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Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds.
Humanity has wiped out 60% of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world's foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation.
The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else.
"We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff" said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. "If there was a 60% decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done."
"This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is," he said. "This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a 'nice to have' – it is our life-support system."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @02:35PM (69 children)
People. It's not a popular statement. I am convinced that most of the world's problems do follow from the sheer number of people on the planet. To reduce the impact humans have we need fewer humans. How to get there is the very, very tricky part. Ethically, Socially as well as Economically. A very hard problem with a harder solution.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @02:39PM
That's how we stop the growth in population.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Wednesday October 31 2018, @02:51PM (56 children)
Yes, it's not a popular statement. Partially because it misses some of the biggest problem:
Way way way too many rich people. If everyone lived the lifestyle of the poorest 10% of us, we'd use 3-5% of the resources we do now. So you very frequently see "There's too many of us" coming from the kind of person there's especially too many of: first world middle or upper class people.
That's not to say I want everyone to become poor, far from it, but I do want to remind everyone who makes this claim that for every 20 poor polynesian or african farmers they think the world would be better without, it'd be better still without just one of them.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:23PM (28 children)
We want a civilization, not hand-to-mouth subsistence punctuated by dances for rain and witch hunts.
Ergo, those 20 have to go, not the one.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:33PM (18 children)
Amish use technology but do so as little as possible, it seems a good middle ground.
As for overpopulation, stabilize dirt poor societies and stop giving incentives to those with 2+ kids. Problem solved.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @05:34PM (10 children)
I watched a documentary on self-described "Minimalists" once. This guy has very few possessions, and said: "I don't need much. If I need something in the moment, I just get on my skateboard, roll down to the nearby convenience store, and buy it. I need no car, no refrigerator, not STUFF to manage."
WHAT?!
Where the fuck do you think that skateboard came from? The smooth roads you use? The convenience store stocked with vittles, refrigerated for your safety? That running water coming to your temporary abode? And on and on and on!
These fuckers, inclulding the Amish, get the joy of pretending like they're doing the small-footprint thing, but in reality they are totally dependent on the mass of consumers, whose leftover productivity provides enough for them to subsist.
They're like all those "empowered" single-mothers who "ain't need no man", but who live off the tax monies of millions of men, most of whom are straight and white.
They are delusional.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 31 2018, @05:55PM (4 children)
Naahhhhh - you're not getting away with that one.
The Amish, Mennonites, and any others like them, are at least mindful of resources. Probably the worst among them are as wasteful as the last American generation BEFORE the 1930's. That is, you'll find waste, but it isn't blatant, obvious planned obselescence consumerism. And, the best of them use no more resources than people in the 1600's or 1700's. There's a spectrum among these people, for observing the old ways. None of them are as wasteful as the average American. Few are probably as wasteful as the average Brit or European.
The typical American doesn't have the slightest care about resources, whether they be natural, processed, human, or whatever. In the American mind, resources are to be used, exploited, sold, commoditized, or otherwise turned into profit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @05:59PM (2 children)
They are ALL highly dependent on modern technology, especially modern health care. And, pointing to the Amish as an counterexample to the OP is just as absurd as pointing to the poor African farmers; we want a Civilization, not Amish LARPing.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:06PM (1 child)
Shared resources (Health care, roads, etc) generally scale differently. If I have a car and want to drive 100km, I require x amount of gas. 1000kms would require 10x gas.
If I build a road for one person to use, it costs y. If 10 people use the road, it still costs y (maybe with slightly higher maintenance costs). It's not a linear increase. Health care is the same idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:24PM
Smooth Cross-continental roads and robotic prostate surgery aren't something Amish people could even imagine on their own.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @01:48AM
There's all degrees of Amish - some use rubber tires, it's against the rules but they do it anyway.
Some of the things they do are more wasteful than modern practices: lighting in their grocery stores is by kerosene... hardly competitive with the efficiency of florescent or LED, though more than compensated for by the lack of air conditioning, but again, the lack of refrigeration can lead to a great deal of waste too... All in all, yes, they lead a simple and ecologically friendly life, but when one's field caught on fire he didn't hesitate to run out to the pole-mounted telephone and call the non-Amish fire department to come out and help save his barn.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Snow on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:01PM (4 children)
Are you purposely being dense?
- Skateboards are made from dead trees, resin & tiny bit of metal vs a literal ton of metal, various plastics, glass, etc in a car. Therefore skateboard is less than a car (the default transport method).
- The convenience store would have a fridge regardless of this guys personal lifestyle. He, however does not have a fridge, meaning one less fridge was sold/powered up.
You point about the minimalists standing on the shoulders of the 'mass consumer' is misapplied. It's like saying my household water consumption doesn't matter because I am still reliant on the water grid. Apples and oranges.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:29PM (3 children)
If that guy didn't live amongst "wasteful" consumers, then there would be no convenience store. There would be no smooth roads; there would be no cheap skateboards composed of hard-won insights into designing and manufacturing fiddly bits of of plastic and meta and wheels at enormous volumes.
His "minimalism" is utterly dependent on the vast majority of people NOT following his minimalism.
Hey, guess what? You don't get a network of industrial pipes supplying potable water unless you live amongst people who want to piss into a clean toilet or lounge in a bubble bath because they're bored.
The only one being dense here is you; you fail to see the world for what it is.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday October 31 2018, @10:11PM (2 children)
>If that guy didn't live amongst "wasteful" consumers, then there would be no convenience store.
Why is that? If everyone wanted to shop at their local convenience store (over, say Walmart), then there would obviously be a market for convenience stores and the invisible hand would deliver.
>There would be no smooth roads
Sure there would. Goods still need to get to the convince store. Roads could be narrower to accommodate less traffic, and the lower impact skateboard wouldn't cause the road to wear as quickly as cars do. You could add smaller skate-paths at lower cost (like current bike paths).
Following your logic, it would make no difference if everyone just drove an 18 wheel tractor/trailer everywhere and only shopped at the Walmart 3 states over.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @01:51AM (1 child)
The thing that skewers skateboards, bicycles, and all other manner of "ecologically friendly commuter transportation" is: rain, sleet, snow, blistering hot days, plagues of biting insects, and all the other times when people would just rather travel in their cocoon. Sadly, most people choose not to afford multiple commute options so they just use the three ton SUV all the time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:14AM
I don't see why anything "skewers" human powered transport?
I bicycle when the weather is nice and use a car when it's not. As a result I save perhaps a thousand miles on my car every year, mostly short trips (which are alleged to be not so great for the car anyway). I still need all the infrastructure (roads, etc), but at least I use a bit less gasoline and my car might last a few years longer. I also get some exercise and save the cost (and the drive) to a gym...
Even though I work in the automotive industry, it's kind of fun to thumb my nose at a gas station when I ride by on a bike--you aren't getting my money today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @09:50PM (1 child)
We dont have to stabilize them, just stop proping them up and build giant fucking walls to contain the fallout. After 50 years the population will stabilize itself. No more US Aid for starving overpopulated dumbfuckinstans. Big walls and minefields.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:16AM
> Big walls and minefields.
I think these are both widely recognized as being detrimental to wildlife.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @01:32AM (4 children)
A good start, but far from a solution. Incentive economics might work for bots, but real women have pre-menopausal urges to procreate, a percentage of adolescent hormonal insanity that leads to additional large families, and more than the occasional use of child bearing to secure a financially attractive mate. As for sperm donors, there will never be a shortage of able, willing and eager sources.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday November 01 2018, @09:13AM (3 children)
It worked for western societies, though. Good wages plus divorce laws plus porn.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @12:12PM (2 children)
I'd argue the reverse: wages are poor enough that birth control seems an attractive option. If wages were really good, we could all afford to pay for boarding schools.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday November 05 2018, @12:47AM (1 child)
but around here in the eighties the wages were more than OK, and the people were already procreating much less.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 05 2018, @01:14PM
I have spent most of my life in Florida - the majority of "working people" around here are paid mostly in sunshine and warm nights, they get just enough cash to cover their cost of transportation to/from the job and a meager dwelling that keeps them from being arrested for homelessness. Food? SNAP. Clothing? Charity.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:44PM (7 children)
Or... get this, we get rid of everyone like you. The rest of us work on fixing the issues that remain after that.
You see that noise petard you're building, get up there, we've gotta hoist you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:50PM (6 children)
Too bad your wit isn't as sharp as your edge.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by ikanreed on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:50PM (5 children)
No really, I just think everyone like you should die so we can get on to actually fixing problems in sane ways.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @04:02PM (4 children)
Just look at your unhinged, pre-programmed outbursts. Your incessant irony would be hilarious if there weren't so many of you.
#OrangeManBad
(Score: 4, Touché) by ikanreed on Wednesday October 31 2018, @04:04PM (2 children)
It's perfectly sane to want to remove mass murdering psychos from the equation before discussing policy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @04:06PM
What are you talking about?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:59PM
No one but you said anything about mass murdering. It is you that thought of mass murder; no one else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:14PM
Haha a trumpette trying to posit solutions for humanity's problems. What WILL the universe come up with next?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:12PM
Wow you're stupid. You want civilization? Then work on tech that is environmentally stable, and then work on getting the human population into a range that is sustainable with that tech. This isn't an either/or situation and FYI you sound like a psychopath.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:44PM (22 children)
Yes... and no. We need the resources of the "wealthy" to feed the poor. Without steel manufacturing, mechanized farming, global shipping, in the current system most people would starve.
The poor, farming/hunting/gathering more or less independently, need ~5 acres of productive land per person to survive. There's only about 21 million square miles of productive land on Earth, which equates to about 2.6 billion 5 acre tracts. Of course, we get by today based on fertilizer and highly efficient farming practices that really aren't possible when you're poor and on your own.
In the end - whether the carrying capacity of the Earth is 2 billion, 20 billion, or 200 billion human beings, at some point you have to ask the question: what lifestyle do those people want to live? Is it better to have a world with 20 billion people living "poor" lifestyles, or a half billion people with the resources to do whatever they want?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday October 31 2018, @05:31PM (20 children)
That is not the right question. You ask pretty much any person if the world would be better if there were less people on the earth, and therefore more resources for those left over to have a higher quality of life, and you will get agreement from them.
The problem is that while pretty much everyone agrees less humans would be great, where everyone disagrees is which humans should get removed. Everyone is for "someone else" to pay the ultimate sacrifice for the good of all. It is never them, or their families/loved ones.
And that is the problem, everyone thinks everyone else should stop having kids, or just be killed off, freeing up resources for themselves. Nobody wants to be the target of the population cull.
So far the only solution that seems to have worked in the past is to have a massive war, and let fate take its course. However with the advent of weapons of mass destruction, it is very hard to have a massive population decimating war without one of the sides triggering an "end of all life" event.
The alternative I can think of is to let the "free market", take its course. As more and more humans exist, prices of everything go up, pushing people in poverty, and those in poverty will not be able to afford to have/care for offspring, or will die early, while those in the middle rung will limit kids to however many they can afford (which is what happens in most developed societies, where the population births are below replacement level). With that some sort of population stability will pursue.
In reality however, letting the poor live like that is quite unpalatable to certain swathes of human society, so all kinds of welfare, healthcare and aid is brought fourth to prevent the lower rungs dying off and letting them reproduce, which while the charitable and good thing to do, does perpetuate the problem.
Of course, if you didn't help the poor, you can be sure those in crippling poverty would turn to crime, or organised violence/revolution against the "upper classes" that have condemned them, nobody will lie down and die quietly. So even this scenario ends up in some violent dystopia.
So, to conclude, we are pretty much screwed as a race. Reproduction is the main goal of all life on earth, and you would have to have a really oppressive society (like China with its one child policy), in order to attempt to control population growth, and even they didn't manage it completely. We don't really have any good options, from what I can see (unless we lick space based transport, and start colonising space).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:00PM (1 child)
Funny thing is, "fate" manages to bypass the rich and influential and their children while those who would, in peace-time, be the working class get sent off to do the dying. Just look at Cadet Bone Spurs and Lieutenant Dubya for prominent examples.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday October 31 2018, @08:21PM
Of course, that is fate in a way too. By being rich and/or powerful, they have the influence to avoid such nasty things like actual combat. Most of the time being rich and powerful is something that just is the fate of your circumstance of birth.
Your average poor sod, not so much. That of course ignores the number that will either volunteer pre-war (i.e. those who just like the idea), or during the war (propaganda, patriotism, other reasons). Sad state of affairs, but it seems governments have no trouble finding willing recruits for killing.
Even when the draft was instituted, many would rather go to fight than try their hand at avoiding getting drafted. It is quite the minority that sees war for the racket it is and is willing to risk it all to avoid being pulled into it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by exaeta on Wednesday October 31 2018, @08:23PM (12 children)
How about this? Adding a 1% income tax for each child you have, 2% if not married. (so 1% on two people or 2% on one).
Us singles are oppressed under the current tax code, why don't we reverse the situation?
Also get rid of the mortgage tax deduction.
This would fix the overpopulation problem.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Wednesday October 31 2018, @09:13PM
> This would fix the overpopulation problem.
I am not sure it would. These are my thoughts:
The rich don't have an income (or rather, they can make their income be whatever they want), plus all kinds of other tax tricks means they can avoid said "child based income tax", and have as many children as they want.
The poor don't have an income (or if they do, it is so small as to not be subject to income tax), that is why they are poor. So said "child based income tax" would not apply to them, so they can have as many children as they want
The only people who are rich enough to be taxed, but not rich enough to avoid said taxation, are the working/middle classes in developed countries, who are already taxed to the hilt, and cannot afford to have 2 kids (most have 1, if any kids at all). That is why they are in rapid population decline.
Slapping another tax on those who are already in a population decline due to low birthrates, while not affecting those who have a lot of kids, will not really make much of a dent in world population growth.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Wednesday October 31 2018, @11:31PM (5 children)
"Not married" != "not supported by partner" - Marriage is a legal / religious state that has no inherent bearing on income.
And 2% is too low. Needs to be much higher, IMHO, otherwise it's neither a deterrent or a significant aid to the social load those kids present.
Fix housing prices and get rid of mortgages entirely would be better. Most mortgages are horrific examples of usury.
And get rid of all deductions. You earn, you pay a percentage. No advantages for anyone. The mortgage deduction is hilarious: you get a break for supporting the lenders. Good grief, could the tilt of the playing field towards them be any more obvious?
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 01 2018, @03:57AM (4 children)
And a 1% tax on your total assets, with maybe an exemption for your primary residence.
1% is a reasonable fee to pay to society for respecting and protecting your assets, and is neither debilitating nor onerous. It is not difficult to invest your hoarded capital to produce a return exceeding 1%.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday November 01 2018, @06:32PM (2 children)
Sounds okay to me. Although I think if your primary residence has a high value, say in the top 40% of value range for all of the homes in your state, it shouldn't be exempt. Clearly you're stashing value there (or in the land itself) instead of in the rest of your net worth, considerably more so than the average person has the ability to do so. If your land is used otherwise, such as a farm, then it should be taxed that way except the part your home is actually sitting on up to perhaps 100x100 feet (just handwaving there.) When municipalities allow land values to get so far out of hand (like some Cali cities, and others similar), it's probably time to live somewhere else anyway. Unless you like paying absurd amounts for the same land and structure you could have much less expensively somewhere else, of course. The view, the stores, the job, whatever. Me, I won't play that. I think it's outright dumb.
Loopholes for big spenders are bad, IMHO. They always turn into escape hatches.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 01 2018, @09:18PM (1 child)
There are two main reasons for the home exemption;
1/ old people on low incomes. If you've lived in your little house in the same area for the past 40 years, paid off your house and then retired, it is not fair to suddenly hit you with a huge tax bill just because the area got popular.
2/ increase the rate of home ownership. Exempting the home would tend to decrease the cost of owning relative to renting. Higher rates of home ownership come with many societal benefits.
Also, I'm not sure about the US, but in AU we have 'Council Rates' which are basically a local government tax on real estate. It's usually between 0.1% and 1% and is the main source of income for local councils. Hitting the home again would be double-dipping. However, you could always put a limit on it. Maybe the first million dollars of home value is untaxed.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Friday November 02 2018, @01:59AM
1/ Keeping in mind we're speaking of proposed mechanisms: a home's taxes should only change via external evaluation with actual improvements, and/or the cost of related infrastructure. New city water pipes, repair of your particular street, that sort of thing. So then it's fair to make changes, as long as they're proportional. The current system (in the USA, don't know about your country) is ridiculous; first they pretend the home has a totally fictional new value they invent that has nothing to do with its actual value, though you're neither selling it or taking out a loan on it; then they assess taxes on this utterly imaginary value they cooked up. They keep upping this imaginary value, when in actuality, the home is aging, costing more to maintain, and is decreasing in value precisely as a car does as it is used and it ages. The root of the problem, of course, is the ridiculous inflation behind the whole mess. I don't think it should be legal. You pay X for a house and property, it should never be assessed for more than you paid unless you actually improve the house and/or the property. Which, frankly, most people do not manage to do. You sell it for more to someone, fine, tax that transaction, and then tax THEM at that rate, because that's the value of the home (again, keeping in mind that the actual value will decrease after that, again.)
2/ You mean bank ownership. How many people can actually afford to buy a home? What they actually do is have the bank buy the home, able to take it at any violation of the loan terms (and sometimes, just "because") and then, if they're really, really diligent, 30 years later they can actually own the home. Except the tax people and the courts can still take it. That's how it works in the USA. "Ownership" of a home is about 99% illusory here. In any case, if home values weren't so ridiculously inflated, this would not be a problem in the first place.
Here in the US, if the tax authorities were only double-dipping, it would be a huge relief to the taxpayers. :/
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Sunday November 11 2018, @09:36PM
Asset tax is unlikely to be looked upon favorably. Nor would it be an appropriate use of government power.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @01:43AM (4 children)
Far from it, this would address the current thorn in your personal income paw, and very little more.
A global child tax: first one is free for every man and woman, after that every additional child incurs an additional lifetime 10% tax on the parent(s)' post-tax income to defray the future costs of protecting the environment from the additional child(ren). Taxes so collected to be administered by a world governmental organization devoted to preservation of the ecosystem we all depend on.
Everyone, everywhere - fair and equal except that some countries will have miserable enforcement performance and require "advisory assistance" from the WGO.
This still might not be enough, but the tax rate could be reviewed every decade and revised according to how world population is tracking.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday November 01 2018, @11:03AM (1 child)
Yeah, but a one world dystopian government won't happen. The earth (for all the perceived shrinkage in size due to improvements in communication) is still a large place, and you will not get all the peoples of the world to agree to your solution.
The only way your "top down" approach would be if every country on earth was a dictatorship, and their populations serfs. A little bit like China in that sense, but far more extreme, with far better enforcement and monitoring. To keep control over such a wide ranging would require a massive amount of resources, and would not work, long term.
Every single dictatorship eventually succumbs to collapse, because people are individual agents, and generally are unwilling to have their entire life controlled by a government.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @12:27PM
I did mention "advisory assistance" - the UN already fields minor peacekeeping forces, with a tithe from the parents of every population expansion child an organization like the UN could exert enough influence on minority dissenters to keep population expansion taxes collecting worldwide within reasonable tolerances. It would require a majority (of world military power) buy-in to get rolling, I think US, China, India and a majority of Europe would be enough to make it stick after establishment.
Of course, a key component of political acceptance is to offer more carrot than stick. Compliant states to receive food, energy and infrastructure aid, etc.
As for "dictatorship" - the nature of the organization's funding and mission statement should prevent it from growth to anything resembling a totalitarian state. Its sole source of funding is the parents of population expansion children, said funding is not terribly unreasonable (even the church demanded a tithe, when they could...), and its sole mission statement is preservation of the world ecology through use of those funds taken from population expanders. If an individual, or country full of individuals, feels the desire to expand the global population - that is perfectly acceptable as long as they comply with payment of the global population expansion tax.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Monday November 19 2018, @07:07PM (1 child)
A 10% tax is objectively too much. I don't think more than 5% would be reasonable, and that's on the high end.
4 children brings you to 80% effective tax rate? I don't think so.
I stand by 2% during the duration that the child is under 18.
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday November 19 2018, @07:49PM
Taxes aren't about fair, often they aren't about what things cost, mostly they are about behavior modification.
The aggregate behavior of 7 billion people some years in the future is virtually impossible to predict, if 10% tax causes a population crash, then great, let's ride that wave down and start tweaking it for a soft landing around 2 billion stable population. I suspect 10% is not enough to generate the required (not desired) drop in birth rate to even bring peak population in under 10 billion, and if you elect me king of the world, I promise to raise that new child tax rate 1% per year until such time as birth rates do start declining.
What to do with the excess tax income? Certainly it can defray the bulk of other income and sales taxes, leaving them to focus on behavior modification rather than simply being large enough to fund desired social and infrastructure programs.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @01:28AM (2 children)
We've run that experiment for ~70 years now. Result: population tripled, number living in poverty more than tripled, and the ecosystem is on a fast track to never never land.
There were the world wars, there was the cold war, what we are waging right now without even acknowledging it is war on every other species on the planet - all out subjugation, enslavement, harvesting and even worse: strip mining style devastation of any species not homo sapiens. The other side of this war doesn't participate in our economy, they hold no currency, no voting rights, and they have the weakest of representation in our legislative processes: representation via under-funded proxies painted as the eco-nut kooky fringe of society.
When this is over, if there is any kind of accurate history of it recorded, it will be "the big event" before the transformation to the next era. Whether that is the era of birth control (difficult to imagine), rapid expansion space colonization (unlikely), or ecological collapse (current front runner) is up to us.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday November 01 2018, @10:57AM (1 child)
> We've run that experiment for ~70 years now. Result: population tripled, number living in poverty more than tripled, and the ecosystem is on a fast track to never never land.
No we haven't, we have never run such an experiment. In fact we have been doing the opposite, globally, because It is too unpalatable and inhumane to leave it to "the free market". The results you speak of are precisely because we cannot bring ourselves to be so callous and brutal, and instead build out welfare states and provide all kinds of healthcare and aid to support the poorest, with the result that they have population explosions (see Africa for an example).
Don't get me wrong, I don't think it is a good idea to have a "dog-eat-dog" cruel world, indeed if you read my original post I point out why it would not work, even if we agreed to such a inhumane society.
> Whether that is the era of birth control (difficult to imagine), rapid expansion space colonization (unlikely), or ecological collapse (current front runner) is up to us.
I doubt any of those three will happen (ecological collapse most likely of the three though). I think we would have a societal and economic collapse before any of those three kick off (we are already reaching unsustainable debt levels, and we still haven't left the 2008 crisis, it is just being dragged along by money printing, but even that is coming to an end). There is a good chance it may occur with a war (great to have a foreign "enemy" to distract the locals about their situation, and have someone else to blame). When people cannot afford to feed themselves or their kids, we will see a slowdown in population growth.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @12:15PM
By all accounts, the sixth mass extinction event has already happened, the only question is how deep it's going to go before it bottoms out.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:27AM
> Everyone is for "someone else" to pay the ultimate sacrifice for the good of all.
Speak for yourself, I chose to not have kids back when I was a student in the '70s and haven't (no trophy wives in sight, grin). Part of my reasoning (when I was much younger) was based on projections of world population--and making an educated guess that kids growing up now wouldn't be coming into a very nice world. There were other reasons too, but that was certainly one.
Looks like my prediction is coming true. I'm content with my decision. I got lucky and was born when the USA was going through some really good times, which don't appear to be coming back. It's been a great ride so far.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 01 2018, @07:21PM
Actually, in many industrialized nations now, the infant mortality rate is so low, that people opt to have few children. This has the odd consequence that lower mortality rates lead to negative population growth.
This seems likely to be the best way out of this situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 05 2018, @04:17AM
> ~5 acres of productive land per person to survive
Have you ever grown your own food?! An acre of moderately fertile soil (with ok rain and no killer hail/tornado/flood etc) will happily feed five humans, rotating plants with a few chickens.
It won't handle grazing cattle to support a single human, mind you.
But I've grown my family's food, by "hand" (no fertilizer, no gas, hand tools) and the issue isn't growing enough potatoes or beans, it's having the time to tend them, and keeping them out of season, and dealing with 'bad' winters (which are superb for pest management) and dry summers (which we couldn't solve without impacting our well) and their ilk.
Want a good idea of food productivity? Grow a backyard potato patch, if you have a back yard. They're hardy and you'll be amazed at how many you pull out per square meter.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by patrick on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:57PM (1 child)
How many animals is a western doctor worth, versus how many animals are 20 poor subsistence farmers worth? How do you quantify the world being "better" without these human beings?
You allude to the environmental impact of a rich lifestyle vs a poor lifestyle. However, there are low and high tech ways to be sustainable and low and high tech ways to cause major harm to the environment.
Counter arguments include poor poachers (a huge problem for African wildlife), and slash-and-burn farming used by 200–500 million people worldwide [wikipedia.org], while many natural environments are protected by environmental conservation groups, and patrolled by rangers or similar (ie: the upper and middle class).
Quantifying who the world would be better without is a slippery slope, and not helpful in the long run. The key is a local focus on intelligent sustainability, as populations grow and decline in varied areas all over the world.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:00AM
We're already pretty far down a slippery slope, and without real population reduction there won't be a long run to worry about.
Nobody has to die for population control (at least not unnaturally soon, immortality medicine is a whole other problem waiting to hatch.) Limit new births by much stronger disincentives than are currently used. The problem with this is: nationalism, and corporations that feed on population growth - specifically: top level executive compensation based on growth - decisions from the top are directed to garner bigger bonuses (so what if you can already afford 10 private islands (net worth 300M), why not try for 100 island buying power (3B net worth) before you die?) As for nationalism, the first nations to "blink" on the population growth race will be less populous in the later balance of human decision making. Even though China widely publicized "One Child", their population growth never stopped - it did slow, but did nothing resembling leveling off.
What the ecosystems of the world need is a global human one-child-like policy that actually delivers the results you would expect from the name.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @06:14PM
Then everyone would spawn the broods of the poorest 10% of us. Welcome 50 billion paupers in 30 years.
Do go and learn something of demography. Ideology compounded by ignorance is doubleplusungood.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @06:30PM
Poor diagnosis and poorer prescription. See: Bushmeat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushmeat#Extent [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by patrick on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:13PM (8 children)
For a good idea about what the inevitable population growth will look like, Hans Rosling (the late statistician and co-founder of Médecins sans Frontièrs Sweden), had a few videos.
Barring some major apocalyptic catastrophe (which I hope you don't want), you're not going to get less population in the coming decades. But if the poorest countries continue on the path of positive growth in healthcare and infrastructure, there's a strong probability that the population will stabilize after a few decades.
More of Dr. Rosling's videos [ted.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:30PM (6 children)
You'll note populations in 3rd world countries have exploded under "foreign aid".
Within countries, populations of poor "underserved" peoples have exploded under welfare.
This notion that developed countries have stable populations seems like yet another confusion between correlation and causation. In reality, it seems that the population among the well-to-do, educated groups stabilizes or begins to decline, while the population among the subsidized, uneducated groups explodes.
Remove subsidies, and force people to face reality.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:40PM (5 children)
Ok, you're the control freak who gets in charge because you are the control freak. You get presented two options:
1. tax independent people to fund an army of welfare recipients who get dependent on the system, that is, you
2. tax independent people to avoid them becoming too big, to fund a series of projects which will result in decent jobs, increasing the number of independent people and decreasing the need of taxation. The needy get food, blanket, roof and no money, and pay with work hours.
1 is and always has been a no brainer. Reducing population is just a way to postpone the next inevitable crisis.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:53PM (4 children)
I reject putting a control freak in power; I reject taxation as an acceptable way to organize society's resources.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @06:35PM (3 children)
Doesn't matter what you reject. You'll be among the first culls, because your attitude sucks. But, since we live in a free society, you won't be gagged. You can exercise your freedom of speech as you are strapped to the guerney to be euthanized.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @06:56PM (2 children)
You can't speak of a "free society", and in the same breath talk of forcibly culling a person because his "attitude sucks".
Either you're pointing out the absurdity of that position, or you are in fact delusional.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:18PM (1 child)
Since you're AC it is hard to say exactly but I get the feeling you were the one saying we should kill off the poor people and save the rich because we want to preserve 1st world society. That insane idea is considered in the discussion until it gets back to YOU getting culled and suddenly you want to talk about delusional?
Get fucked you stupid ass. We all get your points and as usual they are uninformed reactionary garbage with little thought about the real world scenarios.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:31PM
Nobody has said any such thing.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 01 2018, @02:06AM
This has been "common wisdom" since the 1960s. Actual result during that period: population tripled, but there's still a "strong probability" that the population will stabilize after a few MORE decades.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by Bot on Wednesday October 31 2018, @03:29PM
Yea, after we impoverished you using fiat money, deprived you of independence with the industrial revolution, poisoned you with pollution, we are going to solve the problem, which is YOU.
Signed, the enlightened elite.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday October 31 2018, @08:28PM
It's obvious what the plan currently is. Labor will be replaced with robots; unemployed people removed. Removed where? Depends on the country in question they might be killed in wars, put in prisons or concentration camps or reservations or whatever, where their procreation abilities can be controlled. That's the future we are facing now and I am not talking about next century, but rather next decade or two so most of us will be affected. The nature will recover very quickly by itself.
The real question is if we can do anything about it. Even more, do we want to do anything?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.