SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
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: 2) by requerdanos on Wednesday October 31 2018, @07:27PM (1 child)
Because often, the amount of benefits one receives depends upon the number of people in the family.
More kids == more benefits.
Now, the care, feeding, and upbringing of the kids costs more than the increase in benefits would provide, but all that's often considered irrelevant beside the fact that the benefit amount gets bigger, therefore having more kids is an investment that pays off in cash.
Financially rewarding sterilization would stand a chance at stopping the parts of the population explosion that are due in part to more kids==bigger check.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday November 02 2018, @04:11PM
The incentive you are talking about generally only applies to people that already have kids. Having even one is a full-time job, and if your goal is to get a job involving children there are usually less stressful ways to do that (such as running a daycare, which the countries we are talking about also tend to subsidize).
But sure, some people figure out after they have a kid that they don't really have time for anything else but being a parent. This is especially true for single mothers. And the incentive may lead to some people deciding that more children will lead to more stable finances. But this situation is the size of a rounding error when it comes to population growth.
If you're really concerned, though, then the real solution isn't forced sterilization AKA eugenics. The real solution is to make it easier to make money doing something else while being a parent. That means raising the number of opportunities for part-time, intermittent work. Stuff where the person doing the job can skip days at a time because their kid is sick and pick up extra work once in a while when their schedule allows or they just need more money to cover a sudden expense.
Basically, we need something that looks more like a gig economy. And we need to either make it profitable facilitate this economy without incentivizing exploitation, or we need it to be facilitated by people that are directly accountable to the public (i.e. elected officials of the government).
But again, the whole thing is no more than a rounding error when it comes to population growth. Birth rates in countries that provide per-child welfare benefits are still below replacement.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?