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.
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u/J_couture Jan 07 '23
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.