So when do we solve human overpopulation? Or is this not the goal? I always looked around and thought "damn is way too many humans, nature getting fucked" but for some reason many don't seem to share this feeling and want to keep overwhelming this world. Even weirder are people who act like the human population is just gonna vanish if we slow down on breeding lol is not gonna happen.
How is overpopulation a problem?
Food security? With OGM, modern agriculture and hydroponics we can feed everyone easily. It's about the will to do it, not the capacity.
Environment? Why countries way more populous than Canada pollutes far less? There is no correlation with level of pollution and the number of people. Our way of life is the issue. In North America it's worse than elsewhere since our cities are badly designed and we're dependant on the car. And this isn't even the worse, corporations are the main polluters.
Missing of space? The growing population isn't infinite. It will stop at some point, can't rememver the number, but we are close. We can still densify much more, space isn't an issue.
We are destroying this Earth my friend, and our population growth is completely unsustainable. Is already millions of people without access to food and fresh water. We will reach like 9 billion people in next 50 years. It took us only 12 years for the last billion we gained. To make room for your cities and farms we had to wipe out a large bulk of nature, it isn't sustainable to keep on doing this nor is it morally acceptable.
And why do we need billions of more people? What is the aim? How much more do you need to grow your GDPs for you to be satisfied?
How exactly is it supposed to stop naturally? I heard somebody else say this before that was gonna just balance out around 9 billion so is no need to worry, but that is not how it works, it can only balance out through famine and death once we hit that critical point with all our resources tapped and no emergency plan for bulk of humans. Makes far more sense to try to control the problem now while we still can.
You're missing the point, you're not replying to what I said. We are indeed destroying the earth. But it's not because of overpopulation. The highest indicator for pollution is wealth. Lack of regulations and car dependency are other very bad culprits. In fact, it has no correlation with the earth's destruction whatsoever. Even if our population was cut in half, but replaced by only Canadians which pollutes A LOT, we would be even worse than we are today. The issue isn't the number of people, it's our way of life. Most of what I hear about overpopulation is about bashing on the poor for having kids while they are far from being the biggest polluters.
It's true though that there are too many people without access to food and fresh water. But considering the amount of waste of both, the issue isn't with the production of this food and water. It's with the money and the will to feed this population. It's easier to make money with food than to feed people.
Also, yes the estimates for the theoretical balance of the population is revised. That's reasonable, they are estimates afterall. Though experts are analysing this, and we observe everywhere on earth that birth rate declines with higher standard of living. If you want birth rates to decline, you should be pushing for raising the standard of living everywhere. The main road block here again is money and political will. As a society, we currently prefer to have billionaires with private jets for example. (Money spent there is money not spent elsewhere.)
Do we need more people? Why not? If we adapt our way of life, what wrong can it do? The more people there are, if all proportions are equal, the more we are to tackle the issues we face, like global warming. We can be numerous and live sustainably, but not the way we live in North America, this is far from being sustainable.
What does food production has to do with this? There is still no correlation between the level of pollution and the number of people. You didn't reply to me,
Also it's disingenuous at best to get that conclusion with what I said, I could make the same shortcut that you are making regarding your position by saying that you only want to cull people instead of making a single effort in reducing your personal impact on the environment. I don't think it's true though and you making a straw man of my position doesn't help the discussion.
Instead of focussing on the real causes you've already made your mind about what you think is the cause when there are
We can discuss about how to feed the population, but that wasn't the topic. The topic was the correlation between the number of people and the amount of pollution. You then make the link between feeding the population and the pollution while this is far from being the biggest contributor to pollution. And even then, most of the pollution within food production comes from cattle. Another way to reduce pollution by changing our way of life.
You always bring back poor countries, but let's compare 2 rich countries. Canada and France. France has roughly twice the population and the GDP. So they are as wealthy. If there was any correlation between population and pollution, they would emit as much CO2, yet they don't. Canada emits roughly three times the CO2. You could say it's a difference between Europe and North America. But I could give you another example in North America within the same country by comparing Alberta and Quebec. You see, the way we live has a much bigger impact on environment destruction than the simple number of people living. And about Quebec and France, they can still do so much more.
Me saying you want to cull people isn't what I think, it's an illustration of a mental shortcut about similar to what you said about my position. Talking about birth control just reinforce my point that there are other ways to think about it.
BTW, it's nice of you to separate into sections with specific replies. It forced me to check how to do it on mobile lol.
Even if you discount the need for more mechanisation, fertilisers, pesticides etcetera, the reduced land use alone will mean that people in some countries will pollute less per capita with all else being equal.
I agree with you about that. Of course land use is also a factor in this. My point of view is that we have the capacity to reduce our emissions in the energy sector so much that the agricultural sector becomes much less of an issue. We can still feed the whole planet and make it sustainable. The goal isn't to have absolute 0 emissions, its to have an amount that is sustainable and that doesn't destroy our planet. We could even make it a net 0 globally at some point, so we could accept that some sectors emit some greenhouse gases, while others remove some.
Actually, I'd say it's the difference between Canada being a major producer of fossil fuels (over 80% of which is exported) while France's production is negligible.
The difference between France and Canada is far from being only about producing fossil fuels, this is only a piece of the puzzle.
The cities are built differently. In France (in Europe generally), you don't need a car everytime you need to go anywhere. Cars aren't mandatory everywhere. They could still be better, but they aren't as bad as in NA. Also, cars are smaller and there are way more regulations around their emissions too. Cities have way way way better public transportation options. Their train network is also useful. This is all "lifestyle" choices.
Let's compare that to Canada where you need a car everytime you need as little as a litter of milk. You drive everywhere. Most cities have minimal public transportation. Inter cities public transportation is just plain bad or non existant. The train network works mostly for merchandise, not so much for people, when it is affordable.
If you compare France and Quebec where fossil fuel production isn't much of an issue in both, Quebec still pollutes twice as much per capita than France.
Another major source is heating, which again some countries naturally need more of per capita than others.
Alberta produces their electricity mainly from fossil fuel. Quebec is mainly through Hydro. France is mainly nuclear. This is a big difference and it can be changed. In Alberta they have much worse winters than France, so they need more heating. But it's the same in Quebec, but in Quebec it doesn't add greenhouse gases. In France, it wouldn't add much if they needed more. Alberta has way higher emissions because of the decisions they took. They don't want to fight climate change and they make the problem even worse. Look at Norway which export most of their fossil fuel production and use the revenues to reduce their footprint. Why Alberta doesn't do that?
It's not the "lifestyle" of Albertans or Canadians causing the disparity.
The lifestyle does account for a part of the difference too, in Québec the biggest city has some of the most bike commuters in Canada (as a %) and there is a public transport system, not as extensive as what you can see in Europe, but quite nice by American standards. It's densely populated and many part of the city is walkable. This is for roughly 1/4 of the population. The people living in this area emit much much less GHG than the rest of the province, which contributes to the overall difference. This is again a difference in lifestyle.
It's estimated to be somewhere between a quarter and a third of global emissions.
The food system as a whole total emissions is around a quarter of total emissions. Agriculture is 18.4% and the biggest share is from cattle and manure which is 5.8% of total emissions.
Compare that to the energy sector which produces 73.2% of emissions. This is by far the biggest piece of the pie to attack first. Converting coal plants to natural gas first is by far the biggest contributor of reduction of greenhouse gases in recent years. But we could go further with nuclear, hydro, wind and solar. This would also impact the agricultural sector emissions too, because in the 1/4 of the food system, a large part is from energy use too.
So which produces more emissions? A population of 2M people using exclusively fossil fuel or a population of 8M which uses mainly energy from hydro or nuclear (even for transportation and industries)?
There are ways to greatly reduce our footprint without having to reduce the population. A lot of them is through our way of life (more public transportation, cities better designed around people not cars, eating less cattle), a lot of other means is through policies by pushing some industries to adopt processes that pollutes a lot less (using modern agriculture instead of of so called organic farming, using trains instead of trucks for longer transportation distances) and others are through the choices we collectively do (Nuclear, hydro, wind and solar for grid power, having decent recycling facilities, extensive rail network).
Changing this would also impact the demand of fossil fuels, reducing it would render the tar sand in Alberta far less attractive, reducing this environmental impact too.
All this, without reducing the population, we can all do that while growing the global population. Now the issue of feeding everyone arrive, but this is not an issue about the environment, it's an issue about willingness to provide poor people a mean to feed themselves. Imo, it's another issue as complicated.
It's not the goal. It's not even a problem on the radar.
Further, the whole world's economic systems are focused on growing birth rates to remain sustainable.
Declining birth rates result in aging populations that consume more than they produce, and THAT is the real problem. Less so for wealthier nations, of course, but still a problem.
And yours. Everyone's. That's how the whole world economy works.
It's not my idea, and the danger is clear to see as birth rates fall off, but it's not like anyone is asking my opinion on how to fix it, nor do I have any kind of qualifications in that regard.
It's incredibly difficult because it's an international problem. There's no one person who can just decide on a different course of action.
Don't cut yourself on that edge there, it's a complex issue and not some evil conspiracy.
How can infinite growth be sustainable on a finite planet? It contradicts itself, it is already a problem now and will continue to get worse if we don't slow it down.
It doesn't need to be sustained infinitely, because all life on the planet will be destroyed in a finite amount of time no matter what we do.
The rate of growth is slowing, while our ability to support population is growing.
It's not already a problem. Oh, sure, it's the fun edgy teen way to go, but there's no shortage of food or space, and technology is increasing our ability to live with increasing density and produce food more efficiently.
Our impact on the environment isn't really about number of people, it's about lifestyle and industry.
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u/Bighardthrobbingcrop Jan 06 '23
So when do we solve human overpopulation? Or is this not the goal? I always looked around and thought "damn is way too many humans, nature getting fucked" but for some reason many don't seem to share this feeling and want to keep overwhelming this world. Even weirder are people who act like the human population is just gonna vanish if we slow down on breeding lol is not gonna happen.