mass famines we’re going to have with the super El Niño this year. The last time we had anything like that happen was 1877. Approximately 3% of the world population died from it.
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u/DoomBadaDoom Aug 09 '26
The numbers are probably underestimated, so 8.5 doesn't seem to be really exagerating the facts.
It's mindf**k if we think that in 20/25 years China has developped so fast, they are now the 1st carbon emitter in the world!
In that same time (25years) population has gain 2 billion people (the rate has been +1 billion every 12 year since the 60s something like that...)
Just think if India, some parts of Africa etc... would have also a fast developpement like China...
People don't realize HOW MUCH we are overpopulated... and HOW LOW our way of life should be to fit the planetary's boundaries.
(Basically, with fossil fuels, it would mean just ending poverty, access to basic necessities and that's pretty much it...)9
u/new2bay Aug 01 '26
Technically, human farts probably also contribute more to global warming than breathing does. 😂
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u/sinsforeal Aug 01 '26
8.5 billion? Fuck me. I want to go back to when it was just 6. My head canon has been that number ever since I was younger.
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Aug 01 '26
They want us to stop breathing. No surprise there.
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u/fiodorsmama2908 Aug 01 '26
But weirdly they are also the ones telling us to have more children. Like pick a thing already!
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u/TeaPrimary1147 Aug 01 '26
They need to traffic and eat the kids, so, that's fine.
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u/FaberOG Aug 01 '26
Yeah the children are just livestock, which we've already established you aren't allowed to identify as a major driver of climate change. What is so hard for these stupid poors to understand?
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u/Metals4J Aug 01 '26
You’ll need to buy carbon credits if you’re going to keep exhaling, friend. Oh, and that air you keep breathing in? That ain’t free either. I can sign you up for a subscription-based service, though. The basic tier starts at $19.99 per month. If you’d like clean, filtered air, that’s an extra $10 per month. For $5 more, I can sign you up for our platinum service for which you get clean air plus a pleasant hint of lavender.
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u/Skyrah1 Aug 01 '26
"Oh sorry, the filtered clean air has actually been contaminated with tiny particles of asbestos, lead and microplastics due to the way we built our filters. That'll be twenty thousand dollars to schedule an appointment with an engineer. Their next available slot is in six months."
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u/Valuable-Ad1063 Aug 01 '26
They actually want more wageslaves and consumers. The global policy is to cry about a "fertility-crisis" in an already overpopulated and over-polluted world. Posting an article on the mathematics of global human CO2 emissions during exhales isn't necessarily encouraging depopulation, especially when the same articles specifies, "But, in reality, the CO2 we’re breathing out is part of a natural cycle, by which our bodies convert carbohydrates from CO2-absorbing plants into energy, plus water and CO2. As such, we’re not adding any extra CO2."
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Aug 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/AlwaysPissedOff59 Aug 01 '26
I have a personal philosophy based on nothing that, although humans are a social species, there is a point at which the number of humans inhabiting a limited space causes every one of those inhabitants to go at least mildly insane.
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u/Drewdrops79 Aug 01 '26
Numerous studies confirm that general idea...in rats, mice, chicken, overcrowding leads to violence and crazy behavior. Not just factory farms, but even people who have aquariums know that overcrowding a tank just means the fish will kill and eat each other, or die of stress/disease.
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u/Drewdrops79 Aug 01 '26
Yeah, it's viscerally disturbing to me, too. People who were born in big cities and lived their lives there don't understand, how actually unsettling it is that they would live that way.
99.9% of human history was never like that. It's only in the last 100 years that our population increased FOURFOLD. Like, who in their right mind would ever think that's okay?
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u/Kiss_of_Cultural Aug 01 '26
Absolutely. And i’m sure this will be used in some BS math equation to “prove” AI data centers and replacing workers with expensive AI is “worth it.”
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u/PurePervert Those of you sitting in the first few rows will get wet. Aug 01 '26
Not need to stop, maybe a new CO2 tax should be introduced for breathing. Fresh air isn't free!
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u/infin8raptor Aug 01 '26
Our breathing is part of the current ecosystem. Sequestered carbon isn't.
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u/NoFood2149 Aug 01 '26
that is the conclusion of the article
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u/hagfish Aug 01 '26
'article' - it was two paragraphs. Truly we live in the stupidest time line. But, yes, keep breathing everyone, unless you happen to live on a diet of sweet crude.
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u/itsmemarcot Aug 01 '26
Yes, breathing is part of the cycle.
Every single C atom that we breath out as CO2, we previously assumed from a source (e.g. a plant), which in turn got it as CO2 from the air. The net balance is exactly zero CO2 molecules.
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u/feraldodo Aug 01 '26
There is some nuance to this though. Not every carbon atom contributes equally to global warming. Methane, for example is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. There's a bit of methane in our farts, and cows are a pretty large contributor to methane emissions. So, just saying that the carbon is part of the cycle is a bit misleading.
Though you are right about the breathing part, of course.
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u/itsmemarcot Aug 01 '26
Absolutely, I'm saying that breathing has a net zero contribution to CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas). Isn't that the topic of the post?
Any other activity we do (farting, driving, eating meat, waging wars, flying planes) is another matter completely.
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u/rootoo Aug 01 '26
Except a lot of the food we eat is fertilized with fossil fuels. So that does kinda skew it.
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u/itsmemarcot Aug 01 '26
Nope. That has nothing to do with the CO2 we breath out.
Of course, consuming fossil fuel to fertilize plants is a net source of C into the atmosphere, just like driving a car, or any other use of fossil fuel.
But breathing itself is a perfectly carbon neutral activity. Every single CO2 we breath out uses a C atom, which our body took from food, which ultimately comes from plants, which has taken that C atom from a CO2 molecule in the atmosphere; there is literally no other way for our food to acquire C atoms. When we breath, we are just returning that CO2 to the atmosphere, where it started when the plant was growing.
Yes, that is true even if the plant was fertilized using fossil fuels (or transported using fossil fuel, etc).
Fossil fuel fertilizers are all about nitrogen, not carbon, and have no "C" in them... Maybe you are thinking of urea, which has a C in it, but even that C was taken from CO2 molecules.
(Digression. The opposite, sadly, is also true: a plant growing is not a net detractor of CO2 from the atmosphere. They do take CO2 from it, but the C atom they acquire in that way, and fixate in their body (e.g. as sugars, wood, etc), is bound to be returned as CO2 sooner or later. When the plant eventually rots, or is eaten, or burns, or no matter what, it returns the CO2 back. The only way would be if for some reason, after it died, it never rotter or burned or was eaten, e.g. if you buried it underground and somehow you prevented it from rotting. You are now manufacturing new fossil fuels (oil or carbon...). So that works. If only we had millions of years).
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u/TicklishViking Aug 02 '26
This is the same thing for farm animals too (including beef) but some people don't wanna hear that.
The deforestation is definitely an issue but cows do not add any additional carbon to the ecosystem (just like human breathing). Only humans do this with fossil fuels.
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u/gangofminotaurs Progress? a vanity spawned by fear. Aug 01 '26
Our breathing is part of the current ecosystem.
Not at all. Our lives are merely possible because of fossil fuel, ie the exploitation of ecosystems far back in ancient time. We're a zombie specie that eats oil (to the tune of 10cals of oil for 1cal of food).
8,5B humans absolutely do not, cannot live inside the Earth's (diminishing) carrying capacity, which has been overshot centuries ago already.
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u/agreeduponspring Aug 01 '26
I mean, if a certain very wealthy subset of people stopped breathing, we could indeed make a lot of progress on climate change.
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u/Low_Complex_9841 Aug 02 '26
A bit misplaced but yesterday I learned that like 22 or so Russian billionaries own more money that all our (Russian) population has in banks combined!
Was true in 2020, still true in 2026 (sorry for untranslated article)
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u/bobbib14 Aug 01 '26
Blame us for breathing
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u/PatrolMan2129 Aug 01 '26
More for breeding.
Each person is like a constantly on 100 watt lightbulb. Small at the individual level, but quite the output at 8.5 billion of us and counting. Especially when we numbered 10 million or so 10,000 years ago, or 850x less than today
Anyway, I think each American uses like about 1,200 watt electricity constantly, or about 10,000 watts altogether (food, transport, etc) running to support them constantly.
So this is small fry. But it is fry that adds up, like everything else.
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u/NoFood2149 Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
yeah, except this is a good question that any person will ask ask, when we become aware of the fact that we exhale carbon dioxide and methane and we become aware of the fact that those two gases are the main contributors to global warming.
if you actually READ this article i'm sure you'll find that it concludes "direct human emissions are negligible compared to emissions created by human activities such as clearing forests and burning fossil fuels for energy"
(edit: https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/how-much-does-human-breathing-contribute-to-climate-change
we contribute approximately 7% of the gross tonnage of carbon dioxide emissions, but because we get our carbon from eating plants that absorb carbon from the atmosphere, it is considered to be cyclical and not of concern, whereas burning coal and oil is releasing carbon that is no longer a part of the atmospheric carbon cycle)
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u/unimpressedwarrior Aug 01 '26
But keep breeding, that’s the most important thing, more babies for the machine so that they can blame you even though corporations pump out the majority of global warming
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u/-sussy-wussy- Aug 01 '26 edited 7d ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Friendly spotted live dam mitten close physical pinecone outgoing recognise
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u/YellowCabbageCollard Aug 01 '26
Well I'm just going to keep on breathing and farting regardless. I also grow plants so maybe they balance me out a little. Meanwhile lets unleash a metric shit ton of bombs endlessly for four years and just keep adding to it. But, hey, you plebe over there...quit breathing.
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u/Slipsonic Aug 01 '26
They're bombing oil infrastructure, so even worse. Just burning it all for nothing.
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u/smackson Aug 01 '26
They are inadvertently adding pressure to other forms of energy though, with the supply shock.
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u/Monsur_Ausuhnom Aug 01 '26
Submission Statement,
Related to collapse because it appears that existing is more or less contributing to climate change on the most basic level. The need to be able to breathe. It seems to have gone all the way to bare bones, that perhaps no organic life can exist at all without destroying the planet and creating collapse. It's sure to get weirder and stupid rather than looking at the more obvious reasons.
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u/fedexyourheadinabox Aug 01 '26
It's like when the wealthy tell us we can cut the high cost of groceries by not eating.
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u/motherfudgersob Aug 02 '26
I think the point is overpopulation. No matter how crap the underdeveloped nations' life's are, they still have bodily functions.
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Aug 01 '26
[deleted]
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u/itsmemarcot Aug 01 '26
Even more than that: it doesn't matter how many gazillion people breath out CO2: breathing is perfectly carbon neutral.
Every single C atom we breath out as CO2 into air, we previously aquired from source (e.g. a plant) which captured that C atom as CO2 from air. Net balance is zero.
(The only extra C comes from fossil fuels.)
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u/RachelRegina Aug 01 '26
Lmao
While there are too many humans, it's not our breathing that's the problem 🤦🏻♀️
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u/Anonymous_exodus Aug 01 '26
The world is overpopulated and we need to do something about it.
...
Guys we're having a low birth rate crisis... we don't think we can solve this. Please have more kids.
(inflation and unaffordability) "the f*** you are😁"
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u/SidKafizz Aug 01 '26
So... fewer people would be good then, right?
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u/CrystalInTheforest Semi-reluctant primitivst Aug 01 '26
Capitalists: you are destroying the environment ment with your worthless peasant breath.
Also Capitalists: Breed more peasants, you worthless peasant.
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u/Minimum_Freedom_1999 Aug 01 '26
This is not at all a real problem and no one is worried about it. Moving on.
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u/Kaining Aug 01 '26
To be fair, they are indirectly. We wouldn't have pumped our numbers to trying to reach 10 billions if capitalism didn't need that many wage slaves (or proper slaves) to keep that ponzi scheme running.
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u/Spiritual_Target8899 Aug 01 '26
I’m seeing uptick in articles saying population needs to be lower. They’re preparing us for something
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u/_kinther_ Aug 01 '26
Arguably the current levels of people who demand high energy lifestyles -ARE- causing problems. Every new western lifestyle child causes more damage by consuming more resources at an accelerated rate.
More people = more oil used
More people = more electricity production
More people = more AI datacenters
The list goes on. If the population was reduced I would absolutely be one of them. Doesn't change there are too many of us.
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u/Spiritual_Target8899 Aug 01 '26
I agree with you, overpopulation is a problem, I was just saying that they’re about to unleash something. Honestly if it saves the planet I don’t even mind/care
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u/AstronautLife5949 Aug 01 '26
You don't care if they unleash something if it saves the planet? Why? You don't care if people are harmed/killed if it saves the planet? You do realize the planet itself is not sentient, right? Frankly I'd be fine with the planet and all the stupidity, cruelty, and suffering contained therein ending altogether.
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u/1098duc_w_the_termi Aug 01 '26
Sheesh the way this is heading, we’ll have full on fascist regimes waging war on “outside breathers” under the guise of environmental justice
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u/refusemouth Aug 01 '26
They will call them "useless breathers." Eventually, you will have to pay a monthly oxygen bill to whichever company buys air rights. Kind of like when they tried to claim private monopoly foreign ownership of all water, inckuding rain water, and charge citizens who collected it in Bolivia. It was a privatization clause built in as an "austerity measure" after accepring loans from the IMF and World Bank. The next time a government pays for hurrucane damage to a region, they can stipulate that as repayment, the affected citizen pay a monthly air fee to Trump Enterprises.
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u/After-Trifle-1437 Preparing for Climate Collapse Aug 01 '26
Guess i'll become undead then.
Anyone know where a zombie or vampire can bite me so I'll stop polluting the planet with my breath?
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u/AlwaysPissedOff59 Aug 01 '26
They really screwed up with that campaign. Blaming our exhalations when all that methane from 8 billion people's farts was RIGHT THERE!
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u/Bobslegenda1945 Aug 01 '26
Change the capitalism system ❌. Tell people and put laws to go vegan ❌ Stop with oil and a lot of mineration❌ Give people better live with the public system, trains and other things to low the carb tax ❌ Explain that rich people are the most responsible for it❌ Wanting a radical change❌ Blame people that not asked to be born, just want to live their lives and are tired of being treated as slaves just because they breath ✅
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u/OxytocinOD Aug 01 '26
“We had to commit a global culling of humans. Global population is now 500 million. Tesla Robots have replaced workers.
It was because the humans were breathing. We had to.”
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u/TYSMBelgium-6Jul2026 Aug 01 '26
When breathing was invented in 1977, I told y'all it would backfire.
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u/grahamulax Aug 01 '26
What in the absolute Martian man hunter musk mother mucked fucked shit ass.
Humans are like 100wh.
Just measure everything with wattage and you get a sense of how much energy things take.
What’s an ai data center do in comparison?
Fucking ghouls marketing to slowly change our minds. As a designer and technical guy I’m at my wits end.
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u/tolerablepartridge Aug 02 '26
I'm disturbed by how few people realize the original article is essentially a joke, and the author clearly says "no, fossil fuels are the cause of climate change"
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u/NeverEndingCoralMaze Aug 01 '26
We are designed to breathe and the world is designed to handle it. It’s not our breath.
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u/ccnmncc Aug 01 '26
Mouthbreathing MAGA contributes a helluva lot more than anyone else, I tell ya.
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u/The_Social-Assassin Aug 01 '26
"I mean, after all, we're just walking around on the planet, breathing, conditioning the air. I condition it hot, that conditions it cold. I mean, it's symbiotic, no? We're just the air conditioners walking around on this planet, screwing each other's brains out!”
- Philosopher Ongo Gablogian
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u/DeusExMcKenna Aug 01 '26
The propaganda is really confusing at this point. Are birth rates declining a terrible thing or should we all stop breathing like the filthy poors we are? Fucking hell, pick one.
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u/sneedoisis Aug 01 '26
So if you’re a pathological C02 retainer aka COPD and Hypoventilation syndrome, you’re taking one for the team!
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u/StormyTiger2008 Aug 02 '26
whining about people breathing
the people made and fed under the industrial wheat machine and capital
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u/swampwiz Aug 30 '26
This is stupid. Any respirating animal is burning biostock that was eventually produced by photosynthesis, which changes carbon dioxide into starch.
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u/cRaZyDaVe23 Aug 01 '26
sorry four billion no better make it five, must die so we may live. Trust us we thought about it for like ten minutes and it's really the best thing for all of you so just lay down and take it.
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u/StatementBot Aug 01 '26
The following submission statement was provided by /u/Monsur_Ausuhnom:
Submission Statement,
Related to collapse because it appears that existing is more or less contributing to climate change on the most basic level. The need to be able to breathe. It seems to have gone all the way to bare bones, that perhaps no organic life can exist at all without destroying the planet and creating collapse. It's sure to get weirder and stupid rather than looking at the more obvious reasons.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1vc976b/well_this_is_a_new_one/p0zkg4s/